Part 10 (1/2)

Don Jose was shocked. Merriest and most indulgent of hosts, he was inclined at this point to play the tyrant. If I must see Cadiz, well and good. He would take me to the morning express and put me under charge of the conductor. At Utrera, an hour farther on, his son would come to the train and see that all was well. At _Puerto de Santa Maria_, another hour distant, I should be met by a trusted friend of the family, who would transfer me to another train and another conductor, and so speed me for my third hour to Cadiz, where I should be greeted by a relative of mine hostess and conveyed in safety to his home.

I appreciated the kindness involved in this very Andalusian programme, but otherwise it did not appeal to me. That was not the way Columbus went, nor Cortes. And much as I delighted in the Alhambra, and the Mosque of Cordova, and the Alcazar of Seville, I did not feel called upon to bow a New England bonnet beneath the Moorish yoke.

Thus Don Jose and I found ourselves quietly engaged in an Hispano-American contest. He heartily disapproved of my going, even by train. ”_Una senora sola!_ It is not the custom in Andalusia.” His plan of campaign consisted in deferring the arrangements from day to day. ”_Manana!_” Whenever I attempted to set a time for departure he blandly a.s.sented, and presently projected some irresistibly attractive excursion for that very date. His household were all with him. His wife had not been able to procure the particular _dulces_ indispensable to a traveller's luncheon. Even my faithless comrade, draped in her flower-garden shawl, practised the steps of a _seguidilla_ to the rattle of the castanets and laughed at my defeats.

At last, grown desperate, I suavely announced at the Sunday dinner table that I was going to Cadiz that week. My host said, ”_Bueno!_”

and my hostess, ”_Muy bien!_” But there was no surrender in their tones. On Monday, instead of writing the requisite notes to these relays of protectors along the route, Don Jose took us himself, on a mimic steamboat, for a judicious distance down the Guadalquivir.

Tuesday he put me off with Roman ruins, and Wednesday with a private gallery of Murillos. By Thursday I grew insistent, and, with shrug and sigh, he finally consented to my going by train on Friday. I still urged the boat, but he heaped up a thousand difficulties. There wasn't any; it would be overcrowded; I should be seasick; the boat would arrive, wherever it might arrive, too late for my train, whatever my train might be. Compromise is always becoming, and I agreed to take the nine o'clock express in the morning.

After the extended Spanish farewells, for to kiss on both cheeks and be kissed on both cheeks down a long feminine line, mother, daughters, and maid-servants, is no hasty ceremony, I sallied forth at half-past eight with Don Jose in attendance. He called a cab, but in Spain the cabbies are men and brothers, and this one, on learning our destination, declared that the train did not start until half-past nine and it was much better for a lady to wait _en casa_ than at the depot. This additional guardians.h.i.+p goaded me to active remonstrance.

Why not take the cab for the hour and look up a procession on our way to the station? There are always processions in Seville. This appealed to both the pleasure-loving Spaniards, and we drove into the palmy _Plaza de San Fernando_, where an array of military bands was serenading some civic dignitary.

The music was of the best, and we fell in with the large and varied retinue that escorted the musicians to the palace of the archbishop.

As they were rousing him from his reverend slumbers with _La Marcha de Cadiz_, I caught a twinkle in Don Jose's eye. Did he hope to keep me chasing after those bands all the forenoon? I awakened the cabman, whom the music had lulled into the easy Andalusian doze, and we clattered off to the station. Of all silent and forsaken places! I looked suspiciously at Don Jose, whose swarthy countenance wore an overdone expression of innocent surprise. A solitary official sauntered out.

”Good morning, senor! Is the express gone?” asked the driver.

”Good morning, senor! There isn't any express to-day,” was the reply.

”The express runs only Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sat.u.r.days.”

”What a pity,” cooed Don Jose, contentedly. ”You will have to wait till to-morrow.”

”Yes, you can go to-morrow,” indulgently added the driver, and the official chimed sweetly in, ”_Manana por la manana!_”

”But is there no other train to-day?” I asked.

The official admitted that there was one at three o'clock. Don Jose gave him a reproachful glance.

”But you do not want to go by train,” said my ingenious host. ”Perhaps to-morrow you can go by steamboat.”

”Perhaps I can go by steamboat now,” I returned, seizing my opportunity. ”When does that boat start?”

n.o.body knew. I asked the cabman to drive us to the Golden Tower, off which sea-going vessels usually anchor. Don Jose fell back in his seat, exhausted.

The cabman drove so fast, for Seville, that we ran into a donkey and made a paralyzed beggar jump, but we reached the river in time to see a small steamer just in the act of swinging loose from the pier. In the excitement of the moment Don Jose forgot everything save the necessity of properly presenting me to the captain, and I, for my part, was absorbed in the ecstasy of sailing from the foot of the Golden Tower along the Silver Road.

It was not until a rod of water lay between boat and wharf that the captain shouted to Don Jose, who struck an att.i.tude of utter consternation, that this craft went only to Bonanza, and no connection could be made from there to Cadiz until the following afternoon. And I, mindful of the austere dignity that befitted these critical circ.u.mstances, could not even laugh.

It was a dirty little boat, with a malodorous cargo of fish, and for pa.s.sengers two soldiers, two peasants, and a commercial traveller. But what of that? I was sailing on a treasure s.h.i.+p of the Indies, one of those lofty galleons of Spain, ”rowed by thrice one hundred slaves and gay with streamers, banners, music,” that had delivered at the Golden Tower her tribute from the h.o.a.rd of the Incas, and was proudly bearing back to the open roads of Cadiz.

We dropped down past a n.o.ble line of deep-sea merchantmen, from Ma.r.s.eilles, Hamburg, and far-away ports of Norway and Sweden. We pa.s.sed fis.h.i.+ng boats casting their nets, and met a stately Spanish bark, the _Calderon_. On the sh.o.r.es we caught glimpses of orange grove and olive orchard, lines of osiers and white poplars, and we paused at the little town of Coria, famous for its earthen jars, to land one of our peasants, while a jolly priest, whose plain black garb was relieved by a vermilion parasol, tossed down cigars to his friends among the sailors.

Then our galleon pursued her course into the flat and desolate regions of the _marismas_. These great salt marshes of the Guadalquivir, scarcely more than a bog in winter, serve as pasture for herds of hardy sheep and for those droves of mighty bulls bred in Andalusia to die in the arenas of all Spain. For long stretches the green bank would be lined with the glorious creatures, standing like ebony statues deep amid the reeds, some entirely black, and many black with slight markings of white. The Guadalquivir intersects in triple channel this unpeopled waste, concerning whose profusion of plant life and animal life English hunters tell strange tales. They report flocks of rosy flamingoes, three hundred or five hundred in a column, ”glinting in the suns.h.i.+ne like a pink cloud,” and muddy islets studded thick with colonies of flamingo nests. Most wonderful of all, the camel, that ancient and serious beast of burden, a figure pertaining in all imaginations to the arid, sandy desert, keeps holiday in these huge swamps. It seems that, in 1829, a herd of camels was brought into the province of Cadiz, from the Canaries, for transport service in road-building and the like, and for trial in agriculture. But the peculiar distaste of horses for these humpy monsters spoiled the scheme, and the camels, increased to some eighty in number, took merrily to the marshes, where, in defiance of all caravan tradition, they thrive in aquatic liberty. The fascination of this wilderness reached even the dingy steamer deck. Gulls, ducks, and all manner of wild fowl flashed in the suns.h.i.+ne, which often made the winding river, as tawny as our James, sparkle like liquid gold.

If only it had been gold indeed, and had kept the traceries of the Roman keels that have traversed it, the Vandal swords whose red it has washed away, the Moorish faces it has mirrored, the Spanish--

”_Usted come?_”