The Only Cheerfulness In The Local Color Was To Be
Noted In The Caparison Of The Donkeys, Which We Were To Find More And
More Brilliant Southward.
Do I say the only cheerfulness?
I ought to
except also the involuntary hilarity of a certain poor man's suit which
was so patched together of myriad scraps that it looked as if cut from
the fabric of a crazy-quilt. I owe him this notice the rather because he
almost alone did not beg of us in a city which swarmed with beggars in a
forecast of that pest of beggary which infests Spain everywhere. I do
not say that the thing is without picturesqueness, without real pathos;
the little girl who kissed the copper I gave her in the cathedral
remains endeared to me by that perhaps conventional touch of poetry.
There was compensation for the want of presence among the ladies of
Burgos, in the leading lady of the theatrical company who dined, the
night before, at our hotel with the chief actors of her support, before
giving a last performance in our ancient city. It happened another time
in our Spanish progress that we had the society of strolling players at
our hotel, and it was both times told us that the given company was the
best dramatic company in Spain; but at Burgos we did not yet know that
we were so singularly honored. The leading lady there had luminous black
eyes, large like the head-lamps of a motor-car, and a wide crimson mouth
which she employed as at a stage banquet throughout the dinner, while
she talked and laughed with her fellow-actors, beautiful as
bull-fighters, cleanshaven, serious of face and shapely of limb. They
were unaffectedly professional, and the lady made no pretense of not
being a leading lady. One could see that she was the kindest creature in
the world, and that she took a genuine pleasure in her huge, practicable
eyes. At the other end of the room a Spanish family - father, mother, and
small children, down to some in arms - were dining and the children
wailing as Spanish children will, regardless of time and place; and when
the nurse brought one of the disconsolate infants to be kissed by the
leading lady one's heart went out to her for the amiability and
abundance of her caresses. The mere sight of their warmth did something
to supply the defect of steam in the steam-heating apparatus, but when
one got beyond their radius there was nothing for the shivering traveler
except to wrap himself in the down quilt of his bed and spread his
steamer-rug over his knees till it was time to creep under both of them
between the glacial sheets.
We were sorry we had not got tickets for the leading lady's public
performance; it could have been so little more public; but we had not,
and there was nothing else in Burgos to invite the foot outdoors after
dinner. From my own knowledge I cannot yet say the place was not
lighted; but my sense of the tangle of streets lying night long in a
rich Gothic gloom shall remain unimpaired by statistics. Very possibly
Burgos is brilliantly lighted with electricity; only they have not got
the electricity on, as in our steam-heated hotel they had not got the
steam on.
VIII
We had authorized our little interpreter to engage tickets for us by the
mail-train the next afternoon for Valladolid; he pretended, of course,
that the places could be had only by his special intervention, and by
telegraphing for them to the arriving train. We accepted his romantic
theory of the case, and paid the bonus due the railroad agent in the
hotel for his offices in the matter; we would have given anything, we
were so eager to get out of Burgos before we were frozen up there. I do
not know that we were either surprised or pained to find that our
Chilian friends should have got seats in the same car without anything
of our diplomacy, by the simple process of showing their tickets. I
think our little interpreter was worth everything he cost, and more. I
would not have lost a moment of his company as he stood on the platform
with me, adding one artless invention to another for my pleasure, and
successively extracting peseta after peseta from me till he had made up
the sum which he had doubtless idealized as a just reward for his
half-day's service when he first told me that it should be what I
pleased. We parted with the affection of fellow-citizens in a strange
monarchical country, his English growing less and less as the train
delayed, and his eyes watering more and more as with tears of
com-patriotic affection. At the moment I could have envied that German
princess her ability to make sure of his future companionship at the low
cost of fifty pesetas a day; and even now, when my affection has had
time to wane, I cannot do less than commend him to any future visitor at
Burgos, as in the last degree amiable, and abounding in surprises of
intelligence and unexpected feats of reliability.
IV
THE VARIETY OF VALLADOLID
When you leave Burgos at 3.29 of a passably sunny afternoon you are not
at once aware of the moral difference between the terms of your approach
and those of your departure. You are not changing your earth or your sky
very much, but it is not long before you are sensible of a change of
mind which insists more and more. There is the same long ground-swell of
wheat-fields, but yesterday you were followed in vision by the
loveliness of the frugal and fertile Biscayan farms, and to-day this
vision has left you, and you are running farther and farther into the
economic and topographic waste of Castile. Yesterday there were more or
less agreeable shepherdesses in pleasant plaids scattered over the
landscape; to-day there are only shepherds of three days' unshornness;
the plaids are ragged, and there is not sufficient compensation in the
cavalcades of both men and women riding donkeys in and out of the
horizons on the long roads that lose and find themselves there.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 16 of 101
Words from 15279 to 16336
of 103320
