Chapter VI: Part 6

“I was born in the tower,” said Maria; “I have lived here all my life, and I have never seen those mountains without snow. That is the _campana de la Vela_,” she pointed to a huge bronze bell hanging in the turret. “You should see the tower on the day after New Year. How many girls come up to see the view that day! They believe, foolish ones, that she who rings the bell on the second of January will get a husband before the year is over.” Maria smiled, with grim close-shut lips. Had she ever been weak enough to try the charm? For Encarnacion it was unthinkable.

“When Don Alfonzo was here we asked him to ring the bell. Though he laughed very much, he would not. From what we hear, he will be married before New Year all the same.”

In the Torre de la Vela they know all that is going on. It was growing dark; the stars were pricking through the blue; down in the city of Granada the lights seemed to reflect them.

“Is that the Gypsy quarter?” I asked Maria. I could just make out doors like the one leading to Aladdin’s cave, in the face of a hillside far below.

“Yes, that is the Albaicin. You have been there?”

“Not yet; to-morrow we shall go to see some Gypsy dancing.”

Maria shrugged scornful shoulders. “Take care they don’t pick your pockets. The Gitanos are great thieves; they are taught to steal from the time they are babies. You may like what you will see. When there are no ladies,” she held up her hands in horror, “their dances are not to be imagined or described. Do not let him go by himself.” She looked at Patsy, leaning over the parapet absorbed in the view. “They are deceitful hussies! The dances they dance when men go alone are very different from what you will see!”

“That would be a hot walk without the shade of those trees,” said Patsy. “Pleasant that we should remember the Iron Duke in Spain most of all for his elms. Who loves his fellow men, plants trees. The English _are_ civilized, confound ’em! The longer you’re in Europe, the more you have to think of England as the Great Friend.”

There was no excuse to linger longer. The sisters had invited us to sup, and we had declined.

“Go you with God,” said Encarnacion, she came with us to the door. “To-night when you hear the _campana_ de la Vela, think of Maria and me in the tower.”

“In the tower,” echoed Maria over her shoulder.

The next day we drove to the Albaicin, by the road of the Sacred Mountain. The base of the mountain is honeycombed with gypsy cave dwellings. The caves are built, or rather excavated,

at four different levels, and entered from rough terraces. The gypsy settlement seemed a sort of primitive community, like those from which Tangiers and Naples must have developed into the terraced cities they are to-day. Higher up the mountains are the sacred caves where hermits once lived. On the summit is a large church and a religious house.

“That old gentleman Don Jaime gave me the letter to,” said Patsy, “told me that the priests who live up there are no end of swells. They can’t ‘get in’ on anything but merit, not even royal patronage. They must show that they have the goods; must pass a stiff examination. Each one has his separate establishment, with his own house and garden and servants, and draws a pension of from three to five thousand pesetas a year. Most of them are great ‘orators’; they are sent for from all over Spain to preach, and jolly well paid for it. They always get twenty-five dollars a sermon, and have been known to get forty! Spain’s the place for priests; when I take orders I shall come here to live!”

The gypsy King met us at the entrance of his cave; a swart hulk of a man, with the voice of a bull and bold piercing eyes. Behind him stood his son, looking just as the King must have looked at twenty. The boy had a mop of coarse black hair--the King’s was iron gray--low forehead, strong white teeth, that curious veiled eye that later in life grows fierce and bright; body, hands, feet, exquisitely turned, color a rich olive, the look of race that is better than beauty, and the glow of youth that is best of all. It was small wonder the two ragged girls plaiting straw in the dust of the hot yellow road looked at him with longing eyes.

The door of the cave, fitted flat against the hillside, seemed to lead into the bowels of the earth. The cave, literally scooped out of the mountain, was divided into four decent whitewashed rooms, comfortable and clean enough. We went directly from the road into the largest; it was of fair size, with rough beams running across the ceiling and with a tiled floor. We were expected; great preparations had been made for our visit. A row of rush-bottomed chairs stood against the wall. Beautifully polished copper saucepans of many sizes were placed on a shelf, with some wild peonies stuck in a beer bottle. I somehow fancied that the saucepans would be for sale if we took a fancy to them. A small inner room, perfectly dark, led from the living room; it had a bed with a white crocheted quilt. On the left of the entrance was a cave room that served as a kitchen; on the right, a sort of property room,--where half a dozen women and girls with powdered faces and fresh flowers in their hair were waiting. The eldest, a fierce old woman with a beak like a parrot’s, dusted a chair for me.

“This is my house,” she said. Pointing to the King, “He is my son, these are all my family.” She seemed surprised at my asking if there was any other cave as good as hers.

“No,” she said, “this is the best; cool in summer, warm in winter, and clean, as you can see.”

The musicians, the King’s son and another youth with oiled hair and clean new jackets, took their places, twanged their guitars and the _fiesta flamanca_ began. First a dance by two women, while the others sat by, clapping their hands, tapping with their feet, keeping time to the music.

“More power!” cried the King.

“_Dalé, dalé_,” droned the chorus. The guitars twanged louder, the hand-clapping redoubled. Little by little the dancers woke up. The youngest woman was sixty, the oldest girl ten. This was a little disappointing to Patsy, though they all did their best and gave us good measure. The children were evidently students being carefully trained; the old women were all good artists, and intent on preserving and handing down the traditions of their art,--but the thing was somehow curiously academic! The old mother took a tambourine from the wall and shook out the music from it in fine style. “Tire yourselves!” she cried. After the second dance, she handed a tray with glasses of wine. Each succeeding dance was better than the last. The best of all was the one the old woman gave us at the end. Only once was there an approach to what Maria had hinted at. A woman with a bad face gave us a Jaleo, a gross, wriggling dance with unpleasant contortions of the body, wonderful as an exhibition of skill and strength, but not quite decent, and lacking the grace, the beauty, and the dignity of the old woman’s performance.

“Haven’t we had enough?” said Patsy, at the end of half an hour. “You saw those men tip the wink to our coachman as we passed? The whole village is on its good behavior. We are not to be shocked, annoyed, or begged from; it’s all put down in the bill we must pay the ruffian King for protecting us from his tribe, preventing us from seeing the real thing and giving us this fake show.”

Patsy was all wrong--because he was disappointed in the age of the performers! You can see a young and handsome Spanish dancing girl in any music hall in Madrid. The gypsy cave in the mountainside, where the dancers of the past and the dancers of the future meet, was worth a trip to Granada!

Of course we spent most of our time in Granada at the Alhambra. Some things must be experienced to be understood. Falling in love is one, Niagara Falls another, going down a toboggan slide a third, the Alhambra a fourth. The old simile of the oyster came to mind as freshly as if we had invented it,--just as every pair of young lovers imagine they have invented love! The heavy walls are the outside of the oyster; the fairy courts and halls painted with the tints of rainbow, dawn, sea, and moonlight are the inside of the shell. The pearl? In the room of the Two Sisters the winter apartment of the sultana, I had a vision of Irving’s Linderaxa. I could not remember how he described his pearl of the harem, but the face I saw or dreamed of as I sat in that fairy palace was the fairest woman’s face I ever saw. Her skin was like warm ivory, her hair an aureole of flame, her eyes, gray stars, her smile, the smile of the imperishable child.

I asked Patsy if he was disappointed in the Alhambra.

“Yes,” he said, “disappointed the right way. After the Acropolis, it is the best thing I ever saw. The lovely color, the movement of it all! Will you tell me how any people could invent a written language as decorative as this?” We were in one of the great halls looking at the Cuffik inscriptions that form one of the most fascinating and characteristic of the wall ornamentations.

“It is all based on Persian art, but it is even more joyous, don’t you think? You know the Koran discourages, if it does not forbid, the representation of any living creature in art. That is like the ‘Thou shalt make no graven image.’ Man and beast are practically ruled out of Arab art. Do you miss them? I don’t. After the gross use of men and animals,--remember the great bearded bullmen of the Assyrians, and the hawk and cat headed gods of Egypt,--this endless variation of leaf and flower and geometric design is refreshing. Why it is like a vegetarian diet to a sailor man who has had scurvy from living on salt beef.”

The guardian, who had long tracked us, here buttonholed J., and poured out a flood of familiar information. We listened mechanically, as he talked, until he said something we had not heard twenty times before.

“Last week two Moors from the Algeciras Conference were here. I myself took them about. They showed no enthusiasm. In this room the older one said to me, ‘These are sentences from the Koran,’ as if I did not know that before! In spite of all their pretended indifference, I knew very well what those Moors were feeling. It is a very deceitful race; they always hide their emotions.” The guardian spoke as scornfully of the Moors as Maria had spoken of the gypsies.

“Do you notice how they all dislike what they call deceit? The Spaniard is a truthful person, and honest. I don’t know why it is surprising, but after some of the countries we have traveled in, it comes like a shock!” said Patsy.

A long straight path of gold sand between two lines of tall, black cypresses leads to the old Moorish garden of the Generalife, near the Alhambra. Every other tree is clipped square at the top, the alternate one towering to a pointed spire. There is always a sound of gliding waters; in the early morning and evening, when the birds’ matins and lauds are sung, you can hear the nightingales and the merles. In the patio of the cypresses, under the shade of immemorial trees, is a great sheet of still green water like a vast chrysophrase, where you can study the cloud shadows, or your own reflection--if you are handsome--like Narcissus, or watch the greedy gudgeon and gold fish devour the bread you throw them. We passed through a long, flower-bordered path with a thicket of laurel, aloes and pomegranate for a background. A hundred tiny jets of water, like white aigrettes, waved among the green, and lost themselves in the shrubbery. We climbed the long Stairway of the Cascades, cheered by the babble of the little streams of water that run down the tops of the balustrade on either side. In the mirador at the top we rested, and looked down on the wonderful garden with its terraces, cedars, clipped myrtle hedges, thousand and one fountains.

“The Bankshires are only beginning here; in Seville the rose madness was at its height,” said Patsy. “We have travelled with the rose; we couldn’t have managed better if we had tried.”

From the mirador you see the Sierras with the eternal snow fields glistening on their summits. “The Moors certainly understood the use of water,” said J. “I have never seen anything quite so good as this garden even in Italy.”

There was music in the air, the rushing sound of water from those melting snows cunningly led down the mountainside and set here to dance and sing, to cool the heat and beguile the leisure hours of long, hot, summer days. Patsy watched with fascinated eyes a joyous _saldadore_ of water leaping and singing under the shade of an oak.

“Water is to these people of the south what fire is to us northerners,” he said. “They are the two living elements, and they both dance. Dancing is the natural expression of joy in life; it is copied from dancing spray and dancing flame. David was quite right to dance before the ark. I had a

Shaker nurse who danced with me when I cried; I suppose that is why I’m so fond of it.”

Granada cathedral is so hemmed in with trumpery little buildings that it is impossible to get an impression of it as a whole. The mushroom growth will have to go. Each succeeding tourist wave sweeping over Europe, as the Goths and Vandals swept before them, sweeps away some such trash, and uncovers hidden gems of architecture. The interior of the cathedral, though over ornate, has some splendid architectural effects, and is rich in every sort of treasure ecclesiastical. I remember a curious white marble statue of the Virgin with a black marble cloak, and a very charming painted wood group of St. Anne, St. Joachim and Mary, a good example of one of the arts you must come to Spain to see. Painted wood statuary, wrought iron work, ecclesiastical embroidery and--dancing have all been carried farther in Spain than anywhere else in Europe. Montañes, Roldan, and Alonzo Cano, succeeded in making their painted wood statues and bas-reliefs as dignified as if they had worked in bronze or marble. Just as Luca della Robbia did with terra cotta. There is a polychrome carved retablo of the Entombment in Seville, by Roldan, that is a true masterpiece of sculpture. The outer figures are modelled in such high relief they seem almost free; those in the middle distance are in ordinary high relief, the more distant in low, almost flat relief; the background is a painted wood panel. This does not sound encouraging, but the material a masterpiece is made of is of little consequence; it may be wood, marble, iron, gold or woven wool,--if a master uses it, a masterpiece is produced.

As I was sketching the wonderful wrought iron screen that shuts off the tombs from the main part of the chapel royal, I heard two women’s voices: “You have made a mistake, I think. The tombs of Ferdinand and Isabel are on the right,” said an alert, gray-haired woman.

“Thank you; I know,” said a clear young voice. The last speaker, caught red handed in the very act of laying flowers on a tomb, was annoyed. She saw that I, too, looked with disfavor on the alert gray-haired lady with the guidebook, and by mutual consent we made acquaintance beside the tomb of Juana la Loca, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabel, and her husband, Philippe le Bel.

“Poor things!” said the girl who had laid the flowers between the two marble figures lying side by side.

“Poor things! Tell me their story if you remember it.”

“They were married when Juana was seventeen, and Philippe eighteen. She was very pretty, but he was the handsomest man in Europe. They only had each other ten years; even then they were not allowed much peace! At first they lived at his court in Brussels where they were very happy; life was not quite so strict and straight laced as at the Spanish Court. Isabel was a great queen, but I don’t think she could have been a nice mother. She sent a priest to be Juana’s confessor, a grim Spanish bigot. Phillippe laughed at him so much that Juana refused to confess to him. That was the beginning of all their troubles! The priest came back to Spain and told tales, set her mother against Juana. When she came home, to be with her mother when her child was born, Isabel tried to prevent her returning to her husband,--locked her up. Did you ever hear of such a thing?”

She spoke as if it was happening now; her face was flushed; she clinched and unclinched her hand.

“But they couldn’t keep Juana; she was like a raging lioness; they had to let her go back to her husband. Then Isabel spread the report that Juana was mad,--and made arrangements in her will to prevent her ever reigning. Juana wouldn’t have cared about that; all she wanted was to be let alone, to have a little peace and happiness in her life. After Isabel’s death, those two poor things made their great mistake,--they came back to Spain. Somebody who was jealous of their happiness poisoned Philippe. Nobody knows whether Juana’s father Ferdinand was responsible for the murder or the Inquisition. I think it was the Inquisition; those cruel inquisitors did not want anybody to be happy, and Philippe was too liberal, too open-minded to suit that terrible Cardinal Jimenez. Juana and Philippe were at Burgos at the time. When it was all over, the friends who were with her at the deathbed told Juana that her husband was dead.

“No,” she said, “not dead, asleep!” You see, then, she really did go mad. They had Philippe embalmed and put in a leaden coffin; from that day Juana was never separated from his body. Wherever she went she took it with her; for twenty years she travelled all over the country with it. I saw her coach, the first that ever came to Spain, in Madrid. In those days, when royalties travelled, they stopped at convents or monasteries, if there was no royal residence near. Poor Juana was so jealous she would never go into a convent, for fear the nuns might look at her beloved! Philippe dead had his pages and his suite just as if he had been alive. Finally, Juana was shut up at Tordesillas. There she had the coffin placed in a chapel leading from her room, where she could always see it.

Here is a photograph I bought of Pradilla’s picture of Juana.”

The picture shows the sad procession on a windswept hillside outside Burgos just before dawn. The coffin stands on an iron bier, with two wax candles at the head and foot. A priest reads the service from his book. Juana’s ladies stand or sit exhausted on the ground. A group of pages and gentlemen in furred dresses stand near a fire kindled in the open. Juana, in a long black dress, stands beside the coffin looking down. “Dead? No, asleep!” she seems to say.

“For forty-seven years Juana watched beside the body of her husband. He died at twenty-eight; she lived to seventy-four. Their son, Charles V, gave Juana as fine a tomb as Isabel’s. I think she deserved it. A great lover is as rare as a great queen. Come with me and see the vault. That old battered coffin is Philippe’s, the very one Juana carried about with her. I touched it the other day. It made it all seem so real!”

We were standing by the royal vault, looking down through a grating at the coffins, when a fair young man with blue eyes strolled through the chapel and joined us.

“Haven’t you been here long enough, Joan?” he said. “Let’s get out of this stuffy old church.”

“All ready, Philip; I was only waiting for you.” She looked at him with adoring eyes, smiled kindly at me, and went off leaning on his arm. They were as pretty a young couple as you could see, and their names were Philip and Joan! It could hardly have been by chance that they were here. I fancied that the bride had contrived to include a pilgrimage to the tomb of the true lover, Joan the Mad, in their wedding journey.

_Amor es como el vino_
_guárdate á tiempo_
_y te sabrá más dulce_
_cuanto mas viejo._

Love is like wine;
Guarded with time
It shall taste to thee sweetest
When it is oldest.

IX

TANGIERS

We sailed from Algeciras for what Don Jaime called our “little crusade to Morocco.” The Don could not go with us; he was called to Madrid, he said, on important business. Patsy, who went down to Algeciras a day or two before us, had something to tell about the Conference then in session. The Moroccan delegates had arrived at night, bringing the ladies of their harems with them. They had landed between two and three in the morning, so the few curious persons waiting on the dock only caught an unsatisfactory glimpse of muffled figures passing from the vessel to the waiting carriages. Private houses had been prepared for the Moorish delegates; most of the Europeans, and Mr. Henry White, the American delegate, stayed at the Hotel Maria Cristina.

At the opening meeting of the Conference on the sixteenth of January, 1906, the president, the Duc d’Almodovar, declared that the reforms to be introduced into Morocco must be based on the triple principle of the sovereignty of the Sultan the integrity of his states, and the open door. The poor Moroccan delegates, who did not want any reforms at all introduced into their country, were only allowed to read their little speech at the second session, and as it was in Arabic, nobody understood much of it.

We had a perfect day for our trip across the Straits of Gibraltar from Europe to Africa. It took two hours and a half, and seemed much shorter than crossing the English channel. At one point we could see at the same time the white houses of Tangiers, and the gray Moorish fortifications of Tarifa, the southernmost point of Europe. The currents are very strong between the two coasts. A French steamer lay wrecked upon the rocks close to Tarifa Point light. The sea was like a silver shield. On the Spanish coast there were long stretches of tawny sands among the gray and purple rocks, with here and there an ancient Saracen watch-tower.

“Trafalgar Bay lies in that direction,” said Patsy, pointing to the northwest. “Nelson must have looked at these yellow cliffs, as he lay dying on the deck of the Victory, thinking, perhaps, of the white cliffs of England.”

The winds that blew over Trafalgar Bay caught the great Admiral’s last command, “Anchor,

Hardy, anchor,” and his last request whispered to his trusty Captain, “Kiss me, Hardy!” If you ever sail that way, listen to the wind whistling in the shrouds. If you have ears to hear such things, you may catch the echo of that whisper.

The coast of Africa, as we approached it, was not more arid than the opposite shore.

We anchored in the bay far out from Tangiers, a white town set like a pearl on the edge of an emerald crescent. Near the right point of the crescent, Tangiers climbs up the hill from the yellow sea sands to the green heights of the foreign embassies and villas; at the extreme point stands the lighthouse. America cleared the Mediterranean of Barbary pirates; and the great European powers built the lighthouse, as they have built the post-offices, the hospital, and every other modern thing in Morocco. While waiting for the health officers, we watched the fish darting through the clear, beryl-green water. Presently a lighter with a load of bulls closely wedged together drew up alongside the steamer. A rope was passed round the horns of two of the bulls, and they were hoisted on board in pairs, in what seemed a cruel manner. The whole weight came on their horns, their necks were stretched out, their poor, frightened eyes, blank with terror haunt me still. They made no noise; most of them hung limp; a few struggled and only succeeded in kicking each other.

We and our luggage were rowed ashore in a small boat. The sea was alive with half naked bronze men in sacking bournouses, who waded back and forth, carrying enormous loads of terra cotta tiles from a lighter to the land. On the pier a splendid person in a long blue garbardine, white turban, and yellow slippers, met us with a card and a bouquet of flowers.

“My name is Ali,” he said; “I am your friend.” He laid his hand to his lips, then to his forehead with the grave and lovely salutation of the East.

Ali led us before three magnificent, white-robed Moors, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the custom-house, smoking long chibouks. These officials paid no attention to us; indeed, they seemed unconscious of our presence. The two younger men went on with their conversation; the elder, kingly as Saul, looked silently across the sea towards that lost paradise of his race, Andalusia. Our luggage was laid down at their feet; they did not even glance at it. After a few minutes, the youngest Moor took his pipe from his mouth, and waved his hand slightly in our direction.

“All right,” said Ali, “good custom-house, yes?”

The bearers took up our portmanteaus, and we passed into the narrow crowded street where no vehicle can go, and where Ali had hard work to protect me from the surging crowd of heavily laden porters and donkeys. It was market day. Ali piloted us through a maze of narrow, twisting lanes, and markets thronged with strange figures: Moors in white bournouses, Jews in black caftans, negro slaves with gashed faces, wild looking hill men with blue eyes, who looked at us more fiercely than all the rest. The buyers and sellers outshrieked each other. The long sharp cry of the water-carriers, the braying of donkeys, the yelling of man, woman and child, mingled with the hammering of the tin and coppersmiths in the bazaars.

In the vegetable market we met a tall old Sheik with a long beard, dressed in a lovely pea-green _jellabiyah_, with turban to match, and salmon colored undergarments. Ali salaamed to him.

“Health be with you!”

“And with you be peace!” The Sheik’s voice was like distant thunder. He carried a large basket. The seller of vegetables received him respectfully, if less cordially than Ali. The Sheik cast a critical eye over the vegetables, then laid his hand on a bunch of young carrots, a string of fresh onions, some ruby radishes and some long green beans. Whatever he touched, the dealer put into his basket, saying, “Take it,” each time more faintly.

“God increase thy goods!” said the Sheik, when he had considerably diminished them by half filling his own basket.

“And thy goods, also,” answered the dealer cheerfully, as the old man pottered off to the butcher’s, next door.

“He is holy man,” said Ali; “they all give to him.”

The butcher’s gifts--a skinned sheep’s head, with awful staring eyes, and other gruesome things, were too horrid to look at. We waited till the Sheik passed on to the bread sellers, a group of white shrouded women sitting against a wall. They were as carefully veiled as if they had been young and lovely ladies. Each had a cushion before her with flat loaves of bread. When the middle one gave the Sheik a loaf, there was the rattle of bangles, and a glimpse of a hand that might have belonged to the Cumaean sibyl.

Outside the market, in the midst of the mad hurly-burly, there appeared an incarnation of that Oriental calm we had begun to believe the Moors had left behind them in Cordova. Down the middle of an evil-smelling lane, a man on horseback rode slowly towards us. The squalling crowd made way for him, flattening itself against the wall.

“Welcome!” said Ali, as the stranger passed in the odor of sandalwood.

“Twice welcome,” answered the horseman. He was fairer than many Spaniards; his brown beard and moustache were beautifully combed and curled, he had a high aquiline nose, eyes like dark jewels, thin pencilled eyebrows. He was dressed all in white; his _sulham_ of finest wool had a silk braid round the edge, and tassel hanging from the hood drawn over his head. He turned his horse to avoid us. Except for that slight motion of laying the reins against the animal’s neck--the action showed a slim brown hand with an ancient turquoise ring--he gave no sign of having seen us. It is a sign of Arab as of British breeding, not to look too much at strangers.

“That was an Arab gentleman,” said J.

“Now I know just how Abd-er Rahman looked!” murmured Patsy.

The horse was a spirited chestnut, with a skin so thin the veins showed under it, and delicate, proud feet that he planted scornfully in the unspeakable filth of the lane. Later, in Blacksmiths Square, where we lingered to watch two men shoe an old white mare--one held her foot, the other put on the shoe--a servant led the chestnut up to the smith. The man stopped work, patted the chestnut and kissed it, while his helper fed it with little cakes. Though there were a dozen horses and mules waiting their turn to be shod, the chestnut took precedence over all.

Ali explained this favoritism. “That horse, he have been to Mecca,” he said. “That make him very holy.”

For all his holiness the homely smell of the chestnut’s scorched hoof when the hot shoe touched it was in no wise different from the old white mare’s!

Seeing the horse fitted with a set of new shoes reminded J. and Patsy that while in Morocco they must each buy a pair of real Morocco slippers. Ali had a friend who was a slipper seller, so we hunted him up in the quiet, back street where he lived. We found him in a tiny bazaar like a big box, hung with slippers of every size and color. The others were so long choosing their shoes, the street was so deserted, that I ventured to walk on alone. From an open doorway came the drone of childish voices reciting a lesson; an Arab school was in session. Twenty very little boys sat upon the floor, rocking slowly back and forth, reciting verses from the Koran in a sort of singsong chant. The schoolroom was a dark, dank hole, its only light coming from the door. Dazzled by the blinding light of the street, I did not at first see the schoolmaster, a young man of eighteen. He sat near the door, writing out sentences from the Koran with a reed pen, in a large book like a ledger. He had just reached the bottom of the page, had dipped his reed in a fascinating bronze inkstand worn in his sash, and I was silently admiring his beautiful Arabic handwriting, when he looked up and saw me. A tiny boy, who could not have been more than three, just then smiled at me. He was such a bonny child, so like one of the children at home, that I kissed my hand to him.

“Christian dog!” The master’s rattan whizzed through the air, and came down whack, whack, on each side of the boy’s head. Then all the little children scowled and bit their thumbs at me. The master tore the neatly written page from the book, crumpled it up, threw it at me, and retreated across the room, the book under his arm, cursing me as I believe I was never cursed before.

At that moment Ali came running up, and after a few angry words with the schoolmaster, hurried me away.

“They no like you,” he said. “I am your friend; I take care of you.”

The page had been torn from the book because the shadow of a Christian had fallen upon it! After that, Ali became as my shadow. When I wanted to stop and admire the tower of the great Mosque,--it has a poor, far-away likeness to the Giralda--he would not let me stay, telling me that it was not safe for Christians to linger near the mosque or the tombs of saints.

The Great Socco, the big market-place outside the city gate, is the most Oriental thing you can see without going to India. The bazaars of Constantinople, the Muski of Cairo, even the streets of Jaffa, are European compared to it. The Socco lies on a bare hillside; it is shut in with walls, and entered through a handsome Moorish gate. A restless stream of camels, asses, beggars, traders, fruit-sellers, veiled women, jugglers and snake charmers pulses ceaselessly back and forth. A caravan from Fez was starting that day, another had just arrived. The camels snarled and grunted as the drivers unloaded their bales of merchandise and dates. Near the gate, in a corner of comparative peace, an audience had collected about the one-eyed story teller. He beat his drum as we came up. Ali gave him a piece of silver, and we were allowed to stand on the edge of the crowd and listen to the tale of the Fisherman and the Genie told in Arabic with dramatic gestures, and listened to with breathless interest.

There was an encampment at one end of the Socco, extending outside the gate along the road to Vez. The tents were small and poor, the people who lived in them wild, and, at the same time, wan

looking,--the most wretched of all the wretched people I have ever seen. They belong to a tribe of Berbers from the country, driven by famine into Tangiers. The blue eyes of those half-naked, half-starved hillmen shone with a fierce light; the black-eyed Moors looked gentle beside them. Blue eyes mean white blood! The wild hillmen have not forgotten where it comes from. They remember that long and long ago, in Roman days, a tribe of Vandals and Alans--some say eighty thousand people--crossed the straits to Morocco and never came back, though three hundred years later some of their descendants came over to Spain with Tarik, our old friend of Tarik’s Hill, and conquered Christian Spain for the Crescent.[2]

Outside the Socco, on the road leading up to the villas, we came upon a white umbrella with an artist we knew by sight sketching under it, guarded by a soldier. His was the first Christian face we had seen since we left the steamer; it seemed an age, it was but a few hours ago. We greeted each other as if we had been old friends! He knew Tangiers well, had been here three months sketching, therefore he had a great deal to tell us about Morocco and the Moors. I noticed during all our stay that the people who had lived longest in Morocco were the least positive in what they said about the Moors! My first question to the artist was about the Berber tribe.

“During the Algeciras Conference,” he said, “the Sultan feeds them with bread every day, so that it may not be said that he cannot take care of his own. They tell me here that the day the Conference adjourns, there will be no more bread given away in Tangiers.”

Before lunch time J. and Patsy adopted, or were adopted, by a Hebrew Jew. Israel was his name; Christian, compared to the fierce Moslem horde, was his nature. He was a neat young man, educated at the school of the Israelite Alliance in Tangiers, pleasant and well mannered, his chief defect being that he wore silly European clothes, when he might have worn lovely Oriental robes. He quickly confided to us that he was engaged to be married, and that his Rachel was suffering from acute dyspepsia. He didn’t _say_ dyspepsia, but he illustrated it with unmistakable sounds and gestures.

“Let her take one of these after every meal.” Patsy handed Israel a bottle of soda mint tablets. Israel bent himself double with bowing. Meanwhile he and Ali gabbled together; the word _hakem_ (physician) was repeated several times. The soda mints worked well; they suited Rachel, and Patsy’s reputation as a physician was made. That was the beginning of all his glory, and our discomfort.

At luncheon there was quail for him, larks for us. When we rode out, he had the best mount. The pillows of his bed were soft as down, ours hard as brickbats. That night Ali consulted him about his daughter, who seemed to be suffering from bronchitis. A box of Brown’s bronchial troches was unearthed from my medicine chest and given to Ali. Though the troches were mine, the credit was Patsy’s!

I saw three prisons in Tangiers: the prison of the Moors, the prison of the Jews, and the prison of a Prominent Citizen’s wives. In the first two, hideous and squalid past belief, criminals are kept; in the third, the mothers of the prominent citizens of to-morrow, in whose hands lie the future of Morocco. This prison, called a harem, was the most dreadful of all, though it was clean, handsome, had a large patio, marble columns, and whatever else passes in Morocco for luxury. I was received by the Prominent Citizen’s four wives. The favorite, an enormously fat young woman, sleek and sleepy as a cat, had painted eyes and finger nails reddened with henna. After the first greeting, the other women paid little attention to me; the favorite, who was younger, had some questions to ask.

“Are you married? How many children have you? I have a son. She”--looking at a woman who sat near, a sour-faced creature of Chinese type--“has only daughters. This morning we saw you pass in the street. I know that everything is different in your country. You travel, we stay at home; you go out unveiled, we may not show our faces to any strange man. There were two men with you this morning; were they your two husbands?”

I tried to explain Patsy. It seemed stranger to her that he was only our friend travelling with us, than if he had been an extra husband.

A servant brought in a copper machine like a Russian samovar, and the Chinese looking wife made tea for us with fresh green tea leaves and mint. It was very sweet, and not just what I am used to in the way of tea, but I managed to drink one small tumblerful; the ladies of the harem drank glass after glass. I had brought a present of some goodies, and when these had been distributed the conversation became more animated. The women all examined my dress, hat, gloves and jewels, with greatest interest. The favorite cried out at the close fitting French waist, held her hands to her own fat sides, and shook her head at the very thought of confining those Atlas mountains of flesh with stiff whalebone. I told her that I thought her dress much more comfortable, and far prettier than mine; this pleased her more than anything I said.

From the corridor round the patio heavy green doors led to the women’s sleeping rooms. They had no windows; no light or air could ever penetrate those dreadful places, quite empty save for the beds,--mattresses laid on the floor covered with gay quilts,--and several large clocks hanging on the walls. In the part of the harem I saw there was literally nothing except divans, beds, and little stands for trays,--things to sit on, to sleep in, to eat from. There must have been rooms where the cooking and housework goes on, but I did not see them. The rooms were empty, the faces of the women were empty. It seemed the height of irony that where time is of so little value there should be so many timepieces. The English lady who arranged the visit for me goes often to this and other harems.

“The women’s lives are so dull, any visitor is welcome,” she said. “One rule I have had to make. I must choose the subject we talk about,--otherwise, they would talk of unspeakable things. They are so coarse and dull. Poor things!”

The poorer women seem better off than the well-to-do, because they have more occupation. They cook, wash, and make the clothes for themselves and their children. They must be very strong, for I saw women carrying the most enormous loads of faggots. Divorce is not uncommon among them; the divorced woman is always given back her dowry. A bride is brought to her husband’s house heavily veiled. It is for her to lift the veil; if she refuses, the marriage does not go on. I heard of a girl who for three days kept her veil down, and was then sent back to her parent’s house.

It was pleasant after a day spent in the muck and confusion of Tangiers, to mount Zuleika, the big gray donkey, and ride up to the European quarter for the sunset. My saddle was like a little chair set sideways on the mule, with a swinging board to support my feet. Ali walked by my side, Abdul, the mule driver, just behind.

“Arrree!” Abdul cried, and twisted Zuleika’s tail till the poor creature screamed.

“Stop!” said Ali. “By thy head, do not that again. Dost thou not know that Christians would rather see a man beaten than a beast?”

“_Mashallah!_” muttered Abdul. Israel, running beside Patsy, holding his stirrup, told him in French what the other two said, so they were usually silent in Israel’s presence.

We were on our way to see our friend Mme. Hortense, whom we found waiting for us on the terrace of her pleasant house. She had kept her word, and provided a characteristic Moorish entertainment for our afternoon’s visit,--a snake charmer. His long bag of snakes moved as the mass of serpents writhed and wriggled. One after another he took the long pythons from his bag and let them coil and twist about his body. Last of all he took out a small, vicious looking serpent, and held it to his mouth. The snake bit his tongue, or appeared to do so, for drops of the snakecharmer’s blood fell on the white marble pavement.

“You’ve seen enough?” asked Mme. Hortense. She spoke to the snake charmer with the voice of authority; he gathered up his dreadful linen bag and departed.

“_Allahu akbar!_” The cry of the Muezzin in the minaret of the mosque came faintly up to us on the heights.

“Progress?” said Mme. Hortense in answer to my question, as the ridiculous shambling figure of the snake charmer left the terrace. “Among the Jews, yes, if you call it progress! When I came here, thirty-four years ago, your boy Israel’s father and all the rest of them, wore the fez and the kaftan. Now many of the younger ones wear straw hats and trousers. They have built themselves comfortable houses in the worst possible taste. The schools of the Israelite Alliance have really accomplished a miracle. For the Moors there is no progress, believe me. In all these years they have not advanced one step. Here in Tangiers they are on their good behavior, of course; the city is well policed by the European powers. There is no public slave market here, you must go to Fez to see that; but as to real advance,--look at that blind man! His eyes were put out for stealing.”

Down the hot road under the blue cactus hedge a poor pock-marked blind man cried for alms. Mme. Hortense threw him a coin, a tall, shrouded woman who was passing, a bare brown child astride on her hip, picked up the money and gave it him.

“God increase thy goods,” said the blind man. Then as he wandered down the hill led by his dog, tapping with his cane, “God vouchsafe thee a good evening. May thy night be happy!”

“He is my cook’s son,” said Mme. Hortense. “All my servants are Moors, except my Jewish chairmen,--no Moor will carry a Christian. I like the Moors best. At the time of the last uprising I asked my favorite servant what he would do if our house were attacked. He said, ‘I would lie down on the ground before you. That means that you belong to me and that they must kill me before they touch you.’ I think he would have done it, too. A good Moor has no vices; he neither drinks nor smokes. The doctors will tell you what good blood they have; a wound heals with them in half the time it does with us. Of course I know the servant class best, that is natural. The better class do not like us,--can you blame them? A man my husband knew, quite a great personage in his way, got into evil ways from associating with Christians; in fact, he drank himself to death. He was a sacred person, of the family of the prophet. The faithful believed the liquor he drank was turned to milk as it touched his lips, and that he died without sin; all the same, the wise ones hold us at arm’s length.”

“Progress!” Mme. Hortense came back to my question. “Last week a man from the interior came to Tangiers on business. It turned out that it was important for him to stay here longer than he had planned; but, at some sacrifice, he persisted in returning to his home on the day originally fixed. It leaked out through his servants that before leaving home he had walled up the door of his house. There was a well inside, and the house was provisioned, as if for a siege, but the women would grow restless if he delayed his return too long!”

While Mme. Hortense talked, there appeared before us on the terrace, as if by magic, a lean man with very few clothes and bare, sinewy arms. He was a juggler, and as we sat there looking down on the flat white houses, the minarets, the sea beyond, listening to Mme. Hortense’s stories of life in Tangiers, the juggler pulled from his mouth length after length of rose-colored ribbon, till he stood in a pink bower miraculously produced from his interior. A string of large, dangerous looking needles followed the pink ribbons from his inexhaustible maw.

“_Baraka, baraka!_” Enough, enough, cried Mme. Hortense. The juggler bowed and was gone as he had come, silently, and as if by magic.

I never knew where Ali slept or when he ate. If I wanted him at the most impossible time, he was always there! One morning when the voice of the sea and the song of the birds called me out into the garden for the sunrise, I thought I had escaped him. Before I reached the end of the oleander walk he was at my side. Then came the natural, if unreasonable, demand: “Ali, I am so hungry, get me something to eat.”

“He cook, he hurry up; lady, wait ten minutes.”

“I can’t wait. Get me a glass of milk.”

“Pick your pardon, lady, no can squeeze the buffalo before he had his breakfast.”

Such strange and interesting creatures lived in that garden: wonderful long-tailed Japanese cocks with their neat little hens, a lame gazelle, a white peacock, some blue Australian pigeons, and many other birds,--and they all had their breakfasts before I had mine. When Ali finally brought it on a tray and set it on a table under a mammoth mulberry tree, I was so busy with the bread and honey--orange blossom honey; when I took the lid off the jar, the perfume was as strong as if I had held a bunch of orange flowers in my hand--that I did not notice two gentlemen who were waiting for their breakfast. The buffalo had been squeezed by this time, for the gentlemen’s servant brought them dates and milk.

My neighbors were an odd pair: an old man who looked like Jumbo, with wise small eyes, and gray wrinkled skin like an elephant’s, and a young man, his son or grandson, who could not have been more than twenty, though the lower part of his face was covered with a full soft beard. They were Orientals, I thought, and they would have looked better in turbans and robes than in European dress. They talked together in a language whose very sound was unfamiliar. They seemed so remote, so unconscious of my presence, so much more like figures out of the Arabian Nights than fellow travellers, that when the older man came up to my table, spoke to me in perfect English, and asked me if I would like to see _La Dépêche Morocaine_, the French daily newspaper, I was as much astonished as if the Sheik of the market-place had spoken to me in my own tongue. We talked about the weather, the view, the picturesqueness of Tangiers; when the ice was well broken I found that he wanted to talk about things at home.

“It is many years since I was in America,” he said. “I rarely meet an American.” Where _did_ he live? “When I have the good fortune,” he made me such a bow as Solomon might have made the Queen of Sheba, “I like to hear how the Great Experiment is working out.” Then followed a searching examination about affairs at home. His questions showed a complete ignorance of detail, a good grasp of large issues. He read me as if I were a book he only had time to skim through. After I had told him what I could about “the working out” of what he called “the Great Experiment,” I asked him to tell me something about the Sultan of Morocco and his brother Muli Hafid. He asked permission to smoke; an Indian servant brought him a nargileh. When it was drawing nicely, and the smoke came cool to his mouth after passing through the water in the crystal jar, he spoke as one who speaks with authority.

“I have known Abdul Aziz and Muli Hafid since they were boys. They are both weak men; there is little to choose between them. I knew their father, Muli el Hassan, before them. He was a strong man; he ruled this people by might, the only way. He was clever, too, pitted the strong tribes against each other so that they punished one another: thus all were kept in order, and the balance of power preserved. When he died, the power remained in the hands of the young Sultan’s mother and the Grand Vizier: people said he was her lover,--that is as it may be. Then the Vizier died, the young Sultan took the reins, and everything was changed. The English got hold of the boy, as they have got hold of so many a weak young ruler before him. Abdul Aziz became so completely under English influence that it was said in the bazaars he wore English clothes under the native dress. He is not only a weak, but a pleasure-loving person; the two things usually go together. His favorite amusements are playing polo and going out at night in one of his many automobiles.” This he said scornfully, and pulled so hard at his pipe that the water bubbled in the vase.

The young man looked at me and laughed. “Would you rather he took to ballooning, father? Even a Sultan of Morocco must amuse himself. I knew a fellow the Sultan took a fancy to. One sign of his favor was that he accepted my friend’s riding crop and cigarette case and forgot to make any return present. He told me a good story about Abdul Aziz: One day he was riding with him, when they met the Sultan’s caravan on its way from Tangiers to Fez, bringing Abdul Aziz a grand piano. It had come on to rain, as it sometimes can rain in Morocco! The Sultan insisted on having the piano unloaded from the camels’ backs and put together. Then he sat down and strummed on the piano in the middle of the pelting rain, and the camels and the camel drivers and all the escort stood round, or sat on their horses, and waited, on the road to Fez.”