Puslapio vaizdai
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in the dark, twisted my ankle, flayed my feet, and at last hobbled into Caldoz reduced to five-minute stages - you can guess it wasn't without incident. I found a room in the Posada de San Francisco for 4.50 pesetas a day, all included; and on the next morning Miguel rolled into Caldoz with my luggage. He unpacked his goods in a small triangular plaza, which lay before the posada, and I came down to breakfast to find him at work. As I shook hands with him I unconsciously became aware of a subtle change in the man. The semi-contemptuous irony was gone, and a furtive expression was in its place. He gave me my things one by one, slowly, reluctantly -the two suit-cases, my paintbox, a roll of canvas, easel, and

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guitar were not found, he would refund me the value. I was, of course, inclined to be lenient towards Miguel, whom I judged to be a poor man by his style of dress.

I felt sure that during the absence of my instrument I could find somebody who would hire me a guitar during the time I was here, so I addressed myself to José the innkeeper.

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Surely, surely," said José, "we'll find you half a dozen guitars by to-morrow, Señor Juan."

A withered Andalucian sitting near-by on a stool had been chatting to a group of women. From the timbre of his voice and from the quality of the laughter he aroused I judged that he was telling indecent stories. Wasn't Gautier, Frenchman of the second empire though he might be, amazed at the lewdness of conversation indulged in by the real ladies of Granada ? At my words the raconteur swung about.

"If the señor is in need of a guitar I have one in my house which is at his service. It belongs to my son, who is at the moment at Melilla serving his country."

I can get used to Spaniards offering you their walking-sticks or watches or children, if you admire them; but I get annoyed when they exaggerate an already farcical politeness to offer you things which are not at hand, and which possibly may not exist. He pressed

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his offer, actually pressed it the curtain which shaded the several times with urgency. doorway. You'll hear the sequel. course I refused, with the most profound courtesy, I may add.

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"Aha, Mr Miguel," I thought, "the guitar is really lost, and you are not so keen to pay for it. So you are playing ostrich."

One day I encountered him face to face. He couldn't dodge me.

"Hola, Miguel," says I, "and the guitar, eh?"

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"I have put an advertisement in the Granada paper,' he said grumpily, "but the guardia civiles haven't found it yet. Still, I have also spoken to the road-menders. A guitar can't disappear. No, señor. I tell you this: I am Miguel, a man of his word."

I suppose ten days had passed before I came across

"In that case," I said, "I'll Paco, the Andalucian raconteur. hire it."

"Oh dear, no!" answered Mrs José. "He would never hear of payment."

And that very evening she reported to me that Paco had promised to bring his guitar on the next day.

Paco avoided the posada for a full week. During this time Miguel had gone off to Granada, and had returned to Caldoz. But he didn't unload in the little triangular place, as was his ordinary custom. He sneaked into the town by a back road, and put up his cart in a side-street behind the mayor's new cement built cinema hall. Once I spotted him coming out of an aguardiente shop, of which there are dozens in Caldoz. At the sight of me he stepped back behind

We met in the great gorge, with its white mills and creaming waters. He grinned at me with a cynical air.

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Good-day, señor; so it is here you paint."

"Claro," I answered shortly, "The señora of José was telling me," he went on airily, "that you have lost your guitar."

"A nuisance," I answered with meaning, 'for now I have no guitar to play upon."

"Dear, dear," said Paco; "but perhaps it will be found. I hope your picture will be satisfactory. Good-day, señor."

After this he began to come back to the posada. Not another word he said about that instrument belonging to his son, which shows what this famous Andalucian courtesy is

really worth. Of course nobody could expect Paco to lend me his guitar; but the parade sometimes exasperates

one.

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Miguel had been playing "I spy with me around the village. Time and time again I spotted him being inefficiently invisible. I must have made a sad disorganisation in his habits. The ass. If he had come up and had spun a yarn, wailed about being a poor man, &c., I'd have wiped the guitar off the slate, cussed a bit, and forgotten it. But this ostrich game, with his silly tail-feathers sticking up above the horizon every time, annoyed me. It aroused my competitive spirit. Now and again the idiot would watch me off to work, and would then walk into the posada demanding "El Ingles," clamouring to settle his affair of the lost guitar. Twice he made appointments with me which he did not keep, and so wasted two mornings' work. I became determined to have my pound of biltong, and there was no Shylock danger here, because I don't believe he has an ounce of blood in him.

After about a month of these manœuvres I ran into him near the posada.

"Hola, Miguel," I said; "I hear you have been asking for me to settle about the guitar. Come in at once. What could be better."

"At this moment I have an affair in that buvette over there," said Miguel. "The

moment I am free I'll come over." "Without

said I.

equivocation,"

"Faith of a Spaniard," replied Miguel.

He stalked into the drinkshop. I went into the posada. For a while I stood in the door, but soon became aware that I could perceive the shape of Miguel as he stood behind the curtain spying me through its semi-transparence. So I in turn dodged behind the posada door, watching for Miguel through the crack at the hinges. Sure enough, as soon as he thought I was well inside, he came creeping out on his jutesoled shoes. I let him get three-quarters of the way down the side of the Plaza, then I stepped out.

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"Hey, Miguel," I called, and beckoned with a decisive finger. He came like a whipped puppy.

Though Miguel had been public enough in his demands for me when he knew I wasn't there, he did not now want publicity at all. I was wiser. He dragged me into a remote corner, but I brought Concha, sister of Mrs José, as witness. I had Miguel taped sufficiently to understand that without a third person this interview might as well not take place.

Lord, how I hate the bargaining system. Even playing it as a game with Miguel I couldn't help feeling somehow soiled by this chaffering and bitterness which a few bits of silver can brew up. To cut this part short-though what

a tangle of arguments we did get into,-Miguel consented to pay forty pesetas compensation for a guitar which was worth seventy-five at least.

"I will go home to fetch the money," said Miguel. "I will return in ten minutes."

He slouched out of the door. "Miguel leaves Caldoz tonight," I mused.

You will probably think this a sordid sort of a yarn, an exhibition of avarice. Well, as a matter of fact, though Miguel looked like the poorest rapscallion imaginable, I'll bet that he was a bit richer than Mr John Brown. His carting business was a monopoly, and he had further set his son up as the carter from Loja. They had a pot of money stored away in some sock hidden in the hovel where they lived. Besides, a fellow can't live quite insulated from his environment. You know as well as I do that the Spaniard's romance is money, that he dreams money, talks of little else, reduces it to twopencehalfpennies, so that he can mouth enormous quantities of reales.

in this weather. Whenever little John has a moment to spare he drapes himself about a chair-back in those luxuriant human curves of which the dweller in cold countries is almost ignorant, and at once he is asleep. But somebody must wake him up. I calculated that by snatched moments thus, say one minute per snooze, Juanito manages to filch an hour and a half of oblivion per day. Sleep on the instalment plan cannot be called satisfying. Little John steals his sleep as I, when a child, used to prig pennies from the red post-office money-box. Did you ever feel that twelve slyly extracted pennies ever valued a whole silver shilling held hard and warm in the palm of the hand!

So I made the sleepless little John my spy, and he told me a week later that Miguel had come back with a cargo of melons from the country beyond Loja. Miguel must have been a very disappointed man to find me still in the posada.

During the week there had been a steady procession of folk to ask news of the affair. Each person had said: “You'll get no money from Miguel— he loses lots of things, but he never paid up yet."

Sure enough, Miguel that very night inspanned his waggon and fled. He stayed away a week. I got little John on to his movements. Little John, or Juanito, was the posada mined. the posada ostler, a lad of about fifteen. It seems to be the recognised rule in Spain that the ostler of a posada may never sleep. Carts come in at all times, night and day, especially nights

VOL. CCXV.-NO. MCCCIII.

I became the more determined. That very evening I decided to tackle him in his own house. You get into Caldoz by a street which seems so steep that it is incredible how beasts can climb up it. In the darkness-for though

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Caldoz is lit by electricity the current is so weak that the lamps only glow like red-hot pokers-I, with difficulty, was able to find his house in that precipitous street, down which I was afraid of shooting upon my hinder end should I make a mis-step. I walked inthere's no ceremony in Spain, nor privacy either. Miguel lived in the light of a twopenny dip amid repellent grime. Half his sitting-room was piled with brushwood, and round a rough trestle table his family was seated on rush-bottom chairs. In the middle of the table a melon, split open, showed a delicate translucent purity like that of a lily on a dungheap.

"Miguel," I exclaimed, "it is a week ago since you promised to return in ten minutes to the posada."

"Come in, come in, señor," cried Miguel, in no way abashed. "Have a slice of melon.'

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"Do you think I have come here to talk about melons," I said angrily; "I want that other affair settled, about the"

Miguel grasped me by the arm. "Don't let's talk of it here," he exclaimed, looking at his wife nervously; "come to me in the market to-morrow. I am selling melons there, and I will settle with you in full."

There's no more dodging," I said bluntly.

"I will be there, faith of a Spaniard," said Miguel. "I have a whole cartload of melons

to dispose of. How can I avoid you. Now, señor, taste a slice of melon."

But I couldn't eat melon with Miguel; my sense of humour had given way under the strain.

On the next day I set my teeth and went to the marketplace. You know a decent upbringing doesn't fit one for the exigencies of life. I hate squabble and fuss; I had to force myself not to let the whole thing drop. If I couldn't have imagined that snipe Miguel chuckling in his sleeve I would have got out of the affair, and been d-d glad to be rid of it for the money. In the market-square I found Miguel and his son with a large heap of melons, surrounded by files of women, picking, choosing, nosing, pinching, and bargaining melons. Miguel, probably on consultation with his son, who had the stronger character, now changed his tactics. He had become aggressive.

"Can't attend to you," he shouted; "I'm too busy."

He used the melons as a city magnate uses the telephone to inconvenience and irritate an unwelcome visitor. Under similar circumstances it should be possible to get a detached point of view of such behaviour: view it from afar, as a novelist views the interactions of his characters.

I suppose it took me half an hour of patience to wear Miguel down, but at last he shuffled up to me, and, with a contemptuous underhung smile,

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