“Wait a moment longer,” he said; “do you not see that the gentleman is taking a photograph?”
Let it not be supposed, however, that Spanish travellers find their slow trains such a trial as we do. The men chat, smoke, eat, drink, and sleep, and the women eat and sleep—the elder ones, that is. The younger ones spend most of their time standing at the window. This is a very favourite occupation of all Spanish travellers in first-class compartments. Directly the train slows into a station every window of the corridor carriage will be occupied by a more or less portly person of either sex, who thrust their heads and bodies out as far as they will go, to stare up and down at the exceedingly uninteresting crowd assembled to see the train come in. Except on Sundays and holidays, when the station is to the village what the fashionable promenade is to the town, the people who loaf on the platform are by no means the pick of the population, being merely those who have nothing else to do. But this does not seem to diminish the Spanish traveller’s interest in them, and he will block the windows till the very last minute, watching the village idiot or the diseased beggar until he is quite out of sight, as if all his hopes of happiness depended on getting the very last glimpse of the unpleasing spectacle.
The girls who travel have, it must be admitted, another object in planting themselves at the window while the train is in a station. They want not so much to see as to be seen, and faute de mieux, the open admiration of the village loafer helps to pass the time. On one occasion I travelled for many hours in company with the wife and daughter of a man whose office under the Government argued a good social position and a certain amount of cultivation. The mother talked of nothing but the excellence of the food in the town we had both been visiting, and the girl never spoke at all save to ask me at intervals where we were and how much behind time the train was now. At every station she planted herself in the window, and as she was strikingly handsome with unusually brilliant colouring, a group of yokels never failed to collect in front of our compartment, staring at her for all they were worth.
“I cannot imagine,” the mother once remarked to me, “why so many people stand there.”
“Well,” I said with perfect sincerity, “they probably do not often have any one so pretty as your daughter to look at.”
The mother bridled and smiled, and immediately told the girl what I had said.
After that our young beauty never left the window at all—presumably lest some admirer should miss the opportunity of gazing on her charms—from the moment the train drew into any station until it left again; and I calculated afterwards that she had stood three solid hours on end in the corridor, only varying her position to move to my window at the opposite end of the compartment when we stopped at a station where the platform was on that side.
This discourteous habit, common to men and women alike, of blocking the first-class carriage windows regardless of the comfort and convenience of the other passengers, is in some ways the most unpleasant feature of travelling in Spain. It is practically confined, however, to the well-to-do, and I am bound to say that on short journeys, where a little fatigue does not matter, I often prefer to travel second or even third class, so that I may get my fair share of the view and the air, which is impossible when travelling with Spaniards who can afford to pay the higher fares. On the other hand, as they seem quite unable to amuse themselves in other ways (for very few of them ever read in the train, or indeed in their own houses), perhaps one ought not to grudge them the delightful distraction and the wide enlightenment to be obtained by looking out of the carriage window.
In other ways many little courtesies are shown. Food, for instance, is always offered, even though you are at the moment unpacking your own lunch basket. This is as a rule a form, which means no more than the offer of his house, at such a number of such a street, which your travelling acquaintance will make you when he gets out at his station, well knowing that you and he will never meet again in this world. But sometimes the offer to share with you is quite genuine, as in the case of a stout Catalan commis-voyageur, who, after I had politely declined three times over to divide his lunch, having just finished my own before his eyes, took two elegant celluloid toothpicks out of his pocket, and laid one upon my knee, saying, “That at least you will accept!”
He afterwards told me that he “travelled” for a German firm which made celluloid ornaments, and I always regret that I returned his toothpick without reading the advertisement printed on it. I thought he might want it, and I knew I did not, but I believe he really did wish me to accept his gift—and take a note of his firm.