"And thus leade they their lyves in fullfilling the holy hunger of golde. But the more they fill their handes with finding, the more increaseth their covetous desire."
—Decades in the New Worlde.
I wanted to go from Seville to Cadiz by water. I longed to sail by the "Silver Road" in the wake of the silver fleets. The little artist, as befitted her youth, preferred a Manila shawl to that historic pilgrimage. So I proposed to make this trifling trip alone.
Don José 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 Cortés. And much as I delighted in the Alhambra, and the Mosque of Cordova, and the Alcázar of Seville, I did not feel called upon to bow a New England bonnet beneath the Moorish yoke.
Thus Don José and I found ourselves quietly engaged in an Hispano-American contest. He heartily disapproved of my going, even by train. "Una señora sola! It is not the custom in Andalusia." His plan of campaign consisted in deferring the arrangements from day to day. "Mañana!" Whenever I attempted to set a time for departure he blandly assented, 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 José took us himself, on a mimic steamboat, for a judicious distance down the Guadalquivír. 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 José 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 guardianship 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 José'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 José, whose swarthy countenance wore an overdone expression of innocent surprise. A solitary official sauntered out.
"Good morning, señor! Is the express gone?" asked the driver.
"Good morning, señor! There isn't any express to-day," was the reply. "The express runs only Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays."