These stories are both worth something as testimony of things as they are, or very lately were, in Spain, and we heard others which I remember less clearly.
There are a great many gipsies at Granada still, and, though they have lost their prestige for romance and daring, a good deal of interest is attached to them. They seem now to be held as very inoffensive sort of people, are miserably poor, dirty, and live troglodyte fashion, in caves hollowed in the hill-side. The King of the Gipsies, or El Capitan as he is called, is a fine musician, and we invited him to come up to the hotel one evening and play to us. Captain Antonio’s company is not to be had for the asking. He is, or affects to be, a little shy, wants coaxing and persuading, will not play except before a large audience; and, as Bensaken said to us, “He is a great man in his way, and you couldn’t offer him less than two dollars.”
After disappointing us on several occasions, Captain Antonio came. He had pleaded a sore finger as excuse for his delay, but I am inclined to think that he waited in expectation of a larger audience and more dollars; for the arrival of an American family healed the Captain’s finger miraculously fast. It was sore in the morning, very bad indeed! and, lo and behold! in the evening it was quite well; but let that pass—Captain Antonio’s music made us very forgiving.
He came in—a tall, superbly built man in the prime of life, with a tawny skin, eyes of extraordinary brilliancy, receding jaws, and very low brow, long narrow throat, and altogether, of an Egyptian, ancient look, as if he had been one of the old Nile gods come to life.
He bowed graciously, threw off his Spanish cloak, for the gitanos, like all the rest of the world, are growing conventional now, losing costume and characteristics every day; and commenced tuning his guitar.
It was a wretchedly poor instrument, and we began to wonder what sort of torments were about to be inflicted on us, when, on a sudden, the tuning ceased and the music seized hold of us like galvanism. For it was such music as one had never dreamed of before. His fingers but touch the chords, and all at once your breath is taken away, your blood is warmed as if by strong wine, your brain whirls, your eyes see visions, your ears hear marvellous voices, your senses are all mastered by a power that seems to shake the very spheres.
You see the strangest forms and faces, imp, devil, witch, and wizard; you hear a jargon of voices, in love, in anger, in war, in worship, in joy, in despair. Beautiful gitanos come in the charmed circle, join hands, dance for a moment and vanish, or it is filled by a gipsy camp—the fires are blazing, you see men and women feasting, singing, making love, when, all at once, a cry of alarm is heard, and the scene is changed to bloodshed and horrors. Every phase of savage life is brought before your eyes and made real, as if you were tasting it in the flesh. You are indeed for the nonce a gipsy, and know what the gipsy’s world is, above, below, in heaven and in hell; your pulses are quickened to gipsy pitch, you are ready to make love and war, to heal and slay, to wander to the world’s end, to be outlawed and hunted down, to dare and do anything for the sake of the sweet, untrammelled life of the tent, the bright blue sky, the mountain air, the free savagedom, the joyous dance, the passionate friendship, the fiery love.
All at once the gipsy stopped, and the spell was broken. We had never been gipsies, after all; the camp-fires burning under the dark night, the flashing knives, the peaceful dance, the happy loves, the vagabond wanderings over plain and mountain, the midnight encounter,—all these had been but shadows evoked by Captain Antonio’s guitar, and we were a company of ladies and gentlemen, whose utmost vagabondage had not exceeded boiling a pic-nic kettle in Epsom Forest, or, more likely, taking tea on our own lawns. We felt thankful to Señor Antonio for having given us so full an experience of wild life in the space of a few minutes. I cannot say how real it had all seemed. We had wandered with him over so many southern lands, had bivouacked under such fiery suns, that I looked at a fair-haired English lady present, almost with a feeling of wonder to see her hair still golden and her cheeks still rosy.
The gipsy captain received our expressed thanks, as I thought, indifferently, but looked into our faces as if he would read our real criticisms there. Whether he approved either of them or of us, it were quite impossible to say; he had a face as unreadable as a bit of hieroglyphic writing, except that whilst playing, a strange fiery light shone in his eyes, as if he were himself possessed by the devilry of his music.
When he had rested a little and drunk a copita, or thimbleful of brandy, we asked him for a sacred song, and he said he would play us a Christmas hymn. What a change! It was as touching and sweet a melody as any of our Christmas carols, and quite as solemn.