I go first to three years and a half ago, and winter-time. I returned from France, a bitter cold journey too, one twenty-sixth of December, in the express that passes the bridge of the Bidassoa.
The snow, already very thick at Biarritz and Saint Sebastian, rendered almost impracticable the traversing of the Guipuzcoa. The train stopped two hours at Zumarraga, for snow to be cleared away. Later an avalanche stopped us for three hours. All night this snow trouble went on. Sounds were deadened by the fall, and so we were travelling in a silence to which danger gave a touch of grandeur.
The morning of the morrow found us at Avila. We were eight hours late, and had fasted for a day. We learnt at last that we should be “hung up” at that place four days! Do you know Avila by any chance? It is the place that they should send those people to who rave about Old Spain being dead and done with. The inn I stopped at, Don Quixote could easily have used also.
In resuming my journey I went third-class, for a change, in a compartment nearly full of Spanish women. There were really four compartments with partitions about shoulder high.
Well, we were passing the Sierra of Guadarrama, and suddenly the train stopped again. We were blocked by another avalanche. When we realized this there was a general request made to a gitana present to dance.
She did dance: a woman about thirty, of the ugly gipsy type, but she seemed to have fire in the fingers that flashed the castanets and fire in her limbs. Everyone knelt and listened, or beat time with their hands. I now noticed in the corner facing me a young girl, who was singing.
She wore a rose-coloured skirt, that made me guess she was from Andalucia—that colour-loving province.
Her shoulders and bosom were swathed in a creamy shawl, and she had a throat scarf of white foulard to protect her from the cold. The whole carriage already knew that she was trained at the Convent of San José d’Avila, was going to Madrid to find her mother, and bore the name of Concha Perez.
Her voice was singularly penetrating. She sang without moving her body about, hands in shawl, eyes closed.
The songs she was singing were not taught her by the Sisters, I can be quite sure. They were the little songs of four lines, only loved by the people. Into these quatrains they put much passion. I can hear again in memory the caress in her voice as she sang—