One has a right to expect that the station which is the finish of a long and tiring journey should be both a terminus and have a quality all of its own. Our egoism makes it seem at that moment the most important place in the world. But Murcia (pronounced locally Mouthia) had only a big ugly barn of a station like many through which we had already passed, and even lacked a Precia Fijo jewellery shop. All we could see of the town, on emerging, was a few houses and a line of small trees which appeared as though they had been in a blizzard of whole-meal flour, so thick was the dust. Over this buff landscape quivered the blue sky.

In front of us were one or two cranky omnibuses and many green-hooded two-wheeled carts. These carts were Oriental in appearance and had the most distinctive appearance we had yet noted in Spain. They were gaily painted, and the hoods bulged with the generous curves of a Russian cupola. Inside they were lined with soiled red velvet, and the driver sat outside of this magnificence on a seat hanging over one of the tall wheels. Into one of these we were squeezed in company with two grinning travellers, and started off, soon plunging into the shadow of an avenue of lime trees, behind the grey trunks of which cowered insignificant little houses painted in colours which once had been bright.

The more communicative of our fellow travellers said it was indeed the hottest day of the year. It was hot, but we were not oppressed by it, and found out in time that the Spaniard always seemed to suffer from the heat more than we did. Our endeavours to be agreeable in imperfect Spanish worked up the traveller to a discussion on languages, and to a eulogy on ourselves for taking the trouble to learn. We said that we were artists. He answered:

"Ah, yes, that explains it. Poor people, of course, are forced to learn languages."

We drove across a stone bridge, almost in collision with a bright blue tram-car. A momentary glimpse was given to us of a muddy river running between deep embankments; and we drew up before a square barrack of red brick pierced by a regiment of balconied windows. The proprietor, oily like a cheerful slug, waved his fingers close to us, and drew back his hand in delicate jerks as though we were rare and brittle china. He preceded us into an Alhambra-like central hall, led us carefully up a stone staircase to a wide balcony, opened a door into a palatial bedroom with a flourish; and demanded fifteen pesetas "sin extraordinario." Intuition told us that this was not a case of "Precio Fijo," and we reduced him gently to eleven pesetas before we accepted the bargain. Then, to take off the raw edge left by the chaffering, Jan said:

"I don't suppose you get many foreigners here, SeÑor?"

"Si, si!" returned the hotelkeeper, anxious for the reputation of his caravanserai. "We get quite a lot. Oh, yes, quite a lot. Why, only last year we had two French people, un matrimonio; and this year you have come."

The maid was in appearance and behaviour like an india-rubber ball, and the conviction was firmly fixed in her mind either that we couldn't speak Spanish or that she could not understand if we did. So she grunted, bounced at us and smiled with her mouth wide open like a dog, hoping that by this means she was translating a Spanish welcome into an English one. With difficulty we dissuaded her from these antics and persuaded her to speak, but she turned her words—which were already dialect—into baby talk; and the less we understood the louder she shouted.

However, she was a kindly creature and succeeded in cheering our spirits, which were flagging, for we were very tired and almost ill, having barely recovered from a severe attack of influenza before leaving London. We washed off the thick dust and went downstairs into the large cool hall. The central quadrangle had once probably been open to the sky, but now was covered, five stories up, by a glass roof, beneath which sackcloth curtains stretched on wires shut out the sun. There were comfortable wicker chairs all about, and the hall was decorated with four solemn plaster busts, one in each corner. We were curious to find out who were thus honoured in a southern Spanish hotel. One was of Sorolla, a popular Valencian painter, one was of a woman, a poetess. The other two we did not know, but think they represented contemporary literature and architecture. Imagine finding in an English hotel hall busts of Brangwyn, Mrs. Meynell, Conan Doyle and Lutyens.

The hall was cool. We ordered coffee and buttered toast. But the butter was rancid, for we had crossed the geographical line, almost as important as the equator, below which butter is not, and oil must take its place.

Four children, making a lot of noise over it, were in the hall, playing a game peculiarly Spanish. The smallest boy, who always had the dirty work to do, carried flat in front of him a board, to the end of which were fixed a pair of bull's horns. He dashed these at his comrades in short straight rushes. Two of the other boys carried pieces of red cloth which they waved in front of the bull. The fourth boy carried a pair of toy banderillas, straight sticks, covered with tinted paper and pointed with a nail. As the bull rushed the "banarillero" dabbed his sticks into a piece of cork. Then they decided that the bull was to die. One of the cloak-wavers took a toy sword which he triumphantly stuck into the cork. With a moan the small boy sank on to the floor. His companions seized his heels and dragged him round the tiled floor of the hall. The game seemed to us a little tedious; later on we were to learn how like to actual bullfighting it was.

The hotel interpreter, for whom we had inquired, now came in. He spoke in French:

"What can I do for you?"

We wished to find a gipsy guitar-player named Blas, and we had been told that the interpreter knew his house. We feared that he might be in Madrid, where he sometimes played in the Flamenco cafÉs; but the interpreter said that he was in Murcia, and that we could look for him at once.

From the cool hall we stepped into the blazing sun of midday Spain, crossed an open space so dazzling that it hurt the eyes, and entered a maze of narrow, tall streets. Jan and I moved along in single file, clinging to the narrow margins of shadow which edged the houses, while the interpreter with a mere uniform cap on his head stalked imperturbably in the sunlight. Across squares we hurried as rapidly as possible to the shadow on the opposite side. The houses were orange, pink, blue or a neutral grey which set off the hue of the tinted buildings. The squares were planted with feathery trees of a green so vivid that it appeared due to paint rather than to nature.

It was a clear and windless day, and soon we remarked a characteristic which Murcia exhibited more strongly than any other Spanish town we have visited. Each house had exuded its own smell across the pavement, so as one went along one sampled a variety of Spanish household odours. Some people find an intimate connection between colour and smell. We might say that we passed successfully through a pink smell, a purple smell, a citron green smell, a terra verte smell (very nasty), a cobalt smell, a raw sienna smell, and so on. This characteristic clung to Murcia during the greater part of our stay.

About fifteen minutes' walk through these variegated odoriferous layers brought us into a street of mean appearance. The interpreter stopped before a large gateway door, pushed it open and ushered us into a courtyard in the corner of which was a black earthenware pot astew over an open fire. A brown-faced crone, withered with dirt and age, her clothes ragged, her feet shod in burst alpagatas, asked us what had brought us there.

"Where is Blas?" said the interpreter.

With an unctuous gesture the old gipsy crone spread out her hands, and turning to a doorway shouted out some words. Gipsy women young and old came from the house. They were dark, dirty and tousled, clad in draggled greys or vermilions, many carrying brown babies astraddle on the hip. With gestures, almost Indian in subservience, they crowded about us, looking at us with ill-disguised curiosity. The interpreter repeated his question.

"Blas," said a young, beautiful, though depressed-looking woman, "is not in the house."

"The English SeÑor will speak to him," commanded the interpreter. "Send him to the hotel when he comes home."

Then our friend the interpreter determined to earn a large tip, and calculating on our ignorance brought us back by the longest route, past all the principal buildings of the town; thereby quadrupling the journey through the baking streets. Our desires, however, were fixed on home. We were staggering beneath the heat. Had the interpreter but known it, his tip would have been increased by celerity; but, stung by our apathy over public monuments, he took us into a courtyard to look at some gigantic tomatoes gleaming in the shade, and ran us across the street to examine a skein of fine white catgut, dyed orange at the tips, which a workman was carrying. He explained that this was for medical operations and for fishing lines, which was a local industry.

Lunch was ready when we got back, a prolonged and delicious lunch for those in health, but we could eat little of it. Black olives were in a dish on the table; and the fruit included large ripe figs, peaches, pears and apricots. A curious fact we had noted was that much of the fruit did not ripen properly. Either it was unripe or else had begun to rot in the centre. The sun was too strong to allow it to reach the stage of exquisite ripeness which the more temperate climate of England encourages. The waiter was dismayed by our lack of appetite. He urged us repeatedly to further gastronomic efforts, and holding dishes beneath our noses stirred up the contents with a fork. At last he made us a special salad which was not on the menu. The other occupants of the long white restaurant were all fat men who swallowed course after course in spite of the heat. We looked at them and thought: "No wonder there are so many plump people in Spain."

After coffee in the large hall, we went to our bedroom for a rest. The windows of our room looked southwards, over the muddy river. Immediately beneath was a road on which was a wayside stall of bottles and old ironwork, an ice-cream vendor, a boy roasting coffee on a stove, turning a handle round and round while the coffee beans rustled in the heated iron globe, sending up a delicious smell to our windows. A row of covered carriages, tartanas, waited beneath the shadows of the riverside trees. All along the opposite bank were two-storied mills, and beyond them the town stretched out in a wedge of flat roofs bursting up into church towers. Green market gardens came up to the edge of the town, and covered the valley to the base of the hills with a dense growth of flat and flourishing green which one had not expected thus far south in Spain.

We were awakened from our siesta by the spherical maid who mouthed and pantomimed that a SeÑor was waiting for us in the hall. Luis Garay, a young painter and lithographer to whom our friend had written about us, had come at the earliest opportunity. He was slim, sallow, almost dapper, with dark frank eyes, and we took a liking to him at once. Together we went outside the hotel and sat at a table in the open place facing the principal promenade of Murcia. The river was on the right-hand side, and on the left was a line of tall buildings, some cafÉs, others municipal. The heat attacked one in waves, it seemed as palpable as though it possessed substance. When we took our seats the plaza was empty because the siesta was not yet over, but after four o'clock had passed gradually the life of the town blossomed out.

The army of beggars attacked us; in monotonous undertones they moaned their woes.

"Hermanito, una limosna qui Dios se la pagara,"[5] they whined.

To those who seemed unworthy Luis answered, "Dios le ayude."[6]

How exquisite is the courtesy of the Spaniard even to a beggar. Our manners have not this fine habitual touch—after the international occupation of Scutari the beggars of the town had learned two English phrases; one was "G'arn," the other "Git away." It is true that under this harsh exterior the Englishman may hide a soft heart; he may be like the schoolmaster who feels the caning more poignantly than does the schoolboy; indeed many a man puts a deliberately rough exterior on to mask the flabbiness of his sentimental nature; and the Spaniard, for all his courtesy, may have the harder nature. Yet the courtesy which recognizes a common level of humanity is a precious thing. It may be that by refusing alms with respect one may be preserving in the beggar finer qualities than would be generated by giving with contempt. A Spaniard once said, "I like a beggar to say 'Hermanito, alms which God will repay.' It is naÏf and simple. It has a beauty for which one willingly pays a copper. But when a beggar whines that he has eaten nothing for three days, it is offensive. It is an insult to give a man a halfpenny who has eaten nothing for three days; and one cannot afford to give him the price of a square meal; and anyhow one knows that he is lying."

As well as the pitiful beggars there were the musical beggars. Two men came playing the guitar and laud. Another followed with a gramophone which he carried from his shoulder by a strap. Then came the barrel-organ. We had not noted its arrival. Suddenly the most appalling din broke out. Awhile ago in Paris M. Marinetti organized a futurist orchestra; one could imagine that it had been transported in miniature to Murcia. There were bangs and thumps and crashes of cymbals, and tattoos of drums, and tinkles of treble notes, and plonkings of base notes intermixed apparently without order, rhythm or tune. What a state the barrel must have been in! Once we presume that it played a tune, but now it was so decrepit that nothing as such was recognizable. It was dragged by a donkey and a cart and shepherded by a fat white dog which had been shaved, partly because of the heat, partly because of vermin. It was an indecent-looking dog, and the flesh stood out in rolls all round its joints. No sooner had this musical horror disappeared round the corner than another organ in an equal state of disrepair took its place.

"It is all right," Luis reassured us; "you have suffered the worst. There are only two in the town."

A crowd of urchins carrying home-made boot-blacking boxes pestered us with offers of "Limpia botas." A man and a woman sauntered between the tables bellowing and screaming "Les numeros"; these were state lottery sellers.

Also there were sellers of local lotteries, which were promoted by the Church in aid of the disabled whom they employed to sell the tickets. Nuns, too, were amongst the beggars. There were boys selling newspapers; men selling meringues and pastry, others hawking fried almonds, very salt to excite thirst; children hunting between the legs of the tables and chairs for cast cigarette ends or straws discarded by the drinkers; a man peddling minor toilet articles—toothpicks, scent, powder, buttonhooks—and another with a basket of very odorous dried fish.

The smell of the fish banished our new-won universal brotherhood and we waved the fish vender away without courtesy. But an elegantly dressed young man sitting near accosted him and began to chaff him. But what was pretence to the dude was earnest to the salesman. He had some talent for selling and he pestered the dude for nearly half an hour, at the end of which the latter in self-defence and for the sake of peace bought a portion of the smelly commerce. Probably the fishmonger's total gain out of the transaction was a fraction of a penny. But the Spanish is not a wasteful nation. When the dude walked off home he took with him the fish wrapped in his newspaper.

At last we called the waiter by the Spanish custom of clapping the hands, paid for the drinks, and guided by Luis set out to visit the house which our friend had lent us for the summer. Habits of cleanliness were shown in the streets. Young girls were hard at work, each industriously brushing the dust from the sidewalk in front of her house, even though that sidewalk were itself of dried mud. To us it seemed that the story was being repeated of the old woman who tried to besom the tide out of her front door.

Many of the householders had spread their sphere of influence even beyond the sidewalk, and had soaked their patch of road, turning the dust into viscous mud. The pavements were already beginning to be encumbered by chairs, and by groups of people sitting out in the cooling day.

The Paseo de Corveras is a one-sided street darkened by tall trees. On the other side stretch maize fields surrounding a small farm, and walled-in gardens filled with tall feathery date palms. The dates were already hanging in orange clusters beneath the sprouting heads of fronds. Luis took us to the house of Antonio Garrigos, who lived at No. 12.

Antonio was a handsome man of pure Spanish type, giving an impression of nervous vitality. He produced three keys, each of about a pound in weight and large as any key of a theatrical gaoler. The house key was of monstrous size, and he assured us that we would have to carry it with us wherever we went. Our friend's apartment at No. 26 was on the first floor and spread right across two humbler dwellings below. It was cool and roomy, filled with specimens of Spanish draperies, pottery and furniture, which he had collected during several years in Spain. At the back was a kitchen, with large earthen vessels for water, and Spanish grids for cooking on charcoal. The bed was big for one, but very small for two, so we suggested taking off the spring mattress and laying planks in its place. Antonio at once said that to-morrow he would get the planks in time for the night.

Then, feeling very tired but thoroughly pleased with our prospective house, and with the new acquaintances we had found, we walked back to the hotel, had a supper as liberal as the lunch, and went to bed