"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.