The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (10.1896)

136 La Goya

concertina. The Goya ran out to meet us, as I got off my horse
and looked about. Something unusual was going on certainly.
Upon a table draped with cloth at the far end of the veranda, a
small open coffin with the body of a baby stood set on end,
against a background of flaring red and white calico ; the lid
painted black with a double white cross rested at one side. In
front flickered two candles stuck in old beer bottles. The Goya
told me that I was at the funeral of her hostess’s child. As we
entered, the bereaved mother came forward and greeted me with
a smile. She received my expressions of sympathy as if they were
something foreign to the occasion. Some of the women, led by
the Dueha, gathered round the Goya and whispered to her, gig-
gling ; but they hastened away as soon as the music called for a
dance. I sat apart with the Goya to watch.

And what a scene ! There amid its gaudy trappings, glancing
back the flame of the sputtering candles, stood an enshrouded
mystery. In a little box of blackened wood was all life knows of
life ; a ghastly nothingness ; a thing of terror yet of fascination, a
question and an answer both in one ! And around it, shouting in
a drunken dance, with laughter and ribald song, moved creatures
whom it was almost flattery to call savages. The living seemed
to be carousing over the dead like cannibals about a boiling
cauldron. The Goya’s chatter was unheeded as I sat there
looking on, indifferent. Did not disgust sicken me, horror choke
me, loathing overpower me ? No ; just one feeling stirred me,
the feeblest our soul can know, the indolent supercilious curiosity
of a woman’s uplifted lorgnettes. I seemed dead to every civilised
prejudice I had ever possessed.

But when the dance ended a vague sense of annoyance took
possession of me. Hurriedly telling the Goya to prepare at once
for her return, I ordered Juan to get the animals ready. While I

waited