Will Irwin

“ I must be here from nine in the evening until four in the morning, dancing three times every night. The air of this place is smoky, as you see. Then distinguished patrons come, and I must often sit and drink wine with them. I usually pretend I am drinking when I am not"—here La Sorda gave again her tinkling laugh of an amused child—"but sometimes they catch me and I must drink a little. All that is very bad for the breathing and I must have breath to dance my best." ”

“ I don't know why, but the guitars are always with me and I with the guitars."
"Tortola told me that the gipsy dance cannot be taught—to any one but an old-fashioned gipsy."
"It is true. Many people come for lessons. They cannot learn. La Argentinita was here last month." La Argentinita, a slender, appealing, pretty girl from the Argentine, who could make castanets talk, was at this period the newest craze in Madrid.
"Whenever she tried, she was only graceful and Spanish—so." And the hands and arms of La Sorda flowed into a sweeping, billowy gesture. "But another woman does it. ”

“ Then the leader of the guitar orchestra pounded vigorously for order, the guitars strummed, and the curtain rose for another turn.
"Watch this one," said La Sorda, her face resuming its deep serenity. "She is a pupil of mine in the Spanish dance. If she does well, she goes to Granada for a regular engagement." ”

“ Spanish incomes are incredibly small.
"And how much for your teaching?" pursued José.
"Two to four pesetas an hour," replied La Sorda. She tossed off these figures in a careless aside; she was laughing now at some joke from a far corner of the audience.
"Sometimes rich patrons give her presents," said José, on his own account. "She has bought with these presents a little house across the river. There she lives with her mother, and her cousin cooks for them. She lives very well, as things go with the Gitanos." ”

“ Everything is allowed to the tourist. I suppose that few tourists have ever seen La Sorda. They go to see the Spanish dance—just pretty—so. La Sorda dances for Seville. If you wish to see her—Here—" and Tortola wrote in the fly-leaf of my guide-book an address. "Go," she added, "late at night."
Nothing, at the moment, seemed less likely than that I should visit Seville on that trip, for the western front and the spring offensive of 1917 were calling. But when I had finished the business which led me to Madrid, I found the French border closed for a week. ”

“ Mother learned it from a teacher of the deaf. I had spoken a little, already, before I was five, so that was not hard. It was many years before I could read the lips."
"And when did you begin to dance?"
"I don't know. My mother loved dancing—she danced gipsy fashion. When I was little I danced with her. There were others who taught me—when I was a child many old women were still doing the real gipsy dance. I learned from them in Gitano camps when they came to Seville, and over by the caves at Granada. When I began really to dance, my cousin played the guitar for me. ”

“ She either dances by her sense of vibration from the guitars, or she makes the guitars follow her steps—I never could be sure which. That is why they call her La Sorda—the deaf woman. The gipsy heart lives in her. She dances in a cheap den at Seville, where working-men and soldiers go to drink their wine on Saturday nights. Yes"—in answer to a glance from one of our women—"it is a place where a foreign lady can go if she has an escort, though few Spanish ladies would. ”

“ That is one of their engaging little ways which we shall never quite understand. With us, and equally with the English, the eminent poet who advocates low tariff or the noted actor who bursts forth on the Irish question gets but scanty attention. ”