a.s.sured of the ladies" safety, the men of the two (outwardly) united parties remained to help the chauffeurs and a bewildered landlord to take down luggage. Overwhelmed by a wave of halfgrown children and a thick spray of babies, Carmona"s man lost his presence of mind. The two cars had hardly stopped before the little creatures were in them, and on them, and under them, trying to pinch the tyres, blowing the horn, squalling, laughing, crying. "Mon Dieu, c"est un obsession!" wailed the unfortunate Frenchman; and even the imperturbable Ropes showed signs of "nerves."
As fast as the thronging goblins were beaten off, they were up again in redoubled force; but so merry they were, and so handsome was each bold brown face, with its dazzling eyes, that it was impossible to be angry.
Somehow, we rescued the luggage, and with the aid of the landlord pitched, or slid, or rolled it through the door, momentarily opened.
"For Heaven"s sake, sir, see me through this!" implored Ropes, noticing that the men of the party were on the point of following the luggage.
"Hate to trouble you, but I don"t think my Spanish will run to it." In pity I climbed into the car to go with him to the stable which the landlord indicated as our garage. It was an experience to be remembered in nightmares; yet there was in it a sort of schoolboy pleasure. We seemed to have done battle against the whole force of the army out against us; nevertheless when we returned to the _fonda_, swept along by a large bodyguard, we found a regiment a.s.sembled round the door. How we got through was food for another wild dream, but we did get through, to stand panting on the other side of the grating, in the _patio_.
Dozens of dark faces were pressed against the bars, like tier above tier of glowing pansies in a flower-bed; and we knew at last the sensation of those who are the observed, not the observers, in a menagerie.
Everyone was in the _patio_, where electric lights hanging from the balconies mingled with rich yellow lamplight and ruddy firelight streaming from the kitchen. All the luggage was piled anyhow, in a chaotic heap surging with suit-cases, boiling with dressing-bags; while near by, like Marius and a friend or two at the ruins of Carthage, stood the d.u.c.h.ess, Lady Vale-Avon, Carmona, d.i.c.k, and the Cherub. Monica and Pilar had been talking at a distance with a young girl of the house, but seeing me gravitate in their direction, Lady Vale-Avon called her daughter.
"The ladies are saying they can"t stay here," announced d.i.c.k, his voice in sympathy with a twinkle in his eyes.
"I"m not saying so," cut in Monica. "I think it will be fun; a real adventure. The landlady"s wonderful, and all her daughters and nieces beauties. If we"re nice to them, they"ll be adorable to us."
"The place is a den!" exclaimed Lady Vale-Avon. "There must be something better in the town."
"I"m afraid there isn"t," said the Duke. "This accident has made me helpless. I"m horribly sorry; but we can"t get on anywhere else to-night."
"We can sit up," said the d.u.c.h.ess, "in the automobile."
"Do let"s look at the rooms," begged Monica. "And don"t let them see we"re finding fault. Their feelings will be hurt."
"What nonsense!" replied Lady Vale-Avon. "As if they had feelings!"
"If you don"t consider them, they won"t take pains to make you comfortable," I said, knowing by instinct the people with whom we had to deal. "They"re beginning to suspect already that something"s wrong, and judging from the expression of their faces it will take only a little more for the landlord to say he has no rooms. Then we really may have to sit in the automobiles."
The keeper of the _fonda_ and his family, who had come so warmly to welcome the strangers, were now hovering aloof, silent and suspicious, their spirits dashed by the contemptuous looks of Lady Vale-Avon and the d.u.c.h.ess. Standing in semi-darkness, the landlord"s face was a blur of brown shadow, featureless, save for a pair of enormous eyes burning with an emotion which was no longer hospitality. His wife, whose broad shoulder was pressed against her husband"s as if to form a line of defence, was a dark-browed, gypsy-like woman, who must once have been beautiful, and might now be formidable. Behind them were grouped a handsome boy, and three or four extraordinarily pretty girls with red and white roses in their hair.
"They wouldn"t dare turn us out!" exclaimed Lady Vale-Avon. "They can never have had persons of our sort before."
"If you asked, they"d probably retort that Dukes and Marquesses were thick as blackberries," said I.
She glanced at Carmona, hoping for support, but he shrugged his shoulders in despair; and a look from me was a signal for the Cherub to step forward.
The atmosphere had begun to tingle, and in a few moments more it might have been too late to make peace with these proud and self-respecting people, who had never submitted to indignity. But in the s.p.a.ce of six seconds the magnetism of the Cherub had begun to do its work. He murmured, nodded, and smiled, took the family into his confidence with a few graphic gestures, explained that the ladies were upset by an accident, appealed to the landlord"s chivalry, and the landlady"s heart. Gathering frowns were chased away by smiles; and when Monica showed her dimples to the boy and girls with a look which pleaded for kindness, the battle was fought and won.
They had not many bedrooms. Several were engaged by commercial travellers, but these gentlemen should be stowed into one room, their clothing and luggage moved at once. Oh, they would not object when they learned that it was a question of accommodating ladies; or if they did, they must eat their objections for supper; it was no matter. And the landlord and landlady would give up their room, a good one, their worships need have no fear. All should be ready in the opening and closing of an eye. But would we meanwhile have supper? There was always enough for a few unexpected ones.
Having listened so far, the Cherub turned blandly to Carmona. These arrangements need not include the Senor Duque"s party, unless he liked, of course, but-his palms were extended as if to receive the decision. Plump it fell into them. Everyone must stay, and make the best of it.
So the ladies were bundled into a room where they might get rid of the dust, and the men into another; clean rooms, with whitewashed walls, bare save for a pictured saint or two in lurid colours; floors covered with coa.r.s.e, bright matting; and iron beds with lace-frilled and embroidered pillows.
In a quarter of an hour everyone was ready for dinner, but five out of fifteen minutes I had given to the hasty scribbling of a pencilled note for Monica. I hoped to slip it into her hand in the dining-room, but she was closely under guard; and Carmona annexed four seats at the head of the long table, by which manuvre he secured isolation for his party. It was safe from any sortie of ours, as there was a scattered contingent of commercial travellers already earnestly engaged in dining on either side of the table. Two polite men on the left, and three on the right, all with napkins tucked under their chins, rose, offering to move rather than divide friends; but Carmona a.s.sured them that the sacrifice was unnecessary. As they were all paralysed by Monica"s beauty, of a type so different from any to which they were accustomed, they had not the self-command to protest; and as dinner went on (in many courses of which the landlord was evidently proud), they could scarcely do justice to their _merluza_ served with grilled lemon and minced red Spanish pepper; their _tortilla_ of eggs, potatoes, peas, and ham; their pigeons with olives, or even their freshly baked maccaroni, for gazing languorously at the vision of pink and white and gold.
Such charms as Pilar"s, though unsurpa.s.sable of their kind, went for nothing with these ardent gentlemen; and even the landlord"s son, daughters, and nieces who waited upon their guests, forgot half their duties in abject admiration. "An angel!" "a saint!" "a princess of fairyland!" were a few of their whispered adjectives; and when the object of their worship was s.n.a.t.c.hed away by her mother and the d.u.c.h.ess, before the goats"-milk cheese had been brought round, a gloom fell upon the room.
The commercial travellers galloped through the remainder of the meal, and went out, hoping perhaps, if they promenaded the street, to have the joy of seeing a light in the radiant being"s window. The pretty girls of the household vanished with murmured excuses, leaving us at the mercy of the boy, who sighed grievously, dropped a sugar bowl, and spilled coffee within an ace of the Cherub"s shoulder.
Pilar presently disappeared also, leaving her three men alone at the table, observed only by a few dozen eager faces pressed against the iron bars protecting the open window.
Soon we heard peals of laughter from the _patio_; the pretty girls were sallying forth on a foraging expedition in search of a warming-pan to heat the beds of the three great ladies, who feared dampness. In twenty minutes they came back, and we arrived in the _patio_ in time to see the triumphal entrance of four or five charming creatures, bearing among them a long-handled bra.s.s vessel which had probably existed since the days of Philip the Second. But this was only the beginning of the fun; and we made an excuse of our cigarettes to linger, and hear what we could not see.
It was not a beautiful _patio_; and the public still surged outside the iron-grated door in the hope of further insight into the private lives of the travelling menagerie; but our luggage had been carried to the rooms which were now ready (thanks to the complaisance of the dazzled commercial gentlemen), and there were garden seats, on which we settled ourselves in spite of the chill in the evening air.
From the rooms above we heard laughter and ecstatic cries. Evidently the warming-pan was making a sensation as it went its round, or something else had happened; and when at last the girls trooped downstairs from the balcony, I beckoned them to come our way. They skipped to us, wild with delight at the prospect of pouring out their hearts to an appreciative audience.
The great warming-pan, stuffed with embers that glowed and paled, was laid on the tiled pavement while the girls wove themselves into a group, with interlacing arms.
"Why are you so happy?" I asked
"Happy? We have been in paradise, with the angels," replied the prettiest girl with crimson roses stuck in a bank of copper hair.
"There was but one angel," objected her brunette cousin.
"That is true. The two old ones think themselves everything, but they are less than nothing. I would not change my years for theirs, with their jewels and their quarterings. Thanks be to G.o.d, in our Spain, we are all as n.o.ble as the n.o.bles, or at least in this province!"
"You are also all beautiful!" said I.
"That you can say so, senor, after seeing that wonder!" exclaimed the landlord"s eldest daughter, a creature of carnation and flame. "Ah, the joy of it, we have been undressing her!"
"If you could have seen her, with gold hair down to her knees!" gasped a gypsy of fifteen. "And when we had got her dress off, and she was in her-"
"Hush, Micaela! it is not seemly that you should mention such garments in the presence of senores!" broke in the girl of the copper coronet.
["Now you are as bad as I was, Mariquita!"]
NOW YOU ARE AS BAD AS I WAS, MARIQUITA
"But why, then, since they are most beautiful? You know well, Mariquita, you yourself said they were like the handwork of fairies, and her shoulders-"
"Be silent, foolish one, or I shall have to burn your nose off with the warming-pan!"
"And what did the elder ladies say to the young lady"s new maids?" I asked quickly, as great eyes began to flash, and scarlet lips to pout.
Back came the smiles, and the maidens fell into a fit of schoolgirl giggling.
"There was but one Majesty there, praise be to the saints, the English one, who is no doubt the mother of our lady angel. They have two rooms between them, but that of the senorita is tiny, with no door of its own, and only a square glazed hole for a window, though the bed is as good as any, and we have given it the best linen. When we took in the warming-pan, our angel tried to say in Spanish that she was sure our beds were dry and well aired, as indeed they were. She had taken off her bodice, and was undoing her hair, which was so beautiful we could have fallen down and prayed to her as a saint. Then we could not resist, but began helping her to undress, talking about her beauty. She was not offended, though we kissed her hands, and that silly Micaela one of her tiny white feet when we had pulled off the stocking-"
"Now you are as bad as I was, Mariquita."
"No, indeed; what is a stocking? A thing it is as well to go without as to wear. That is different. The angel laughed till she was close to tears, and said we were far nicer maids than the one her mother had sent on by railway train in starting by automobile. After this, she would be spoiled for others; and she gave us each one a present. Lola, two wondrous hatpins with blue stones in silver-not that she would ever suffer the tortures of a hat, but it is a great thing to have them. Teresa, a sweet round purse of blue leather, of the size to hold a five peseta piece; Micaela, a handkerchief with lace on the edge, and me an embroidered veil like a gossamer. What did we care that Her Majesty the mother would have sent us away if she could? She had not enough Spanish to make us understand what we did not wish to understand, and at last she saved her breath for another day. But by that time we had finished, for we had put our angel into her night-dress, a thing of cobwebs and lace kept together by blue ribbons, which I should have thought good enough for a queen to wear when mounting her throne."
"You must show us your presents," said I, with deliberate cunning. All were displayed on the instant, with chattering, laughing, and clamourous claims for rival merits. But the veil was the thing which I looked on to covet. She had worn it one day after rain, when the roads had been clear of dust, and her face had gleamed through the lace as a star gleams through a floating cloud-film. I felt that I could not see it in other hands than mine.
While the Cherub compared the gifts with eloquence, I drew Mariquita apart. "I want that veil very much," said I; "so much that I"ll give you a hundred pesetas if you"ll part with it."
She opened her tobacco-brown eyes. "But the senor is only a man, and cannot know that the bit of embroidered net is worth no more, in money, than fifteen pesetas at most."