The Romantic Young Lady
♦
One of the many inconveniences of real life is that it seldom gives you a
complete story. Some incident has excited your interest, the people who are
concerned in it are in the devil’s own muddle, and you wonder what on earth
will happen next. Well, generally nothing happens. The inevitable catastrophe
you foresaw wasn’t inevitable after all, and high tragedy, without any regard to
artistic decency, dwindles into drawing–room comedy. Now, growing old has
many disadvantages, but it has this compensation (among, let us admit, not a
few others), that sometimes it gives you the opportunity of seeing what was the
outcome of certain events you had witnessed long ago. You had given up the
hope of ever knowing what was the end of the story, and then, when you least
expected it, it is handed to you on a platter.
These reflections occurred to me when, having escorted the Marquesa de San
Esteban to her car, I went back into the hotel and sat down again in the lounge.
I ordered a cocktail, lit a cigarette, and composed myself to order my
recollections. The hotel was new and splendid, it was like every other first–class
hotel in Europe, and I had been regretting that for the sake of its modern
plumbing I had deserted the old–fashioned, picturesque Hotel de Madrid to
which I generally went when I stayed in Seville. It was true that from my hotel
I had a view of the noble river, the Guadalquivir, but that did not make up for
the thés dansants that filled the bar–lounge two or three days a week with a
fashionable crowd whose exuberant conversation almost drowned the strident
din of a jazz orchestra.
I had been out all the afternoon, and coming in found myself in the midst of
a seething mob. I went to the desk and asked for my key so that I might go
straight up to my room. But the porter, handing it to me, said that a lady had
been asking for me.
‘For me?’
‘She wants to see you very much. It’s the Marquesa de San Esteban.’
I knew no one of that name.
‘It must be some mistake.’
As I said the words, looking rather vaguely around, a lady came up to me with
outstretched hands and a bright smile on her lips. To the best of my knowledge
I had never seen her before in my life. She seized my hands, both of them, and
shook them warmly. She spoke in fluent French.
‘How very nice to see you again after all these years. I saw by the paper that
you were staying here and I said to myself: I must look him up. How many
years is it since we danced together? I daren’t think. Do you still dance? I do.
And I’m a grandmother. I’m fat of course, I don’t care, and it keeps me from
getting fatter.’
She talked with such a rush that it took my breath away to listen to her. She
was a stout, more than middle–aged woman, very much made up, with dark
red hair, obviously dyed, cut short; and she was dressed in the height of
Parisian fashion, which never suits Spanish women very well. But she had a
gay, fruity laugh that made you feel you wanted to laugh too. It was quite
obvious that she thoroughly enjoyed life. She was a fine figure of a woman and
I could well believe that in youth she had been beautiful. But I could not place
her.
‘Come and drink a glass of champagne with me and we will talk of old times.
Or will you have a cocktail? Our dear old Seville had changed, you see. Thés
dansants and cocktails. It’s just like Paris and London now. We’ve caught up.
We’re a civilized people.’
She led me to a table near the space where they were dancing and we sat
down. I could not go on pretending I was at ease; I thought I should only get
into a fearful mess.
‘It’s terribly stupid of me, I’m afraid,’ I said, ‘but I don’t seem able to
remember ever having known anyone of your name in the old days in Seville.’
‘San Esteban?’ she interrupted before I could go on. ‘Naturally. My husband
came from Salamanca. He was in the diplomatic service. I’m a widow. You
knew me as Pilar Carreon. Of course having my hair red changes me a little,
but otherwise I don’t think I’ve altered much.’
‘Not at all,’ I said quickly. ‘It was only the name that bothered me.’
Of course now I remembered her, but I was concerned at the moment only
with the effort to conceal from her the mingled consternation and amusement
that filled me as I realized that the Pilar Carreon I had danced with at the
Countess de Marbella’s parties and at the Fair had turned into this stout,
flaunting dowager. I could not get over it. But I had to watch my step.
I wondered if she knew how well I recollected the story that had shaken Seville
to its foundations, and I was glad when after she had finally bidden me an
effusive farewell I was able to recall it at ease.
In those days, forty years ago, Seville had not become a prosperous
commercial city. It had quiet, white streets, paved with cobbles, with a
multitude of churches on the belfries of which storks built their nests.
Bull–fighters, students, and loungers sauntered in the Sierpes all day long. Life
was easy. This of course, was before the time of motor–cars, and the Sevillan
would live in penury, practising every possible economy, in order to have a
carriage. For this luxury he was willing to sacrifice the necessities of life.
Everyone who had any claim to gentility drove up and down the Delicias, the
park–like gardens by the Guadalquivir, every blessed afternoon from five till
seven. You saw carriages of all sorts, from fashionable London victorias to old
broken–down shays that seemed as though they would fall to pieces,
magnificent horses and wretched hacks whose tragic end in the bull–ring was
near at hand. But there was one equipage that could not fail to attract the
stranger’s attention. It was a victoria, very smart and new, drawn by two
beautiful mules; and the coachman and the footman wore the national
costume of Andalusia in pale grey. It was the most splendid turn–out Seville
had ever known, and it belonged to the Countess de Marbella. She was a
Frenchwoman married to a Spaniard, who had enthusiastically adopted the
manners and customs of her husband’s country, but with a Parisian elegance
that gave them a peculiar distinction. The rest of the carriages went at a snail’s
pace so that their occupants could see and be seen, but the countess, behind
her mules, dashed up between the two crawling lines at a fast trot, went to the
end of the Delicias and back twice and then drove away. The proceeding
savoured somewhat of royalty. When you looked at her gracefully seated in
that swift victoria, her head handsomely poised, her hair of too brilliant a gold
to be natural, you did not wonder that her French vivacity and determination
had given her the position she held. She made the fashion. Her decrees were
law. But the countess had too many adorers not to have as many enemies, and
the most determined of these was the widowed Duchess de Dos Palos, whose
birth and social consequence made her claim as a right the first place in Society
which the Frenchwoman had won by grace, wit and character.
Now the duchess had an only daughter. This was Doña Pilar. She was twenty
when I first knew her and she was very beautiful. She had magnificent eyes and
a skin that, however hard you tried to find a less hackneyed way to describe it,
you could only call peach–like. She was very slim, rather tall for a Spanish girl,
with a red mouth and dazzlingly white teeth. She wore her abundant, shining
black hair dressed very elaborately in the Spanish style of the period. She was
infinitely alluring. The fire in her black eyes, the warmth of her smile, the
seductiveness of her movements suggested so much passion that it really
wasn’t quite fair. She belonged to the generation which was straining to break
the old conventions that had kept the Spanish girl of good family hidden away
till it was time for her to be married. I often played tennis with her and I used
to dance with her at the Countess de Marbella’s parties. The duchess
considered the Frenchwoman’s parties, with champagne and a sit–down
supper, ostentatious, and when she opened her own great house to Society,
which was only twice a year, it was to give them lemonade and biscuits. But she
bred fighting–bulls, as her husband had done, and on the occasions when the
young bulls were tried out, she gave picnic luncheons to which her friends
were asked, very gay and informal, but with a sort of feudal state which
fascinated my romantic imagination. Once, when the duchess’s bulls were to
fight at a corrida in Seville, I rode in with them at night as one of the men
escorting Doña Pilar, dressed in a costume that reminded one of a picture by
Goya, who headed the cavalcade. It was a charming experience to ride through
the night, on those prancing Andalusian horses, with the six bulls, surrounded
by oxen, thundering along behind.
A good many men, rich or noble and sometimes both, had asked Doña Pilar’s
hand in marriage, but, notwithstanding her mother’s remonstrances, she had
refused them. The duchess had been married at fifteen and it seemed to her
really indecent that her daughter at twenty should be still single. The duchess
asked her what she was waiting for; it was absurd to be too difficult. It was her
duty to marry. But Pilar was stubborn. She found reasons to reject every one of
her suitors.
Then the truth came out.
During the daily drives in the Delicias which the duchess, accompanied by
her daughter, took in a great old–fashioned landau, they passed the countess as
she was twice swiftly driven up and down the promenade. The ladies were on
such bad terms that they pretended not to see one another, but Pilar could not
keep her eyes off that smart carriage and the two beautiful grey mules and, not
wishing to catch the countess’s somewhat ironic glance, her own fell on the
coachman who drove her. He was the handsomest man in Seville and in his
beautiful uniform he was a sight to see. Of course no one knew exactly what
happened, but apparently the more Pilar looked at the coachman the more she
liked the look of him, and somehow or other, for all this part of the story
remained a mystery, the pair met. In Spain the classes are strangely mingled
and the butler may have in his veins much nobler blood than the master. Pilar
learnt, not I think without satisfaction, that the coachman belonged to the
ancient family of León, than which there is none in Andalusia more
distinguished; and really so far as birth went there was little to choose between
them. Only her life had been passed in a ducal mansion, while fate had forced
him to earn his living on the box of a victoria. Neither could regret this, since
only in that exalted place could he have attracted the attention of the most
difficult young woman in Seville. They fell madly in love with one another. It so
happened that just then a young man called the Marqués de San Esteban,
whom they had met at San Sebastian the summer before, wrote to the duchess
and asked for Pilar’s hand in marriage. He was extremely eligible and the two
families had formed alliances from time to time ever since the reign of Philip II.
The duchess was determined not to stand any more nonsense, and when she
told Pilar of the proposal added that she had shilly–shallied long enough. She
must either marry him or she should go into a convent.
‘I’m not going to do either the one or the other,’ said Pilar.
‘What are you going to do then? I have given you a home long enough.’
‘I’m going to marry José León.’
‘Who is he?’
Pilar hesitated for a moment and it may be, it is indeed to be hoped, that she
blushed a little.
‘He’s the countess’s coachman.’
‘What countess?’
‘The Countess de Marbella.’
I remembered the duchess well and I am sure that when roused she stuck at
little. She raged, she implored, she cried, she argued. There was a terrific scene.
People said that she slapped her daughter and pulled her hair, but I have an
impression that Pilar in such a pass was capable of hitting back. She repeated
that she loved José León and he loved her. She was determined to marry him.
The duchess called a family council. The matter was put before them and it was
decided that to save them all from disgrace Pilar should be taken away to the
country and kept there till she had recovered from her infatuation. Pilar got
wind of the scheme and put a stop to it by slipping out of the window of her
room one night when everyone was asleep and going to live with her lover’s
parents. They were respectable persons who inhabited a small apartment on
the unfashionable side of the Guadalquivir, in the quarter called Triana.
After that no concealment was possible. The fat was in the fire and the clubs
along the Sierpes buzzed with the scandal. Waiters were kept busy bringing
trays of little glasses of Manzanilla to the members from the neighbouring
wine–shops. They gossiped and laughed over the scandal, and Pilar’s rejected
suitors were the recipients of many congratulations. What an escape! The
duchess was in despair. She could think of nothing better to do than go to the
Archbishop, her trusted friend and former confessor, and beg him himself to
reason with the infatuated girl. Pilar was summoned to the episcopal palace,
and the good old man, used to intervening in family quarrels, did his utmost to
show her the folly of her course. But she would not be persuaded. Nothing that
anyone could say would induce her to forsake the man she loved. The duchess,
waiting in an adjoining room, was sent for and made a final appeal to her
daughter. In vain. Pilar returned to her humble lodging and the duchess in
tears was left alone with the Archbishop. The Archbishop was no less astute
than he was pious, and when he saw that the distracted woman was in a fit
state to listen to him, advised her as a last resource to go to the Countess de
Marbella. She was the cleverest woman in Seville and it might be that she could
do something.
At first the duchess indignantly refused. She would never suffer the
humiliation of appealing to her greatest enemy. Sooner might the ancient
house of Dos Palos fall in ruin. The Archbishop was accustomed to dealing
with tiresome women. He set himself with gentle cunning to induce her to
change her mind and presently she consented to throw herself on the
Frenchwoman’s mercy. With rage in her heart she sent a message asking if she
might see her, and that afternoon was ushered into her drawing–room. The
countess of course had been one of the first to hear the story, but she listened
to the unhappy mother as though she had not known a thing about it. She
relished the situation enormously. It was the crowning triumph to have the
vindictive duchess on her knees before her. But she was at heart a
good–natured woman and she had a sense of humour.
‘It’s a most unfortunate situation,’ she said. ‘And I’m sorry that one of my
servants should be the occasion of it. But I don’t exactly see what I can do.’
The duchess would have liked to slap her painted face and her voice trembled
a little with the effort she made to control her anger.
‘It is not for my own sake I’m asking you to help. It’s for Pilar’s. I know, we all
know, that you are the cleverest woman in the city. It seemed to me, it seemed
to the Archbishop, that if there was a way out, your quick wit would find it.’
The countess knew she was being grossly flattered. She did not mind. She
liked it.
‘You must let me think.’
‘Of course, if he’d been a gentleman I could have sent for my son and he
would have killed him, but the Duke of Dos Palos cannot fight a duel with the
Countess de Marbella’s coachman.’
‘Perhaps not.’
‘In the old days it would have been so simple. I should merely have hired a
couple of ruffians and had the brute’s throat cut one night in the street. But
with all these laws they have nowadays decent people have no way of
protecting themselves from insult.’
‘I should deplore any method of settling the difficulty that deprived me of the
services of an excellent coachman,’ murmured the countess.
‘But if he married my daughter he cannot continue to be your coachman,’
cried the duchess indignantly.
‘Are you going to give Pilar an income for them to live on?’
‘Me? Not a peseta. I told Pilar at once that she should get nothing from me.
They can starve for all I care.’
‘Well, I should think rather than do that he will prefer to stay on as my
coachman. There are very nice rooms over my stables.’
The duchess went pale. The duchess went red.
‘Forget all that has passed between us. Let us be friends. You can’t expose me
to such a humiliation. If I’ve ever done things to affront you I ask you on my
knees to forgive me.’
The duchess cried.
‘Dry your eyes, Duchess,’ the Frenchwoman said at last. ‘I will do what I can.’
‘Is there anything you can do?’
‘Perhaps. Is it true that Pilar has and will have no money of her own?’
‘Not a penny if she marries without my consent.’
The countess gave her one of her brightest smiles.
‘There is a common impression that southern people are romantic and
northern people matter–of–fact. The reverse is true. It is the northerners who
are incurably romantic. I have lived long enough among you Spaniards to
know that you are nothing if not practical.’
The duchess was too broken to resent openly these unpleasant remarks, but,
oh, how she hated the woman! The Countess de Marbella rose to her feet.
‘You shall hear from me in the course of the day.’
She firmly dismissed her visitor.
The carriage was ordered for five o’clock and at ten minutes to, the countess,
dressed for her drive, sent for José. When he came into the drawing–room,
wearing his pale grey livery with such an air, she could not deny that he was
very good to look upon. If he had not been her own coachman–well, it was not
the moment for ideas of that sort. He stood before her, holding himself easily,
but with a gallant swagger. There was nothing servile in his bearing.
‘A Greek god,’ the countess murmured to herself. ‘It is only Andalusia that can
produce such types.’ And then aloud: ‘I hear that you are going to marry the
daughter of the Duchess of Dos Palos.’
‘If the countess does not object.’
She shrugged her shoulders.
‘Whoever you marry is a matter of complete indifference to me. You know of
course that Doña Pilar will have no fortune.’
‘Yes, madam. I have a good place and I can keep my wife. I love her.’
‘I can’t blame you for that. She is a beautiful girl. But I think it only right to
tell you that I have a rooted objection to married coachmen. On your wedding–
day you leave my service. That is all I had to say to you. You can go.’
She began to look at the daily paper that had just arrived from Paris, but José,
as she expected, did not stir. He stared down at the floor. Presently the countess
looked up.
‘What are you waiting for?’
‘I never knew madam would send me away,’ he answered in a troubled tone.
‘I have no doubt you’ll find another place.’
‘Yes, but . . .’
‘Well, what is it?’ she asked sharply.
He sighed miserably.
‘There’s not a pair of mules in the whole of Spain to come up to ours. They’re
almost human beings. They understand every word I say to them.’
The countess gave him a smile that would have turned the head of anyone
who was not madly in love already.
‘I’m afraid you must choose between me and your betrothed.’
He shifted from one foot to the other. He put his hand to his pocket to get
himself a cigarette, but then, remembering where he was, restrained the
gesture. He glanced at the countess and that peculiar shrewd smile came over
his face which those who have lived in Andalusia know so well.
‘In that case, I can’t hesitate. Pilar must see that this alters my position
entirely. One can get a wife any day of the week, but a place like this is found
only once in a lifetime. I should be a fool to throw it up for a woman.’
That was the end of the adventure. José León continued to drive the Countess
de Marbella, but she noticed when they sped up and down the Delicias that
henceforward as many eyes were turned on her handsome coachman as on
her latest hat: and a year later Pilar married the Marqués de San Esteban.
