“Ah,” exclaimed the Marquès, hesitating beside her chair.
“You have had a good rest?” she inquired mockingly.
He blew uncomfortably.
“Yes, that is to say, I have just come in from a drive.”
He forgot his perplexity and decided to sit down.
“A very good drive?”
He stared at the tweedy backs of the retreating tourists.
“The battalion goes!” he exclaimed. He had always called them the battalion when speaking to Mrs. Lance. “Yes, a good drive.”
“Awful people,” said Mrs. Lance.
“There are,” said the Marquès, magnifying himself into the travelled man, and increasing his perspiration as he did so, “two kinds of English. The first class who go to Cannes and the third class who go to Majorca and eat oranges in their bedrooms. Ha! ha!”
He was recovering confidence. When Mrs. Lance laughed, he protested:
“Oh, but I have a great affection for the English. Above all I adore English women. Not those famished Valkyrie with their hair caught up in their teeth. They are not women. They are too—too—flat.”
Mrs. Lance moved back in her chair until she could see herself in the mirror on the tiled wall opposite. She patted her hair and breathed deeply for the sake of her figure. The Marquès was waving a persistent fly away from his face as he talked.
“Oh,” she said, “we are too flat?”
“No, they are too flat.”
“And Spanish women,” said Mrs. Lance grimly, “are too rotund.”
Then she coloured with annoyance at having allowed the conversation to become so physical.
“The town is very excited,” she put in quickly.
But the Marquès went on:
“Yes, they have that. That is why I adore certain English women. I could talk to them for hours. They are so ethereal, so fine; under that austerity,” he slyly pulled a severe face, “so generous.”
Mrs. Lance curled her lips.
“I once nearly killed my husband.”
“Ah, it is the English sportswomen I most admire.”
“I shot him in the hand.”
“Ah, you shot him in the hand,” he mocked.
Mrs. Lance continued derisively:
“It was at night. I was in bed. I woke up because I heard the door-handle rattle. It was in Egypt. I thought ‘Burglars! I’m taking no chances.’ So I pulled my little revolver from under my pillow,” she was carried away by her story, “and fired,”
“English customs are so difficult,” he said, drawing his chair closer and looking up through the glass roof.
“I hit him,” she said.
“Oh you hit. You hit him in the hand! What a lucky man.”
“It was a nice little revolver,” she boasted dreamily.
“And, tell me,” he said, leaning on the table towards her. “Do you still sleep with that revolver under your pillow?”
“I do.”
She lay in bed, the Marquès’ hand was on the door-knob, she fired. Bang. The absurd man! Her mind was inventing and scheming.
“Charming! Charming,” he said, wondering what the number of her room was. “What beautiful precision. What grace.”
“Why?” scoffed Mrs. Lance excited, for question, answer and raillery tripped drily and coquettishly towards each other and parted again a little more reluctantly each time, like partners in a quadrille.
“Because in Spain when one takes the hand,” he paused triumphantly, “one aims at the heart.”
He lifted her hand and kissed it. Two spots of faint colour appeared on Mrs. Lance’s face, and one eyebrow was raised quizzically. The patio was so warm and secluded, the sky was cut into tents of blue by the glass above, that she schooled her secret anger and allowed amused pleasure to rise inside her.
“Ah,” the Marquès said, holding her hand in the air, “I have been attacked. I have been fired at this afternoon. A public assassination. I am in fact already a corpse whose spirit has fled to its divinity.”
He told her at length how he had taken Crystal into his carriage.
“I have never suffered so before. It was torture, an exquisite torture. All the time I said to myself: between the mother and the daughter, what is there to choose? The mother has a beautiful daughter, the daughter has a beautiful mother. Two shots at the heart. Bang! Barbarous!”
“Crystal is ridiculous,” Mrs. Lance laughed, but his eyes became brilliant and he stared at her as he continued.
“But I saw through it. I said to myself, English propriety has devised a deceit. You are not mother and daughter at all.”
“Come, Marquès. What are we, aunt and uncle!” She leaned towards him.
“You are sisters!”
He sat back in triumph. Mrs. Lance could not conceal her delight.
“Sisters …” he shook his head sorrowfully and leaned towards her, his elbows on the table, “in misfortune. That was the greatest torture of all when Miss Crystal told me of …your embarrassment, this business of the hotel. Tears came to my eyes. I have always been, as I say, a profound admirer of English women. A worshipper.”
“Of the English sportswoman.”
“With revolvers under their pillows! Ah, it is my religion. They are so courageous. They appear so cold, but in reality, thanks be to God—they are not so cold as they appear. They appear so reserved, but they are not so reserved. They are delicious. In Spain it is the reverse. Everything is on the surface. Everything in fact is the reverse.”
“There are pillows but no revolvers,” Mrs. Lance said slyly, wondering at her excitement.
“For a man like me, who loves with his soul, there are targets—but no revolvers. In Spain to win the daughter you make love to the mother; in England it appears you make love to the daughter to win the mother? Is that not so? Ah, how I admire English formality! So that when I was with Miss Crystal this afternoon my thoughts went flying to you. I thought it is impossible, incredible that the beautiful should be unfortunate.”
“I am unfortunate,” said Mrs. Lance.
“I cannot permit it!” exclaimed the Marquès loudly, suddenly seizing her hand and kissing it. The light of his eyes and the fervour of his words seemed to dance about her. “I adore you. These things,” he indicated the corridor which led to the hotel manager’s office, “are nothing. They vanish. They vanish when I see lips and eyes like yours and hear you speaking. Your skin is like soft fire and I am inflammable. My heart is burned up with a passion.…”
A vein began to swell like a serpent across his forehead.
“Are you making love to me, Marquès, or offering to pay my bill?” said Mrs. Lance sharply, drawing away in her chair. He advanced his round the table towards her. He waved the besetting fly away with violence. The blue snake grew.
“The two! That can be settled. The manager is a great friend of mine. Do not let us think about it. It has gone. Since you have been here I have dreamed about you, and craved to kiss those eyes. I have waited for you, listened to your voice. I have loved you and longed to possess that divine beauty.…”
Words poured from him. His hands played on her waist, her arms, her shoulders. Mrs. Lance drew away angrily, but he seized her hand and pleaded with her again. “It is the fiesta to-night. Everyone will be out. The hotel is already deserted. To-night …”
“Marquès! You insult me.” Mrs. Lance got up, but he seized her shoulders.
“Is it an insult to love and adore, to admire your courage, your ruthlessness,” he added slyly. “Your passionate nature, that lifts you high above the head of all other women?”
He persisted hotly and she played coldly with him. Between spasms of disgust her mind kept saying, “He will pay the bill. It has vanished into nothing.” The dirty little dago would pay the bill. Good Lord! And then her face brightened with the inspiration of revenge. His word ‘ruthlessness’ put her on her mettle. What an excellent plan it would be to make him pay the bill by pretending to promise to meet him, and
then quietly slip away with Crystal by the night train!
“And the manager is a good friend of yours?” she half whispered.
“Yes, yes, yes. That is nothing, nothing.” He waved the matter away. He looked anxiously at the door and then seized her in his arms. “That is nothing.” There was a rime of perspiration on his forehead. She pictured him creeping to her room, his ludicrous dismay at finding it empty.
“He is.” His hot face was within a few inches of hers.
“As good a friend as that?”
“Here in Spain they are doing everything to encourage tourism,” he said passionately.
Mrs. Lance laughed in his face and went away slowly as some people came into the patio and stared at her. The Marquès followed her into the corridor whispering with agitation:
“Where shall I see you? You will be here. Yes? Here?”
“I don’t know.”
She went quickly to the stairs and said sharply, enchanted with her wild scheme:
“Yes, yes. Perhaps I will.”
He stood at the foot of the stairs with his mouth open and his eyes shining. He seemed like a tawny fish looking up towards a bait. Then he marched to the street, breathed violently at the sky and marched back calling to the waiter:
“Is Don Jorge there? Where is he? I want to see him.”
But when she got to her room she slammed the door and locked it. She stood scheming, and it was not for some minutes that she realised she was standing before her mirror. Then she laughed triumphantly at herself, and began taking the clothes out of the wardrobe.
“I’ll teach the beastly swine a lesson,” she laughed. She threw the clothes on the bed and sat down on the chair helpless with laughter.
Very soon she heard footsteps in the corridor and someone tried to open the door. She was alarmed and set her teeth.
“Who is it?”
The handle was rattled impatiently.
“Who is there?”
“Mummy, me.”
Mrs. Lance sighed in relief and let Crystal in.
“Why are you all locked up?”
“My dear child, I don’t know. I didn’t know I was. And why are you so excited?” Mrs. Lance adored her.
Crystal cried, with outstretched fingers pointing to the clothes on the bed, the trunks:
“Isn’t it wonderful about the Marquès! He has told you!”
“The Marquès,” Mrs. Lance exclaimed, looking fixedly at Crystal as though, taken by surprise, she was recoiling to spring.
“Hasn’t he told you?”
“Hasn’t he told me what?” demanded Mrs. Lance, going cold, holding the dress she was folding in the air.
“About the manager. He says he will see about all this dreadful money, and everything will be marvellous and all right if you will let me go.…” Crystal found herself suddenly hot, as if a hundred crests of fire were breaking into shameful colour all over her body. A spark in her head had been ignited by the fixed, half-cunning, half-suspicious glitter in her mother’s eyes.
“If I will let you go …and what?” repeated Mrs. Lance very slowly.
Crystal’s cheeks were flaming, and she could not move. She said weakly and in horror:
“If we will go.…” Tears came to her eyes. She hated her uncleanness.
“If we will go where?”
“To—to the fiesta—with him,” said Crystal, trying to put up a fight. But she wished she could hide herself, never see her mother or anyone again.
“And why should we do that?” Her mother found erotic delight in this persistence.
Crystal was terrified. She seemed to see two things creep out of her mother’s eyes, and to feel them crawl into the shameful corners of her own body.
“I—I don’t know,” said Crystal. The tears dropped down her cheeks.
Mrs. Lance put down the dress.
“I wish to heaven,” she said at last, half laughing, “that I hadn’t sold my little revolver.”
She was trembling with anger and humiliation.
“I’ll damn well teach him a lesson,” she thought.
She comforted Crystal, but was very annoyed with her; also she was jealous of her for the first time in her life. Because of this she took Crystal in her arms and kissed her passionately, pushing her lips greedily into Crystal’s auburn hair.
The Marquès went upstairs to his room and there he found his wife. She was changing her dress, and was standing in that repulsive condition of semi-undress which reminds a husband brutally of the inescapable legality of the married state. The bars and hooks of her corsets, the machinery of clips, bonds and pulleys, the robot-like efficiency and intricacy of the encasement in which her spongy flesh was armoured, went far towards subjecting him.
The Marquèsa was very angry.
“The porter has given me this bag and this letter,” she said. “There is a letter here asking a certain Madame Mathieu to give you back the money you lent.”
“What is this?” exclaimed the Marquès, in consternation. “Give it to me.”
“The money you lent! Never in my life have I been so humiliated. My own husband!”
The Marquès took the letter and read it.
“Where did you get it from?”
“From the porter, I told you.”
“Where did he get it from?”
“It was left in your carriage. The cab driver brought it in. You are hiding something from me. Sacred Virgin! never, never have I been so humiliated and insulted.”
“Wait a minute,” said the Marquès, very white. “Wait a minute. You are jumping to conclusions. My God! patience a moment. I didn’t write this letter. You surely know my handwriting by now.”
“I know when I am being deceived. It is no use pretending it’s not your writing. And supposing it isn’t? How did the letter come in your carriage? And,” she said triumphantly, “and this bag.”
“It is the bag of Mrs. Lance. And this is her letter. This is her writing!”
“Oh, give it to me,” cried the Marquèsa. “It is,” she said accusingly, forgetting all about what she had said before. “It is the writing of Mrs. Lance.”
“And she is asking Madame Mathieu for money.”
“Well,” said the Marquèsa, facing him more angrily than ever, now that her first suspicions were without foundation. “You know what I said about that woman. You know what I said! You can’t deceive me. There is something between you and Mrs. Lance.”
In a flash the Marquès had made his decision. His courage vanished: he knew the difficulty of deceiving a suspicious wife. One lie to wipe out the intrigue, and he would vow himself to virtue.
“There is nothing, nothing, nothing.”
“Well, how did you get the letter?”
“It was left in the carriage.”
“Oh—that woman was with you.”
“No, she wasn’t.”
“Well then, how—?”
“Ay, calm yourself. Patience,” shouted the Marquès, “listen to me. I met the little girl in the Plaza going to the house. She was alone. That woman has no right to send her daughter out alone. It is not convenable. I took her in my carriage and she must have left the letter. Now I remember, it was to a Madame Mathieu she said she was going.”
“About the money!” repeated his wife.
“Clearly—about the money!”
They faced each other, now speechless.
“That woman!” exclaimed the Marquèsa.
“I can tell you something else,” said the Marquès adroitly. “Just this moment I have discovered it, and that is why I came up here hoping to find you.”
His wife relaxed and sat down in her chair.
“What is it?”
“They owe a very large bill here. I have discovered that. Be careful they do not come to you for money,” he warned her sternly.
“To me!”
“To you. You are not to speak to either of them!” he recovered his authority. “I am going to tell Don Jorge all about it. I came up h
ere to warn you first. Give me that letter. I will take it down at once and speak to him about it. I know what these people are like! One has to be very careful with these English.”
“Evidently,” said his wife. “That woman! It is barbarous.” She was defeated, but she had the satisfaction of knowing she had been right and so resigned herself. Under the twitching of the electric light that was diffused in the room like a thin and acid wine, she put on her black dress. Her black hair was brushed back from the peak of her broad forehead. Her sallow face was pink with powder. Her small black eyes died in their tawny hollows. She sighed as she walked about the room, and sighed again as she adjusted the high comb and the web of mantilla lace that she was wearing for the fiesta. And then the highest of her toppling pile of chins surprisingly toppled over into a loud yawn.
Crystal and her mother went downstairs to find Alec waiting in the hall. The provincial crowds were passing up and down outside in the Plaza. Above the dark liquid blobs of moving people were the pale façades of the buildings, and their black roofs cut into tragic silhouette as by a diamond against a sky which had the outstretched unearthly clarity of a transept window. The stars were white and holy.
“Alec, come out here. I must speak to somebody,” said Mrs. Lance, and led the way to a deserted corner of the Plaza. Crystal was pale and her eyes were heavy. She looked at Alec coldly, as if she had never seen him before.
“I have been insulted, Alec, as I have never been insulted in my life,” said Mrs. Lance. “I always knew that these people were beasts, but I did not know they were swine. They think nothing of making insulting proposals to their own women. I never realised they would dare to treat English gentlewomen in that fashion.”
The Spanish Virgin Page 3
