The glad lady

The next day there was such an influx of custom, so many cattlemen to demand meals, that the dining-room was insufficient to accommodate both these and Don Juan’s party; moreover, Matilda declared that it would not do to seat ladies at the table with so many rough men, therefore dinner was served in the little sala.

“Six places,” said Doña Martina as they sat down. “Matilda has not counted noses this time; there is one too many.” She had hardly spoken when the door opened and in walked the young Englishman who had left them the week before. He bowed to the company and sat down at the end of the table. On his right was Patty, on his left Doña Martina.

“As I was saying,” Patty began, in English, “a twelfth century palace may be very charming to look at and to live in during the summer, but in winter the saints deliver me from a chilly house.”

The young man looked up brightly. “You are English, American, of course, and I fancied you were all Spaniards.”

“We are a composite party.” Patty had found the entering wedge. “My sister and I are Americans, my brother-in-law is Spanish, and so, of course, is his brother, while my friend is French.”

“Then you are a compatriot of mine.”

“Are you an American?” It was Patty’s turn to be surprised. “We all thought you so deadly English.”

“I have lived in England for a number of years. My mother was an Englishwoman. After my father’s death she went home to live and I completed my education in England.”

“That accounts for it.”

“For my seeming like an Englishman? Yes, of course, but I still claim America and am delighted to meet Americans. One finds very few in this part of the world.”

“We haven’t met any. You are the first we have seen, and you are really a sort of mixture, aren’t you?”

“I suppose I am, but in spite of that I still cling to the traditions of my boyhood. The happiest years of my life were spent in the States.”

“That sounds very English, or foreign, I should say. We are so lordly in our claims that we call ourselves Americans and our country America, while here an Americano is one who has been to Spanish America. We are Inglesas because we speak English. I felt quite abashed when I asked a Spanish-American if he were not a Spaniard, and he quite indignantly replied, ‘No, I am an American.’ ‘But you speak Spanish,’ I persisted. ‘So do you speak English,’ he said, ‘but you are not an Englishwoman.’ It was quite a new point of view to me. That was when I first came abroad; now I am broader-minded.”

“From what part of America are you?” asked Doña Martina, addressing her neighbor. “One cannot tell by your speech, you know.”

“I was born in Louisville, Kentucky. My father’s name was Robert Lisle and mine is the same.”

“I wonder if you could be related to Margaret Lisle, who married our uncle, Henry Beckwith.”

“She is my first cousin.”

“Really? Isn’t that a coincidence? As we are continually saying, the world is very small. I must tell my husband; he knows Uncle Henry very well. Why, you are quite like a relative, and from our own state, too. What are you doing down here in Spain? Traveling for pleasure?”

“No, I am a mining engineer. I have come down with some Englishmen interested in the mines of this province. I have been to Gijon and am going to join my friends in Santander later on. I stopped off at this place, where I had been once before, and, remembering this good little fonda, I concluded it would be a proper center from which to make a few trips to Covadonga and other places in the neighborhood.”

“Covadonga is one of the places we have in mind to visit,” Doña Martina told him. “Just now we are merely staying here till our house shall be in order. It should have been ready before this, but you know the Spanish mañana, and the painters will not have left it for a few days yet. Meanwhile, we are comfortable and are seeing something of the life in the village.”

“Unfortunately for me, my Spanish is very shaky and I cannot get along without a phrase book. It seemed rather venturesome to come to these parts so poorly equipped, but the call was sudden, and I had no time to prepare for it.”

“I’ve no doubt you know as much as Mademoiselle Delambre and I do,” Patty chimed in. “I make frightful mistakes, but I plunge in recklessly and am gradually getting a vocabulary.”

“I thought before I ventured too far off by myself I would devote a little time to study, and perhaps you can recommend a teacher, or at least someone who would be willing to give me some hours of conversation each day.”

“I am sure my husband can direct you to someone,” Doña Martina assured him, and with that, the meal having been finished, they all left the table.

This new acquaintance brought a fresh element into the party. As Doña Martina remarked, “I told you so. Let Patty but appear and a man drops down from the skies; already there are three on the list and I hope she is content.”

Paulette looked up from under her light lashes and smiled. She was fond of Patty, but in her heart of hearts she felt that her own attractions were not to be despised. She was a small person, rather chic, and, but for a somewhat large nose and a rough complexion, would have been considered pretty. As it was she made the most of a slim figure and golden locks, which were her chief charms.

“Your golden hair, Polly, dear, is your fortune as much as your ducats are,” Patty had one day said to her when they were discussing each other in that perfectly frank way that young girls have. “With that and your very stylish and trig form you are saved from being utterly commonplace. Your eyes are rather small, your mouth nothing remarkable; you have too much nose; your feet are passable in high heels; your hands are positively ugly, but no one observes anything but those golden locks and that you have an air.”

“And you, my dear Patty, may not have what you call an air, but cast a glance from those melting brown eyes upon even a gamin in the street and he bows before you. Your nose is impertinent, but it is not, as mine, a feature whose bridge it is difficult to pass over. A nez retrousée is not objectionable, it is in fact desirable with such eyes. A very long nose would give you a visage so melancholy as would make one fancy you a veritable ascetic. Your mouth is a trifle large for your nose, but better that than too small, else your eyes would seem out of proportion. Your figure is not bad, a little thin, but that is a fault which years may improve. I may grow too stout, you will not.”

“How honest we are,” Patty returned. “That comes of hearing so much about confessions and the like, here in the convent.”

The confessions were not so frequent, once the convent was left behind, for the two girls were now in the world of reality rather than of dreams, and there was too much that was vitally interesting going on about them to admit of vagaries and of such discussions as touched only personal appearance. Each tried to look her best and thoroughly enjoyed the pretty summer outfit which had been a matter of such moment at the time of providing.

Patty had sought the galleria after dinner, and stood watching the great stars slip down behind the mountains. From below came the laughter and chatter of the vaqueros who had gathered in the wine-room. There was more movement than usual on the little plaza, on account of the presence of so many cattle drivers. The air was sweet with the scent of blossoms hidden behind garden walls or nodding from the boxes set in windows. Paulette, Don Tomás and Doña Martina were pacing the white way. Don Juan was busy over his papers. Patty, leaning her arms on the ledge of the galleria rested her chin upon them. It was pleasant to be there. One seldom had a chance to be alone, and once in a while one must have time to think. How long ago it seemed since she and Tina had come from home, that home which was now broken up. Five years Tina had been married. Before that was the yellow house with white pillars, the garden—ah, yes, that was it—the scent of flowers reminded her of home. She could see her father pacing, pacing, his hands behind him, his head bent. That was after the days when her frail little mother, with big eyes like Patty’s own, used to walk the garden-paths, holding little Patty by the hand, the little six year old Patty, who suddenly missed the dear companion and found out there was no use in asking again for mother, for she was in far off heaven, too distant to reach. Then grandma Beckwith took mother’s place at table, and finally there was neither grandma Beckwith nor papa to haunt the garden walks, only Patty and Tina and the new brother Juan. Three years these had lived in the old house, then it was leased for a term of years and the two sisters came abroad, Patty to finish her education with the sisters in a convent, and Tina to follow her husband wherever his business might call him. They had gone to London first and then to Paris, where, within the last year, Don Juan had been desperately ill, and upon his recovery had felt that nothing would complete his cure but the healthful breezes of his native province in northern Spain. It had been a long two years for Patty, although there were visits from her sister once in a while, and one Christmas there had been a jolly good time at an old chateau, where lived an American fellow schoolmate, who had invited Patty with some other girls for a holiday visit. Now schooldays were over and what next? The summer here, and then would they go to Madrid as Don Juan sometimes thought of doing? Would they stay here in Asturias? Would they return to America? This present experience was delightfully novel and entertaining. It was pleasant, too, to be with dear old Tina, who tried to be so strict and to maintain such discipline with her young sister, just as she had always tried in the days gone by, but— A homesick feeling came over Patty, a longing for the old home, the old ways, for the beloved country whose faults, like her own, were but youthful faults after all.

She gave a long sigh, and presently became aware from a slight movement that someone had stepped out upon the balcony, then a voice said, “I beg your pardon. I didn’t know anyone was out here. Will my cigar annoy you?”

“And I with a Spanish brother-in-law who smokes cigarettes eternally? No, Mr. Lisle, I have passed beyond feeling annoyed at so slight a thing as that. In the convent, of course, the sisters don’t smoke.”

“The convent?”

“Yes, I have been there for the past two years completing my education. I have learned many things—especially from the French girls.”

She did not see the young man’s frown. “And from the sisters?”

“Oh, I learned things from them, too, the dear doves. I have become fluent in excellent French. I learned to embroider beautifully; I can sketch—a little; my music isn’t so terrible and—well, the lives of the saints may be very edifying, but somehow they never did interest me as much as the lives of the sinners.”

“Whom do you class among the sinners?”

“Myself for one.”

“I can scarcely credit that. Are you such a sinner?”

“We are all miserable sinners, so sister Cecile used to say, and I think she meant I was one of the chief, yet, I am sure she loved me. Some day I must go back there to see them all, for I was really very happy after a fashion.”

“And now?”

“Oh, I am happier still now, though I was happiest in the dear old home. I have just been thinking about it. The smell of the roses brought it all back to me.”

“Tell me about it. May I sit here?” He threw away his cigar and established himself on the bench which ran along one side of the galleria, while Patty sat opposite in a porch chair.

“It is in Kentucky, you know,” the girl said, “not far from Lexington, and I spent all my childhood there. I had a governess after my mother died, then, after my father’s death, I went to boarding-school for a while. I was still at school when my sister married. We lived in the old home for a couple of years after that, then, when Dr. Estradas had to come over here, they brought me with them and sent me to a convent to finish my studies.”

“Then you, too, are an orphan.”

“Yes, I have no one but Tina.”

“I have my grandfather and one uncle, no brothers or sisters. I, too, remember my old Kentucky home and my happy boyhood.”

“Don’t you get homesick, oh so homesick for it sometimes? I do. ‘For the sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home, my old Kentucky home so far away,’” she sang softly. “That almost breaks my heart, for my mother used to sing it to me, and it brings back everything, everything, the old house with the white columns, the roses in bloom, the sun shining on the trees. Oh, dear, why can’t things stay as we want them?”