Here, Thought I, Is An Opportunity Not To Be Lost - One Long Waited For!
Leaving My Horse At The Gate
I went to them, and addressing a large
woman, the most important-looking person of the three, as politely as
I
could, I said I was not, as they perhaps imagined, a long absent friend
or relation returned from the wars, but a perfect stranger, a traveller
on the great south road; that I was hot and thirsty, and the sight of
them refreshing themselves in that pleasant shade had tempted me to
intrude myself upon them.
She received me with smiles and a torrent of welcoming words, and the
expected invitation to sit down and drink mate with them. She was a
very large woman, very fat and very dark, of that reddish or mahogany
colour which, taken with the black eyes and coarse black hair, is
commonly seen in persons of mixed blood - Iberian with aboriginal. I
took her age to be about fifty years. And she was as voluble as she was
fat and dark, and poured out such a stream of talk on or rather over me
like warm greasy water, and so forcing me to keep my eyes on her, that
it was almost impossible to give any attention to the other two. One
was her husband, Spanish and dark too, but with a different sort of
darkness; a skeleton of a man with a bony ghastly face, in old frayed
workman's clothes and dust-covered boots; his hands very grimy. And the
third person was their daughter, as they called her, a girl of fifteen
with a clear white and pink skin, regular features, beautiful grey eyes
and light brown hair. A perfect type of a nice looking English girl
such as one finds in any village, in almost any cottage, in the
Midlands or anywhere else in this island.
These two were silent, but at length, in one of the fat woman's brief
pauses, the girl spoke, in a Spanish in which one could detect no trace
of a foreign accent, in a low and pleasing voice, only to say something
about the garden. She was strangely earnest and appeared anxious to
impress on them that it was necessary to have certain beds of
vegetables they cultivated watered that very day lest they should be
lost owing to the heat and dryness. The man grunted and the woman said
yes, yes, yes, a dozen times. Then the girl left us, going back to her
garden, and the fat woman went on talking to me. I tried once or twice
to get her to tell me about her daughter, as she called her, but she
would not respond - she would at once go off into other subjects. Then I
tried something else and told her of my sight of a handsome young lady
in mourning I had once seen there feeding the pigeons. And now she
responded readily enough and told me the whole story of the lady.
She belonged to a good and very wealthy family of the city and was an
only child, and lost both parents when very young. She was a very
pretty girl of a joyous nature and a great favourite in society. At the
age of sixteen she became engaged to a young man who was also of a good
and wealthy family. After becoming engaged to her he went to the war in
Paraguay, and after an absence of two years, during which he had
distinguished himself in the field and won his captaincy, he returned
to marry her. She was at her own house waiting in joyful excitement to
receive him when his carriage arrived, and she flew to the door to
welcome him. He, seeing her, jumped out and came running to her with
his arms out to embrace her, but when still three or four yards distant
suddenly stopped short and throwing up his arms fell to the earth a
dead man. The shock of his death at this moment of supreme bliss for
both of them was more than she could bear; it brought on a fever of the
brain and it was feared that if she ever recovered it would be with a
shattered mind. But it was not so: she got well and her reason was not
lost, but she was changed into a different being from the happy girl of
other days - fond of society, of dress, of pleasures; full of life and
laughter. "Now she is sadness itself and will continue to wear mourning
for the rest of her life, and prefers always to be alone. This old
house, built by her grandfather when there were few houses in this
suburb, she once liked to visit, but since her loss she has been but
once in it. That was when you saw her, when she came to spend a few
months in solitude. She would not even allow me to come and sit and
talk to her! Think of that! She thinks nothing of her possessions and
allows us to live here rent free, to grow vegetables and raise poultry
for the market. That is what we do for a living; my husband and our
little daughter attend to these things out of doors, and I look after
the house."
When she got to the end of this long relation I rose and thanked her
for her hospitality and made my escape. But the mystery of the white,
gentle-voiced, grey-eyed girl haunted me, and from that time I made it
my custom to call at Dovecot House on every journey to town, always to
be received with open arms, so to speak, by the great fat woman. But
she always baffled me. The girl was usually to be seen, always the
same, quiet, unsmiling, silent, or else speaking in Spanish in that
gentle un-Spanish voice of some practical matter about the garden, the
poultry, and so on.
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