We Certainly Had Other English Neighbours - Those Who Lived Half A Day's Journey On Horseback From Us Were Our Neighbours There - English, Welsh, Irish, Scotch, But They Were Not Like Mr. Royd.

These others, however prosperous (and some were the owners of large estates), came mostly from the working or lower middle class in their own country and were interested solely in their own affairs.

Mr. Royd was of a different order. He was about forty-five when my years were seven, a handsome clean-shaved man with bright blue humorous eyes and brown hair. He was an educated man, and loved to meet with others of like mind with himself, with whom he could converse in his own language. There was no English in his house. He had a bright genial disposition, a love of fun, and a hearty ringing laugh it was a pleasure to hear. He was an enthusiast about his sheep-farming, always full of fine projects, always dreaming of the things he intended doing and of the great results which would follow. One of his pet notions was that cheeses made with sheep's milk would be worth any price he liked to put on them, and he accordingly began to make them under very great difficulties, since the sheep had to be broken to it and they yielded but a small quantity compared with the sheep of certain districts in France and other countries where they have been milked for many generations and have enlarged their udders. Worst of all, his native servants considered it a degradation to have to stoop to milk such creatures as sheep. "Why not milk the cats?" they scornfully demanded. However, he succeeded in making cheeses, and very nice they were, far nicer in fact than any native cheeses made from cows' milk we had ever tasted. But the difficulties were too great for him to produce them in sufficient quantity for the market, and eventually the sheep-milking came to an end.

Unfortunately Mr. Royd had no one to help him in his schemes, or to advise and infuse a little more practicality into him. His family could never have been anything but a burden and drag on him in his struggle, and his disaster probably resulted from his romantic and over-sanguine temper, which made him the husband of his wife and caused him to dream of a fortune built on cheeses made from sheep's milk.

His wife was a native; in other words, a lady of Spanish blood, of a good family, city born and bred. They had met in Buenos Ayres when in their bloom, at the most emotional period of life, and in spite of opposition from her people and of the tremendous difficulties in the way of a union between one of the Faith and a heretic in those religious days, they were eventually made man and wife. As a girl she had been beautiful; now, aged about forty, she was only fat - a large fat woman, with an extremely white skin, raven-black hair and eyebrows, and velvet-black eyes. That was Dona Mercedes as I knew her. She did no work in the house, and never went for a walk or a ride on horseback: she spent her time in an easy-chair, always well dressed, and in warm weather always with a fan in her hand. I can hear the rattle of that fan now as she played with it, producing a succession of graceful waving motions and rhythmic sounds as an accompaniment to the endless torrent of small talk which she poured out; for she was an exceedingly voluble person, and to assist in making the conversation more lively there were always two or three screaming parrots on their perches near her. She also liked to be surrounded by all the other females in the house, her two daughters and the indoor servants, four or five in number, all full-blooded negresses, black but comely, fat, pleasant-looking, laughing young and middle-aged women, all as a rule dressed in white. They were unmarried, but two or three of them were the mothers of certain small darkies to be seen playing about and rolling in the dust near the servants' quarters at the far end of the long low house.

The eldest daughter, Eulodia, was about fifteen as I first remember her, a tall slim handsome girl with blue-black hair, black eyes, coral-red lips, and a remarkably white skin without a trace of red colour in it. She was no doubt just like what her mother had been when the dashing impressionable young George Royd had first met her and lost his heart - and soul. The younger sister, about eight at that time, was a perfect contrast to Eulodia: she had taken after her father, and in colour and appearance generally was a perfect little English girl of the usual angel type, with long shining golden hair, worn in curls, eyes of the purest turquoise blue, and a complexion like the petals of a wild rose. Adelina was her pretty name, and to us Adelina was the most beautiful human being in the world, especially when seen with her dusky little playmate Liberata, who was of the same age and height and was the child of one of the black servants. These two had grown fond of each other from the cradle, and so Liberata had been promoted to be Adelina's constant companion in the house and to wear pretty dresses. Being a _mulatita_ she was dark or dusky skinned, with a reddish tinge in the duskiness, purple-red lips, and liquid black eyes with orange-brown reflections in them - the eyes called tortoiseshell in America. Her crisp cast-iron coloured hair was worn like a fleece round her small head, and her features were so refined one could only suppose that her father had been a singularly handsome as well as a white man. Adelina and Liberata were inseparable, except at meal-times, when the dusky little girl had to go back among her own tribe on the mother's side; and they formed an exquisite picture as one often saw them, standing by the Senora's chair with their arms round each other's necks - the pretty dark-skinned child and the beautiful white child with shining hair and blue forget-me-not eyes.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 44 of 96
Words from 44919 to 45983 of 98444