CHAPTER I A CONVERSATION ON THE TRAIN

QUENTIN awoke, opened his eyes, looked about him, and exclaimed between his yawns:

“We must be in Andalusia now.”

The second-class coach was occupied by six persons. Opposite Quentin, a distinguished-looking Frenchman, corpulent, clean-shaven, and with a red ribbon in his buttonhole, was showing a magazine to a countryman in the garb of a wealthy cattle owner, and was graciously explaining the meanings of the illustrations to him.

The countryman listened to his explanations smiling mischievously, mumbling an occasional aside to himself in an undertone:

“What a simpleton.”

Leaning against the shoulder of the Frenchman, dozed his wife—a faded woman with a freakish hat, ruddy cheeks, and large hands clutching a portfolio. The other persons were a bronze-coloured priest wrapped in a cloak, and two recently-married Andalusians who were whispering the sweetest of sweet nothings to each other.[10]

“But haven’t we reached Andalusia yet?” Quentin again inquired impatiently.

“Oh, yes!” replied the Frenchman. “The next station is Baeza.”

“Baeza!—Impossible!”

“It is, never-the-less—It is,” insisted the Frenchman, rolling his r’s in the back of his throat. “I have been counting the stations.”

Quentin arose, his hands thrust into his overcoat. The rain beat incessantly against the coach windows which were blurred by the moisture.

“I don’t know my own country,” he exclaimed aloud; and to see it better he opened the window and looked out.

The train was passing through a ruddy country spotted here and there with pools of rainwater. In the distance, small, low hills, shadowed by shrubs and thickets raised themselves into the cold, damp air.

“What weather!” he exclaimed in disgust, as he closed the window. “This is no land of mine!”

“Are you a Spaniard?” inquired the Frenchman.

“Yes, sir.”

“I would have taken you for an Englishman.”

“I have just left England, where I spent eight years.”

“Are you from Andalusia?”

“From Cordova.”

The Frenchman and his wife, who had awakened, studied Quentin. Surely his looks were not Spanish. Tall, stout, and clean-shaven, with a good complexion and brown hair, enveloped in a grey overcoat, and with a cap on his head; he looked like a young Englishman sent by his parents to tour the continent. He had a strong nose, thick lips, and the expression of a dignified[11] and serious young man which a roguish, mischievous, and gipsy-like smile completely unmasked.

“My wife and I are going to Cordova,” remarked the Frenchman as he pocketed his magazine.

Quentin bowed.

“It must be a most interesting city—is it not?”

“Indeed it is!”

“Charming women with silk dresses ... on the balconies all day.”

“No; not all day.”

“And with cigarettes in their mouths, eh?”

“No.”

“Ah! Don’t Spanish women smoke?”

“Much less than French women.”

“French women do not smoke, sir,” said the woman somewhat indignantly.

“Oh! I’ve seen them in Paris!” exclaimed Quentin. “But you won’t see any of them smoking in Cordova. You French people don’t know us. You believe that all we Spaniards are toreadors, but it is not so.”

“Ah! No, no! Pardon me!” replied the Frenchman, “we are very well acquainted with Spain. There are two Spains: one, which is that of the South, is Théophile Gautier’s; the other, which is that of Hernani, is Victor Hugo’s. But perhaps you don’t know that Hernani is a Spanish city?”

“Yes, I know the place,” said Quentin with aplomb, though never in his life had he heard any one mention the name of the tiny Basque village.

“A great city.”

“Indeed it is.”

Having made this remark, Quentin lit a cigarette, passed his hand along the blurred windowpane until he[12] had made it transparent, and began to hum to himself as he contemplated the landscape. The humid, rainy weather had saddened the deserted fields. As far as one could see there were no hamlets, no villages—only here and there a dark farmhouse in the distance.

They passed abandoned stations, crossed huge olive groves with trees planted in rows in great squares on the ruddy hillsides. The train approached a broad and muddy river.

“The Guadalquivir?” inquired the Frenchman.

“I don’t know,” replied Quentin absently. Then, doubtless, this confession of ignorance seemed ill-advised, for he looked at the river as if he expected it to tell him its name, and added: “It is a tributary of the Guadalquivir.”

“Ah! And what is its name?”

“I don’t remember. I don’t believe it has any.”

The rain increased in violence. The country was slowly being converted into a mudhole. The older leaves of the wet olive trees shone a dark brown; the new ones glistened like metal. As the train slackened its speed, the rain seemed to grow more intense. One could hear the patter of the drops on the roof of the coach, and the water slid along the windows in broad gleaming bands.

At one of the stations, three husky young men climbed into the coach. Each wore a shawl, a broad-brimmed hat, a black sash, and a huge silver chain across his vest. They never ceased for an instant talking about mills, horses, women, gambling, and bulls.

“Those gentlemen,” asked the Frenchman in an undertone, as he leaned over to Quentin, “What are they—toreadors?”

“No,—rich folk from hereabouts.[13]”

“Hidalgos, eh?”

“Pst! You shall see.”

“They are talking a lot about gambling. One gambles a great deal in Andalusia, doesn’t one?”

“Yes.”

“I have heard some one say, that once a hidalgo was riding along on horseback, when he met a beggar. The horseman tossed him a silver coin, but the beggar, not wishing to accept it drew a pack of cards from among his rags and proposed a game to the hidalgo. He won the horse.”

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” laughed Quentin boisterously.

“But isn’t it true?” asked the Frenchman somewhat piqued.

“Perhaps—perhaps it is.”

“What a simpleton!” murmured the countryman to himself.

“Isn’t it true either, that all beggars have the right to use the ‘Don’?”

“Yes, indeed, that’s true enough,” answered Quentin, smiling his gipsy smile.

The three husky youths in the shawls got off at the next station to Cordova. The sky cleared for an instant: up and down the platform walked men with broad-brimmed Andalusian hats, young women with flowers in their hair, old women with huge, red umbrellas....

“And those young men who just went by,” asked the Frenchman, full of curiosity about everything, “each one carries his knife, eh?”

“Oh, yes!—Probably,” said Quentin, unconsciously imitating his interlocutor’s manner of speech.

“The knives they carry are very large?”

“The knives! Yes, very large.[14]”

“What might their dimensions be?”

“Two or three spans,” asserted Quentin, to whom a span more or less mattered very little.

“And is it hard to manage that terrible weapon?”

“It has its difficulties.”

“Do you know how?”

“Naturally. But the really difficult thing is to hit a mark with a knife at a distance of twenty or thirty metres.”

“How do they do that?”

“Why, there’s nothing much to it. You place the knife like this,” and Quentin assumed that he had placed one in the palm of his hand, “and then you throw it with all your might. The knife flies like an arrow, and sticks wherever you wish.”

“How horrible!”

“That is what we call ‘painting a jabeque [a facial wound].’”

“A ca—a cha—a what?”

“Jabeque.”

“It is truly extraordinary,” said the Frenchman, after attempting in vain to pronounce the guttural. “You have doubtless killed bulls also?”

“Oh! yes, indeed.”

“But you are very young.”

“Twenty-two.”

“Didn’t you tell me that you have been in England for eight years?”

“Yes.”

“So you killed bulls when you were fourteen?”

“No ... in my vacations.”

“Ah! You came from England just for that?”

“Yes—for that, and to see my sweetheart.[15]”

The Frenchwoman smiled, and her husband said:

“Weren’t you afraid?”

“Afraid of which?—The bulls, or my sweetheart?”

“Of both!” exclaimed the Frenchman, laughing heartily.

“What a simpleton!” reiterated the countryman, smiling, and looking at him as he would at a child.

“All you have to do with women and bulls to understand them,” said Quentin, with the air of a consummate connoisseur, “is to know them. If the bull attacks you on the right, just step to the left, or vice versa.”

“And if you don’t have time to do that?” questioned the Frenchman rather anxiously.

“Then you may count yourself among the departed, and beg them to say a few masses for the salvation of your soul.”

“It is frightful—And the ladies are very enthusiastic over a good toreador, eh?”

“Of course—on account of the profession.”

“What do you mean by ‘on account of the profession’?”

“Don’t the ladies bully us?”

“That’s true,” said the countryman, smiling.

“And he who fights best,” continued the Frenchman, “will have the doors of society opened to him?”

“Of course.”

“What a strange country!”

“Pardon me,” asked his wife, “but is it true that if a girl deceives her lover, he always kills her?”

“No, not always—sometimes—but he is not obliged to.”

“And you—have you killed a sweetheart?” she inquired, consumed with curiosity.[16]

“I!”—and Quentin hesitated as one loath to confess—“Not I.”

“Ah!—Yes, yes!” insisted the Frenchwoman, “you have killed a sweetheart. One can see it in your face.”

“My dear,” said her husband, “do not press him: the Spaniards are too noble to talk about some things.”

Quentin looked at the Frenchman and winked his eye confidentially, giving him to understand that he had divined the true cause of his reserve. Then he feigned a melancholy air to conceal the joy this farce afforded him. After that, he diverted himself by looking through the window.

“What a bore this weather is,” he murmured.

He had always pictured his arrival at Cordova as taking place on a glorious day of golden sunshine, and instead, he was encountering despicable weather, damp, ugly, and sad.

“I suppose the same thing will happen to everything I have planned. Nothing turns out as you think it will. That, according to my schoolmate Harris, is an advantage. I’m not so sure. It is a matter for discussion.”

This memory of his schoolmate made him think of Eton school.

“I wonder what they are doing there now?”

Absorbed in his memories, he continued to look out the window. As the train advanced, the country became more cultivated. Well-shaped horses with long tails were grazing in the pastures.

The travellers commenced to prepare their luggage for a quick descent from the train: Quentin put on his hat, stuffed his cap into his pocket, and placed his bag on the seat.

“Sir,” said the Frenchman to him quickly, “I thank[17] you for the information with which you have supplied me. I am Jules Matignon, professor of Spanish in Paris. I believe we shall see each other again in Cordova.”

“My name is Quentin García Roelas.”

They shook hands, and waited for the train to stop: it was already slowing up as it neared the Cordova station.

They arrived; Quentin got off quickly, and crossed the platform, pursued by four or five porters. Confronting one of these who had a red handkerchief on his head, and handing him his bag and check, he ordered him to take them to his house.

“To the Calle de la Zapatería,” he said. “To the store where they sell South American comestibles. Do you know where it is?”

“The house of Don Rafaé? Of course.”

“Good.”

This done, Quentin opened his umbrella, and began to make his way toward the centre of the city.

“It seems as though I hadn’t crossed the Channel at all,” he said to himself, “but were walking along one of those roads near the school. The same grey sky, the same mud, the same rain. Now I am about to see the parks and the river—”

But no—what he saw was the orange trees on the Victoria, laden with golden fruit glistening with raindrops.

“I’m beginning to be convinced that I am in Cordova,” murmured Quentin, and he entered the Paseo del Gran Capitán, followed the Calle de Gondomar as far as Las Tendillas, whence, as easily as if he had passed through the streets but yesterday, he reached[18] his house. He scarcely recognized it at first glance: the store no longer occupied two windows as before, but the whole front of the house. The doors were covered with zinc plates: only one of them having a window through which the interior could be seen full of sacks piled in rows.

Quentin mounted to the main floor and knocked several times: the door was opened to him, and he entered.

“Here I am!” he shouted, as he traversed a dark corridor. A door was heard to open, and the boy felt himself hugged and kissed again and again.

“Quentin!”

“Mother! But I can’t see you in all this darkness.”

“Come”—and his mother, with her arms about him, led him into a room. Bringing him to the light of a balcony window, she exclaimed: “How tall you are, my son! How tall, and how strong!”

“I’ve become a regular barbarian.”

His mother embraced him again.

“Have you been well? But you will soon tell us all about it. Are you hungry? Do you want something to drink?—A cup of chocolate?”

“No, no—none of your chocolate. Something a bit more solid: ham, eggs.... I’m ferociously hungry.”

“Good! I’ll tell them to get your breakfast ready.”

“Is everybody well?”

“Everybody. Come and see them.”

They followed a narrow corridor and entered a room where two boys, aged fifteen and twelve respectively, had just finished dressing. Quentin embraced them none too effusively, and from the larger room they went[19] into a bedroom, where a little girl between eight and nine years old was sleeping in a huge bed.

“Is that Dolores?” asked Quentin.

“Yes.”

“The last time I saw her she was a tiny little thing. How pretty she is!”

The child awoke, and seeing a stranger before her, became frightened.

“But it’s your brother Quentin, who has just arrived.”

Her fears immediately allayed, she allowed herself to be kissed.

“Now we shall go and see your father.”

“Very well,” said Quentin reluctantly.

They left the bedroom, and at the end of the corridor, found themselves in a room in whose doorway swung a black screen with a glass panel.

“We’ll wait a moment. He must have gone into the store,” said his mother, as she seated herself upon the sofa.

Quentin absently examined the furnishings of the office: the large writing-desk full of little drawers; the safe with its gilt knobs; the books and letter-press lying upon a table near the window. Upon the wall opposite the screen hung two large, mud-coloured lithographs of Vesuvius in eruption. Between them was a large, hexagonal clock, and below it, a “perpetual” calendar of black cardboard, with three elliptic apertures set one above the other—the upper one for the date, the middle one for the month, and the lower one for the year.

Mother and son waited a moment, while the clock measured the time with a harsh tick-tock. Suddenly the screen opened, and a man entered the office. He was[20] clean-shaven, elegantly dressed, with a full, pink face, and an aristocratic air.

“Here is Quentin,” said his mother.

“Hello!” exclaimed the man, holding out his hand to the youth. “So you have arrived without notifying us in advance? How goes it in England?”

“Very well.”

“I suppose you’re quite a man now, ready to do something useful.”

“I believe so,” answered Quentin.

“I am glad—I am very glad to see you so changed.”

At this point an elderly man entered the office. He was tall and thin, with a drooping grey moustache. He bowed low by way of a greeting, but Quentin’s mother, nodding toward her son, said:

“Don’t you know him, Palomares?”

“Whom, Do?a Fuensanta?”

“This boy. It’s Quentin.”

“Quentin!” the old man fairly shouted. “So it is! My boy, how you have grown! You’re a regular giant! Well, well! How do you like the English? They’re a bad race, aren’t they? They’ve done me many a bad turn! When did the boy come, Do?a Fuensanta?”

“This very minute.”

“Well—” said Quentin’s father to Palomares.

“Come,” announced his mother, “they have work to do.”

“We shall have a little more time to talk later on at the table,” said his father.

Mother and son left the office and made their way to the dining-room. Quentin sat at the table and ravenously devoured eggs, ham, rolls, a bit of cheese, and a plate of sweets.[21]

“But you’ll lose your appetite for dinner,” warned his mother.

“Ca! I never lose my appetite. I could go right on eating,” replied Quentin. Then, smacking his lips over the wine as he stuck his nose into the glass, he added: “What wine, mother! We didn’t drink anythink like this at school.”

“No?”

“I should say not!”

“Poor boy!”

Quentin, touched, cried:

“I was lonesome, oh, so lonesome over there for such a long time. And now ... you won’t love me as you do the others.”—

“Yes, I shall—just the same. I’ve thought about you so much—” and the mother, again embracing her son, wept for a time upon his shoulder—overcome with emotion.

“Come, come, don’t cry any more,” said Quentin, and seizing her by her slender waist, he lifted her into the air as easily as if she had been a feather, and kissed her upon the cheek.

“What a brute! How strong you are!” she exclaimed, surprised and pleased.

Then they went over the house together. Some of the details demonstrated very clearly the economic stride the family had made: the hall with its large mirrors, marble consoles, and French hearth, was luxuriously furnished: displayed in a cabinet in the dining-room, were a table-service of Sèvres porcelain, and dishes, teapots, and platters of repoussé silver.

“This table-service,” said Quentin’s mother, “we bought for a song from a ruined marquis. Every one[22] of the dishes and platters had a crown and the marquis’ initials painted on it—but between the three girls and me, we have rubbed them all off with pumice stone. It took us months.”

After seeing the entire house, mother and son descended to the store. Here, the commercial ballast of the house was in evidence: heaped-up piles of sacks of all sorts separated by narrow aisles. The employés of the store came forward to greet Quentin; then he and his mother reclimbed the stairs and entered the house.

“Your room is all ready for you,” said his mother. “We shall have dinner directly.”

Quentin changed his clothes, washed, and presented himself in the dining-room, very much combed and brushed, and looking extremely handsome. His father, elegant in the whitest of collars, presided at the table: his mother distributed the food: the children were clean and tidy. A girl in a white apron served the meal.

Throughout the entire meal there existed a certain coldness, punctuated by long and vexatious moments of silence. Quentin was furious, and when the meal was finished, he arose immediately and went to his room.

“They have forgotten nothing here,” he thought. “I don’t believe I shall be able to stay in this house for any length of time.”

His baggage had been brought to his room, so he devoted himself to unpacking his books, and to arranging them in a bookcase. It was still raining, and he had no desire to go out. It soon grew dark; for these were the shortest days of the year. He went down to the store, where he came upon Palomares, the old dependent of the house.

“How did you like England?” he was asked.[23]

“Very much. It is a great country.”

“But a bad race, eh?”

“Ca, man! Better than ours.”

“Do you think so?”

“I certainly do.”

“Maybe you’re right. Have you seen the store?”

“Yes, this morning.”

“We’ve made a great fight here, my boy. We have worked wonders—your mother most of all. When she’s around, I can laugh at any other woman, no matter how clever she may be.”

“Yes, she must be clever.”

“Indeed she is! She is responsible for everything. When I used to go into the office upstairs, and turn the screws on the calendar, I thought ‘Today we’ll have the catastrophe’—but no, everything turned out well. I’m going upstairs for a while. Are you coming?”

“No.”

Quentin seized an umbrella and took a stroll through the city. It was pouring rain; so, very much bored, he soon returned to the house.

His mother, Palomares, and all the children were playing Keno in the dining-room. They invited him to take part in the game, and although it did not impress him as particularly amusing, he had no choice but to accept. It was a source of much laughter and shouting when Quentin failed to understand the nicknames which Palomares gave to the numbers as he called them; for beside those that were common and already familiar to him, such as “the pretty little girl” for the 15, he had others that were more picturesque which he had to explain to Quentin. The 2, for example, was called “the little turkey-hen”; the 11, “the Catalonians’ gal[24]lows”; the 6, “the clothier’s rat”; the 22, “mother Irene’s turkeys”; the 17, “the crooked Maoliyo.” Among the nicknames, were some that were surprisingly fantastic; like the 10, which Palomares designated by calling “María Francisca, who goes to the theatre in dirty petticoats.”

At the end of each game, Palomares took a tray with a glass of water on it, and said to the winner:

“You who have won behold your glass of water and your sugar-loaf: you who have lost,” and he pointed to the loser, “go whence you came.”

His fun was hailed with delight every time he went through the ceremony.

“Now tell us what you did in Chile,” said one of the youngsters.

“No, no,” said Quentin’s mother. “You two boys must study now, and my little girl must go to bed.”

They obeyed without a protest, and soon after, one could hear the buzzing of the two boys as they read their lesson aloud.

“Well,” said Palomares, “I’m going to supper,” and taking his cloak, he went out into the street.

Quentin’s father came in, and they had supper. The evening meal had the same character as the dinner. As soon as they had finished dessert, Quentin arose and went to his room.

He climbed into bed, and amid the great confusion of images and recollections that crowded his brain, one idea always predominated: that he was not going to be able to live in that house.