Froth Part 17

There was a touch of annoyance in her tone. Aurelia's advent made her position more false than ever.

"Never mind," said Raimundo, "I see the resemblance clearly, and that is enough."

The door was standing open.

"So pleased," said Clementina, addressing Aurelia without offering her hand, but with one of those frigid and condescending bows by which a woman of fas.h.i.+on at once establishes the distance which divides her from a new acquaintance.

Aurelia murmured a few polite words. Raimundo went out on the landing to take leave of her, repeating his polite and cordial speeches, which did not seem to impress the lady, to judge from her grave reserve. She went downstairs, dissatisfied with herself and full of obscure irritation. It was not the first time, nor the second, that her impetuous nature had placed her in such a ridiculous and anomalous position.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SAVAGE CLUB OF MADRID.

At two in the afternoon about a dozen of the most constant habitues of the Savage Club lay picturesquely scattered on the divans and easy chairs of their large drawing-room. In one corner was a group formed of General Patino, Pepe Castro, Cobo Ramirez, Ramoncito Maldonado, and two other members with whom we have no concern. Apart from these sat Manolito Davalos, alone; and beyond him Pinedo with a party of friends.

The att.i.tudes of these young men--for they were most of them young--corresponded perfectly with the refinement which shone in every revelation of the elegance of their minds. One had his head on the divan and his feet on an armchair; another, while he curled his moustache with his left hand, was stroking the calf of his leg below his trousers with his right; one leaned back with his arms folded, and one condescended to rest his exquisite boots on the red velvet seats of two chairs.

This _Club de los Selvajes_ is a parody rather than a translation of the English Savage Club. To be accurate, it is a translation of such graceful freedom that it keeps up the true Spanish spirit in close alliance with the British. In honour of its name, all the outward aspect of the club is extremely English. The members always appear in full dress every evening in the winter, in smoking jackets in the summer; the servants wear knee-breeches and powder; there is a s.p.a.cious and handsome dining-room, a fencing court, dressing-rooms, bath-rooms, and a few bed-rooms; the club has, too, its own stables, with carriage and saddle horses for the use of the members.

The Spanish character is revealed in various details of internal management. The most remarkable feature is a general lack of ready money, which gives rise to singular situations among the members themselves, and in their relations to the outer world, producing a complicated and beautiful variety which could nowhere be met with in any other city in Christendom. It more especially leads to an immense and inconceivable development of that powerful engine by which the nineteenth century has achieved its grandest and most stupendous efforts--Credit. Within the walls of the Madrid Savage Club there is as much business done on credit as in the Bank of England. Not only do the members lend each other money and gamble on credit, but they effect the same transactions with the club itself viewed as a responsible ent.i.ty, and even with the club-porter, both as a functionary and as a man.

Outside this narrow circle the _Savages_, carried away by their enthusiasm for credit, bring it into play in their relations with the tailor, the housekeeper, the coach-builder, the horse-dealer, and the jeweller, not to mention transactions on a large scale with their banker or landlord. Thanks to this inestimable element of economical science, coin of the realm has become almost unnecessary to the members of the club. Its function is beautifully fulfilled by an abstract and more spiritual medium--promises to pay, verbal or written. They live and spend as freely as their prototypes in London, without pounds sterling, s.h.i.+llings, dollars, and pesetas, or anything of the kind. The superior advantages of the Madrid Club in this respect are self-evident.

Nor are they less in the cool and frank impertinence with which the members treat each other. By degrees they have quite given up the polite and ceremonious courtesy which characterises the solemn British gentleman; their manners have gained in local colour approaching more and more to those of the picturesque quarters of Madrid known as Lavapies and Maravillas. Nature, race, and opportunity are elements it is impossible to resist, whether in politics or in social amus.e.m.e.nts.

The club always begins to warm up after midnight, the fever is at its height at about three in the morning, and then it begins to cool down again. By five or six every one has gone piously to bed. During the day the place is comparatively deserted. Two or three dozen of the members drop in in the afternoon, before taking a walk, to colour their pipes.

Stupefied by sleepiness they speak but little. They need the excitement of night to display their native talents in all their brilliancy. These are concentrated for the time on the n.o.ble task of bringing a meerschaum to a fine coffee-colour. If, as some a.s.sert, objects of art were once objects of utility, so that the notion of art involves that of usefulness, it must be confessed that, in the matter of their pipes, the members of the Savage Club work like true artists. They have them sent from Paris and London; on them are engraved the initials of the owner with the count's or marquis's coronet, if the smoker has a right to it; they keep them in elegant cases, and when they take them out to smoke, it is with such care and so many precautions that the pipes become more troublesome than useful. A "Savage" has been known to make himself ill by smoking cigar after cigar solely for the pleasure of colouring his mouthpiece sooner than his fellows. No one cares about the flavour of the tobacco; the only important point is to draw the smoke in such a way as to colour the meerschaum equally all over. Now and again taking out a fine cambric handkerchief, the smoker will spend many minutes in rubbing the pipe with the most delicate care, while his spirit reposes in sweet abstraction from all earthly cares.

Grave, dignified, and harmonious in grace, the most select of the members of the club sucked and blew tobacco smoke from two till four in the afternoon. There is something confidential and pensive in the task, as in every artistic effort, which induces them to cast their eyes down and fix their gaze so as to enjoy more entirely the pure vision of the Idea which lies occult in every amber and meerschaum cigar-holder. In this elevated frame of mind lounged our friend Pepe Castro, smoking a pipe in the shape of a horse's leg, when the voice of Rafael Alcantara roused him from his ecstasy by calling across the room:

"Then you have actually sold the mare, Pepe?"

"Some days ago."

"The English mare?"

"The English mare?" he echoed, looking up at his friend with reproachful surprise. "No, my good fellow, the cross-bred."

"Why, it is not more than two months since you bought her. I never dreamed of your wanting to get rid of her."

"You see I did," said the handsome dandy, affecting an air of mystery.

"Some hidden defect?"

"No defect can be hidden from me," replied Alcantara haughtily. And every one believed him, for in this branch of knowledge he had no rival in Madrid, unless it were the Duke de Saites, who had the reputation of knowing more about horses than any other man in Spain.

"Want of pace, then?"

"No, nor that either."

Rafael shrugged his shoulders, and turned to talk to his neighbours; he was a ruddy youth, with a dissipated face and small greenish eyes full of cruelty. Like some others who were to be seen at the club every day, he frequented the company of the aristocracy without having the smallest right. He was of humble birth, the son of an upholsterer in the Calle Mayor. He had at an early age spent the little fortune which had come to him from his father, and since then had lived by gambling and borrowing. He owed money to every one in Madrid, and boasted of the fact.

The qualities for which he was still admitted to the best houses in the capital were his courage and his cynicism. Alcantara was really brave; he had fought three or four duels, and was always ready to fight again on the slightest pretext. He was, too, perfectly audacious; he always spoke in a tone of contempt, even to those who most deserved respect, and was disposed to make game of any one and every one. These characteristics had gained him great influence among his fellow "Savages;" he was treated an equal by all, and was indispensable to every ploy; but no one asked him for repayment of a loan.

"Well, General, did you like Tosti's singing last night?" asked Ramoncito of General Patino.

"Only in her ballad," replied the General, after skilfully blowing a large cloud of smoke from a pipe made in the image of a cannon on its gun carriage.

"You do not mean that she was not good in the duet?"

"Certainly I mean it."

"Then, Senor, I simply do not understand you; to me she seemed sublime,"

replied the young man, with some irritation.

"Your opinion does you honour, Ramon. It is greatly to your credit,"

said Cobo Ramirez, who never missed an opportunity of vexing his friend and rival.

"So I should think; that is as true as that you are the only person here of any judgment. Look here, Cobo, the General may talk because he has reasons for what he says--do you see? But you had better hold your tongue, for you wear my ears out."

"But mercy, man! Why does Ramon lose his temper so whenever you speak to him?" asked the General laughing.

"I do not know," said Cobo, with a whiff at his cigar, while he puckered his face into a slightly sarcastic smile. "If I contradict him he is put out, and if I agree with him it is no better."

"Of course, of course! We all know that you are great at chaff. You need make no efforts to show off before these gentlemen. But in the present instance you have made a bad shot."

"I am of the General's opinion. The duet was very badly sung," said Cobo, with aggravating coolness.

"What does it matter what you say, one way or the other?" cried Maldonado, in a fury. "You do not know a note of music."

"What then! I have all the more right to talk of music because I do not strum on the piano as you do. At any rate, I am perfectly inoffensive."

This led to a long dispute, eager and incoherent on Ramon's part, cool and sarcastic on Cobo's; he delighted in putting his rival out of patience. This afforded much amus.e.m.e.nt to all present, and they sided with one or the other to prolong the entertainment.

"Do you know that Alvaro Luna has a fight on hand this evening?" said some one when they were beginning to tire of "Just tell me," and "Let me tell you," from Cobo and Ramon.

"So I heard," replied Pepe Castro, closing his eyes ecstatically as he sucked at his cigar. "In the Escalona's gardens, isn't it?"

"I think so."

"Swords?"

"Swords."

"Another honourable scar!" said Leon Guzman from where he was sitting.