Part 28 (1/2)

”_Bueno_, senorita. At what you please.”

It takes a Spaniard to depict a throng of Spanish ladies,--”fiery carnations or starry jasmine in their hair, cheeks like blush roses, eyes black or blue, with lashes quivering like b.u.t.terflies; cherry lips, a glance as fickle as the light nod of a flower in the wind, and smiles that reveal teeth like pearls; the all-pervading fan with its wordless telegraphy in a thousand colors.” In such a throng one sees not only the typical ”eyes of midnight,” but those ”emerald eyes”

which Cervantes knew, and veritable pansy-colored eyes dancing with more than pansy mischief. But the voices! In curious contrast to the tones of Spanish men, soft, coaxing, caressing, the voices of the women are too often high and harsh, suggesting, in moments of excitement, the scream of the Andalusian parrot. ”O Jesus, what a fetching hat! The feather, the feather, see, see, see, _see_ the feather! Mary Most Pure, but it must have cost four or five _pesetas_!

Ah, my G.o.d, don't I wish it were mine!” The speaker who gets the lead in a chattering knot of Spanish women is a prodigy not only of volubility, but of general muscular action. She keeps time to her shrill music with hands, fan, elbows, shoulders, eyebrows, knees. She dashes her sentences with inarticulate whirs and whistles, and countless pious interjections: _Gracias a Dios! Santa Maria! O Dios mio!_ The others, out-screamed and out-gesticulated, clutch at her, shriek at her, fly at her, and still, by some mysterious genius, maintain courtesy, grace, and dignity through it all. Yet it is true that the vulgar-rich variety is especially obnoxious among Spaniards.

An overdressed Spanish woman is frightfully overdressed, her voice is maddening, her gusts of mirth and anger are painfully uncontrolled.

This, however, is the exception, and refinement the rule.

The legendary Spanish lady is forever sitting at a barred window, or leaning from a balcony, coquetting with a fan and dropping arch responses to the ”caramel phrases” of her guitar-tinkling cavalier.

”You're always saying you'd die for me.

I doubt it nevertheless; But prove it true by dying, And then I'll answer yes.”

For, loving as they are, Spanish sweethearts take naturally to teasing. ”When he calls me his b.u.t.terfly, I call him my Elephant. Then his eyes are like black fire, for he is ashamed to be so big, but in a twinkling I can make him smile again.” The scorn of these dainty creatures for the graces of the ruling s.e.x is not altogether affected.

I shall not forget the expression with which a Sevillian belle, an exquisite dancer, watched her _novio_ as, red and perspiring, he flung his stout legs valiantly through the mazes of the _jota_. ”Men are uglier than ever when they are dancing, aren't they?” she remarked to me with all the serenity in the world. And a bewitching maiden in Madrid, as I pa.s.sed some favorable comment upon the photographs of her two brothers, gave a deprecatory shrug. ”Handsome? _Ca!_” (Which is _no_ many times intensified.) ”But they are not so ugly, either,--_for men_.”

The style of compliment addressed by _caballeros_ to senoritas is not like ”the quality of mercy,” but very much strained indeed. ”Your eyes are two runaway stars, that would rather s.h.i.+ne in your face than in heaven, but your heart is harder than the columns of Solomon's temple.

Your father was a confectioner and rubbed your lips with honey-cakes.”

Little Consuelo, or Lagrimas, or Milagros, or Dolores, or Peligros laughs it off, ”Ah, now you are throwing flowers.”

The _coplas_ of the wooer below the balcony are usually sentimental.

”By night I go to the patio, And my tears in the fountain fall, To think that I love you so much, And you love me not at all.”

”Sweetheart, little Sweetheart!

Love, my Love!

I can't see thy eyes For the lashes above.

Eyes black as midnight, Lashes black as grief!

O, my heart is thirsty As a summer leaf.”

”If I could but be buried In the dimple of your chin, I would wish, Dear, that dying Might at once begin.”

”If thou wilt be a white dove, I will be a blue.

We'll put our bills together And coo, coo, coo.”

Sometimes the sentiment is relieved by a realistic touch.

”Very anxious is the flea, Caught between finger and thumb.

More anxious I, on watch for thee, Lest thou shouldst not come.”

And occasionally the lover, flouted overmuch, retorts in kind.

”Don't blame me that eyes are wet, For I only pay my debt.

I've taught you to cry and fret, But first you taught me to forget.”