Froth: A Novel

by Armando Palacio Valdés

Clementina went to her room, followed by Estefania, the coachman's sworn foe. She put on a magnificent dress of creamy-white, cut low. She usually wore a sort of demi-toilette for these Saturday receptions, with sleeves to the elbow. But this evening she was moved to display her much-praised person in honour of a foreign diplomate who was to dine in the house for the first time. While the maid was dressing her hair, her mind wandered vaguely over the events of the day. She had not kept her appointment with Pepe; he would certainly arrive in a rage. She pouted her under lip disdainfully, and her eyes had a spiteful glitter, as if to say: "And what do I care?" Then she remembered Raimundo's greeting and that ill-starred look backwards, with a feeling of shame to which her cheeks bore witness by a deepening colour. She called herself a fool—heedless, mad. Happily for her, the young man seemed to be simple and unpretending; otherwise he would at once have built wild castles in the air. She thought of him a good deal, and with some tenderness. He was, in fact, attractive and good-looking and had a way of speaking, at once gentle and firm, which impressed her greatly; then his passionate devotion to his mother's memory, his retired life, his strange mania for butterflies, all helped to make him interesting.

How many times Clementina had thought over all this during the last few months it would be hard to say, but very often, beyond a doubt. Her spirit, lulled by a slumberous sweetness, was sentimentally inclined. That home on the third floor, that sunny study, that quiet and simple life. Who knows! Happiness may dwell where we least expect to find it. A heap of frippery, a handful of gems, a dish or two more on the table cannot give it. But an odious reflection, which for some little time had embittered all her dreams, flashed through her mind. She was growing old—yes, old. She allowed herself no illusions. Estefania found it more difficult every week to hide the silver threads among her golden hair. Though she firmly resisted every temptation to apply any chemical preparation to her beautiful tresses, she was beginning to think that there would be no help for it. The candid, eager, happy love, of which her adventure with young Alcázar had given her visions, was not for her. Nothing was left for her, nor had been for some time, but the vapid, vulgar inanities of aristocratic fops, all equally commonplace in their tastes, their speech, and their unfathomable vanity. What connection could there be between her and this boy but that of mother and son? She sometimes wondered whether Raimundo's feelings towards her were quite what he had described them in that first interview; but at this moment she was sure that he had spoken the simple truth, that love was impossible between a lad of twenty and a woman of seven-and-thirty—for she was seven-and-thirty though she was wont to take off two years—at any rate such love as she at this moment longed for.

These reflections furrowed her brow, and with an effort she determined to think of something else. Looking at her maid in the glass, she noticed that the girl was deadly pale. She turned round to make sure, and said:

"Are you ill, child? You are very white."

"Yes, Señora," said the girl in some confusion.

"Do you feel the old sickness again?"

"I think so."

"Well, go and lie down, and send up Concha. It is very odd. I will send for the doctor to-morrow, to see if he can do anything for you."

"No, no, Señora," the girl hastened to exclaim. "It is nothing, it will go off."

A few minutes later the lady made her appearance in the drawing-room, brilliantly beautiful. Osorio was there already, walking up and down the room with his friend and almost daily visitor at dinner, Bonifacio. He was a man of about sixty, solemn and starch, with a bald head, a yellow face and black teeth. He had been Governor in various provinces, and now held the post of chief of a Department of State. He talked little, and never contradicted—the first and indispensable virtue of a man who would fain dine well and spend nothing, and his dress-coat was perennially adorned with the red cross of the order of Calatrava to which he belonged. In his own house, the most conspicuous object was a portrait of himself with a very tall plume in his cap and an amazingly long white cloak over his shoulders.