“And what else?”
“And—well, one does not get married every day and it is only natural that it should upset one a little—it is a very serious thing—. Father Urtazu warned me of that, so that last night I did not close my eyes and I counted the hours, and the half hours, and the quarters, by the cuckoo-clock in the reception-room, and at every stroke I heard, tam, tam, ‘Stop, you wretch,’ I cried, ‘and let me cover my face with the bed clothes and go to sleep, and then wake me if you can.’ But it was all of no use. Now that it is over, it is just like jumping a wide ditch—you give the jump, and you think no more about it. It is over.”
Miranda laughed; sitting beside his bride, looking at her closely, she seemed to him very lovely, transformed almost, by her traveling dress and the animation that flushed her cheeks and brightened her fresh complexion. Lucía, too, began to return to the unrestraint of her former intercourse with Miranda, somewhat interrupted of late by the novelty of their position toward each other.
“Don’t laugh at my nonsense, Señor de Miranda,” murmured the young girl.
“Do me the favor not to misunderstand me, child,” he answered. “And my name is Aurelio, and you should address me as thou not you.”
The whole of this dialogue had passed in an undertone, the interlocutors bending slightly toward each other and speaking in low, almost lover-like accents. The presence of a witness to their conversation, in the person of their fellow-traveler, who leaned back silently in his corner, by the restraint it imposed, imparted to their whispered words a certain air of timidity and mystery which lent them a meaning they did not in themselves possess. The same words spoken aloud would have seemed simple and indifferent enough. And so it often is with words—they derive their value not from what they express in themselves but from the tone in which they are uttered and the relation they bear to other words, like the pieces of stone employed in mosaic that, according to the position in which they are set, represent now a tree, now a house, now a human countenance.
The train at last stopped at Venta de Baños, and the lamps of the station glared upon them like fiery eyes through the light mist of the tranquil autumn night.
“Is it here—is it here we are to stop for supper?” asked Lucía, whose appetite and curiosity were both alike sharpened by the event, new for her, of supping at the restaurant of a railway station.
“Here”; answered Miranda, speaking much less cheerfully than before. “Now we shall have to change trains. If I had the power, I would alter all this. There can be nothing more annoying. You have to hunt up your luggage so that it may not be carried off to Madrid—you have to move all your traps——”
As he spoke, he took down from the rack the rug, valise, and bundle of umbrellas, but Lucía, youthful and vigorous, daughter of the people as she was, snatched from his hand the bag, which was the heaviest of the articles, and leaping lightly as a bird to the ground, ran toward the restaurant.