They seated themselves at the table set for travelers; a table tasteless in its appointments, that bore the stamp of the vulgar promiscuousness of the guests who succeeded one another at it without intermission. It was long and was covered with oilcloth and surrounded, like a hen by her chickens, by smaller tables, on which were services for tea, coffee, and chocolate. The cups, resting mouth downward on the saucers, seemed waiting patiently for the friendly hand which should restore them to their natural position; the lumps of sugar heaped on metal salvers looked like building materials—blocks of white marble hewn for some Lilliputian palace. The tea-pots displayed their shining paunches and the milk-jugs protruded their lips, like badly brought-up children. The monotony that reigned in the long hall was oppressive. Price-lists, maps, and advertisements hanging from the walls, lent the apartment a certain official air. The end of the room, occupied by a tall counter covered with rows of plates, groups of freshly washed glasses, fruit-dishes in which the pyramids of apples and pears looked pale beside the bright green of the moss around them. On the principal table, in two blue porcelain vases, some drooping flowers—late roses and odorless sunflowers—were slowly withering. The travelers came in one after another and took their places, their features drawn with sleep and fatigue, the men with their traveling caps pulled down over their brows, the women with their heads covered with woolen hoods, their figures concealed by long gray water-proof cloaks, their hair disordered, their cuffs and collars crumpled. Lucía, with her smiling face, her well-fitting jacket and her fresh and natural complexion, formed a striking contrast to the women around her, and it seemed as if the crude yellow light of the gas-jets had concentrated itself above her head, leaving the faces of the other guests in a turbid half-light. They were served the invariable restaurant dinner—vegetable-soup, broiled chops, sapless wings of chickens, warmed-over fish, slices of cold ham, thin as wafers, cheese, and fruits. Miranda ate little, rejecting in turn every dish offered him, and, asking in a loud and authoritative voice for a bottle of Sherry and another of Bordeaux, he poured out some of each of the wines for Lucía, explaining to her their particular qualities. Lucía ate voraciously, giving full rein to her appetite, like a child on a holiday. With each new dish was renewed the enjoyment that a stomach unspoiled and accustomed to simple food experiences in the slightest culinary novelty. She sipped the Bordeaux, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth, and declaring that it smelled and tasted like the violets that Velez de Rada used sometimes to bring her. She held up the liquid topaz of the sherry to the light and closed her eyes as she drank it, declaring that it tickled her throat. But her great orgy, her forbidden fruit, was the coffee. We, the faithful and exact chroniclers of Señor Joaquin, the Leonese, have never been able to discover the secret and potent reason which had always made him prohibit the use of coffee to his daughter, as if it were some poisonous drug or pernicious philter; a prohibition all the more inexplicable since we are already aware of the inordinate passion for coffee cherished by our good Colmenarist himself. Lucía, forbidden to taste the black infusion, of which she knew her father swallowed copious draughts every day, had taken it into her head that the prohibited beverage was nectar itself, the very ambrosia of the gods, and she would sometimes say to Rosarito or Carmen, “Wait until I am married, and I will drink as much coffee as I please. You shall see if I don’t.”
The coffee of the restaurant of Venta de Baños was neither very pure nor very aromatic, and yet when for the first time Lucía introduced the little spoon filled with the liquid between her lips, when she tasted its slight bitterness and inhaled the warm fumes rising from it, she felt a profound thrill run through her frame, something like an expansion of her being, as if all her senses had opened simultaneously like the buds of a tree bursting into bloom at once. The glass of Chartreuse, sipped slowly, left in her mouth a penetrating and strengthening odor, a slight and pleasant thirst, extinguished by the last sips of the coffee sweetened by the powdered sugar that lay in little eddies at the bottom of the cup.
“If papa were to see me now,” she murmured, “what would he say?”
Miranda and Lucía were the last to rise from the table. The other passengers were already scattered about in groups on the platform, waiting to obtain seats in the express which had just arrived and which stood, vibrating still with its recent motion, in front of the railway station.
“Come,” said Miranda, “the train is going to start. I don’t know whether we shall be able to find a vacant compartment or not.”
They began their peregrination, passing through all the coaches in turn in search of a vacant compartment. They found one at last, not without some difficulty, and took possession of it, throwing their parcels on the cushions. The opaque light of the lantern, filtering through the blue silk curtain, the dull, uniform, gray hue of the covers, the silence, the air of repose succeeding the glare and confusion of the restaurant, invited to rest and sleep, and Lucía unfastened the elastic of her hat, which she took off and placed in the rack.
“I feel dizzy,” she said, passing her hand over her forehead. “My head aches a little—I am warm.”
“The wines, the coffee,” responded Miranda, gaily. “Rest for a moment while I go to inventory the luggage. It is an indispensable formality here.” Saying this, he lifted one of the cushions of the coach, placed the rolled-up rug under it for a pillow, and raised the arm dividing the two seats, saying:
“There, you have as comfortable a bed as you could wish for.”
Lucía drew from her pocket a little silk handkerchief neatly folded, spread it lightly over the cushion to prevent her head coming in contact with the soiled cover, and lay down on her improvised couch.