“Don’t blame me,” he said; “it’s all her father’s fault for not letting her take enough exercise to keep her fat down. I am not tall (he was about five feet high, a slim little pocket Adonis), and I haven’t the courage to make myself ridiculous by marrying a woman who will make two of me before she is thirty.”
I could not help feeling that there was something to be said on his side; but once again the cruel results of this branch of Spanish etiquette became apparent. If Paz had been able to lead a natural life, walking by day and dancing by night, as she did while her mother was living, she would not have lost either her figure or her lover, for before they went into mourning she and Rosa were among the merriest and most active of all the girls in their set. And now one can anticipate for her no brighter future than to be the maiden aunt to Rosa’s children, a sort of household drudge and mother’s help for life;—beloved, it is true, by the nephews and nieces, who will regard her with an affection almost if not quite equal to that bestowed on their mother herself, but always just “my aunt,” a woman in a subordinate position, given a home for the sake of her services as nurse while the children are young, and as duenna when the girls grow up. She will always be cheerful and philosophical, for Paz is made that way, and she will always be practical and helpful in the house. But she will be an old maid, a good wife spoiled, and she will feel it to the end. And all because when she was yet in her teens she was compelled to sit indoors for a year after her mother’s death, and therefore grew so fat that her lover was frightened away. Poor Paz! She is one of many victims to a ridiculous and indefensible custom and a mistaken sense of duty.
CHAPTER XI
Entertaining in town and country—Critical guests—A subscription ball—Le dernier cri from London—Dancing in a bog—Why the ladies went home—The search for Spanish gaiety—A disappointed artist—Afternoon calls—Arab hospitality—Ladies at work—Spanish unpunctuality—A new winter coat—Maria’s compliment—Open house to old servants—Carmen the cigarrera.
It does not cost much to entertain in Spain, at any rate in the smaller towns. In the large towns things are otherwise, and it may be as well to begin by relating an incident that I heard of in connection with some very pleasant friends who lived in one of the “capitals,” which means the chief town of the great provinces into which Spain is divided. Here there is a great deal of cursileria—a slang term best translated as “snobbishness”—and as every lady who gives a party wishes to spend more than any other lady, and as pride is everywhere more plentiful than pesetas, little hospitality is shown to or by people who are not rich.
POSED FOR THE PHOTOGRAPHER.
An heiress had married the head of an old and noble family who himself possessed hardly anything beyond the family estate in Castile. Just when her eldest girl put on her first long frock and was about to be presented at Court, my friend lost almost all her money through some unfortunate speculation on the part of her husband—for the husband, be it observed, is absolute master of his wife’s property in Spain. After the first shock the Condesa removed to a smaller house, and arranged her mode of life to suit her altered circumstances, while the Conde, a Colonel in the King’s Guard, went to Madrid as usual to fulfil his duty at Court.