There were no dance cards. Each pair started in or stopped when they saw fit, quite irrespective of the others. A man stepped across the room, held out his gloved right hand to a girl, without a word, and she rose to accept an invitation that apparently could not be refused—at least, not one failed to accept it, though some of the more attractive were led out upon the floor at least fifty times in the course of the evening. Evidently it was “bad form” to carry on a conversation out of hearing of the chaperon. Neither dancer visibly spoke a word until the girl wished to stop, when she murmured “gracias” and was at once returned in silence to her seat. As the evening wore on, several young fops dropped in, alleging conflicting engagements as an excuse for their tardiness, and joined the celebration without removing their lavender gloves, which, indeed, the chilliness of the room pardoned. One of the newcomers, in particular, stirred up the ladies to almost human expressions of interest. He was son of the Minister of the Interior, just back from Paris, and lost no opportunity to display the wisdom he had gleaned in the “Capital of the World,”—a rather sharp-cornered French and an authoritative knowledge of new and more complicated manners of hopping about the floor to music. At frequent intervals our eight-year-old Indian slavey, Mercedes, familiarly known as “Meech,” arrived with fiery drinks in which we toasted “Don Panchito,” even the young girls tossing it off without a tear. At midnight the festival raged at its height. At one o’clock we sat down to dinner in a temperature far from agreeable to those of us who did not dance. Then the celebration broke out anew, though the chaperons and pianist, and even “Don Panchito,” had disappeared. The young fops removed their gloves and took turns on the stool. The clock was striking four when I retired, and little “Meech” was still serving liquid gladness as uncomplainingly and expressionlessly as ever. When I awoke at eight, she had just finished tidying up the sala, and was beginning her regular daily labors.
Gradually we made the acquaintance of various celebrities. There was “Chispa,” for instance, the little Spanish bull-fighter who gave a benefit and “last final performance” in the plaza de toros each Sunday. The royal sport of Spain is, at best, a gloomy pastime in Spanish-America. Even when skilled toreadors from across the Atlantic are to be had, the bulls raised in the Andean highlands are so manso that the game degenerates into little more than public butchery. The killing of horses is forbidden in the bull-ring of Quito, both by law and because of the high price of those rare animals, and the toreador is not permitted to stir up a sluggish bull by exploding banderillos de fuego on his flanks. “Chispa,” however, who was just such a “spark” as his apodo suggested, would have enlivened the most dreary entertainment, though his companions were local amateurs, so clumsy that he was called upon to save the life of each a dozen times during each corrida. Each succeeding “despedida” had some new feature to draw recreation-hungry Quito within the circular mud walls. One Sunday the program announced the engagement of “Hombres de Yerba” and “Hombres Gordos” (“Men of Hay” and “Fat Men”), and the inventive Spaniard was all but forced to lock the gates against the tailend of the throng. One of his amateurs was bound round and round with green alfalfa and set in the center of the ring. The bull, however, either was not hungry or in no mood for jests, and tossed the helpless fellow scornfully from his path. The “Hombres Gordos” were made up with clown faces topped by silk hats, their bodies padded to enormous size with excelsior. Still the protection was not sufficient. One was thrown so savagely that the audience agreed he had been killed—until the evening paper announced he had merely broken a leg and several ribs. The fat man is no more beloved in Quito than elsewhere, and the merriment went on unabated. It is quiteño custom for the matador to brindar (dedicate the death of each bull) to some celebrity or person of means in the audience, tossing the favored one his cap to hold during the killing, and expecting it to be thrown back with a roll of bills in proportion to the skill of the coup de grace. Toward the end of the “last final performances” the supply of local “personages” grew so low that the eye of “Chispa,” roving around the circle, fell upon Hays; but even as he opened his mouth for the speech of dedication, the ex-corporal faded from public view.
Then there was Umberto Peyrounel, our first really and truly, flesh and blood “andarín.” Derived from the Spanish word andar (to walk), the term is used in the Andes to designate a foreigner who travels on foot, without any particular excuse for traveling at all; a peculiarly Latin type of tramp, loving to attract attention and making his living by so doing. We ourselves had often been styled “andarines” on the journey from Bogotá, though this genuine article scornfully rated us “excursionistas.” The distinction seems to be, not whether a man “andars” on foot, but whether he makes his way without using his own money, if such he possesses.
Probably not his own in spite of the circumstantial evidence against him
The undertaker’s delivery wagon. The coffin is sky-blue with gilt trimmings
We saw Umberto first at a Sunday night concert, where he was inconspicuously amusing himself by running races with several hundred newsboys and bootblacks around the plaza mayor. A stocky fellow, tall as Hays, of middle age, he was modestly dressed in a suit of sky-blue corduroy, leather leggings, and a velvet cap of the Dutch fisherman or Quartier Latin style. Across his chest hung a row of large medals; a flaring, wax-ended mustache all but touched his ears, and his luxurious black hair hung loose almost to his waist. When he called on us next morning his coiffure was done up in a simple maidenly knot at the back of his head. On closer examination the gleaming brass medals seemed to be glorified tobacco tags. He announced himself the son of Italian parents, born in the Argentine, of a sect corresponding to the Huguenots of France, known as the “martyrs of Piedmont.” Leaving home three years before, he had walked across his native land to Chile, thence to Quito, where he was preparing to push on to Bogotá. To the people along the way—and even to us, until he caught the gleam in our eyes—he announced that two great dailies of Buenos Aires and New York had offered him a prize of $100,000 to make the journey on foot from the door of one to that of the other. On the road he was accompanied by a dog, wore silver-plated spurs as a sign of his rank as a caballero, and carried, in addition to a revolver and rifle, some forty pounds of baggage, most of which consisted of bulky ledgers filled with hand-written statements of his arrival and departure on foot, signed by every corregidor, alcalde, or native official of whatever species, by merchants, lawyers, and editors of every place, large or small, he had visited, each adorned with its official seal. This collecting of signatures was no mere whim; it was the customary excuse of his fellows for surreptitiously appealing to charity. At every hamlet he opened the ledgers—ostensibly to give the residents the pleasure of adding their names to the roll of honor—and at the psychological moment slipped into their hands a printed card bearing a subtle plea for assistance in winning his great “prize.” All genuine “andarines,” Umberto assured us, did the same, and he berated us soundly for not having adopted the custom.
“How can you prove to the public that you have made the journey on foot, if you do not have the testimonials of distinguished persons along the way?” he cried, scornfully.
“The public has its choice of believing it or jumping off the end of the dock,” Hays answered for both of us.