THE REAL ARGENTINE
CHAPTER I
FROM LONDON TO LISBON
We set out from London on a raw and rainy day. It had been raining off and on for many weeks, and as enthusiasts of the car we had been grumbling, my wife and I, a good deal at the weather. But we were booked for the land of sunshine! And when we bade good-bye to the chauffeur at Charing Cross Station, rather nervously watched the old grey car roll away among the traffic and the drizzling rain, we comforted each other with simple words about the sunshine that awaited us far off by the River Plate.
Even Paris was dirty. I am an inveterate lover of Paris, and must have made some thirty different visits, but seldom out of season, so that I have rarely seen her draggle-tailed. But in that rainy March she looked as miserable as London, and next day only the luxurious accommodation of the Sud Express made the journey through a sodden France agreeable. Floods everywhere. In the neighbourhood of Orleans, the geography of the country seemed to have changed, and this land of few lakes was studded with sheets of water that more than rivalled those of Bouchet, or Gerardmer.
Entering Spain we suffered a change in railway accommodation which was to be typical of many things when changed into Spanish—a change for the worse. The carriages were no longer so princely in their appointments, they were smaller and not quite so clean; but we were still on the Sud Express, the train de luxe, and were (but guessed it not) more comfortable than we were to be again for many moons. So in the darkness through Northern Spain, awakening in the morning as we were nearing the borders of Portugal.
Thus far the journey had mostly covered ground long familiar to me, but Portugal was a new land, and romantically beautiful it appeared, with its stony uplands, its green mountains and leafy valleys, seen in the clear rain-washed air of that golden day that followed the passing of the floods. We were due in Lisbon at eleven o’clock at night; but, a bridge on the route having been washed away, the train had to make a long détour. We arrived at one o’clock in the morning; yet the town was as wide awake as if it had been no later than ten. It evidently goes to bed about three, as we soon found to our cost when we sought to sleep in one of the luxurious chambers of the Avenida Palace Hotel. And here again we were unconsciously bidding good-bye to genuine comfort, as we were never to see in any hotel of South America a room worthy to be slept in by comparison, though we were to pay three times the price charged at the Avenida Palace, which, at the time, seemed sufficiently high!
An interesting little incident on arrival at Lisbon threw a gleam of light on the manners of the degenerate Portuguese nobility, about which we were to learn much from a friend who had resided there since the flight of King Manuel. At the Gare d’Orsay in Paris, we noticed that the next compartment to ours was occupied by a tall and handsome lady and her little daughter. Elegantly dressed, her natural but waning beauty aided artificially, her hair of false gold, this painted lady offered a strong contrast to the group of relatives who had come to see her off. At best, one might have judged these to be ugly people of the artisan class; at worst, gentry who traded less honourably in the obscurer byways of Saint Lazarre or Montmartre. The lady showed no physical resemblance to any of them; she might have been a changeling daughter. Her own child was a charming little creature, despite her plain features, and it was clear the mother could command more cash than any of the shabby group of relatives who had wished them adieu and bon voyage.
All the way to Lisbon, the lady kept closely to her compartment, but the trixy little daughter made free of the car. On arrival at the Portuguese capital, one began to piece together the scraps of a typical modern “romance,” as the pair were met by an undersized, flabby and slightly deformed young gentleman, on whom the child gazed with all the interest of a first encounter. A great motor car was in waiting and conveyed them to our hotel, a distance of about two hundred yards! We were fated to see much of the curious trio on the voyage to Rio de Janeiro. The gentleman, a Portuguese nobleman, was evidently making for the safety of Brazil, and had planned to keep bright his memories of Parisian Nights in company of one of the pleasure-givers.
One meets queer ship-mates on the South American trip. It would be the height of indiscretion to inquire too closely into the relationship of many of the couples who sit with you at table. Somehow I always thought of “the distinguished member of the Jockey Club, with his niece, h’m, h’m!” in Tartarin sur les Alpes, when the Portuguese nobleman, with his lady, h’m, h’m, sat down at table with the rest of our oddly assorted company.
There is a brightness and a sense of gaiety about the picturesque and beautiful capital of Portugal that are most engaging to the fleeting visitor, but after a short time the foreign resident finds it one of the dullest of towns, and has a lurking sympathy with the old and fallen nobility who sought distraction in pursuits that drew only the poison from the pleasures of London and Paris, and eventually made of them the most corrupt aristocracy in Europe. From all one heard, the revolution did not come a day too soon, and seldom have there been a king and an aristocracy that more openly “asked for it” than Manuel and his effeminate nobles.