I arrived in Santacruz in the early evening, and as I stepped out of the carriage with the children the majordomo came rushing out from under the hotel portales and said: "Meesus Trench, is it? Your suite awaits, madam. The Lieutenant Trench from the American warship has ordered, madam."
There was a girl, not too young, sitting over at a small table, and at the name Trench, pronounced in the round voice of the majordomo, she—well, she was sitting by herself, smoking a cigarette, and I did not know why she should smile and look at me—in just that way, I mean. But I can muster some poise of manner myself when I choose—I looked at her. And she looked me over and smiled again. And I did not like that smile. It was as if—as Ned would say—she had something on me.
She and I were to be enemies—already I saw that. She was making smoke rings, and she never hurried the making of a single one of them as she looked at me; nor did I hurry a particle the ushering of the two children and the maid into the hotel. But I did ask, after I had greeted Nan and her mother inside: "Auntie—or you, Nan—who is the oleander blossom smoking the cigarette out under the portales?"
It spoke volumes to me that Nan and her mother, without looking, at once knew whom I meant. She was the Carmen Whiffle of whom nearly every other American woman waiting to be taken home on the next transport had been whispering—and not always whispering—for weeks in Santacruz.
Nan, of course, had a good word for her. Is there a living creature on earth she wouldn't? "I think she is wonderfully good-looking," said Nan.
"No woman with a jaw like that," said Nan's mother, "can be good-looking. And she sat at the piano there early this evening and raved over the 'Melody in F'; but when she tried to play it, it was with fingers of wood. What she really did play with spirit, Nettie—when she thought there were none of us American women around to hear her—was: 'I Want What I Want When I Want It.'"
Auntie went on to tell then how this creature was a divorcee who had married an oil millionaire and within six months got her second divorce and a half-million alimony out of him. And as a baby she was christened—not Carmen, but Hannah! "Now, what's the psychology, Nettie," said auntie, "of a woman who changes her name from Hannah to Carmen? She wants what she wants when she wants it—and she'll come pretty near getting it, Nettie. If I had a husband within a thousand miles of her, I'd lock him up."
You may understand from the foregoing that Mrs. Wedner—Nan's mother—is a woman of convictions; and so she is. The Lady with the Wallop is what Ned tells me the men folks call her. But I am not without convictions myself.
"I have a husband within a thousand miles of her," I said, "and if you mean that for me, auntie, I won't lock him up—not even if he were the to-be-locked-up kind. When I can't hold my man, auntie, against any specimen of her species, I won't call in the police to help me. And I think I'll give her another look-over before the evening is ended."
"Don't bother your head with her," said auntie. "And sit down and have something to eat." And we did have something to eat, but up-stairs in my suite.