The Actress in High Life / An Episode in Winter Quarters

by Sue Petigru Bowen

"No; but Lord Wellington was compelled to hang some of his own heroes for making too free with what was theirs by right of conquest."

The young surgeon, who had been listening to Cranfield, now thought it time to lay some of his coloring on this picture of the siege, storming and sack of this unhappy city. He told some curious and thrilling incidents, but his profession getting the mastery of him, he soon got to the hospital, and, amidst ghastly wounds, horrid disfigurations, and dismembered limbs, began to bandage, slash, and saw, until Lady Mabel sickened at the tale. "Pray stop there; you make me shudder at your hospital scenes, which, in their endless variety of suffering are too like the Popish pictures of souls in Purgatory. I prefer going to dine at the posada, to stopping here to sup full of horrors."

They now returned to the posada and had their Spanish friends to dine with them—Lady Mabel seating Don Alonso beside her, and losing not a word of his grandiloquence. After the meal the party dispersed—most of them taking a siesta in order to get rid of two or three hot hours of the afternoon before they set out on their way back to Elvas. Their Spanish friends however, returned and persuaded them to postpone their ride until they had taken an evening promenade on the bridge, the favorite resort of the ladies of Badajoz and their cavaliers during the hot weather. Here they enjoy an extended prospect, and the cooling breezes that attend the current of a great river.

They found here many of the first people of Badajoz and many of the Spanish officers and their fair friends. Leaning against the parapet of the bridge, Lady Mabel forgot the idlers walking by, while she gazed on the scenery around, or watched the gliding stream below, and listened to L'Isle speaking of the Guadiana; of its mysterious disappearance near its source, its course betrayed only by the rich pastures overlying the subterranean streams, of its return to daylight in the lakes called its eyes: Ojos de la Guadiana; and following it to Portugal, to the Salto de Lobo, so called because a wolf might leap across the deep but narrow chasm between the overhanging rocks, he named the noted places on its banks, and quoted many a ballad of which it was the theme. Presently, finding themselves almost alone they followed their companions, to the bridge head, and joined the large company assembled in this outwork. The Spanish officers had provided music for their entertainment, and oranges and confectionary were handed about. Of the latter, the Spanish and Portuguese ladies, according to national habit, eat a great quantity. After a pause the musicians struck up a lively seguidilla, the gentlemen secured partners, Lady Mabel declining a dozen applications, and with difficulty ridding herself of Don Alonso, who could not understand how a lady who delighted so much in his conversation could refuse to dance with him.

The level space within this outwork was now crowded with couples, the Portuguese ladies entering fully into the spirit of the hour. Mrs. Shortridge and Lady Mabel stood aside, with L'Isle, and had the pleasure of witnessing a genuine impromptu Spanish ball in the open air. They were at once struck with the sudden gayety and activity of a people habitually so grave and inert. But as one dance followed another, the vivacity of the party increased. Many of the officers and some of their fair friends were from Andalusia, where music and the castinets are never heard in vain. Presently the tune was changed, and the excited dancers slid over into the fandango and volero, danced out to the life in so demonstrative, voluptuous and seducing a style, that Mrs. Shortridge declared such exhibitions abominable, and that they should be prohibited by law; while Lady Mabel shrinkingly looked on in bewildered astonishment. She had herself danced many a time, though not as often as she wished; but such dancing she had never dreamed of before.

At this moment the sun set, and the bells of the churches and convents across the water gave the signal for repeating the evening prayer to the Virgin. In an instant the gay crowd was arrested as if by magic. The music ceased; the dancers stood still; the women veiled their faces with their fans; the men took off their hats; and all breathed out or seemed to breathe a prayer to the protecting power who had brought them to the close of another day—all but the English officers, who, mingled with the devout dancers, stood looking like profane fools caught without a prayer for the occasion. After a short solemn pause, the men put on their hats, the women uncovered their faces, the music again struck up, and the throng glided off into gayety and revelry as before.

"I would not have lost this for any thing," Lady Mabel exclaimed; "It is so sudden and extraordinary a transition from the wild abandonment of revelry to absorbing devotion and back again to the revels. Without seeing it, I could not have imagined it. I have before witnessed and, at times, been impressed with this solemn call to the evening prayer, misdirected though it be. But here the effect is utterly ridiculous, to say the least."

"This may give you an insight into the Spanish character on more than one point," said L'Isle. "As to their love of dancing, and of the fandango in particular, it is said, though I do not vouch for it, that the Church of Rome, scandalized that a country so renowned for the purity of its faith, had not long ago proscribed so profane a dance, resolved to pronounce the solemn condemnation of it. A consistory assembled; the prosecution of the fandango was begun according to rule, and a sentence was about to be thundered against it. But there was a wise Spanish prelate present who knew his countrymen, and dreaded a schism, should they be driven to choose between the fandango and the faith. He stepped forward and objected to the criminal's being condemned without being heard.

"The observation had weight with the assembly. He was allowed to produce before them a majo and a maja of Seville, who, to the sound of voluptuous music, displayed all the seductive graces of the dance. The severity of the judges was not proof against the exhibition. Their austere countenances began to relax; they rose from their seats; their legs and arms soon found their former suppleness; the consistory-hall was changed into a dancing-room, and the fandango acquitted."

Both ladies laughed heartily at this story, and L'Isle went on to say; "In spite of the exhibition before us, these people, in their serious hours, retain all the gravity and ceremonious stateliness in language and manner of their forefathers, in the time of Charles the Fifth and his glooming son, when the Spaniard was the admiration and dread of Europe.