The espada stopped, scratching his head under his felt hat.
"It is," he murmured uneasily ... "it is ... well I must say it out.... It frightens me.... Now, Señor, it is said.... Yes, it frightens me. You know well enough I am no laggard, that I can carry on with most women, and say a few words to a 'gachi' as well as anyone else. But this one—no. She is a lady who knows more than Lepe,[82] and when I see her I feel I am an ignorant brute, and keep my mouth shut, as I cannot speak without putting my foot in it. No, Don José.... I am not going. I ought not to go!"
But Don José ended by over persuading him, and finally carried him off to Doña Sol's house, talking as he went of his interview with that lady. She seemed rather offended at Gallardo's neglect. All the best people in Seville had been to see her after her accident, except himself.
"You know that a torero ought to stand well with people of good position. It is only a matter of having a little education and showing that you are not a cowherd brought up in a stable. Just think. A great lady like that to distinguish you and expect you!... Stuff and nonsense, I shall go with you."
"Ah! if you go with me!"
And Gallardo breathed again, as if freed from the weight of a great fear.
The "patio" of Doña Sol's house was in Moorish style, the delicate work of its coloured arches making one think of the Alhambra. The ripple of a fountain, in whose basin gold fish were swimming, murmured gently in the evening silence. In the four galleries with ceilings of inlaid Moorish work,[83] which were divided from the patio by marble pillars, he saw ancient carved panels, dark pictures of saints with livid faces, ancient furniture with rusty iron mountings, so riddled with worm holes, that they looked as if they had had a charge of shot.
A servant shewed them up the wide marble staircase, and there again the torero was surprised to see retablos with dark figures on gold grounds, massive virgins, who looked as if they had been cut out with a hatchet, painted in faded colours and dull gilding; tapestries of soft dead leaf colour, framed in borders of fruit and flowers, of which one represented scenes of Calvary, while the other represented hairy, horned, and cloven-footed satyrs, whom lightly-clad nymphs seemed to be fighting like bulls.
"See what ignorance is!" said the matador to Don José. "I thought that sort of thing was only good for convents! But it seems that these people also value them."...
Upstairs, the electric lamps were lighted as they passed, while the sunset splendours still shone through the windows.