AT THE QUINTA DE PONCE
About three leagues from Buenos Aires, and about half-a-mile to the west of the great southern road which led to the Guardia Chascomus, stood the Quinta de Ponce. The house was a small one with a sloping roof of tiles and with a verandah running round three sides of it. There were also three smaller houses detached, built of mud and wattle, with thatched roofs. The ground belonging to the quinta was fenced in and carefully cultivated, all round the fence ran a double row of poplars, and many other trees grew about in clumps. The house stood at one corner of the quinta, some twenty yards away from the fence; all about that corner the ground was laid out as a garden, where flowers grew in wild luxuriance. Within the house was furnished with great simplicity; numerous doors and windows shaded by green jalousies provided for ample ventilation; the verandah and the many trees which grew around it protected it from the glare of the summer sun. It was well adapted for a summer residence, and had been built for that object by Don Roderigo Ponce de Leon, whose family regularly spent there the hot months of the year.
A cluster of similar quintas on a smaller scale stood around the Quinta de Ponce, divided from each other by roads bordered by poplars. Beyond these quintas on every side was open pasture-land, stretching away to the southward in long undulations, dotted here and there by the lonely, treeless house of some native "hacendado." To the north the towers and domes of Buenos Aires could be seen marking themselves clearly out on the horizon, to the south-east at a nearer distance the sun-rays were reflected from the white-walled houses of the small town of Quilmes. This group of quintas formed a sort of oasis, on which the traveller, bound on some far journey into the depths of the treeless Pampa, looked back with a sort of tender gratitude as he passed by, it was his last glimpse of the world of men as he galloped on towards the world of Nature.
It was a sultry evening towards the end of November, the sun had sunk behind a dense bank of clouds on the horizon; though the sky overhead was yet clear there was evidently a storm brewing somewhere, but the weather occasioned no inquietude to three persons who were sitting under the front verandah of the Quinta de Ponce. These three were Doña Constancia, the wife of Don Roderigo, Dolores his daughter, and Lieutenant Gordon of the 71st Highlanders, who had been their guest since the preceding 12th August—their guest, but at the same time a prisoner of war.
When Marcelino had found, after the fighting ceased that day, that Gordon's wound was not mortal he had him carried at once to his father's house, where under the care of the surgeon of his own regiment he rapidly recovered, but still remained there as a guest, and when in the spring the family left town for the quinta he went with them, hoping in the fresh country air soon to regain his former strength and activity. Marcelino and he were fast friends, and with all the household he soon became a favourite. Lounging there in an easy-chair under the verandah he did not look like a prisoner of war, nor did he feel like one either, talking gaily with the two ladies who were his companions.
Doña Constancia had an embroidery-frame before her, but her daughter seemed to have nothing particular to do, as she sat on a low stool beside her, laughing at some absurd mistake in Spanish which Gordon had just made, for in spite of the best of teaching the young soldier was by no means yet a proficient in the language of the country. No man could wish for better teachers than he had. Doña Constancia, tall and stately, was a model of matronly beauty, and the clear, rich tones of her voice as she spoke sounded like music to the ear; her daughter, much smaller in person, and differing greatly from her in features and complexion, Gordon had already learned to look upon as the fairest specimen of womankind he had ever met. In voice alone she resembled her mother; it was the same voice, but much younger, and had a silvery ring in it which at present amply compensated for the want of depth in tone which could only come with maturity.
It is said that the most speedy way in which a man can learn a foreign tongue is to listen to it as spoken by a beautiful woman. Gordon had had ample opportunity of hearing Spanish so spoken, and already spoke it himself with considerable fluency, but not with perfect correctness, and so not unfrequently made ludicrous mistakes, at which Dolores laughed.
Porteña ladies do not generally laugh at the mistakes in language made by inexperienced foreigners, their innate good-breeding makes them very tolerant of inaccuracies; but Dolores did laugh at the mistakes made by Lieutenant Gordon, and her laughter was a sign of the mutual confidence existing between them. Besides which Dolores was very fond of laughing, and Gordon liked to hear her laugh, and to see the merriment lighting up her face and shining in her deep grey eyes, half veiled by the long dark lashes which fell over them.
"Why do you laugh so much, Dolores?" said Doña Constancia; "I feel sure that when you try to talk English you make far worse mistakes than Mr Gordon does in Spanish."