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Much Darker Days, a fiction by Andrew Lang |
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CHAPTER IX - Saved! Saved! |
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_ CHAPTER IX - Saved! Saved! GLORIOUS, wonderful Alhambra! Magical Cuadrado de Leicestero! Philippa and I were as happy as children, and the house was full every night. We called everything by Spanish names, and played perpetually at being Spaniards. The foyer we named a patio --a space fragrant with the perfume of oranges, which the public were always sucking, and perilous with peel. Add to this a refreshment-room, refectorio , full of the rarest old cigarros , and redolent of aqua de soda and aguardiente . Here the botellas of aqua de soda were continually popping, and the corchos flying with a murmur of merry voices and of mingling waters. Here half through the night you could listen to-- The delight of happy laughter, The delight of low replies. With such surroundings, almost those of a sybarite, who can blame me for being lulled into security, and telling myself that my troubles were nearly at an end? Who can wonder at the chateaux en Espagne that I built as I lounged in the patio , and assisted my customers to consume the media aqua de soda , or 'split soda,' of the country? Sometimes we roamed as far as the Alcazar; sometimes we wandered to the Oxford, or laughed light-heartedly in the stalls of the Alegria . Such was our life. So in calm and peace (for we had secured a Tory chuckerouto from Birmingham) passed the even tenor of out days. As to marrying Philippa, it had always been my intention . Whether she was or was not Lady Errand; whether she had or had not precipitated the hour of her own widowhood, made no kind of difference to me. A moment of ill-judged haste had been all her crime. That moment had passed. Philippa was not that moment. I was not marrying that moment, but Philippa. Picture, then, your Basil naming and insisting on the day, yet somehow the day had not yet arrived. It did, however, arrive at last. The difficulty now arose under which name was Philippa to be married? To tell you the truth, I cannot remember under which name Philippa was married. It was a difficult point. If she wedded me under her maiden name, and if Mrs. Thompson's letter contained the truth, then would the wedding be legal and binding? If she married me under the name of Lady Errand, and if Mrs. Thompson's letter was false, then would the wedding be all square? So far as I know, there is no monograph on the subject, or there was none at the time. Be it as it may, wedded we were. Morality was now restored to the show business, the legitimate drama began to look up, and the hopes of the Social Science Congress were fulfilled. But evil days were at hand. One day, Philippa and I were lounging in the patio , when I heard the young hidalgos --or Macheros , as they are called--talking as they smoked their princely cigaritos . 'Sir Runan Errand,' said one of them; 'where he's gone under. A rare bad lot he was.' 'Murdered,' replied the other. 'Nothing ever found of him but his hat.' 'What a rum go!' replied the other. I looked at Philippa. She had heard all. I saw her dark brow contract in anguish. She was beating her breast furiously--her habit in moments of agitation. Then I seem to remember that I and the two hidalgos bore Philippa to a couch in the patio , while I smiled and smiled and talked of the heat of the weather! When Philippa came back to herself, she looked at me with her wondrous eyes and said,-- 'Basil; tell me the square truth, honest Injun! What had I been up to that night?' _ |
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