Читать книгу The Royal Road to Romance - Richard Halliburton - Страница 11

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“I don’t understand what the señoritas see in me to inspire so much coquetry,” Paul remarked before we’d been in Seville twenty-four hours.

“You!” I exclaimed. “What brazen egotism! It’s I they smile at, cross-eyed one.”

As a matter of fact both of us had been peered at from beneath secretive mantillas by more than one pair of exotic eyes—eyes whose shocking behavior somewhat surprised us, since no one could have been less conspicuous than we. In Barcelona and Granada whenever we looked lonesomely at a heavily chaperoned maiden we were usually met with glances as icy as soft brown eyes can give, and though it is true that sometimes the soft brown eyes looked first, it was from curiosity which might have been bestowed with equal significance on a pink and blue elephant or any other strange animal strolling about town. But in wanton Seville there were glances that were unmistakably flirtatious, and this gave us the smug feeling that comes of being misogynous from preference rather than necessity.

Our initial encounter with a Seville siren was on the third-class railroad coach en route from Granada, a few days after Christmas. She first arrested our attention by laughing at us when we climbed into her compartment, loaded down with mandolins, cameras, sketching boxes, knapsacks, and “Alfonso XIII,” the friendless Heinz dog (fifty-seven varieties) that had become attached to us in Granada and refused to be left behind. She was so exceedingly pretty, however, Paul and I both found it very easy to forgive her for this mockery of our impedimenta. She had eyes filled with roguish good humor, and a red dress that accentuated the high coloring of her dimpled cheeks. But her amusement soon changed into amiability as Paul extracted his mandolin and began to play a stirring Spanish song which set her toes to twitching and her curly head to bobbing. She finally smiled at him shamelessly, right before my eyes, and by the time our destination was reached, had demoralized him so completely with her flirtatious glances that he left my walking-stick and his own cap behind in the coach as we dismounted with Alfonso XIII at the station. Of course the brazen creature was only five years old—but she was typical just the same of her sex in Seville.

The harvest of smiles continued to meet us every time we left our pension, until Paul’s vanity became inflated to such a degree that he made the remark about not understanding what they saw in him to inspire coquetry. When I insisted it was I they smiled at, he in turn excoriated my egotism and sarcastically reproached me for believing that just because a few people, usually street urchins, stared at my funny blond hair, I had all the hypnotic allurements of a Brigham Young. But I was so sure of my position I challenged him to a duel of philandering in which we would keep a strict account for twelve hours of the smiles that each could inspire, and in this manner settle our dispute like gentlemen.

He agreed readily, and thus began the most disgraceful contest ever heard of in Spain.

We had difficulty at first in determining rules for the game, and in deciding what constituted a foul, out of bounds, disqualification and other limitations. A “foul” we concluded was a look of scorn in response to our smiles and should be heavily penalized, while an “out of bounds” was any one over forty.

Paul gained an initial victory by grinning pleasantly upon the hospitable proprietress of our lodging, who returned the greeting with equal friendliness. I contested the decision on the grounds that the lady in question was out of bounds, so to decide the argument we asked her if she were over or under forty.

“I am thirty-seven,” said the señora, who naturally would not have admitted more.

It was my inning next. When a comely young woman with a basket of bread under her arm passed on my side of the promenade, I beamed upon her like August sunshine, until with a contemptuous toss of her head she spurned my amiability. Paul chortled with laughter:

“Well, Romeo, you get penalized one point, making you to date one below zero.”

The succeeding encounter rallied my drooping spirits. Upon overtaking a veritable Spanish rose accompanied by her equally attractive mother, the daughter smiled at me, and the mother nodded a pleasant “good morning” to Paul. I insisted that the choice of the charming señorita was significant enough in itself to settle the affair decisively, but Paul was uncharitable, arguing (not without effectiveness) that the gracious mother, owing to her more mature mentality, had naturally chosen with greater intelligence than her impetuous daughter. Grudgingly he agreed to call the incident a tie.

The contest raged up one street and down another, in and out of cafés, even into the cathedral, continuing with increasing violence as night approached. It was not waged without numerous heated disagreements over the proper distribution of spoils, since it was not always easy to decide who was the beneficiary. We should have been arrested, and would have been in any other city than Seville.

Needless to say, Paul won the match with an overwhelming score. The final count showed thirty-six points for him and only twenty-one for me. But he minimized the glory of his victory, good sport that he was, by attributing it to the fact that he was five years older than I, and had had that much more time in which to acquire proficiency in the subtle art.