He never knew with certainty just how the conversation began. He found himself suddenly talking in English with the younger one, just as on the preceding morning. She, with the audacity that quickly makes the best of a dubious situation, asked him if he was a sailor. And upon receiving an affirmative response, she then asked if he was Spanish.
“Yes, Spanish.”
Ferragut’s answer was followed by a triumphant glance toward the chaperone, who seemed to relax a little and lose her hostile attitude. And for the first time she smiled upon the captain with her mouth of bluish-rose color, her white skin sprinkled with yellow, and her glasses of phosphorescent splendor.
Meanwhile, the young woman was talking on and on, verifying her extraordinary powers of memory.
She had traveled all over the world without forgetting a single one of the places which she had seen. She was able to repeat the titles of the eighty great hotels in which those who make the world’s circuit may stay. Upon meeting with an old traveling companion, she always recognized his face immediately, no matter how short a time she had seen him, and oftentimes she could even recall his name. This last was what she had been puzzling over, wrinkling her brows with the mental effort.
“You are a captain?... Your name is?...”
And she smiled suddenly as her doubts came to an end.
“Your name is,” she said positively, “Captain Ulysses Ferragut.”
In long and agreeable silence she relished the sailor’s astonishment. Then, as though she pitied his stupefaction, she made further explanations. She had made a trip from Buenos Ayres to Barcelona in a steamship which he had commanded.
“That was six years ago,” she added. “No; seven years ago.”
Ferragut, who had been the first to suspect a former acquaintance, could not recall this woman’s name and place among the innumerable passengers that filled his memory. He thought, nevertheless, that he must lie for gallantry’s sake, insisting that he remembered her well.
“No, Captain; you do not remember me. I was accompanied by my husband and you never looked at me.... All your attentions on that trip were devoted to a very handsome widow from Brazil.”
She said this in Spanish, a smooth, sing-song Spanish learned in South America, to which her foreign accent contributed a certain childish charm. Then she added coquettishly:
“I know you, Captain. Always the same!... That affair of the rose at Pompeii was very well done.... It was just like you.”
The grave lady of the glasses, finding herself forgotten, and unable to understand a word of the new language employed in the conversation, now spoke aloud, rolling her eyes in her enthusiasm.
“Oh, Spain!...” she said in English. “The land of knightly gentlemen.... Cervantes ... Lope!... The Cid!...”
She stopped hunting for more celebrities. Suddenly she seized the sailor’s arm, exclaiming as energetically as though she had just made a discovery through the little door of the coach. “Calderon de la Barca!” Ferragut saluted her. “Yes, Senora.” After that the younger woman thought that it was necessary to present her companion.