In the evenings Pasa sat by the window in the room next to the one where they drank, and strummed dreamily upon her guitar. And then, by twos and threes, would come visiting young caballeros and occupy the prim line of chairs set against the wall of this room. They were there to besiege the heart of ~La Santita~." Their method (which is not proof against intelligent competition) consisted of expanding the chest, looking valorous, and consuming a gross or two of cigarettes. Even saints delicately oranged prefer to be wooed differently.
Dona Pasa would tide over the vast chasms of nicotinized silence with music from her guitar, while she wondered if the romances she had read about gallant and more--more contiguous cavaliers were all lies. At somewhat regular intervals Madama would glide in from the dispensary with a sort of drought-suggesting gleam in her eye, and there would be a rustling of stiffly starched white trousers as one of the caballeros would propose an adjournment to the bar.
That Dicky Maloney would, sooner or later, explore this field was a thing to be foreseen. There were few doors in Coralio into which his red head had not been poked.
In an incredibly short space of time after his first sight of her he was there, seated close beside her rocking chair. There was no back-against-the-wall poses in Dicky's theory of wooing. His plan of subjection was an attack at close range. To carry the fortress with one concentrated, ardent, eloquent, irresistible ~escalade~--that was Dicky's way.
Pasa was descended from the proudest Spanish families in the country.
Moreover, she had had unusual advantages. Two years in a New Orleans school had elevated her ambitions and fitted her for a fate above the ordinary maidens of her native land. And yet here she succumbed to the first red-haired scamp with a glib tongue and a charming smile that came along and courted her properly.
Very soon Dicky took her to the little church on the corner of the plaza, and "Mrs. Maloney" was added to her string of distinguished names.
And it was her fate to sit, with her patient, saintly eyes and figure like a bisque Psyche, behind the sequestered counter of the little shop, while Dicky drank and philandered with is frivolous acquaintances.
The women, with their naturally fine instinct, saw a chance for vivisection, and delicately taunted her with his habits. She turned upon them in a beautiful, steady blaze of sorrowful contempt.
"You meat-cows," she said, in her level, crystal-clear tones; "you know nothing of a man. Your men are ~maromeros~. They are fit only to roll cigarettes in the shade until the sun strikes and shrivels them up. They drone in your hammocks and you comb their hair and feed them with fresh fruit. My man is of no such blood. Let him drink of the wine. When he has taken sufficient of it to drown one of your ~flaccitos~ he will come home to me more of a man than one thousand of your ~pobrecitos~. My hair he smooths and braids; to me he sings;he himself removes my zapatos, and there, there, upon each instep leaves a kiss. He holds--Oh, you will never understand! Blind ones who have never known a ~man~."Sometimes mysterious things happened at night about Dicky's shop.
While the front of it was dark, in the little room back of it Dicky and a few of his friends would sit about a table carrying on some kind of very quiet ~negocios~ until quite late. Finally he would let them out the front door very carefully, and go upstairs to his little saint. These visitors were generally conspirator-like men with dark clothes and hats. Of course, these dark things were noticed after a while, and talked about.
Dicky seemed to care nothing at all for the society of the alien residents of the town. He avoided Goodwin, and his skilful escape from the trepanning story of Doctor Gregg is still referred to, in Coralio, as a masterpiece of lightning diplomacy.
Many letters arrived, addressed to "Mr. Dicky Maloney," or "Senor Dickee Maloney," to the considerable pride of Pasa. That so many people should desire to write to him only confirmed her own suspicion that the light from his red head shone around the world. As to their contents she never felt curiosity. There was a wife to you!
The one mistake Dicky made in Coralio was to run out of money at the wrong time. Where his money came from was a puzzle, for the sales of his shop were next to nothing, but that source failed, and at a peculiarly unfortunate time. It was when the ~comandante~, Don Senor el Coronel Encarnacion Rios, looked upon the little saint seated in the shop and felt his heart go pitapat.
The ~comandante~, who was versed in all the intricate art of gallantry, first delicately hinted at his sentiments by donning his dress uniform and strutting up and down fiercely before her window.
Pasa, glancing demurely with her saintly eyes, instantly perceived his resemblance to her parrot, Chichi, and was diverted to the extent of smile. The ~comandante~ saw the smile, which was not intended for him. Convinced of an impression made, he entered the shop, confidently, and advanced to open compliment. Pasa froze; he pranced;she flamed royally; he was charmed to injudicious persistence; she commanded him to leave the shop; he tried to capture her hand and--Dicky entered, smiling broadly, full of white wine and the devil.
He spent five minutes in punishing the comandante scientifically and carefully, so that the pain might be prolonged as far as possible.
At the end of that time he pitched the rash wooer out the door upon the stones of the street, senseless.
A barefooted policeman who had been watching the affair from across the street blew a whistle. A squad of four soldiers came running from the cuartel around the corner. When they saw that the offender was Dicky, they stopped, and blew more whistles, which brought out reinforcements of eight. Deeming the odds against them sufficiently reduced, the military advanced upon the disturber.
