A HASTY DEPARTURE
"Sit quietly and watch a bullfight!" Adair MacKenzie had heard Nan's
counsel to Bess. "Never heard of such a thing. Never saw such a thing
happen. Couldn't possibly sit quietly and watch a bullfight. Too
exciting. Too much blood and gore. No place to bring a woman."
Adair had been upset by Grace's fainting spell and now he was sorry he
had ever brought the girls here. Already he was casting about in his
mind for something else to do that would wipe the memory of the
unpleasantness of the spectacle out of their minds. He was oblivious of
the fact that none of them outside of perhaps Nan and Amelia had
witnessed the fight with their whole attention. He didn't yet know the
story of Linda. The fact that her presence distracted them consequently
had gone unobserved.
"Got your things? Come on. We're going now." Abruptly he made up his
mind and plunged into action without further ado.
"But father," Alice demurred.
"Don't 'but' me," Adair answered. "We're going to get out of this
outlandish place right away. Can't have you all fainting on my hands.
Ready?" He was already halfway out the row and effectively blocking the
view of the ring of all the people who had seats behind his party. But
it didn't matter to him. In fact, he was so concerned with his own
immediate problem that no one else in the world existed. Now he turned
around again to see if the girls were following him.
"Fine spectacle for civilized people to put on," he muttered. "Hurry,
you people. Can't be all day getting out of here."
"That's right." The voice that agreed with him was an American voice and
it startled him. Adair looked up. "What's that?" he asked the question
gruffly.
"I said, 'that's right,'" the stranger answered. He was sitting about
three rows behind where Adair was standing.
"What do you mean?" Adair looked more belligerent than ever.
"I mean you can't be all day getting out of here." The voice in back
answered positively.
"W-w-why, you old--old--old," Adair spluttered. He could think of no
epithet appropriate and yet forceful enough to call his critic in the
presence of the girls. So his spluttering died away as he brandished his
cane and just stood and looked.
"Daddy, daddy," Alice put a soft hand on his arm. "Do come. We are
blocking the view."
"Nothing to see down there anyway," Adair returned. "These Americans,"
he went on talking loudly and looking back at the man above him, "come
down here and think they can run everything. Want to tell us to move on.
Who do they think they are anyway?"
"Sh, daddy." Alice was worried for fear her father would start a fight,
even while she was secretly amused that he was accusing a fellow
countryman of doing the very thing that he was guilty of. "We must get
down and out so that we can find how Grace is," she added tactfully.
"Well, I'm hurrying just as fast as these Mexicans will let me," Adair
answered. "I always said they were the slowest, most inconsiderate
people in the world."
Adair was wrong in what he said, and he knew it. As he was now
sputtering about them being inconsiderate, so often he had sputtered
because of their patient consideration for other people. Then he had
said that they were too polite.
However, Adair prided himself on his willingness to change his mind.
"Only dunces never contradict themselves," he often said.
Now, Alice and the girls were themselves moving along as fast as they
could behind him, so, though he continued to mutter and even brandish
his cane at others whom he suspected of calling at him in Spanish, he
was soon safely out in the aisle and they all hurried up the stairs and
out.
"O-o-ooh, but that was close," Laura's eyes were dancing at the
recollection of the scene in the stands as she and Nan stepped out into
the street.
"Wasn't it though?" Nan was laughing too, now, though at the time, she,
like Alice, had been worried for fear Adair would come to blows with the
American.
"Two Americans come to blows at a bullfight," Laura said, "and the
bullfight is forgotten."
"That's just what I was afraid of," Nan whispered. "These people in this
country are so hot-headed that I was afraid there would be a general
riot, before we got out of there. They were all worked up so over the
first fight that they would have entered our private little fray without
any question."
"That's what I thought too," Laura agreed. "And did you see the
expression on Bess's face?"
"No," Nan returned, "but I can just imagine what it was like. She hates
scenes of any kind. I do too, but this one was almost funny. Cousin
Adair is so quick tempered that he glides in and out of trouble with the
greatest of ease."
"Doesn't he though?" Amelia contributed. "It fascinates me when I see
one of his explosions coming. Every time he opens his mouth, he gets in
deeper."
"That is funny when you see it happen to someone else," Laura agreed
somewhat ruefully. "But when it happens to you, if you have a sensitive
soul, like mine, it's pretty embarrassing." Laura was in earnest, for
her quick tongue often did its work before she had a chance to stop it.
"Oh Laura," her mother had more than once shaken her head over her
daughter's failing, "you need to count to a hundred at least when you
feel your cheeks flushing and your head getting hot with anger. And you
need to button your mouth up tight, or you'll always be terribly
unhappy."
Laura thought of this now, and giggled.
"Well, I don't know what's so funny," Bess remarked. She still felt
irritated at what had happened. "Maybe if you had seen Linda Riggs
looking around at us, you wouldn't be giggling the way you are. I wish I
could have just gone right through that floor."
"But it was concrete and you couldn't." Laura pretended to be very
practical.
"That is, not without hurting herself," Amelia appended.
"Oh, it isn't funny." Bess was genuinely upset. She would have hated the
scene anyway, and when it occurred in Linda's presence, she hated it
doubly. "You should have seen the look of pity and disgust and triumph
on her face when she saw that it was our party that was making all the
fuss," Bess went on, growing more vehement the more she talked. "It was
positively humiliating."
More than any of the others, Bess cared about what other people thought
of her. Always conscious of herself and eager to make a good impression,
she was always upset when things went wrong at all. When they did not
run just according to the way she thought they should, in public
especially, she felt like hiding her head and running. "It's the way I
am and I can't help it," she retorted once when Nan accused her of being
over-sensitive, and so she never made the proper effort to overcome her
failing.
"Who cares what Linda thinks?" Laura said airily as Walker and Grace
joined the party, and the incident was forgotten, for the moment, while
everyone made a fuss over Grace.
"You're just a sissy," Laura teased. "See a little bit of blood and you
go off in a faint. What will you do when we start dissecting things in
biology at school next fall?"
"I don't know." Grace looked worried as though she was going to have to
do the dissecting right away.
"Tut! Tut! We'll worry about that when the time comes," Adair MacKenzie
answered as though it was his problem to be handled in due course. "How
are you now?" He looked at Grace closely while he asked the question.
"Feeling all right again, are you?" He spoke gently, as he might have
spoken to Alice, his daughter, and a warm feeling of sympathy toward him
went through all those standing around.
"Why," Nan said afterward, and Bess had to agree, "I believe he was
irritable up in the stands because he was worried about Grace."
"I suppose so." Bess was much less tolerant of other people's failings
than her friend. "But that was no excuse for him to get all riled up. I
can't forget the way Linda looked."
"Bessie, forget it." Nan spoke sharply. "It's not important at all. It
doesn't matter what Linda thinks of us. And it is important that we not
criticise Cousin Adair. After all, we are his guests."
"You are right," Bess agreed. She could, on occasion, be generous in
yielding when she knew she was in the wrong.
As they talked these things over, the whole party walked toward the
waiting car. Again, it was a voice from the United States that arrested
them, but one more softly spoken than that they had heard in the
grandstands.
"I beg your pardon," it said. Nan and her Lakeview Hall companions
looked up startled. The speaker who had accosted them was accompanied by
none other than Linda Riggs!