Leon Roch: A Romance, vol. 1 (of 2)
by Benito Pérez Galdós · English · Gutenberg #48752 · 485,312 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Leon Roch: A Romance, vol. 1 (of 2)
Author: Benito Pérez Galdós
Translator: Clara Bell
Release date: April 20, 2015 [eBook #48752]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
* Italics are denoted by underscores as in _italics_.
* Bold text is denoted by equals as in =bold=.
* Small caps are represented in upper case as in SMALL CAPS.
* Obvious printer errors have been silently corrected.
* Original spelling was kept, but variant spellings were made
consistent when a predominant usage was found.
* Throughout the text the following replacements were made:
“Maria” by “María”,
“Telleria” by “Tellería”,
“Joaquin” by “Joaquín”,
“Fontan” by “Fontán”,
“Leopold” by “Leopoldo”,
“Agustin” by “Agustín”,
“Perez” by “Pérez”.
* The following changes were also made:
Page 18: “Atheneam” replaced by “Atheneum”.
Page 28: “Centa” replaced by “Ceuta”.
Page 75: “Corralles” replaced by “Corrales”.
Page 144: “Cerinola” replaced by “Ceriñola”.
Page 147: “Cayentano” replaced by “Cayetano”.
Page 199: “Arragon” replaced by “Aragón” (twice).
Page 246: “Monilla” replaced by “Monina”.
Page 274: “her papa” replaced by “your papa” (twice--after
checking the Spanish original version).
LEON ROCH
A ROMANCE
BY
B. PÉREZ GALDÓS
Author of “Gloria,” etc.
FROM THE SPANISH BY CLARA BELL
--AUTHORIZED EDITION--
IN TWO VOLUMES--VOL. I.
REVISED AND CORRECTED IN THE UNITED STATES
NEW YORK
WILLIAM S. GOTTSBERGER, PUBLISHER
11 MURRAY STREET
1888
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1886
BY WILLIAM S. GOTTSBERGER
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington
THIS TRANSLATION WAS MADE EXPRESSLY FOR THE PUBLISHER
CONTENTS.
VOLUME I.
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME, 1
II.--LIFE AT A WATERING PLACE, 9
III.--IN WHICH THE READER WILL ENJOY HEARING THE
PRAISES LAVISHED BY SPANIARDS ON THEIR
COUNTRY AND COUNTRY-MEN, 15
IV.--MORE CONVERSATION, GIVING US SOME IDEA
OF THE SPANISH CHARACTER, 24
V.--ILLUSTRATING ANOTHER TRAIT OF SPANISH
CHARACTER, 31
VI.--PEPA, 37
VII.--TWO MEN AND THEIR SCHEMES IN LIFE, 45
VIII.--MARÍA EGYPTIACA, 57
IX.--THE MARQUESA TELLERÍA, 69
X.--THE MARQUIS, 79
XI.--LEOPOLDO, 88
XII.--GUSTAVO, 94
XIII.--THE LAST ILLUSION, 103
XIV.--HUSBAND AND WIFE, 111
XV.--A MODUS VIVENDI, 127
XVI.--IN THE DOG-DAYS, 133
XVII.--DESERTERS, 142
XVIII.--THE ASCETIC, 149
XIX.--THE MARQUESA GOES TO A CONCERT, 159
XX.--THE OLD, OLD DRAMA, 166
XXI.--A STRUGGLE WITH THE ANGEL, 179
XXII.--CONQUERED BY THE ANGEL, 185
XXIII.--WEATHER PERMITTING, 188
XXIV.--REMINISCENCES--ANXIETIES, 200
XXV.--MARÍA EGYPTIACA DRESSES IN GREY AND DOES
NOT WASH HER HANDS, 211
XXVI.--THE DEVOURING OGRE--CROUP, 222
XXVII.--THE MOTHER, 238
XXVIII.--THE MARQUIS DE FÚCAR ENJOYS THE SPECIAL
FAVOUR OF HEAVEN, 242
XXIX.--ERUNT DUO IN CARNE UNA, 253
XXX.--AN IRRUPTION OF THE BARBARIANS; ALARIC,
ATTILA, AND OMAR, 263
XXXI.--THE CRISIS, 275
XXXII.--REASON _versus_ PASSION, 293
LEON ROCH
LEON ROCH
PART I.
CHAPTER I.
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
“_Ugoibea_, AUGUST 30th.
“DEAR LEON: Think no more of my letter of yesterday; it must have
crossed yours, which I have just received. Vexation, and a fit of
petty jealousy, made me write a great deal of nonsense, and I am
ashamed of having covered my paper with so many dreadful words, mixed
up with such childish prevarications; but no--I am not ashamed; I can
only laugh at myself and my style, and ask you to forgive me. If I
had only had a little patience and waited for your explanations--but
that again is nonsense.--Jealousy and Patience! Who ever saw the
two things combined in one person? You see there is no end to my
absurdities; this proves that after having been a fool, though only
for a day, a woman cannot recover her natural balance of mind all at
once.
“But now I am recovering mine. An end to recrimination; I am
firmly resolved never again to be irritable and suspicious and
inquisitive--as you say I am. Your explanations really and entirely
satisfy me; their frankness and fulness impress me strongly--I hardly
know why--and leave no room in my mind for doubt, but fill my soul
with a conviction--how can I express it? that is in itself a sort
of affection, that is its twin brother and as inseparable from it
as--as--I cannot finish my sentence; but what does it matter?--To
proceed; I was saying that I fully accept your explanation. A denial
would have increased my suspicions; your confession has removed
them. You tell me that you did love--no, that is not the word, that
you had a fancy, a mere fancy, as a boy--as children together--for
Pepa de Fúcar; that you have known her since she was little, and
that you played together--I remember you used to tell me something
about it in Madrid, when we first made your acquaintance. It was
she, no doubt, who used to go with you to pick up the blossoms
fallen from the orange-trees--who was frightened at the rustling
made by the silk-worms when they were feeding, and for whom you
used to make crowns of Marvel of Peru? Yes, you told me many funny
stories of your companion as a child. You and she used to dye your
cheeks with blackberries, and make paper crowns to wear; you loved
to take birds’ nests, and her greatest delight was to pull off her
shoes and stockings and paddle in the streams among the rushes and
water-plants. One day, almost at the same instant, you fell from a
tree and she was bitten by some reptile. That was Pepa de Fúcar, was
it not? You see I remember very well, and could write your history
quite accurately.
“The truth is that I really did not pay much attention to those baby
stories; but when I saw the girl, and when they said you were in love
with her.--It is ten days ago and I still feel as if I were being
suffocated--as I did when I first heard it. Believe me; I felt as if
the world were coming to an end, as if time were standing still--I
cannot express the feeling--or had turned backward and revealed
some horrible spot, some unknown desert where--another unfinished
sentence! To proceed.
“I remember now some more stories of your childish amusements, which
you told me not long ago. How such trifles cling to our memories!
When you were a boy, and were studying that science of stones of
which I can never see the use; when she--for I think that again
it was Pepa de Fúcar--had left off putting her feet in the water
and staining your cheeks with blackberry juice or decking herself
with your paper crowns, that you played at being lovers with less
innocence than before, but still--come, I will allow thus much--still
with perfect innocence. She was at some school where there were a
great number of lilac shrubs, and a porter who undertook to receive
and deliver notes. Are you not astonished at my good memory? I even
remember that porter’s name; it was Escoiquiz.
“Well--enough of ancient history. What you have just told me, what
I did not know till I just now read your letter (and I repeat that I
was not particularly pleased to hear it) was that two years ago you
met again where the orange-trees blow and the silk-worms feed and
the water flows in the brooks; that you suffered a slight illusion,
so to speak, and at that time began to feel a sincere affection for
her, which grew and grew until--and here I come to the story--until
you knew me.--Thank you Sir, and I make you a pretty curtsy, for the
string of compliments, polite hints, protestations, and loving words
which here follow. This shower of praises fills a whole page. Such
pages as these come before us like a face we love, and this one made
me cry with joy. Thanks again, a thousand thanks. It is all charming,
and what you say of me is much too kind and good. You are worth a
hundred of me.--You live for me? Oh Leon! How can I do better than
believe all these romantic speeches? My heart opens wide to accept
them all. I am a good catholic and have been brought up to be a true
believer.
“Yes, I will be so foolish--I have read that blessed page once more.
Oh! it is good to be told that ‘a true, deep, and lofty devotion
has blotted out that fancy and left no trace of it’--very good!
‘the illusions of childhood rarely last into mature years’ of
course; ‘Your sentiments are sincere, and your intentions thoroughly
honest’--yes no doubt; ‘The voice I heard, the words that made me
feel as if the world had come to an end, were simply one of those
wild suppositions thrown out at random, to be taken up by malice
and used by her as terrible weapons’--so it is, so it is; ‘Pepa de
Fúcar is as indifferent to you at this moment as any other woman
living’--that is perfect, exquisite! and finally ‘I and I alone’--me
and no one else.--What joy to press my hand closely to my heart while
I think to myself--me, me alone, and no one in the world but me!
“A potent argument in your favour has just occurred to me; Pepa de
Fúcar is immensely rich and I am almost poor. However, when one
has faith no arguments are needed, and I have faith in you. Every
one who knows you, says you are a model of uprightness and noble
generosity--a rare thing in these days. I am as proud as I am
flattered. How good God has been to me in bestowing on me a gift
which, by all accounts, is so seldom found in this world!
“I cannot avoid telling you--though this letter already seems
interminable--the impression that girl produced on me, even setting
aside the rancour I could not help feeling at first. But now the
storm is over; I can judge her coolly and impartially, and though,
when I heard what you know, I thought she must be perfectly
charming, I see her now in her true light. Every one talks of her
shameful extravagance. It is an insult to Heaven and humanity! Papa
says she spends enough in clothes in a week to support several
families comfortably. She is elegant, no doubt; but sometimes very
affected--as much as to say: ‘Gentlemen, I behave in this way that
you may all see how rich I am.’ Mamma says, no man would ever
think of marrying a girl who thinks of nothing but displaying the
products of industry. Rothschilds are not to be met with at every
turn, and Pepa de Fúcar is enough to frighten away her suitors.
She is recklessly extravagant and wilful, full of whims, and very
badly brought up, and will end by falling into the hands of some
fortune-hunter. So Mamma says, and she knows the world; and I really
believe she is right.
“I do not think her so pleasing even as some people do, nor as I
thought her myself, when I was dying of jealousy. She is too tall and
thin to be graceful. It is impossible to deny that she has a fine
complexion, but one needs a microscope to see her eyes, they are so
small. They say she is very amusing and agreeable, but this I know
nothing about, as I never talked to her, and never wish to. I have
seen her from a distance, on the sands and in the gallery of the
bathing house, and her manners struck me as decidedly free and easy.
I fancied she looked rather particularly at me; and I looked at her,
intending to convey to her that I did not care a straw about her. I
do not know whether I succeeded.
“She was here three days and I would not go out; I never cried more
in my life. At last she went away; but the joy I felt in her absence
is somewhat clouded by the knowledge that you and she are in the same
place. All day yesterday I was wishing that there were some very,
very high tower here, from which I could see what is going on at
Iturburua. I would be at the top with one jump. But indeed I trust
your loyalty--and if you will tell her that you love no one but me,
if she has any affection for you still, and is furious when she hears
it--yes, furious--do let me know; I long to have that satisfaction.
“We expect you on Monday. Papa says that if you do not come, you are
not a man of your word. He is very anxious to see you to discuss
some question of politics, for, by his account, there is a perfect
plague of politicians here who utterly disgust him. If they would but
make him a Senator!--and to tell you the truth, I almost fear for
his reason if he does not attain to that bench of the blessed. He
still suffers from a mania of writing letters to the papers. We have
had some these last few days, and some articles as well. Mamma, of
course, knows them, and they invariably begin with: “It is greatly to
be regretted....”
“He came in to-day quite proud to show me your new book. He praised
it highly and read the opening sentences aloud to Mamma. It was a
most laughable scene; neither he, nor Mamma, nor I understood a
single word of it; but, in spite of that, we had the highest opinion
of the learning displayed in the book. You may fancy how much we
should understand of an ‘Analysis of the Plutonic rocks in the
Columbrete islands,’ and the interest I should take in quartinary
deposits or in metamorphic or azoic strata. Why, I find it hard
enough to spell the words, and have to copy them letter for letter.
However, the mere fact that it was you who wrote this mass of
mysterious learning, is enough to give it a charm in my eyes. I
spent a long time poring over your pages, as though I were trying to
learn Greek, and--you will not believe me, but it is quite true--I
read and read, full of admiration and respect for you who had written
them. Among all those monstrous names too I came on some which
took my fancy in a vague fashion, such as _syenite_, _variolite_,
_amphibolite_. They sound to me like the endearing names of fairies
and cherubs who danced round you while you were studying the works of
God down in the bowels of the earth.
“You see I have become poetical without intending it, a thing which
is past endurance I admit, and yet this villainous letter will not
get itself finished! But Mamma is calling me to go out with her;
she is dreadfully bored here. She says it is the most detestable of
bathing places, and that she would rather stay in Madrid than ever
come here again. There is no casino, no society, no excursions to
make, no shops with pretty things, no company worth looking at--in
fact there is no second Biarritz in the world.
“Leopoldo, too, is bored to death. He says it is a population of
savages, and he cannot understand how any decent person can like to
bathe among the Caffirs--so he calls the poor Castilians who swarm
on the sands. Gustavo is gone to France, to visit that good angelic
creature Luis Gonzaga, who is very ailing. Poor little brother! A
few days since he sent an Italian priest to call on us, Don Paoletti
by name, a charming man who talked delightfully. But I want to tell
you everything and really cannot. My paper is coming to an end, and
Mamma is calling me again. Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye. Do not fail
us on Monday, and we will talk of that--you know what. At night, when
I say my prayers, I pray for you. Now do not put on that disagreeable
face. There is a dark corner in your soul which I do not at all like.
Well, I will say no more for fear of assuming the airs of a preacher,
and for fear too of anticipating a great work--that sentence too
may remain unfinished. Give my love to Syenite, Pegmatite and
Amphibolite, the only fair beings of whom I am not jealous, and
good-bye. I love you with all my heart; nay I am simpleton enough to
believe all you tell me, and I expect you on Monday. So till Monday,
farewell. Beware of failing me. If you do, you will see what you will
see!
MARÍA.”
CHAPTER II.
LIFE AT A WATERING PLACE.
The young man who was reading this letter was walking while he
read, up and down an avenue of tall trees. At one end there was a
low building with a pretentious Greco-Roman façade, from which a
sulphurous smelling vapour came out in tepid gusts, and at the other,
one of those phalansteries in which Spaniards congregate during the
summer carrying with them into the country all the restrictions,
inconveniences, and unhealthy accessories of a town life. Rough
slopes, covered with grass and mosses, came down close behind the
bath house, as if trying to push it into the stream below; and the
torrent itself, striving to make up for its smallness by the noise
it made--like some human beings who are Manzanares[A] in size and
Niagaras in noisiness--rushed tumultuously past the foundation-wall,
swearing and muttering obstreperously that it would carry away the
hotel, the promenade and the drinking-bar; the doctor, the inn-keeper
and the visitors.
[A] The river on which Madrid stands, which in Summer is almost
dried up.
The visitors were limping and coughing in the avenue, or sitting in
various groups on the banks of turf under the trees. Whole monographs
on every imaginable complaint were being delivered by the sufferers;
elaborate calculations as to digestion, past or to come; grotesque
diagnosis; narratives of sleepless nights, of spasms, headaches
and hiccoughs; inventories of palpitations; dissertations on the
irritability of the sympathetic nerve; mysterious hypotheses as to
the nervous system, as impenetrably obscure as the arcana of Isis;
observations formulated into aphorisms by optimist speculators;
forebodings of the apprehensive who thought each cough was a step
towards the grave; hopes from the credulous who believed the waters
might work miracles and bring the dead to life again; suppressed
sighs of these who were in pain; soliloquies of those who were past
curing, and glad laughter of the convalescents.
No one who has not lived for some few days in the midst of such a
panting and wheezing community--with its sick folks who look quite
well and its healthy folks who fancy themselves ill; and men who are
dying visibly by inches, eaten up by the diseases of vice--can form
an idea of the dulness and monotony of this hotel life, which society
has rushed into with such extraordinary unanimity since the invention
and extension of railways, and which scarcely ever affords any of the
pleasures or peaceful rest of the real country.
Nevertheless there is a certain charm to be found in this invalid
community. The constant change of drama; the beautiful faces which
arrive every day followed by more satellites than a planet; the
luxury, the evening meetings; the delicate ambrosia of gossip, served
up constantly fresh and spicy, never satiating and never exhausted
in spite of the incessant demand; the flirtations begun or revived;
the moral friction, sometimes against the grain but sometimes
delightfully soothing; the thousand floating ends, as it were, that
get tied or sundered; the little dances; the parties to see this
or that grotto or panorama, or heap of ruins, which every one has
seen a year ago but which must be once more admired in chorus; the
harmless or very venial gambling; the jokes, the plots, the small
intrigues, with which some members of this little world are so bold
as to disturb the monotony of the common contentment, the common
amusement, the common hygiene--for this sort of society is eminently
a Commonwealth, and its gaiety and splendour hide a regimen as dreary
as that of a hospital--all these accessories make such colonies
highly attractive, to a certain class of mind at any rate, and, as it
would seem, the commonest. For this reason the whole Spanish nation
resort to such spots, some with their own money to spend, and some
with that of others; and at the beginning of July, the ‘Governor’
or the money-lender is put under requisition to supply the funds
necessary to the attainment of this great desideratum of modern life.
It would seem that there is a certain form of dipsomania, a craving
to drink of sulphurous waters; and, to slake that elegant thirst, a
man is willing to become a sort of hydropathic Anacreon.
The young man who was reading the letter was dressed in deep
mourning; having read and folded the three sheets, he was about to
continue his walk, but was hindered by the approach and greetings of
some of his fellow-visitors. It was now the hour when most of the
patients came out to the spring to drink their quantum, and take
a walk. Disconsolate and pinched were many of the faces, some old
and yellow, others young and hectic, with forced smiles, clouded by
a drawn look of suffering; and nothing was to be heard by way of
conversation but an incessant flow of questions and answers as to
every phase of illness, and manner of being ill.
But pathological small talk is altogether intolerable, and so the
young man with the letter seemed to think, being himself on very good
terms with Esculapius; for he turned off as if to leave the grounds.
He was detained, however, by a party of three persons, two of whom
were men of middle age and important appearance; nay, not without a
certain dignity.
“Good-morning Leon,” said the youngest of the trio in a tone of
confidential intimacy. “I saw you just now from my window, reading
the usual three sheets.”
“What! friend Roch, up as early as ever,” cried the eldest who was
also the least good-looking.
“Leon, my good fellow, choicest of souls--won’t you walk with us
this morning?” said the tallest, a consequential personage, who was
walking, as usual, between the other two, so that they looked as if
they occupied their place on each side of him for purely ornamental
purposes, and to throw his personal and social dignity into the
strongest relief. The young man in mourning excused himself as best
he might.
“I will return within an hour,” he said walking briskly away. “Au
revoir.”
The other three went on along the promenade, and it will be proper
here to give some account of this illustrious trio which formed,
as the reader must understand, a constellation such as may be seen
in Spain at any hour, in spite of the frequent cloudiness of our
climate. The reader, like the writer, will of course say at once:
We know them--let them pass and disappear. But then, they never
disappear. This constellation never sets, is never dimmed by the
radiance of the sun, never hidden behind a cloud, never in eclipse.
It is always in the ascendant. Alas! yes, it never fails to shine
with terrible splendour, and at the zenith of social life in Spain.
Who does not know the Marquis de Fúcar? Flattery speaks of him as an
Oasis of Wealth in the midst of the desert of universal poverty; he
holds the first place among the stars of the Spanish capital, and is
the very _Alpha_ of the society he moves in.
Who, again, does not know Don Joaquín Onésimo, that beacon light
of Spanish bureaucracy, which burns so brightly wherever it shows
itself, the central glory of the myriad Onésimos who, under
different pretexts, fill various offices of the State? “Not a
family, but an epidemic,” was said of the Onésimos. But there is
no doubt whatever--Heaven knows--that if this luminary were to be
extinguished, all the precincts of the administration would remain
in darkness, and all social order, social institutions--nay, society
itself, would revert to primæval chaos. The third side of this
triangle was formed by a polished and well-dressed man, in whose
pallid and languid features all the freshness and energy of his
two and thirty years seemed prematurely quenched. His manners were
insolent, and his whole aspect gave that impression of exhaustion
and fatigue which is common enough in those who have wasted their
moral strength in politics, their intellect in party journalism,
and their physical vigour in vice. The type is peculiar to Spain,
and to Madrid--nocturnal in its habits, perfervid, lean; the very
incarnation of that national fever which betrays its burning and
devouring heat in night work over newspapers, in gambling-houses
where the lamps are put out only when the sun rises, in twilight
rendezvous, and in mysterious meetings in the corridors of theatres,
in the corners of cafés and in Minister’s offices. Such a specimen
looks strangely out of place in this pure clear atmosphere, under
these gigantic trees. It might almost be supposed that he would
feel uncomfortable at such a distance from the dens of corruption
and wickedness, that there could be no corner in his heart for the
glories and graces of Nature, nor a perception of its beauties in his
dulled eyes, with their red and swollen lids, heavy and bleared with
late hours.
Federico Cimarra--the young man in question--Don Joaquín Onésimo, who
expected ere long to rejoice in the title of Marqués de Onésimo, and
Don Pedro Fúcar, Marqués de Casa-Fúcar, after having paced the avenue
two or three times, sat down.
CHAPTER III.
IN WHICH THE READER WILL ENJOY HEARING THE PRAISES LAVISHED BY
SPANIARDS ON THEIR COUNTRY AND COUNTRY-MEN.
“It is quite clear that Leon is going to be married to the Marqués de
Tellería’s daughter,” said Cimarra. “She is no great catch, for the
marquis is more out at elbows than an actor during Lent.”
“He has nothing left but the house in the Calle (_street_) de la
Hortaleza,” added Fúcar indifferently. “It is a good property--built
at the same time as that of the Marqués de Pontejos; but before long
that will go too. They say they are all a scatterbrained family, from
the marquis down to Polito.”
“But has Tellería really nothing left but his house?” asked the man
of politics with the anxious curiosity of a creditor appraising an
estate.
“Nothing whatever,” repeated Fúcar, with the certainty of a man
perfectly informed on the subject. “The land at Piedrabuena was
sold two months ago by order of the commissioners. He gave up the
houses and factory at Nules to my brother-in-law as long ago as last
February, and he cannot have any money in the funds. I know that in
June he was borrowing money at twenty per cent. on Heaven knows what
security. In short, he is a thing of the past.”
“And it was such a great house!” said Onésimo. “I have heard my
father say that in the last century these Tellerías laid down the law
to all Extremadura. It was the second in point of wealth. For half a
century they took all the taxes and duties of Badajoz.”
Federico Cimarra planted himself in front of the other two, his legs
stretched out like a pair of compasses and twirling his stick in the
air.
“It is really incredible,” he said with a smile, “that that poor
fellow Leon should be about making such a fool of himself. I am
really very fond of him, he is a great crony of mine; but who would
venture to contradict him? What is the good of trying to argue with
those wooden-headed creatures who call themselves mathematicians? Did
you ever know a single _savant_ who had a grain of common-sense?”
“Never, never,” cried the marquis, laughing loudly, as he always did.
“And is it true, as I hear, that the girl is a perfect bigot? It will
be a funny thing to see a full-blown freethinker caught by a little
chit with _Paternosters_ and _Avemarias_.”
“I do not know whether she is a bigot, but I know that she is very
pretty,” said Cimarra smacking his lips. “She may be pardoned her
sanctimoniousness on the score of her good looks. But her character
is not formed yet--she is a mere child, and since she has been in
love she has forgotten her piety. The woman who seems to me to be
really on the high road to saintliness is her mother, who cannot
escape the law by which a dissipated youth ends in a strictly pious
old age! How she has changed! I saw her last week at Ugoibea, and she
is a wreck, a perfect wreck! María, on the contrary has grown to a
goddess. Such a head, such an air, and such style!”
“There you are right,” said Fúcar with a rather satirical smile.
“María Sudre is worth looking at. I fancy the mathematician must
have lost his bearings and had his head turned by her bright eyes.
I should not like such a girl for a wife. Very handsome no doubt,
excitable, romantic, reticent--very different from what she seems--in
short I do not like her--I do not like her.”
“Nonsense,” exclaimed the official slapping his knee emphatically.
“The idea of speaking ill of María Sudre. I know her well, she is a
miracle of goodness--much the best of the family.”
“Bless me!” said the marquis with a roar of laughter. “The family is
the most perfect family of fools I know; not excepting Gustavo whom
they think such a prodigy.”
“No, no; the girl is a good girl, a very good girl.” Onésimo
insisted. “I cannot say so much for Leon. He is one of your
new-fangled _savants_, a product of the University, the Atheneum
and the School of Mines, and I have no confidence in them whatever.
A great deal of German science that the devil only can understand;
obscure theories and preposterous words; an affectation of despising
the whole Spanish nation as a pack of ignoramuses; a great deal
of pride, and above all that infusion of scepticism which annoys
me above everything. I am not one of those who profess themselves
catholics while they admit theories that contradict the faith--I am
catholic, catholic!” And he slapped his breast defiantly.
“My dear Sir, be as catholic as you please,” said Fúcar, laughing
less boisterously than usual, nay with a certain solemnity. “We are
all catholics.--But let us avoid exaggeration. Exaggeration, Sir, is
the bane of the country. Let us put religious beliefs out of court,
not but that they are to be respected, deeply respected. What I say
is that Leon is a man of mark, a man of very great merit. He is the
best specimen the School of Mines has turned out at all since it
was founded. His enormous talents find no difficulties in any branch
of study; he is as good a botanist as he is a geologist. As I hear,
he is familiar with all the latest discoveries in Natural History,
besides being a capital astronomer.”
“Oh yes!” exclaimed Cimarra, with the patronising pomposity that
ignorance assumes when it is driven to do justice to learning. “Leon
Roch is a first-rate fellow. He is one of the few good men we have
produced in Spain. We are great friends; we were at school together.
In point of fact he did not distinguish himself at school, but since
then....”
“He does not suit me; I cannot get on with him....” said Onésimo,
with the accent of a man who refuses to swallow a bitter pill.
“But my dear Onésimo,” said the marquis solemnly, “there is no need
of exaggeration. Exaggeration is the bane of the country. Because we
are catholics we condemn every man who cultivates natural science
without doing penance for it as a sin; and they go astray; I admit
that they go a little astray; or very far astray perhaps, from the
ways of Catholicism.--But, after all, what does that matter to me.
The world will go its way. The chief thing is not to exaggerate.
It seems to me that Leon’s chief fault--and I have known him from
childhood, for he and my daughter played together as children, at
Valencia--well his chief fault is his readiness to sacrifice himself,
his youth, his wealth, and his prospects to a connection with a
reckless and ruined family, who will simply devour him beyond all
rescue.”
“Is he rich?”
“Oh! very rich,” said Fúcar emphatically. “I knew his father at
Valencia--poor Don Pepe, who died three months ago after spending
fifty years in toiling like a negro. I used to deal with him when
he had a chocolate mill in the Calle de las Barcas. As a matter of
fact, Don Pepe’s chocolate was in high estimation there. I remember
at that time I used to see Leon, a scrap of a boy, with a dirty face
and ragged elbows studying arithmetic in a corner behind the counter.
At Christmas, Don Pepe sold marchpane (cakes). Indeed he dealt in
such goods till about fifteen years ago, and it is not thirty since
he transferred his business to Madrid. When he had accumulated some
capital he began to wish to increase it more rapidly. The amount
of money is incalculable that has been made in this country by
manufacturing chocolate out of canary-seed, out of pine-kernels, out
of red ochre, out of everything rather than out of cocoa. We live in
a land of bricks,[B] and we not only build our houses of them, but we
eat them! Señor Pepe worked hard; at first with his own hands, then
with those of others; finally with a steam engine. The result being
(and the marquis pushed his hat back to the roots of his hair) that
he bought land by the acre and sold it by the foot; that in ’54 he
built a house in Madrid, that he got the management of the best lands
belonging to the nation, and that by his command of public funds he
added considerably to his fortune. In short, I should think Leon Roch
must be worth eight or nine millions.”
[B] _Ladrillo_: cakes of chocolate are also called ladrillos.
“But you have left the choicest bit of the biography untold,” said
Cimarra, seating himself by his friends. “I mean the intense vanity
of the deceased worthy. In most cases these manufacturers who have
enriched themselves--though they are the bane of the whole human
race--are modest enough, and only care to end their days in peace,
living in humble discomfort, and in the same narrow circumstances as
they were used to, when they were working for their daily bread. But
poor Don Pepe was quite the contrary, and his weak point was to be
called marquis.”
“Indeed,” said Fúcar gravely, with the air of a man who felt it his
duty to suppress such levity in the young. “I can assure you Don José
Roch was a good-natured soul, kind and simple in all the relations of
life; I knew him well. He made chocolate of the flower-pots in his
wife’s balcony, or so said the spiteful gossips in the neighbourhood;
but he was a worthy old plodder for all that, and so wrapped up in
his boy that he thought of nothing else. There was in his mind but
one creature in the world: his son Leon; he was insanely devoted to
him. He regarded every man as his enemy who did not consider Leon
the handsomest, the most learned, the first and greatest of all men
on earth. All his pride and vanity were centred in being his son’s
father.--We met one evening last year at Aranceles. I wanted to
discuss a sale of cork with him--for he had a large property in
cork-woods--but he would talk of nothing but his son. It was almost
with tears in his eyes that he said to me: ‘My friend Fúcar, I want
nothing for myself; six feet of earth and a stone at the top will do
for me. My one desire is that Leon should have some title in this
country.--It is the only thing I wish for.’
“I began to laugh: A Spanish title! Is that all you ask?--My dear
Señor Don José, if you told me you longed to be handsome or to be
young again--but to be a marquis! Coronets are given away now as
freely as orders, and before long it will be a matter of pride not
to have one. We are fast coming to a time when if a diploma of rank
is sent to us we shall be ashamed to give a dollar to the porter who
brings the document. Well, you shall be a marquis....”
At these words Fúcar went into one of his fits of laughing; it began
with a shrill chuckle, and ended with a general contortion of his
features and a sort of convulsive explosion, while he turned very red
in the face. Even when this violent hilarity was over it was some
time before he recovered his natural colour and his normal aspect of
dignified gravity.
“Gentlemen,” said the official, hitherto silent, but not a little
annoyed, perhaps, by a consciousness of his own craving for the
marquisate, “however lavishly titles may have been distributed, I am
not aware that any have been bestowed on chocolate makers. We are a
long way....”
“Friend Onésimo,” said the marquis with cool irony, “they are
bestowed on all who like to take them. And if Don Pepe never took the
title of Marquis de Casa-Roch it was only because his son positively
refused to be as ridiculous as the rest of the world. He is a man of
principle.”
“Oh, certainly!” exclaimed Onésimo, who was always ready to support
a time-honoured institution. “But in general, these learned men who
are constantly manipulating principles in scientific matters lack
them utterly in social questions. There are plenty of instances here;
and I believe it is the same everywhere. We have seen how they govern
when the country is so unfortunate as to fall into their hands, and
they govern their own homes in the same way. Learned men, take my
word for it, are as great a calamity in private as in public life. I
do not know one who is not a fool--a perfect and utter fool.”
“You speak figuratively.”
“It is the simple truth.”
“We live in the land of _Vice-versa_.”
“No exaggeration, no exaggeration pray,” said the marquis, in the
tone of voice he always adopted for his favourite protest. “We make a
sad misuse of words nowadays and apply them too recklessly. Envy on
one hand, Ignorance on the other--What is the matter?”
The question was addressed with an expression of alarm to a servant
who was hurrying towards them.
“The Señorita has sent for you, Excellency. She is very unwell
again.”
“I must go, my daughter is in a terrible state to-day!” said the
marquis rising. “You will ask me what is the matter with her and I
can only say I do not know; I have not the remotest idea. I will go
and see her.”
The two friends watched him depart in silence. The marquis walked
slowly, on account of his obesity, and his gait reminded one of the
stately motion of some ancient ship or galleon freighted with the
rich spoils of the Indies. He seemed to be carrying on board, as it
were, all the weight of his immense fortune, collected during twenty
years of such unfailing prosperity that the outer world could only
look on and tremble and wonder.
CHAPTER IV.
MORE CONVERSATION, GIVING US SOME IDEA OF THE SPANISH CHARACTER.
In front of the grotto where the water-drinkers swallowed glass after
glass, eager to counteract the _oidium_ in their blood, there was a
summer-house. It was now ten o’clock, the hour when all the visitors
came out to the spring, and a party had gathered in this pleasant
spot, consisting of Don Joaquín Onésimo, Leon Roch and Federico
Cimarra, who was sitting astride on his chair and making it creak
and groan as he seesawed.
“Do you know Leon what ails Fúcar’s daughter?”
“She left the drawing-room early last evening; she must be ill.” And
having thus spoken Leon sat looking at the ground.
“But her complaint is a very strange one, as the marquis says,”
added Onésimo. “Consider the symptoms. As you know, she collects
china; last month, on her way back from Paris, she spent two days
at Arcachon, and the Count de la Reole’s daughters gave her three
pieces of Palissy-ware. They are considered handsome; to me they are
no better than common crockery. Besides these she brought from Paris
eight specimens of Dresden so fine and delicate you can hardly feel
their weight. Well, Pepa’s whole mind seemed set on these precious
works of art; she talked of nothing but her china. She took them out
to look at, fifty times a day. And then--this morning she collected
all this rubbish, went up to the topmost room in the hotel, opened
the window and flung them into the court-yard, where they broke in a
thousand pieces.”
Federico looked at Leon who merely said: “Yes, so I heard.”
“Yesterday evening,” Onésimo went on, “when we were returning from
the Grotto--where, by the way, there is no more to be seen than in
my bed-room--one of the large pearls dropped out of her earring. We
hunted for it, and at last I found it close to a stone. I stooped to
pick it up, as was natural, but she was quicker than I was; she set
her foot on it and crushed it, saying: ‘Of what use is it?’--Then,
they say, she tore up some costly laces. But did not you see her last
night in the drawing-room? I could swear she is out of her mind.”
Neither Leon nor Cimarra made any reply.
“I can tell you one thing,” continued the intelligent official,
“the man who marries the damsel will have hard work with her. What
bringing up! my dear fellow what training! Her father, who knows
the value of money uncommonly well himself, has never taught her
the difference between a bank-note and a copper piece. She is a
real treasure is the Señorita de Fúcar! I had heard that she was
capricious, extravagant and had the most preposterous and outrageous
fancies you can imagine. Poor husband--and poor father! If she were
only pretty; but she is not even that.--She will vex Don Pedro at
last.--And no one listens when I thunder and declaim against these
modern and foreign fashions which have spoiled all the modesty of
our Spanish women--all their christian humility; their delightful
ignorance, their love for a retired and domestic life, their
indifference to luxury, their sobriety in dress, their neatness and
economy. Only look at the hussies that are the result of modern
civilisation. I quite understand the dread of matrimony which is
spreading among us and which, if it is not checked, will compel the
government to pass a law for betrothals and a law for marriages and
create a president over bachelors.”
“But, bless me!” cried Cimarra, slapping Leon on the shoulder. “Here
is the man who can tell us all about Pepa’s eccentricities, for he
has known her ever since they were both children.”
Leon answered coldly:
“Whether Pepa’s attacks or eccentricities consist in breaking china
or destroying her ornaments, it matters little after all. Her father
is rich enough--enormously rich and richer every day.”
“On the subject,” said the phœnix of the bureaux, “of the immense
wealth of Fúcar, the most characteristic thing ever said, was spoken
by our friend here, who is a man of epigrams.”
“I? I never said anything, not a word about Don Pedro,” declared
Federico with becoming modesty.
“Nay, nay, biting tongue! Was it not you who said at Aldearrubia’s
house--I heard it myself--_apropos_ of Fúcar’s vast fortune: ‘We must
have a new formula in political economy: National bankruptcy is the
fount of riches?’”
“But that might be said of so many men,” remarked Leon.
“Of so very many,” Cimarra hastened to add. “If Fúcar has amassed
a fortune at the expense of the public treasury--as they say he
has?--then I say: so far as the augmentation of his fortune in
dealing with public moneys is concerned, he is by no means the only
man to whom the remark as to National bankruptcy applies.”
Onésimo winced; but recovering himself at once he added:
“I have heard you render a merciless account of the millions amassed
by the marquis, my dear Cimarra. But a wit is always allowed to find
fault. You need not prevaricate, though I know that at this time
you and your victim are excellent friends. Still, you described him
admirably when you said: ‘He is one of those men who make money out
of solids, liquids and gases, or--which comes to the same thing--out
of paving-stones, wine for the troops, and gas for lighting the
streets.’ The tobacco he provides by contract is a particular kind
which has the property of turning bitter in the mouth and the
advantage of being useful as timber; his rice and his beans are
equally unique, the beans are quite famous in Ceuta; the convicts
call them _Apothecary Fúcar’s sprouting pills_.”
“That is talking for talking’s sake,” replied Cimarra. “In spite of
all this I appreciate and esteem the marquis highly; he is a most
worthy man. And which of us has not, at some time or other, trodden
on a neighbour’s corns?”
“I know quite well that this is all merely in joke. In this country
everything must be sacrificed to a witticism. It is the way with us
Spaniards. We flay a man alive, and then give him our hand. I am
criticising no one in saying so--we are all alike.”
At this moment the marquis himself entered the summer-house.
“And Pepa?” asked Leon.
“She is very happy now. She passes from sadness to merriment with a
rapidity that amazes me. She was crying all the morning; she says she
is thinking of her mother, that she cannot get her mother out of her
mind--I do not understand her. Now she wants to leave this place, at
once, without waiting for me to take the baths. I did not want to
come--I detest the horrible, inconvenient hotels in this country. As
for my daughter’s freaks and follies! No sooner were we in France
than she took it into her head to come to Iturburua. I could not help
myself--Iturburua, to Iturburua Papa--What could I do? I am getting
accustomed to this vagabond life, but to tell the truth it vexes me
now just as much to go away as it did to come--to go without having
taken six baths even. For I do not believe there are any waters to
compare with these in the world.--And then where are we to go? I have
not the remotest idea, for my daughter’s vagaries make all reasonable
plans impossible. I am hardly allowed time enough to secure a saloon
carriage; Pepa is in as great a hurry to be off as she was to come.
I am to be ready at once, to-day, early to-morrow at the latest--the
mountains oppress her, the hotel is crushing her, the very sky seems
falling on her, and she hates all the visitors, and it is killing
her--suffocating her....”
While Don Pedro was thus pouring out his paternal troubles, his
three friends sat silent; only Onésimo now and again murmured a few
commonplaces about nervous irritation, the result, as he stated, of
some strange influences to which the fairer half of humanity are
exposed. The marquis took Cimarra’s arm saying:
“Come, my dear fellow, do me the favour of amusing Pepa for a short
time. At present she is very well content, but she will be bored to
the last degree in a short time. You know she always laughs at your
amusing notions; she said to me just now: ‘If only Cimarra would come
and whisper a few spiteful things about the neighbours....’ For we
all know you have a special gift that way. Come my dear fellow; she
is alone.--Good-bye gentlemen; I am carrying off this rascal, for he
is more wanted elsewhere than here.”
Don Joaquín and Leon Roch were left together.
“What do you think of Pepa?” asked Onésimo.
“That she has been very badly brought up.”
“Just so--very badly brought up.--And now I think of it, tell me: Is
it true that you are going to be married?”
“Yes--my hour is come,” said Leon with a smile.
“To María Sudre?”
“To María Sudre.”
“A very sweet girl--and what a Christian education! Honestly my good
fellow, it is more than a heretic like you deserves.” He tapped Leon
kindly on the shoulder and the men parted.
CHAPTER V.
ILLUSTRATING ANOTHER TRAIT OF SPANISH CHARACTER.
It was getting late and the dancing was beginning to flag. The
last whirling couples were gradually disappearing, as do the last
circles of a pool into which a stone has been dropped die away on
the margin; the conventional embrace which does not offend even the
most coy was finally relaxed, and at length the murderous pianist,
whose ear-splitting music inspired the dancers, consented to retire.
A fair visitor however took his place and endeavoured to prolong the
entertainment by wringing a doleful _Notturno_ from the chords of
the instrument--the most dreary and dismal form of second-rate music
ever devised. This parade of lamentation however was happily short,
for the mothers were out of patience and the gay groups of girls
began to move away across the polished floor. The legs of the chairs
creaked and clattered on the boards; with the babble of young voices
mingled a hollow chorus of coughing, and the fair bevy threaded their
way through the door where their exit was impeded by a knot of the
elderly men--the orators, lawyers and politicians who were the glory
and lustre of the company at the hotel.
In the next room the clink of the counters as they changed hands
at the card-tables made a noise like that of false teeth gnashing
and chattering. The coughing and throat clearing increased as the
older people followed the young ones out of the dancing room, and
the little tumult of youthful chatter mingled with the sad sighing
undertone of premature decrepitude which seems to afflict the flower
of the younger generation spread along the wide corridor, mounted
the stairs, and died away by degrees in the different rooms of the
many-celled phalanstery. An ingenious fancy might have likened it to
a vast organ in which, after every sound had been roused to symphony,
each note, deep or shrill, sank back into its own pipe again.
In the card-room sat the Marqués de Fúcar, reading the newspapers.
His invariable attitude when engaged in this patriotic exercise was
one of perfect rigidity; he held the paper almost at arm’s-length,
while a pair of glasses assisted his sight, riding on the tip of his
nose and pinching his nostrils. If he wanted to look at anything but
his paper, he did it over the top of the glasses or with a furtive
glance on each side. He was very apt to laugh aloud whilst reading,
for he was keenly alive to a joke--more particularly when the point
of it--as is not uncommon in a newspaper--was not only palpable but
envenomed. Two other gentlemen were also reading, and four or five
were engaged in conversation, lolling at their ease on the lounges.
Federico Cimarra, after walking up and down two or three times
outside, with his hands in his pockets, came into the card-room at
the moment when the marquis laid down his last newspaper, and taking
his _pince-nez_ off his nose, closed them up and stowed them away
carefully in his waistcoat pocket.
“What a country this is!” exclaimed the great merchant, his face
still beaming with a smile at the last epigram he had read. “Do
you know, Cimarra, what strikes me? Every one here speaks ill of
political men, of the ministers, of the employés, of Madrid--but I
begin to think that Madrid and the ministers and all the ruck of
politicians--as they call them, are the pick of the nation. The
representatives are bad enough, but the electors are worse.”
“Then everything is bad together,” said Federico, with the cold
philosophy which is the sarcasm of a worn-out heart and an atrophied
intellect, united to dwell in a sickly frame. “Equally bad--and
nothing to choose from.”
“And at the bottom of all the mischief is laziness.”
“Laziness! That is as much as to say the national idiosyncracy--the
very Spirit of Spain. Yes I say: Laziness, thy name is Spain. We have
a great deal of smartness--so I hear; I do not perceive it anywhere.
We are all alike; we hide I believe....”
“Oh! if only we had a government that would give a spur to industry
and labour....”
Cimarra put on a very grave face; it was his way of making fun of his
neighbours.
“Labour!--Why we scarcely know how to weave homespun cloth;
hemp-shoes are fast disappearing; our home-made water-jars
are growing quite scarce and even our brooms are brought from
England.--Still, we can fall back upon Agriculture; that is the
favourite theory with all these fools. There is not an idiot in the
country who will not talk to you of agriculture. I should like them
to tell me what agriculture you can have without irrigation, how you
can have irrigation without rivers, or rivers without forests, or
forests without men to plant them and look after them--and how are
you going to get men when there are no crops? It is a vicious circle
from which there is no issue--no escape! My dear Marquis, it is a
matter of race I tell you.--It is one of the few things which are of
the nature of primary truth: the fatality of inheritance. We have
nothing to rely upon but communism supported by the Lottery--that
is our future. The State must take the national wealth into its own
hands and distribute it by means of raffles.
“What--you are astonished? But you will live to see it, take my
word for it. Why it is a splendid idea--and as good a theory as any
other. Ask your friend Don Joaquín Onésimo, who is a beacon-light of
knowledge in such matters, and who, in my opinion, has one of the
best heads that ever thought in Spain.”
“Is he here?” said Fúcar laughing and looking round. “He should come
and hear your theory.”
“He is discussing social science with Don Francisco Cucúrbitas, an
equally great man according to the Spanish standard. He is one of
these men who are always talking a great deal about administration
and management which simply means expedients. What would this world
become but for expedients! The Almighty created these gentlemen for
the express purpose of preaching social Quietism; and they might
do worse. My scheme of communism and lotteries will float, my dear
Sir. The taxes will bring the money, the lotteries will redistribute
it.--By Jupiter! Do you know my friend we might have a very snug
little game here.” And before Fúcar could answer Federico went to the
door to call the men who were still in the next room; then returning
to the marquis, he took a pack of cards out of his pocket and spread
them on the table; they lay in a curve, overlapping each other, like
an angular serpent.
“Here too!” exclaimed Fúcar with some annoyance.
Cimarra went back to the drawing-room where the lights were now
being put out and presently four other men came in at his request.
Only Leon Roch remained walking up and down the darkened room. After
speaking a few words to the waiter, Cimarra took the young man’s arm
and walked with him for a few minutes. The words that passed between
them were somewhat sharp; however, Leon at length went up to his room
from which, in a few minutes he returned.
“Here--vampire!” he said contemptuously to his friend, filling his
hand with gold coin;--and then he was alone again.
Looking into the card-room he could see the group in the
centre,--six men, some of whom bore names not unknown to fame among
their countrymen. One or two, to be sure enjoyed not a very enviable
reputation; but there were others too who had gained credit by their
splendid speeches, amply spiced with high-sounding words on social
anarchy and the national vice of indolence. Of them all the Marqués
de Fúcar was the only one who played for the sake of the game and
shuffled the cards with a frank smile and a jest at each turn of
fortune. Cimarra dealt--he had his hat on, his brows were knit, his
eyes sparkled keenly with an expression at once alert and absorbed,
a solemn look of divination--or idiocy? His thin lips murmured
inarticulate syllables, which an uninitiated bystander might have
taken for some formula of invocation to call a spirit up. It was the
jargon of the professional gambler who keeps up a running dialogue
with the cards as they slip through his hands, sometimes growling,
sometimes only breathing hard, as they alternately smile upon him or
mock him with impish grimaces.
The contest with Chance is one of the maddest and fiercest battles
in which the human mind ever engages. Chance, which is neither
more nor less than an incessant and incalculable contradiction of
facts, is never tired out; we can never meet her face to face, and
to defy her is folly. She is as nimble and supple as a tiger, she
fells and clutches her prey, while her favours--if by a whim she
bestows them--light a flame in her victim’s soul that consumes him
from within. His brain reels and he raves in dreams like those
of the drunkard--for a vague picture of the Gorgon with whom he
is contending takes possession of him and reduces him to bestial
madness. Fighting in the dark, desperately and wildly, the gambler is
the victim of a hideous incubus; he finds himself started in an orbit
of torturing unrest, like a stone flung off into measureless space.
And at each deal the marquis would say:
“Gentlemen, it is getting late--it is time to go to bed. It is good
to have a little amusement--but we must not have too much of a good
thing. We must not exaggerate.”
CHAPTER VI.
PEPA.
Leon Roch having seen enough, left the house. A calm mild night
invited him to walk along the terrace where there was not a living
soul to be seen, and not a sound to be heard but the croaking of
the toads. After pacing the avenue to the end and back for the
second time, he thought he discovered a figure at one of the nearest
ground-floor windows. It was in white, a woman beyond a doubt, whose
arm rested on the sill, above which she was visible as a half-length.
Leon went towards her and perceiving that she did not move, he went
quite near. She might have been carved in marble but for her black
hair and a slight motion of her hand among the leaves of a plant that
grew near.
“Pepa?” he said.
“Yes, Pepa--I have turned romantic and am gazing at the stars. To be
sure, there is not a star to be seen--but it is all the same.”
“It is a very dark night; I did not recognise you,” said Leon,
putting his hand on the top of the window railing. “The damp air is
not good for you. Why do you not shut the window? It is of no use to
wait for your father. That rascally Cimarra has got him to gamble and
they are all quite happy--Go indoors.”
“It is so hot inside!”
The night was in fact pitch dark and Leon could not see the girl’s
face; but he could study the tone of her voice, for the voice is
singularly treacherous. Pepa’s voice quavered. Her head, leaning
on one side, rested against the window-frame. In her hand she held
a flower with a long stem--Leon thought it was a rose. She kept
raising it to her lips and biting off a petal which she blew off
again. Leon noted the situation and understood that it was the moment
to say something appropriate, but he racked his brain in vain; he
could think of nothing, and so he said nothing. Both were silent;
Leon quiet and motionless, both his hands resting on the cold iron
railing, Pepa pulling out the rose petals and blowing them away.
“I hear strange stories of your whims and fancies, Pepa,” he said at
last, thinking that he might presently say something to the point,
if he began by saying something foolish. “You break your china, you
tear your lace....”
“And what a specimen she is!” cried Pepa interrupting him with a
bitter laugh that made Leon shudder. “The poor lady is never to be
seen except in church! You do not understand!--You seem to have lost
your wits. I am speaking of your future mother-in-law, the marquesa
de Tellería. When I was stopping at Ugoibea I had a fancy to see
her. They told me all the nonsense she talked about me. The usual
thing--that I am badly brought up, that I am wildly extravagant,
that my manners are too free, and my style of dress disgusting--yes,
disgusting. But the poor woman herself has been so very different
ever since she began to lose her beauty--Besides, you see, she cannot
live such a worldly life now that she has such a saintly son--for of
course you know that Luis Gonzaga, your María’s twin brother who is
at the college of the Sacred Heart at Puyóo, is said to be a perfect
angel in a cassock? Why, my dear fellow, you are going to live in the
very courts of Heaven! Your mother-in-law even wears a hair shirt.
You do not believe me? But I know it--her lovers say so....” And Pepa
blew away a rose petal which fell on Leon’s forehead.
“Pepa,” he said with some annoyance, “I do not like to hear any
friend of mine speak in that way of a respectable family....”
“But _they_ may talk of me! _They_ may call me violent and crazy and
I must not say a word. Of course! Everything I do is ill-manners,
wild behaviour, ignorance, insolence....! Change the subject then. I
am very sorry never to have seen your future Saint Mary face to face.
They say she is very elegant-looking--she always was. But she goes
out very little at Ugoibea; she and her fool of a mother only walk
out together to get fresh air. They say they give themselves no end
of airs;--however, you are rich and the marquis--they say he is the
only idiot known who has failed to get a place in the government.”
“Pepa, Pepa, for pity’s sake do not talk so wildly; you really hurt
me deeply with your heedless speeches.” Pepa pulled at the rose which
was now much reduced.
“But you see I am badly brought up,” she retorted bitterly. “And now
people are discovering that I have no heart, that I am spiteful,
rebellious, and capricious....”
“That is not the truth; but you should not behave so that people
cannot believe it.”
“Much I care what people believe. Do I want any thing they can give
me?”
“You are too proud.”
“And they say I shall never find a man of any sense to marry me!” she
went on with the same angry laugh, which seemed almost convulsive.
“As if there were such a thing as a man of sense. Well, I am not one
of those girls who pretend to be very meek and goody-goody just to
catch a husband; and I can tell you one thing: I will never marry
a learned man--I loathe a _savant_. Perfect happiness for a woman
consists in having heaps of money and marrying a fool.”
“I see you are in the mood to talk at random to-night,” said Leon
pleasantly. “But you do not mean what you say, and your sentiments
are better than your words.”
His eyes had by this time become accustomed to the darkness, or the
night was perhaps a little clearer; Leon could, at any rate, make out
Pepita Fúcar’s face against the black interior behind her like the
dim blurred outline of an old picture. The whiteness of her skin,
her chestnut hair, the brilliancy of her small eyes, where in each
pupil burned a tiny spark, the pout of her parted lips and the savage
whiteness of her teeth as she still blew away the rose-petals, above
all her petulant air made her seem almost pretty, though in fact she
was very far from it.
“You might make other people fancy that you were as wild as you
pretend to be,” Leon went on, “but I know you better. I have known
you since we were children together, and I know you have a good
heart. A good mother would have taught you some things you sadly lack
and have corrected some faults of manner which make you appear worse
than you are; but you have been neglected as a child and now when you
are growing up your father has suddenly flung you into the world in
a perfect vortex of luxury, folly and riches. You know, better than
I, what a state of confusion your household is in--even strangers
cannot help reminding you that you are spending at the rate of three
months’ income in a week, while your father is too entirely absorbed
in making money to think of anything but business. Poor Pepita--so
rich and so lonely! I can quite understand all the vagaries which
the outside public comment on so severely; I can excuse you--yes,
quite excuse you. First you built a hot-house in the garden; then
you had it moved to the other side--then you gave up your plants and
began to collect china--then bronzes, carvings, old stuffs, what not,
and sold them again for a quarter of what they had cost you. They
say you established a photographer in your house that he might take
views of the garden and portraits of the horses, and all the time you
never looked into a single book unless it were some silly almanac or
rubbishy novel.
“You are charitable I know, for you are tender-hearted; but Pepa, in
what a foolish way! A woman comes to you for help to get masses said;
you put two thousand reales into her hand. The same day comes the
widow of a bricklayer who has died of an accident while at work on
your house, and you give her only a dollar. You have no idea of the
magnitude and proportion of the needs and miseries of the poor.
“Poor Pepita--do not wonder at my speaking to you so harshly; it
is out of a sincere desire for your good. I speak as your brother
might--a brother who wishes to see you wiser and happier.--I tremble
for you Pepita; I dread lest hard and bitter experience should
teach you, by some awful shock, these realities of life of which
you are still ignorant. It really troubles me to see you go so far
astray--so lonely too in the midst of your wealth, and to be unable
to help you; for our roads lie apart. But I feel for you deeply,
and if I may speak to you truly I pity you, yes--I pity you. I
admire and esteem you greatly; I can never forget that we have been
play-fellows--nay--why should we deny it?--that as boy and girl we
had a warmer liking, though a transient one, and that the outside
world imagined we were lovers.--All this I can never forget. I have
always been, and always shall be your best friend.”
Pepa bit furiously at the stem of the flower, and snatching off the
few remaining leaves she almost spit them away again. One or two fell
on the young man’s beard. Pepa put her handkerchief to her mouth.
“Bleeding!” exclaimed Leon, seizing the hand that held it.
“A thorn has pricked my lips,” said Pepa, in such a choked voice that
Leon Roch was startled and grieved. After a short pause the girl
spoke again:
“Do you know,” said she, “that your household will be a funny one?”
“Why?”
Pepa had clasped her hands to stop the beating of her heart.
“Because when your brother-in-law, Luis Gonzaga, who is preparing to
be a missionary, begins to preach on one side, and you begin to utter
heresies on the other, you will be a match for each other. Leon, I
tell you plainly, you are an insufferable prig and your learning
makes me sick.”
“But I happen to know that your real opinion of me is a more
flattering one.”
Pepa leaned out over the balcony and Leon felt her breath on his
face; it seemed to scorch him like a passing flame.
“A man who has studied nothing but stones is an idiot,” said Pepa
with a bitter accent.
“There I agree with you--Come, dear Pepa, be friends with a man who
has a true and frank regard for you. Give me your hand.”
Pepa started to her feet.
“Give me your hand and say good-bye. Do you not feel in your heart
that some day you will want me--perhaps to give you some honest
advice, perhaps even some help, such as mortals must ask of each
other in the shipwrecks of life.”
Pepa angrily flung away the spray she still held, and it struck Leon
on the forehead. He started as if he had been lashed with a whip.
“I--want you!” she exclaimed. “What conceit! Upon my word you must
have lost your senses. It is more likely that I shall one day meet
a pompous prig with a simpleton on his arm and ask: ‘Pray who is
this?’--say good-bye?--Good-bye; and whether it is till to-morrow or
for all eternity, it is all the same to me.”
“As you please,” said Leon putting out his hand. “Good-bye. You are
off to-morrow with your father. I shall not be going to Madrid at
present. We may not meet for some time.”
Pepa turned away and disappeared in the darkness of the room; Leon
gazed after her but could see nothing. A faint perfume--as subtle as
a dream was all the trace the Marquesita de Fúcar had left as she
quitted the window.
“Pepa, Pepilla!” he called in a coaxing tone. But there was no reply,
no sound, no sign from the darkness within. Presently, however, he
heard a low sob. He remained some time calling her name at intervals,
but receiving no answer. Still he heard the sighing, betraying that
in the depths of that blackness lurked a sorrow.
At last he went away slowly and softly--as stealthily as a criminal
and as gloomily as an assassin.
CHAPTER VII.
TWO MEN AND THEIR SCHEMES IN LIFE.
He stumbled over a root and at the same time felt a heavy hand laid
on his shoulder, with the words: “Your money or your life.”
“Leave me in peace,” said Leon shaking off his friend and walking on.
But Cimarra put his hand through his arm and held him so that he was
forced to spin round on one foot. Their tottering gait, and their
position, arm in arm, might have led a spectator to fancy that the
pair were tipsy; but this evil suspicion would have been dissipated
by Cimarra’s next speech as he said, very gravely and with an accent
of reproof in his harsh metallic voice:
“I have had desperate ill-luck! I am distinguishing myself greatly in
Iturburua.”
“Let me be, gamester!” said Leon angrily shaking the arm his
companion was holding. “I am not in the humour for jesting--and do
not intend to lend you any more money. Has the Marqués de Fúcar left
the table?”
“He is just going to his room. I never saw a man have such crushing
good-luck. This is the way with the country--to-night I represent the
country. Alas! poor Spain!--Solés has won enormously; since they made
him governor of a province he has had tremendous luck; his victims
are Fontán, X---- and I. But it is early yet. Leon, go up and fetch
some more shot from the locker.”
Leon did not reply; his mind was disturbed; but his thoughts were
far from the ignoble ideas which agitated his companion. Instead of
going upstairs as Federico had asked him, he went with him into the
card-room. One of the ‘victims’ was snoring on a sofa; the other
was saying good-night, with a voice and demeanour that did justice
to a diabolical temper; but he did not hurry himself and wrapped up
elaborately, as a protection against the night air.
The two friends were left alone.
“I shall not play,” said Leon shortly.
Cimarra, knowing Leon Roch’s tenacious nature resigned himself to his
fate, and seating himself by the table he took up the cards and began
turning them over in his slender and exquisitely-kept hands. A large
ring on his little finger reflected a pale light from the lamp, by
this time burning low, and with his eyes fixed on the pack, he dealt
and shuffled and shuffled and dealt so as to make an infinite variety
of combinations. The cards seemed plastic in his hands and obedient
to his touch.
“It is not my fault--it is not my fault!” muttered Leon gloomily
from the corner of a sofa on which he had dropped, evidently much
disturbed and agitated.
“What is not your fault?” asked Federico looking up in amazement.
“Something has gone wrong with you old fellow--where have you been?”
“No--there is nothing the matter with me; I cannot tell you what
has gone wrong. It is a strange sensation, a kind of remorse--and
yet, no, not remorse for I have done nothing wrong--it is a pain, a
regret--But you would not understand even if I were to explain it to
you; you are a libertine; your feelings are depraved, your heart is
dead, your emotions are all selfish and sensual.”
“Much obliged I am sure. If I am unworthy of a friend’s
confidence....”
“Friend! you are not my friend.--No friendship can subsist between
us two. Chance made us friends in childhood, but our natures have
made us indifferent to each other. In that atmosphere of frivolity,
of mere superficial virtue, if not of actual corruption in which you
have your being I can neither move nor breathe. My poor father’s
vanity flung me into its midst; his devotion to me led him into many
follies and illusions. He--who had made his fortune by the sweat of
his brow in a chocolate factory--wanted to make a fine gentleman of
his son, a finikin and aristocratic creature such as he pictured in
his deluded fancy. ‘Be a marquis,’ said he, ‘enjoy yourself; ride
your horses to death, drive your carriage, make love to other men’s
wives, marry into a noble family. Get into the Ministry, make a noise
in the world, let your name stand at the head of every list.’--These
were not his words, but that was what he wanted.”
Leon was too excited to sit still and he stood up as he spoke. There
are times when we must give vent to our thoughts lest they should
gather into so heavy a cloud as to darken the brain with a dense fog
of murky smoke.
“And what is the end of all this?” asked Federico with some disgust.
“Talk no more nonsense, but come and....”
“I say all this to you because I have made up my mind to desert.
The inhabitants of the social sphere into which my father insisted
on bringing me, I find simply unendurable. I cannot breathe this
air; all my surroundings depress and weary me--the people I meet,
their actions, their manners, their language--their very feelings,
though they are all well regulated, and in the very best taste. It
positively saddens me to look on at the extravagant fancies, the
capricious or sickly sentiment which possesses every mind that is not
sunk in selfish indifference.”
“You are energetic in your denunciation,” said Cimarra, laughing
at his friend’s emphatic _tirade_. “Something serious has happened
to you Leon; you have had some sudden blow. This evening you were
calm, reasonable, friendly, a little sad perhaps, with the peevish
melancholy of a man who is engaged to be married and who is eight
leagues away from his lady-love--and then, all of a sudden, I meet
you in the promenade, agitated and excited--you blurt out a few
incoherent words, and I see you are pale, with an expression--how
shall I describe it.--Whom have you been talking to?” And as he spoke
he gazed at him curiously, but without ceasing to shuffle the cards.
“I have nothing to tell you,” said Leon, already more composed, “but
that as I am tired I will cut the matter short. I intend henceforth
to mould my life on my own pattern, as the birds build their nests
where their instinct leads them. I have laid my plans with the calm
reason of a practical man--eminently and strictly practical.”
“Ah--well, I have heard it said that the whole race of practical men
is the veriest set of dolts on the face of the earth.”
“I have laid my plans,” continued Leon, paying no heed to his
friend’s interruption. “I am going straight on with it--straight
ahead. It will not disappoint me; I have thought of it a great deal,
and have weighed the _pros_ and _cons_ with the accuracy of a chemist
who weighs the elements of a compound, drop by drop. I know what my
aim is--a lofty and a noble one, tending to the good of society and
of humanity, advantageous to my prospects as a man, to the health of
body and mind alike.--In a word I am going to be married.” Federico
looked and listened with an expression of covert amusement.
“And in choosing my wife,” Roch went on--“I ought not to say
choosing for I fell in love like any fool--but that did not prevent
me from realising my position and calmly and coldly reviewing the
character and qualities of my future wife. It is my duty to marry
her, Federico, distinctly my duty; there I am on firm ground and
that much is beyond a doubt. María captivated me by her beauty it
is true; but that is not all--far from it. I smothered my passion,
I studied her closely and I found behind that beauty, a mind in no
respect unworthy of it. María’s goodness, her sense, her modesty,
the submissiveness of her intelligence, her exquisite ignorance of
life added to the seriousness of her tastes and instincts--all made
me feel that she was the wife for me--I will be perfectly frank with
you: her family are not at all to my liking. But what does that
matter? I can separate from my relations. I only marry my wife and
she is delightful--she has feeling and imagination, and that sweet
credulousness which is the most ductile element in human nature. Her
education has been neglected and she is as ignorant as can be; but
on the other hand, she is free from all false ideas and frivolous
accomplishments, and from those mischievous habits of mind which
corrupt the judgment and nature of the girls of our day. Do you not
think me a happy man? Do you not see that this is the very woman I
want; that I shall be able to form my wife’s character, which is the
most glorious task a man can have--form it to my own mind and on my
own image--the highest achievement I can aspire to, and the only
guarantee of a peaceful life.--Do not you think so?”
“You ask me--a hardened and selfish worldling!” said Federico
ironically. “My dear fellow you are out of your mind.”
“I ask you as I might ask this bench!” retorted Leon turning his
back contemptuously. “There are occasions in life when a man feels
that he must speak his thoughts aloud to convince himself of their
validity. It is as if I were talking to myself. You need not answer
me unless you like.--I mean to mould her in my own way. I do not want
a ready-made wife, but a wife to make. I want a woman with a firm
basis of character--strong feelings and perfect moral rectitude. Any
extensive knowledge of the world, or the absurd teaching of a girl’s
school, would hinder rather than help my purpose. I should have to
pull down too much and to build on the ruins; I should have to dig
deep down to find a safe foundation for the edifice.”
Federico had risen during this harangue and thrown down the cards:
after walking two or three times round and about Leon who had not
moved; and now, laying his hand on Roch’s shoulder, he said in a low
voice:
“Most worthy and wisest of men, we, the depraved and ignorant, look
into the future as well as you; we too lay our plans, not indeed
mathematically but perhaps with better hopes of security than you
practical men. We are apt indeed to think of the ass as a practical
animal. We do not condemn matrimony; on the contrary, we regard it
as indispensable to the progress of society and the improvement of
the condition....” He paused a few moments and then went on--“of the
condition of the individual. You will understand what I mean. We,
to be sure, are not learned and when we have fallen in love like a
schoolboy we do not make an elaborate analysis of the qualities of
the women whom we choose to be our wives. We do not aspire to form
their character; we take the article ready made, as God or the devil
has wrought it. This marrying to become a school-master is in the
very worst taste. There is something else to be thought of in these
latter days besides a woman’s character. The inequality of fortune
among human beings, and the luckless fate to which some are born,
the hideous disparity between a man’s fortune and the ‘material of
war’ which he requires to fight against and for life--the miserable
‘Struggle for existence’ as the evolutionists have it--that is what
weighs on me--the scarcity of work to be done in this accursed
country, and the impossibility of making money without having
money.--Do you hear what I say?--All these things and many others
make it necessary to look out for something besides virtue in our
future brides.”
“What?”
Cimarra shook his hands as if he were clinking coin.
“Cash,” he said, “hard cash and ready.” Cimarra talked the mongrel
language of a man of fashion, mixing the style of an orator with the
slang of a gambler, and quotations in foreign languages with the low
blasphemies of a street boy, which shall not be recorded here.
“Life,” he went on, “is getting more difficult every day. It is all
very well for rich folks like you to send moral platitudes flying
about the world, and never to feel a base desire or harbour a thought
that is not the quintessence of the purest ether. However, we need
not exaggerate, as Fúcar is so fond of saying. I maintain that what
sanctimonious fools call filthy lucre may be a potent element of
morality. I, for example....”
“You! And what are you an example of pray?”
“I was going to say that I, if I found myself the possessor of a
fortune, should be a model gentleman, and might even be known to
posterity as the Illustrious Cimarra. For is it not a matter of
course, a phrase ready coined?--Tom, Dick and Harry are Illustrious
nowadays.”
“Though you may try to conceal it, I see some remains of shame in
you,” said Roch. “Your laxity of morals is not as great as you try to
make the world believe.”
“Everything is relative, as my friend Fontán always says in jest,”
replied Federico shrugging his shoulders. “You cannot judge off-hand,
in that light and easy way, of a man like me who lives with the
rich and is poor himself. Get that well into your head. I talk to
you with perfect frankness. My projects after all are as yet merely
visions--sketches, my dear fellow. We shall see--I flatter myself I
have made a good beginning. Time will show. Some day perhaps when you
have quite forgotten me, lost in the bliss of pedagogic matrimony,
you may hear that that reprobate Cimarra has found a wife. We all
have to come to it--sooner or later. Even a poor devil like me has
his schemes and his philosophy. We are all tortoises together, but
some have more shell to cover them than I have.--Do not take it into
your head that I am indifferent to the moral graces of my wife--nor
that I propose to marry a monster. I shall have a virtuous wife, my
learned friend, thoroughly respectable, take my word for it, and a
fine family of children and grand-children.”
“Then you have made your choice.”
“I have.--But I must warn you that I make no great point of personal
beauty. I am not like you; I have a soul above being caught by a
pair of fine eyes and a mouth that time can only spoil. Beauty is
only skin deep. It lasts, as the poet says ‘_l’espace d’un matin_.’
But she has a pleasant and attractive expression, _distingué_
manners, a quantum of dignity, a quantum of liveliness, wit and even
_chic_--Education? Well nothing much to speak of, but we do not
intend to set up for Professors. She has a great deal of good in her
with a spice of the devil too; she has wild ways occasionally, freaks
of temper, habits of extravagance....”
Leon turned pale and fixed a gloomy eye on his companion.
“What do I care if she smashes a lot of rubbishy plates, or cuts a
Murillo into strips, or makes mince-meat of her lace? There are some
things in which no husband should interfere.”
Leon sat staring dully at the green cloth of the table on which he
had propped his elbows.
“Mercy, how the time goes, man!” he exclaimed rising abruptly and
throwing open the window. “It is day!”
The white dawn fell into the room and its light fell on two pale and
haggard faces. The dying lamp still burnt forlorn and dingy; a long
sooty flame flared up the chimney, smelling detestably.
“What a life--by way of recovering one’s health!” said Leon.
Outside, the sky was gray and rainy, a dismal background to the
gloomy faces of the two men who had been up all night. Leon stood
a few minutes, lost in that vague meditation which leaves no mark
on the mind in moments of extreme fatigue, a state half-way between
dreaming and suffering, when it is hard to be sure whether we are
sleeping or only enduring. Federico gazed at his friend who stood
the living image of melancholy; everything about him was black--his
dress, his hair and his beard; his handsome features, and clear
olive skin were marked with dark lines for want of sleep. His fine
forehead, dignified though charged with painful doubts, might suggest
a lowering and threatening sky where the light of day was hidden
behind a shroud of clouds.
Suddenly he turned to Cimarra and said:
“Well, I wish you luck!”
“I wish I could get a little rest,” said Federico. “I am simply dying
for want of sleep; but I must start at once with Fúcar.”
“You are going too?”
“Did I not tell you?--Yes, they made a point of my going with them.
We are getting on you see--like a house on fire!”
Cimarra emphasised his words with a cunning smile.
“_Bon voyage!_” said Leon turning his back on him.
At this juncture they heard the rumble of the Fúcars’ carriage coming
up to convey the travellers to the station of Iparraicea. Federico
rushed up to his room to prepare to start, and for a short time the
hotel was full of the bustle that always accompanies the arrival or
departure of guests--the dragging of luggage, the chatter of boys and
the calling of servants. Leon did not stir from the card-room, and
even when he heard the voices of Fúcar and his daughter at breakfast
in the dining-room, he did not care to go out and bid them farewell.
In half an hour an omnibus was sent off, packed with servants and
baggage, and the travelling-carriage followed with the Fúcars and
Cimarra. Leon saw the first vehicle pass close by the window and
before the second could come past he turned away, put his hands into
his pockets and walked to the opposite corner of the room.
“What need I care?” he muttered to himself. “It is no fault of mine.”
Then he went out into the hall, where the most inveterate bathers
were beginning to put in an appearance, in motley deshabille. The
bath servants, with their aprons tucked up, went into the dens where
yawned the marble vats; through the doors came the noise of the
bubbling mineral water and the swish of the brooms in the baths,
with a strong whiff of sulphur. He loitered down to the avenue and
seeing in the distance the two carriages slowly mounting the hill of
Arcaitzac, he could not help saying to himself with a sigh: “Alas,
for those who have no control over their imagination!”
For a couple of hours he lay down to sleep, and at nine o’clock
took a place in the coach that was starting for Ugoibea. His whole
appearance was altered; he looked the happiest man on earth.
CHAPTER VIII.
MARÍA EGYPTIACA.
Several months had passed since that spring season by the sea; Leon
Roch--on the appointed day, at the appointed hour, and in the
appointed church--had been duly married, without any hindrance to the
fulfilment of the plan he had made. His soul was full of the calm
satisfaction which steals over it softly and silently like the breath
of spring; a peace which brings refreshment and not intoxication,
and which, as it is innocent of excess, never satiates the heart,
and so leaves no aftertaste of tedium. Leon, as a philosopher and a
student of nature, thought that nothing could be better and wished
for nothing more. His wife’s beauty had improved wonderfully since
her marriage and in these additional charms the husband discovered an
appropriate tribute paid by nature to an union so judiciously planned
in theory and wrought out in practice.
“We form a compound being,” he would say, “each the complement of the
other, and it is hard sometimes to say whether the image produced is
mine or hers, our feelings are so intimately blended.”
María’s affection for him, which at first had been bashful and
cold as that of a well brought up Cupid who has just had his eyes
unbandaged, was soon as ardent as he could wish. The passion, that at
first had sat shyly behind a blind, soon peeped out, with its flaming
torch, its ambrosial chalice and its chain of yearning anxieties,
choking its victim with the pain of a too great happiness; so that
for some time her husband forgot his educational schemes, though, in
his more lucid moments, his common-sense reminded him that it would
be needful to put them into practice and realise the effects of his
very superior system. By degrees he recovered his habitual equanimity
and his excited feelings subsided into the subordinate place which he
had always assigned to them as compared with his intellect. At last
he felt like a man who wakes from a long dream; he regarded his mind
as a wide and fruitful territory which has been for a time drowned
out by an inundation, and where, as the waters subside, at first the
highest points become visible, then the hills and at last the plains.
“This will pass away,” he said to himself, “it must. When the land is
clear I will attack the dreaded subject and begin to mould”--he was
fond of this form of speech--“to mould María’s character. It is of
exquisite clay, but formless--almost formless.”
Leon Roch’s young wife was slightly and elegantly-built, every part
in such perfect proportion that a sculptor could have hoped for no
better model. Her hair was black and her skin white with very little
colour, giving such refinement to her grave, fervent expression
that all her admirers were her lovers and envied her husband his
happiness. It was not a face of Spanish type, and the outline of her
profile was an uncommon one in our country, for it was that of the
Athenian goddess, so rare here though occasionally met with, even
in Madrid. Her eyes were large and open, of a sea-blue colour with
changing tawny lights, and their gaze had a sentimental serenity
which might have been thought insipid among a crowd of black eyes,
firing endless volleys of flashing glances. But María’s looks gained
her the reputation of being proud rather than stupid, her lips were
brilliantly red, her throat slender, her figure round, and her hands
small and “moulded of soft flesh” like those of Melibea. She spoke
in measured tones with a sort of deliberate plaintiveness that went
to the souls of her hearers; she laughed but little--so little that
it added to her reputation of pride, and she was so reserved in
her friendships that in fact she had no friends. Even while quite
a child she had always been credited with so much good sense that
her parents themselves regarded her as the choicest production of
their illustrious race, throughout the whole course of its glorious
existence. To this almost superhuman beauty--this woman, in whose
form and face were combined, as in a perfect æsthetic union, all the
charms of antique sculpture, Leon Roch, after ten months of a most
platonic engagement, found himself married. Love at first sight had
enslaved him: he had met her and spoken to her at a court ball, when
she, having only recently been presented, was at that wondering and
budding stage when a girl’s beauty still bears the stamp of innocence
and still blushes with the reflection of the rosy dawn of infancy.
Leon fell in love like a country swain, to his shame be it whispered,
and he was himself astonished to find that his theodolite and his
blow-pipe had turned to a shepherd’s crook and pipe in his hands. Did
he see anything in his wife beyond her uncommon beauty? What share
had his heart in this dream of ecstasy? It would be amusing indeed if
he, whose boast it was that he was master of his imagination, should
find that it had fairly run away with him.
María had been brought up on an estate near Avila by her maternal
grandmother, a woman of great tenacity and determination, who talked
a great deal about her principles without ever defining what they
were or in what they differed from those of her neighbours. Under the
protection of this very superior woman, who, at the age of sixty,
made up her mind to renounce the vanities of the world for the narrow
life of a country house--fashion and society for the dull solitude of
a desert--and the _chronique scandaleuse_ of Madrid for the gossip
of a village--María learnt her first lessons. She could read well,
write badly and say her creed and catechism without missing a comma.
Beyond a few notions of grammar and geography, which were infused
by a governess of unusual learning, she knew nothing else whatever.
However, as she grew older, María, as she turned over the leaves of
the books she happened to meet with, gained some items of knowledge
on such subjects as do not require any very high degree of intellect.
Her companion during these years passed in the wilderness was her
twin brother, Luis Gonzaga. Their grandmother worshipped them both
and called them “her death sighs,” because she declared that at her
last hour, if they could but stand by her side, she would be able to
lift up her last thoughts to God with purer devotion.
The two children were inseparable, sharing their games and their
lessons, their bread and cheese at luncheon, and their grandmother’s
caresses. They would walk arm-in-arm along the horrible lanes of
Avila, and would sit at night, with their heads close together,
to count the stars, which shine more brightly in that part of the
country than anywhere else in the world. You might have heard them
saying: “you must count on that side and I will count on this--you
are not to come out of your piece of sky into mine--there, all on
this side are mine--we can each have half the sky.”
“No, no, it is all for you both,” said a clacking voice from a window
behind them. “Now, my pretties, come in to supper, it is getting
late.”
Their only reading in that remote spot consisted in the Lives of the
Saints, and the two children took the amazing narrative so deeply to
heart, with its tales of suffering, toil, and death, that all they
themselves learned to long for was to be martyrs too; and they were
possessed by the same idea that mastered St. Theresa in her infancy,
when she and her brother discussed the possibility of travelling all
over the infidel world that they might at last have their heads cut
off.
María and Luisito set out one morning for those heathen lands, fully
determined not to return--not to stop, till they should fall in
with a troop of Moors who should hew them in pieces. They lay down
to sleep that evening under shelter of a rock, where the God who
protects the innocent softly kissed their baby lips, and--betrayed
them into the hands of the night-patrol, who recognised the pair and
took them home.
That home was in a very remote spot from the rest of humanity. The
parish priest used to call them “the children of the wilderness” and
he would seat them on his knees to amuse himself with their baby
games: they would stick up their little fingers and call each by a
name, performing a kind of drama with them, known to the children of
most lands: the middle finger is a friar who comes to the door of a
convent and calls in a big voice, and the third finger answers in a
feeble squeak:
“Rat, tat!”
“Who is there?”
“Your brother, who wants to be let in.” And the end of the story
is that friar Pedro is sent off with a flea in his ear, the nuns
thrashing him with sticks, and he disappears grumbling.
At this the twins would still laugh with glee at an age when most
children begin to crave for better playthings than their own fingers;
but, as they grew up, their games lost their primitive simplicity and
their reading and their characters became more serious. Luis Gonzaga
was the delight of his seniors from his quiet good sense and his
incapacity for getting into mischief; the only fault to be found with
him was his love of solitary wanderings among the rocks, breathing
the keen and bracing air that perpetually fans our granite ramparts,
which look like the ruins of some cyclopean fortress, or the broken
teeth of a giant’s jaws from which the flesh has long since
disappeared. He delighted in being alone, and his chief ambition was
to be a goat-herd and follow the kids that spring from peak to peak
in that dead and dessicated arcadia; he heeded neither cold nor heat.
One day he was discovered lying at the foot of a pine-tree, the
solitary specimen of vegetable life within sight, that stood
melancholy, senile and leafless, as though in dismal warning, like
the motto on a tombstone: “we all must die.” The boy was writing
“something” on a scrap of paper with a black lead pencil which he
frequently moistened by putting in his mouth. It was the priest who
found him, and who took possession of the manuscript, which consisted
of a number of lines without rhyme or rhythm, devoid alike of grammar
and spelling, which made the worthy man laugh heartily--for he knew
something, if not much, of the humanities.
“This is neither verse nor prose,” he said.
No, it was neither verse nor prose; but it was poetry. These were
stanzas on the model of verses from the Bible expressing the feelings
of a contemplative nature. How the priest laughed as he read:
“When the darkness of night falls, the flocks of Heaven are scattered
over the vast blue field and watched over by the gentle angels.--
“The Lord passed by yesterday in a chariot of thunder drawn by
lightning which cast down hail and sweated rain; I trembled like a
flame in the wind and my mind was tossed like a pebble carried away
by a flood.
“I am like dried flax that catches fire, and turning to smoke, rises
from the ashes and ascends to Heaven.”
One day their grandmother rose much later than usual, her face was
flushed, her speech slow and strange, while her eyes glistened like
two old metal buttons that have been rubbed very bright. All the
servants observed to their great consternation that their mistress
talked a great deal of nonsense--not that this in itself was an
alarming novelty--but she repeated the same thing again and again,
without any interval of better sense. When the priest felt her pulse,
the good lady grasped his arm and throwing a cloak over her shoulders
exclaimed with a wild laugh:
“Let us dance, Señor Cura--come dance with me!” She dragged him round
two or three times and then suddenly fell senseless.
She only lived long enough to receive Extreme Unction.
When their grandmother was dead and buried the twins went home
to their parents, who at that time were in extremely narrow
circumstances. The boy was sent to a seminary and from thence to
France, while María, whose country manners distressed them greatly,
was sent to a college for girls. At the end of two years she emerged
from this retreat with the polish acquired in such establishments
and her mother introduced her to her circle of friends; a favourable
turn in their fortunes had now given the family of Tellería a chance
of rising from the depths of poverty and obscurity; at length the
marquesa was able to quit the apartments she so sincerely detested,
and for some time the mother and daughter were to be met constantly
in various fashionable circles. Their names were familiar on the lips
of María’s admirers and to the pens of the fashionable chronicler;
they were on view at the play and out driving; they disappeared in
the Spring to reappear with revived brilliancy in the Winter season.
Then at last came the longed-for day when María was married.
This match was regarded as a great stroke of fortune for the whole
Tellería family, whose nobility was not of the highest rank and
whose wealth was not such as to justify any extreme fastidiousness
in the selection of a son-in-law. In spite of all that may be said
to the contrary, the aristocracy of the present day have no blind
reverence for their pedigrees, and if we except half a dozen names
which, besides their historical glory, have a spotless descent, our
nobles do not hesitate to accept an alliance of which the honours are
merely substantial and to bolster up their pride by the aid of a fine
fortune; thus we see every day damsels of high degree giving their
hands--and giving them willingly--to nobles of very recent creation;
to marquisés all hot from the mint as it were; to colonial counts,
to adventurous politicians, distinguished officers and even to the
sons of industry. Modern society is blessed with a short memory; low
or inferior birth is soon a buried part of the buried past. Personal
merit in some cases, and fortune in others, effect the levelling
process with irresistible force, and society progresses with giant
steps towards equality. There is no country in the civilised world
more nearly bereft of a real aristocracy than Spain; trade, on one
hand, which marks every one plebeian, and the government, on the
other, which makes every one noble, are gradually doing away with it.
The happiness of the two young people was undisturbed for the first
few months, excepting by the shadow cast over it occasionally by
María’s relations. After a time however Leon began to think that his
wife’s anxious and suspicious affection had lasted longer than was
reasonable. This would not have been alarming but that it was allied
with an iron resistance to some of her husband’s views and feelings,
and it troubled him greatly to perceive that, without ceasing to
be devoted to him, María showed not the slightest disposition to
yield to his doctrines--not religious doctrines in any sense, for he
respected his wife’s conscience. It was a puzzling disappointment;
hers was not an embryonic nature, but a formed and stubborn
character; not a flexible wire ready to take and keep the form given
to it by a skilful manipulator, but hard set bronze which hurt his
fingers and never bent under them.
One evening, about a year after their marriage, they were together in
María’s sitting-room; they had been talking long and affectionately
on the conformity of ideas which alone can form the solid foundation
of a happy marriage; the subject being exhausted, he had opened a
book and was turning over the pages by the fire, and she had taken
her beads to pray. Suddenly she rose from her knees and coming up to
her husband she laid her hand on his shoulder.
“I have an idea,” she said, fixing her mystical gaze on his face, and
her eyes, with their strange greenish and tawny lights were curiously
soft--perhaps because they had just been raised to God--“I have an
idea that fills me with pride, Leon!”
Leon read on for a moment, finishing a paragraph, and then he turned
to his wife.
“I will tell you what it is,” she went on. “I, a mere weak woman,
utterly your inferior in many things and above all in learning, will
achieve a triumph which, you with all your superiority, can never
attain.”
Leon took her hand and kissed it three times, saying: “I am no one’s
superior, and your’s, least of all.”
“But indeed you are; and it is that which adds to my satisfaction in
my purpose.... You, you believe yourself so strong that your judgment
can radically change my character. I ... I, with only my love that is
stronger than the wisest intellect, propose to conquer your judgment
and mould it after my own image and likeness. How great a battle and
how grand a victory!”
“And how will you set to work?” asked Leon smiling, as he put his arm
round her.
“I hardly know whether to begin quite gently, by degrees ... or so,”
and as she said “so” she violently snatched the book out of her
husband’s hands and flung it in the fire which was blazing brightly.
“María!” cried Leon, startled and disconcerted, and he put out his
hand to rescue the hapless heretic. But she clung closely to his arms
so as to prevent his moving; then, kissing his forehead, she went
back to her _prie dieu_ and returned to her devotions. What was there
in his book? What in her prayers?
CHAPTER IX.
THE MARQUESA TELLERÍA.
The Tellería family occupied the whole of their house, so Leon Roch,
willing that there should be as large an expanse as possible of
the habitable globe between them, had taken a pretty house at the
furthest east end of the town. There, two years after his marriage,
we may find him.
“Good-morning, Leon.... Alone? Where is Mariquilla? Ah, at Mass of
course; I had half thought of going too--but now it is too late....
I will go to the eleven o’clock service at San Prudencio.... But
what is the matter? You are pale. Have you quarrelled?... I will sit
down a while--tell me, what did you give for those statues? They are
lovely. You have certainly a beautiful collection of bronzes.... But
tell me, are you going to put more books into this study of yours?
It is like the library of Alexandria already. Well! You are not at
all like the young men of the present day. A silly set of boys. What
will become of the world when the vicious, idle, sickly creatures who
are the ornament of society nowadays are the men of their time, I
do not know! ... However, there is a greater evil still, for if the
young men are frivolous and impudent the old ones are worse; more
vicious, more dissipated, and more indolent.... But I am forgetting
the matter--a very delicate matter--that I came to speak about, my
dear son. Sit down and listen to me for a minute or two.”
The marquesa waving a pretty hand and arm pointed to a seat close by,
and Leon, obeying her, prepared to hear what his mother-in-law had to
say.
She was a woman of good figure, who had grown suddenly old after a
prolonged youth and fallen a victim to those ravages which are severe
in proportion as they are staved off. Nevertheless, certain traces
of past beauty were still visible in the lady’s face; though her sun
was setting behind mists of paint and powder, not always judiciously
or skilfully applied, and it was not a glorious evening of life. Her
tall figure, which had formerly been dignified, was now bent, as
though in anticipation of her descent into the chill tomb, though the
steel ribs of a pair of stiff stays did what they could to buttress
up the decrepit form. Her eyes, still bright and black, were the
only living sparks in the dilapidated mass; they, from time to time,
glistened with eagerness and vivacity, reminding one of a flash of
true inspiration in the midst of the academic dulness of archaic and
commonplace ideas. Her hair, which had long since exchanged its
Andalusian blackness for Venetian gold, had now passed from Venetian
gold to a dull and powdery white. Her complexion, always coarse and
sheenless, was disguised under an artificial texture commingled
with various perfumed chemicals intended to deceive the spectator,
just as in a theatre the painted scenes simulate the greenery of
a glade and even the diaphanous purity of the sky. The effect,
successful to a certain point in embellishing the withered cheeks
of the faded beauty, failed of its result now and then, because
when she smiled the dead whiteness of the paint gave a yellow hue
to her teeth, though they were still perfectly sound and even; and
she constantly displayed them with her gracious and condescending
smile--an old habit that would need to be modified if once that
double row of ivory keys should begin to desert, like an army that
has had enough of fighting. She was always well and elegantly
dressed; she talked indefatigably, attempting--sometimes not without
success--to insinuate some more intelligent formula among the flood
of empty words that usually form the basis of conversation among such
brainless individuals.
“I am listening, Señora,” said Leon.
“I hate circumlocution,” said the lady; “and besides, María has
doubtless spoken to you on the subject. Your father-in-law is a lost
wretch....”
“Nay--that, as it strikes me, is an exaggeration. The marquis likes
amusement.... It is not an uncommon taste with men who have nothing
to do.”
“No, no. It is of no use to try to defend him. His conduct is
indefensible ... and at his age! The strange thing is that in the
prime of life he was a steady and prudent man, content to stay
quietly at home. I assure you I cannot bear to see him behave like an
elderly boy--that describes him exactly: an elderly boy! about two
years since--just about the time when you married my daughter--my
worthy husband began to go to the young men’s club; there he met
with some young fellows who turned his head; he took up a new set of
words, and a new style of dress, stayed out at night, took to gambling
... you must have noticed that he has grown quite young again; you
must have laughed, if you confess the truth, to see his efforts to
look like a boy among boys. Why, you may see him any day with some
party of dandies, fluttering like a butterfly about Madrid.--It
really is too ridiculous--with a flower in his button-hole. Only this
morning I spoke to him rather sharply about it. How he is ever to
pay his tailor I do not know for his outlay in dress is frightful to
think of! ... In short, to you, in the strictest confidence I can say
all this: the fact is my husband spends more money than he has got,
or ever will have as long as he lives. He never was economical, but,
on the other hand, he was not extravagant; he never kept any kind of
accounts but then he never let himself do a mean thing for the sake
of some impossible luxury ... and who is the victim? I--I, who after
having had always to sacrifice myself, must do so now when my health
is failing and I need care and rest and peace of mind. Oh! how I
envy the mistress of this house, and how thankfully I would accept
a corner here, even the humblest. My life is one incessant misery.
My husband spends what he has not got; Gustavo is well conducted and
careful it is true, but he has no great affection for his parents;
Leopoldo neither is, nor ever will be, good for anything, he is a
helpless being and has idle and dissipated habits in spite of all
I have done to prevent his acquiring them. I can only thank God,
who has given me so many trials, for having at the same time given
me such proofs of his mercy; for what greater pride can a mother
have than to be the parent of two such children as Luis Gonzaga and
María?--He, so devoted to his vocation, and promising, as I am told,
to be a shining light in the church; she, married to you, happy with
you, a pattern with you of perfect and harmonious union.--But what
a pity it is that you should have no children!” At this point the
marquesa, giving way to her feelings, shed a few tears, which she
promptly dried with her handkerchief before they could roll down her
cheeks. Then she went on with her description of her woes as a wife
and a mother.
She had suffered much, she explained, from her husband’s levity,
and the refractory or venial conduct of her two eldest sons had
necessitated her passing her youth, and indeed chief part of her life
in heroic efforts to avert the ruin of the family; she had indeed
given up some of her own fortune, which had been considerable; still
she had kept back the larger portion of it, and she intended to keep
it till her husband’s gallantries and her sons’ extravagance drove
her to extremities. She could not expose herself to a pinched and
miserable old age nor look forward to living on the charity of her
daughter and a rich son-in-law. Her habits, her principles, and her
dignity would not allow her to sacrifice her whole fortune to the
reckless man who had dissipated the patrimony of the Tellerías on
the green tables of the gaming houses and in the dressing-rooms of
ballet-dancers. If she were only to tell him all the things she knew!
“Yes, but I will tell you--I can say anything to you,” she exclaimed,
looking at her son-in-law with a vehement flash. “Are you not my
son--the husband of my child? It is your duty and your right to know
your father’s weakness--I am told that the marquis is entangled with
... but you must know her, you must have heard of her ... some woman
they call Paca or Paquilla--no matter which--she is very pretty and
very charming. She ruined the Duke of Florunda of the little he had
left--and would you believe that that old idiot Agustín, with one
foot in the grave!--it is too pitiable to be angry about, do not you
think?”
Leon did not answer.
“What are you thinking of?” she asked.
“That the cardinal virtue in married life is indeed patience,” he
replied.
“Which is as much as to say endurance and fortitude ... but my
whole life has been a martyrdom!--and I could bear everything if my
husband’s extravagance and follies did not threaten to compromise
the honour and good name of the family. But I am terribly afraid of
that.... What do you think? And I feel very deeply having to tell you
that I cannot pay you the sixty thousand reales that you lent me and
that I was to have repaid you this month.”
“It is of no consequence,” said Leon, wishing to avoid this delicate
subject; “do not let that trouble you.”
“Not only that I cannot pay you those three thousand dollars, but
that I am in desperate need of three thousand more.”
“You can have them.”
“What! three thousand more? But it is outrageous--it is abusing your
generosity! It shall be the last time, for I have quite made up my
mind to practise the narrowest economy in the house--I will give you
a lien on my house at Corrales de Arriba.”
“It is quite unnecessary--I assure you....”
“Thanks, a thousand thanks! How good you are, how dear a son! How can
I ever repay you?” cried the marquesa, evidently agitated by sincere
feeling. “You cannot imagine what a kindness you are doing me....
But I am always thinking of you, and not unfrequently I am able to
intercept half-way some cloud that threatens your happiness. Last
night I had quite a quarrel with your wife.”
“With María?”
“Yes, with María: even she has her faults, though they are only
the excessive side of her virtues. You know that she is very
devout--devout to excess; indeed, at times I have felt that this
question of religion has given rise to some little differences
between you.” Leon sighed.
“To some,” he said, “but nothing serious.”
“Well, you need not speak of your annoyance as a mere trifle,” said
the marquesa, vexed that Leon should speak lightly of a matter that
it suited her to treat as important. “The poor child is blindly
attached to you: her love for you is the ruling motive of her life,
and your reputation as an atheist is a standing misery to her. And
you know that my daughter’s opinions are as independent and as
indomitable as the beasts of the desert.” Leon nodded a sad assent.
“You can understand that she sees your lack of religion with very
great pain; that is but natural. We have instilled a faith in which
she will live and die. But she weeps with despair because you will
not go to prayers every day as she does, will not confess once a
month, will not spend your money on trumpery--it is really quite
absurd! How I lectured her last night--in short, she vexed me, I got
angry, I hammered away at her as if her stupid little head had been
an anvil, and at last....”
“Well--at last?...”
“At last I convinced her that it was preposterous to expect men to
carry out practices, which, in us, are all very well, but, in them,
would be ridiculous, purely ridiculous. The men of the present day
have something else to do than to be sitting in church. It seems to
me that María and you--she spending her time in devotions, and you
spending yours at your studies--may both be very happy. What is the
use of discussion? You do not want to prevent her praying to her
heart’s content. The men of the present day have their own ideas and
it is senseless to try to combat them. No one need be more religious
than I am, but I have no notion of enquiring into things that I do
not understand. Women are not learned; their part is to believe,
believe, believe.
“That a married couple should quarrel over that appears to me the
height of folly. But do you know that her ambition is to convert you?
To lead you to abhor your own views and devote yourself to hers--upon
my word I can hardly help laughing when I think of it. Do you know
what she says? That it would be her highest happiness to burn all
those books of yours--what a sin! So beautifully bound as they are!
Much I should care whether my husband were as regular at Mass as I
am, so long as he loved me and cared for no one else--jealous of his
books! Not I indeed, such a woman must be a perfect fool!
“You cannot think how strongly I spoke to her; I told her that you
were the best man living--to that she agreed--I told her that you
were far superior to her--infinitely superior; that all this talk
about atheism is a mere bogey; that though we hear people speak of
atheists there are no atheists--just as we talk of magicians but
there are no magicians. I told her that she was not to think of
such nonsense as trying to convert you, and that the best thing
she could do was to keep the peace in her home and get rid of
her monomania--do not you think so?--She had better change her
confessor--do not you think so? She should do as I do. I am extremely
religious, I perform all my devotions with the greatest exactitude,
I give all I can afford to the church, but that is all; do not you
think that María should do the same?”
Leon did not reply; he sat silent and gloomy. Suddenly he seemed to
shake off some depressing idea, as we wave off a bee that buzzes in
our ears, and looking at his mother-in-law he said:
“I will send you that money to-day.”
“Ah! is that what you were thinking about?” cried the marquesa
and her face shone with satisfaction till it seemed positively
phosphorescent. “Very good; do so, and I will give you a receipt....
But here I have stayed chattering, and in your delightful society I
forget that I have business to attend to--heaps of business! Eleven
o’clock! I shall be too late for Mass!”
She bustled up and held out her hand to her son-in-law. “And Padre
Paoletti is to preach.--Good-bye, I must fly. What shall I say to
your wife? I will tell her to make haste home and that you are very
dull without her.”
CHAPTER X.
THE MARQUIS.
He was a little man, with delicate and effeminate features, on which
he wore a look of assumed gravity, at first carefully cultivated,
but now as much a matter of habit as though it had been a cosmetic
applied daily out of a gallipot in his old dandy’s dressing-case.
His eyes, nose and mouth were, like his daughter’s, perfectly well
shaped, but what in her was charming, in him was ridiculous, and what
was beautiful in her, in him was purely comical; for there is nothing
more preposterous than the face of a pretty woman hung on, like a
mask, to the figure and manners of a pottering old man.
His fashionable dress, his easy demeanour, his refined and frigid
courtesy, which masked a total absence of kindliness or intelligence,
decorated his exterior as a gorgeous binding covers a book that
is destitute of rational contents. He was not a vicious man; he
was equally incapable of wilful evil or intentional good; he was a
vacuous compound of weakness and dissipation, corrupt rather from
“evil communications” than from inherent wickedness; one of so many!
a creature so hard to be distinguished from the rest of his species,
since absence of character has reduced certain groups of the upper
classes--as well as of the lower--with a few notable exceptions, to
a common type which will lack a generic name till the advance of
terminology allows us to speak of them as “the masses of the upper
class.” Still, this empty-headed and unenlightened mortal had a
great command of words in no respect deficient in meaning, and was
an admired master of all the commonplace of the press and the law;
he added nothing to be sure, but, on the other hand, he deprived
them of nothing. He was, in short, always prepared with a perfect
thesaurus of those ready-made phrases which to many people form the
Alpha and Omega of learning and wisdom. He was constantly insisting
that “administration rather than legislation was what was needed;”
he was convinced that “Spain is a nation past all government;” he
was for “upholding the venerable creeds of the past so that we may
once more become a terror to our foes at home and abroad;” he was
convinced that nothing of native origin could be good for anything;
that Spain is a ruined country, notwithstanding the fertility of her
soil; and at the same time he maintained with punctilious exactitude
the immovable dogmas of Castilian Nobility, of the Faith abandoned by
the modern populace, of the materialistic tendencies of the age and
so forth; he had a sacred horror of “Utopian dreams”--and anything he
did not at once grasp was to him an Utopian dream. In short, not a
string was wanting to his inexhaustible fiddle.
“In here as usual, always in this blessed study of yours, which
is as dark and as small as a prior’s cell and might be a prince’s
boudoir for the treasures it contains!... Here as usual Leon! I
never meet you anywhere. And María? She was with us last evening ...
tears and lamentations as usual; her mother tried to comfort her,
and they sat whispering and talking--between them I suspect, they
made things pleasant for you. They have nothing to think about but
their subscription to the theatres, and the festival-services at San
Prudencio’s; and after Mass they lay their heads together to talk of
the fashions.... But you, are you ill? You look pale, what is the
matter?”
“I?” said Leon, looking at his father-in-law like a man who suddenly
wakes face to face with a stranger, “what were you saying?”
“That you look ill. We were talking of you last evening at the
Fúcars’. Since Pepa married Cimarra, poor Don Pedro’s life is a
bitter one--Poor Pepa! I hear dreadful things of Federico ... and
what a sweet child that is of Pepa’s! Have you seen it? Do you never
go there?... Your cigars are first-rate.”
The smoke of their Havanas mingled as it curled up to the ceiling,
and for a minute or two there was silence in the pretty little room;
nothing was to be heard but the bubbling trickle of the water in the
hose with which the gardener was sprinkling the shrubs outside, and
the twitter of caged birds in a window near, whose chirruping song
sounded like a piping medley of musical notes trying to agree as to
the best way of producing a Wagnerian symphony. In the study, on a
book-stand as large as a pulpit, a huge geological atlas lay open,
showing the successive ages of the globe. On the table were flowers,
dissected so as to show their inmost mysteries; insects undergoing
autopsy; shells sawn down the middle, revealing their secret chambers
of enamel and pearl; prints, displaying eggs at the various stages
of incubation; a model in papier-maché of the human eye of the size
of a coconut; and in the midst of all this paraphernalia stood a
microscope, the lens reflecting a sunbeam on to the marquis’ head
which, being perfectly bald, offered a convenient subject for the
study of craniology.
“So you are studying natural history now?” said Tellería with an air
of condescending tolerance. “Well, it seems to be the science of the
day--the science of materialism. Much good you are doing the human
race by depriving it of its time-honoured beliefs and giving it in
exchange ... what?--The precious discovery that we are first cousins
to the apes of Retiro.” And he laughed with childish glee at his own
idea as he cast his eye on the litter of books.
“You know,” he said suddenly, “that I am on the commission to report
on the law concerning vagrants.”
“You will make a brilliant report.”
“It is a delicate matter,” added the marquis, throwing himself back
in his chair so that he sat with his eyes fixed on the ceiling and
his feet in the air. “It is the question of the day. I have said
again and again to the president of the council: ‘so long as we have
no good vagrancy law legislation is impossible.’ We must go to the
root of the matter, to the foundation of things, do not you see? It
is the immense number of idle and disreputable souls, the starving
and thieving classes, who count on a revolution to make their
harvest, who are the festering cause of the ferment in which we live.
Sweep away all this low filth and I will be responsible for social
good order.”
“Very true,” said Leon. “Sweep them away--a clean sweep, that is what
is wanted.”
“But the worst of it is that I cannot give as much time as I could
wish to the commission; I am so much occupied. And that reminds me,
Leon, I had some business to discuss with you.”
He had in fact reached the point which was the object of his visit;
but though he approached the matter with a degree of anxiety that
made his heart beat, he contrived to conceal his agitation. The
man was too weak not to suffer from such qualms, but too highly
artificial to betray them.
“You are aware that I am one of the directors on the board of
administration of the Bank of Agriculture. It is a grand national
undertaking; our function is to raise the credit of landed property
from the abyss into which it has sunk.” Such phrases of financial
cant were a frequent garnish to the marquis’ conversation, and he
went on to deliver himself of a variety of novel ideas: as for
instance, that Spain is essentially an agricultural country; that
its territorial wealth cannot be developed for want of capital; that
the capital nevertheless exists--why should it not?... That all that
is needed is to concentrate it, to secure it, and to redistribute
it, so as to enable it to fertilise--to benefit--to fructify--and
the marquis, having lost his thread, could not finish the sentence,
which he was improvising instead of repeating by heart. He stopped
short. The Bank of Agriculture was closely connected with a great
English company, “The Spanish Phosphate Company, Limited,” which was
destined to effect a complete transformation in the country; it was
a magnificent scheme. “Funds, subscribers--these were the two poles
of the axis on which the regeneration of Spain was to turn.” This,
again, was borrowed from the company’s prospectus, and the marquis
wound up his harangue by saying with apparent indifference: “Well,
what do you think of it? Will you invest some of your capital in our
shares.”
“I must save my capital to secure my income,” said Leon with feigned
simplicity.
“What, man!”
And then Leon went on to tell him such plain truths about certain
companies that his father-in-law suddenly lost the delicate hue that
his complexion usually wore and a deep purple tinge, like mulberry
stain, flushed his cheek and betrayed his indignation. After a short
pause, during which he devoted himself to twirling the waxed ends of
his grizzled moustache till they looked as formidable as bull-darts,
he rose and began to examine the objects of natural history.
“Well, there is nothing more to be said on the subject,” he muttered.
He touched and turned over everything, taking up this thing or that
to inspect it more closely and then peeped through the microscope.
“But I cannot see anything,” he said, with that odd pride of
ignorance that is occasionally to be met with. “I am no good at all
at such things ... thanks.... How much your microscope helps you!
Now, do tell me--can they see the soul with this? Or is it because
they cannot see it that they maintain that it has no existence?”
And before his son-in-law could reply he went close up to him,
and, standing in front of him, looked at him for a minute or two;
then shaking his head he said: “I cannot help thinking that my
poor daughter has very good reasons for complaining.... I do not
mean that you are not a thorough good fellow, Leon; but really if
you think of it ... she has her beliefs, you have yours--or, to be
accurate, you have none. Your lack of religion and your contempt
for the time-honoured beliefs of the Spanish People grieve and
offend her deeply. My dear fellow,” he added, laying his hand on his
son-in-law’s head with an affectionate gesture. “You must remember
that the Spanish People are above everything religious, and you know
Leon that we are not in Germany here--that land of Utopian dreams.”
Leon attempted some explanation. “No, no, to leave her at liberty
is not enough,” Tellería began again with some vehemence. “You must
take some definite step. You have a reputation for atheism that is
really appalling. I am frank with you, and for my part I would rather
lose my position and my name in the world than have such a character
for atheism as you have gained. I quite enter into María’s feelings;
she is deeply religious--she and her twin brother were born to be
saints--and in the end she will hold you in horror; she will fear
and detest you, and be unable to live with you ... and if it comes
to that, the fault will be yours for having expressed yourself so
extravagantly in your works. Of course we all have our leaven, more
or less, of heresy ... that is to say, I have not; I am orthodox to
the bone, I do not meddle with philosophies ... however, we all,
even the firmest believers, fail in our duties and neglect them; but
at any rate we exercise some caution, we have some tact, we keep up
appearances, we remember that we live among an eminently religious
nation and that we must set an example to the lower classes or they
will kick over the traces. This is not Germany. There is nothing I
hate more than a Utopia. The Spanish People have many faults but they
will never outrage the sentiments which have formed the foundation of
their country’s glory and of the respect it commands both at home and
abroad. To crown our misfortunes the aristocracy of Castile....” But
the worthy gentleman did not succeed in finishing his sentence, for
Leon interrupted him with some energy.
For a long time their voices could be heard alternately even in the
distant room where the birds were singing. María and her brother
paused in their conversation to listen to the parliamentary muttering
that reached them from the study.
“Those tiresome birds do not allow us to hear a single word,” said
the young man. “Listen María, papa and your lord and master are
disputing over something. What a waste of time!”
“Be quiet, you little plagues,” said María impatiently to the birds
and she tried to hear what was going on. Presently the curtain over
the door was hastily jerked open and revealed the pointed horns of
the marquis’ moustache and his face, in which solemnity was now
tempered by affability as though nature had intended it as a living
symbol of the eternal and supreme duplicity of the human species.
“Well, you know,” he said in a bitter-sweet tone between grave and
gay. “I am a hypocrite, and tact is my profession.... Your amiable
wife has told me so in so many words.... A humbug, a hypocrite--yes,
that is what she calls me....” And he kissed his daughter. “Do you
know I really think Leon is a little weak in his mind,” he went on.
“It is a pity, for he is such a clever fellow.... Oh! those dreadful
birds will not let one speak.”
“Be quiet you little torments,” said María.
What a wonderful interest they take in the affairs and disputes of
their masters; between the sentences of the conversation their shrill
notes try to drown the differences of humanity in a flood of rapture.
The party sat talking for some time longer, but the birds prevented
their being overheard, and the reader must have patience till the
birds have ceased singing.
CHAPTER XI.
LEOPOLDO.
One morning when Leon Roch was sitting at work in his study he was
suddenly interrupted; raising his eyes and looking in the large
mirror that hung over the chimney opposite to him, he saw a lean,
tall figure surmounted by a death’s-head, on which the grave seemed
to have spared little but the skin; eyes that looked starting from
their sockets, like those of a delirious creature; a long, thin neck,
all red and scarred; a nose, also purple, finely-cut, though its
extreme sharpness gave it the aspect of a beak and lent the face a
bird-like expression; a meagre crop of yellow hairs that straggled
round the cheeks and chin, forming a narrow line that irresistibly
recalled the band tied round the face of a dead man; a low forehead,
on which his hat had stamped a livid line, like a streak of blood;
a flat head with the red hair parted into two elegant wings; a face
in short which seemed the transfiguration or parody of a handsome
countenance, the caricature of the family type; and at the same time
he saw a man with his hands in his pockets, feet like a woman’s
of which the toes were scarcely visible below the loose trousers
that covered them, and a body devoid of roundness, of modelling or
of grace, like a lay figure made to wear a coat. His dress was a
morning suit, striped from head to foot, with an elegantly-knotted
cravat; a stick that he held in one hand stuck out on a level with
his pocket-hole, and a gorgeous flower blazed in his breast like the
blood-stained handle of an assassin’s knife. As he caught sight of
this personage Leon exclaimed with frank good-nature:
“Ah! Polito, sit down.... What brought you here?”
The young man let himself sink into an arm-chair and stretched his
legs with demonstrations of fatigue. He spoke, and his voice, which
one would have expected to be thin and effeminate, was hoarse and
rasping, a sort of articulate cough or choke, like those voices
which, in the lowest social grade, are formed by crying out wares in
the streets, and which grow harsh under the influence of the morning
air and the nightly dram. After making some brief remark he paused to
put a lozenge or pill into his mouth.
“I cannot do without my tar,” he said, “not for an instant.--The
moment I stop it I feel as if I were choking.--And what are you
doing, Leon? Always at your books? How I envy you your peaceful
life!--No, thanks, I dare not smoke, it is quite forbidden. We must
try to conquer these epileptic attacks, just now I am very well. I
am going to Seville do you know? All the fellows are going away and
I cannot stay here; we are a party of four: Manolo Grandezas, the
Count, Higadillos and I. Higadillos means to do bull-fighting during
the three days of Easter--Why do not you do something! María would
like immensely to see the fêtes.”
“If she wishes to go I am quite ready to take her.”
“She does not wish to go, and that is the fact,” said the
hoarse-voiced youth. “By-the-bye, my dear Leon, I hear people say
that you and she are very unhappy, that you do not get on together
in the least, and that your infidelity is a constant torment to my
poor sister. I, of course, laugh at such nonsense. ‘I tell you he
is the best soul living, a thorough gentleman as you will find.’
That is what I answer, and by Jove, you know I do not say a thing
unless I mean it. Last night the Rosafrías were saying that they
could not imagine--What simpletons!--They could not imagine how my
sister could have married you. ‘But, ladies, be reasonable,’ said I,
‘consider....’ It was of no use, they were utterly out of humour.
I heard one lady whom we all know--I give no names--I heard her
say in so many words: ‘I would rather see my daughter in her grave
than married to a man like that....’ Of course you had plenty of
defenders, even of the fair sex--‘Oh! but he is so clever, such a
gentleman!’ But she cast you off by word and gesture.... ‘There are
things that are impossible, quite impossible,’ said she. At last, I
really did not dare put in a word for you. What I advise, by Jove, is
that you should cease to go to certain houses; you will only expose
yourself to insult or to a snubbing. There is that little Señora
Borellano who speaks of you as the _bête noire_, still, she allows
that you are very attractive. Pepe Fontán said a sharp thing apropos
of that woman’s aversion for you. ‘It is all vexation,’ she said,
‘because Leon is the only man she knows who never made love to her.’
You know she has had an admirer at her heels for this year past, and
Cimarra says she cannot conceal her age. Poor Federico! They say he
has quarrelled with his wife and his father-in-law--he forged some
letters it would seem. I suppose they will send him to Havana. What
is the time? Eleven! And María is not home from church? You must
allow that it is rather too much of a good thing. Oh! I know; she and
my mother will have staid to chat with Padre Paoletti--an Italian
dyed black, as dark as a negro! By Jove! if I were married I would
not be henpecked, I know. My wife should go my way or I would know
the reason why. María is as good as gold; but when she has got a
thing into her head!--You may not believe it but I myself have spoken
to her roundly before now for her nonsense.--Why, my dear fellow, it
is intolerable to have a wife who is perpetually at you with her one
tune: ‘Go and confess: go to communion: go to Mass.’ By Jove! it is
enough to make you go and shoot yourself! Since you leave her free
to go her own way she ought to know better. You are wrong to take
such folly so much to heart. Look here: I should never forbid my wife
attending four hundred and twenty-six Masses a day and undergoing
penance from every confessor; but by setting a limit to her spending
my money on processions I would soon cure her of her fancy. If she
tried to talk to me about religious matters I should say to her:
‘Very good, my child, just as you please; I quite agree to all you
say.’ In short, we should never quarrel over a dogma more or less;
and meanwhile, my dear Leon, I should amuse myself to the top of my
bent. Why, my good fellow, on your plan we should go to the devil
without having any fun first; there can be no greater folly! You bury
yourself among your books in this world, to be damned in the next.
For that is what you will come to as well as I, we are all in the
same boat!” And he laughed as loudly as his short breath would allow.
Then, rising from his seat, and leaning on the table with both hands,
as though his body could not remain upright without support, he went
on:
“Do you know, my dear fellow, that you are going to lend me four
thousand reales?”
Leon opened a drawer; he smiled--why, it is hard to say, but of
all the members of his wife’s family, this inoffensive creature
was the one who filled him with the deepest pity, for which reason
perhaps, he loosened his purse-strings for him from time to time,
not merely with patience but with a vague kindliness, not to grieve
so hapless and frail a being. Or perhaps Leon approved of the system
of the Vicar of Wakefield who, when he wanted to rid himself of some
importunate relative, would lend him some money, a coat, or a horse
of no value, “and never,” said he, “did it occur that he came again
to my house to return it to me.”
“Thanks, best of _beaux frères_!” said the young man, not attempting
to hide the pleasure that every human being feels at the acquisition
of cash; “I will repay you next month with the rest. Not all at
once, I tell you frankly that I cannot pay it all in a lump, but in
instalments. It is really frightful! If there were three Easter-tides
in the year every Spaniard would be reduced to beggary. By Jove! it
all goes in charity; the other night those Rosafría girls coaxed me
into giving a thousand reales for the Pope. Now if the world were
properly constituted the Pope would give to us.--Here, you little
villain! Lady Bull, come here this minute when I call you.”
The last words were addressed to a small dog that had come into the
room at the same time as its master and that had immediately settled
itself into an attitude of respectful patience. It was an odious
little brute, of the King Charles breed, of the colour of a rat
and the shape of a porcupine, with a monkey’s muzzle between long
dappled ears, and a bloated body feebly supported on four tiny paws.
Towards the end of the conversation, the creature’s little bell, till
then silent, began to tinkle energetically and Polito found the dog
rummaging among the books that lay piled on the floor.
“Come along, this minute!” said he, taking it up in his arms.
At this instant they heard a noise of wheels and the tramp of one
of those wonderful Spanish horses which seem to us as indefatigable
as the bronze steed of an equestrian statue that trots perpetually
without ever descending from its pedestal.
“Ah! there they are!” cried Leopoldo going to the window.
“Higadillos on horseback, the Count in his break. I told them to come
round this way to pick me up--I am coming, I am coming!”
From where he sat Leon could see the carriage drawn up by the gate,
and the bull-fighter on horseback; a huge young fellow with his legs
swathed and a voluminous scarf--a supple figure, not wanting in
sculpturesque beauty, crowned with a head of vulgar Spanish type,
of the hue of tobacco, under a wide sombrero. His horse snorted and
pawed, and the count had his hands full with those in the break, a
fiery pair of a cross-breed between the Bearnais and Andalusian.
Polito was soon seated in the carriage with Lady Bull, and the
jolly party set out down the street, Higadillos leading the way,
and cheered by the jingle of the horses’ bells. Leon looked after
them with some curiosity; it was a small but significant fragment of
contemporary Spanish history.
CHAPTER XII.
GUSTAVO.
He looked at him and a friendly smile lighted up his melancholy face
in token of welcome; then they both gazed out--for they were sitting
by the window, at the fresh and scented verdure of the garden, over
which the showers from the garden hose swept like a light broom
of water, laying the dust, startling the birds, frightening the
butterflies, drowning the insects and caressing the plants. Skilfully
directed by the gardener, it penetrated the glistening density of the
euonymus shrubs, dashing off the surface of the leaves in jets of
spray sparkling with miniature rainbows. The garden was a new one,
one of those parterres that are turned out complete by the nurseryman
as the furniture of a house is turned out by the upholsterer;
methodically planted with a tiny wood, lawns, orchards, rockeries
bordered with ivy, and baskets full of sweet-william and convolvulus.
Conifers grew in appropriate spots, each surrounded by a formal bed
in which rows of petunias crept as if on their knees, before some
lordly araucaria, or the insolent loftiness of a dragon-tree all
spikes and blades. It all looked as if it had just been taken out of
a band-box and was the work of human industry rather than of nature;
still, it was very pretty, and fresh, and gay, and nothing could be
fitter to divide the road which belonged to all, from the house which
belonged to one only.
After contemplating the scene for some minutes they sat down to drink
their coffee.
“Before I forget it,” said Gustavo, “I want to mention my disapproval
of a virtue in you, which, when not judiciously exercised, must lead
to mischief: I mean your liberality, which must in the end injure
you, as well as my brother who takes advantage of it. I know that
you have at times given Polito money, and it annoys me, for he is a
ne’er-do-weel of the very worst type. Now and here, in the strictest
confidence, I may tell you exactly what I feel, and pass impartial
judgment on the various members of my family. If their conduct puts
me to shame it is better to blush openly than to feel it seething in
my blood.”
The speaker was a young man of a very precise and rather severe
expression, a good deal like his father and his brother, less
handsome than María and far from the ridiculous effeteness of
Polito. His face was perhaps a little hard; at any rate it indicated
a firm and self-contained nature quite exceptional in the family,
settled convictions and a healthy self-respect. He spoke gravely
and his manners were high-bred, free alike from arrogance and from
familiarity, with an equable and chilling politeness which many
persons thought supreme affectation. Thoroughly honourable and
gentlemanly in all the relations of life, he was also well educated,
though not brilliantly talented.
Neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin, dressed in dark colours
with a calm eye behind his spectacles, free from every vice--even
smoking--simple in his tastes and pitiless to the dissipation of
others, Gustavo, eldest son of the Marquis Tellería, was generally
spoken of as the best of the family, as an honour to his rank, and
one of the hopes of the country. It is needless to add that he was
a lawyer. His brother Leopoldo was a lawyer too; almost all young
Spaniards are; but while Polito hardly knew what a book looked
like, Gustavo studied every day and even found employment under
the protection of one of the most eminent pleaders of Madrid. He
had chosen what may be called the national career, and having left
the university a nobody, he was now on the high road to becoming
somebody. It should be added that he had a natural gift for oratory.
“To you, my dear Leon,” he went on, “I may confess that the conduct
of every member of my family causes me many hours of bitter
reflection--excepting of course the angel who is your wife and that
other angel, even more perfect perhaps, who now lives so far from
us. Is it not terrible to see my brother corrupted by dissipation?
Wallowing in the low frivolity which debases so many individuals--I
will not say of our class, for the disgrace is not ours alone, but
of every class? Desiring to play a part above what our fortune
warrants, he has been led away into insane extravagance, for his
companions are rich and he is not. It enrages me to see Leopoldo
driving carriages and riding horses which cost more than his whole
year’s income; besides, his ignorance distresses me, and his idleness
makes me desperate. Ah! you were quite right in what you once said;
there is a great deal of truth in your remark that ‘while there
is an aristocracy of nature among the lowest, there is also a low
class among the aristocracy.’--However, all this is beside the mark;
we will not talk any longer on a subject that is so painful to my
feelings. I have, I think, made it sufficiently clear that you really
ought not to encourage Polito in his recklessness.”
Leon inserted some remark but Gustavo went on: “The blame, I admit,
lies with my father. Our education was very desultory. It would be
absurd to try to hide the fact that my mother, much as it costs me to
own it, has never succeeded in weaning herself or in preserving us
from the seductions of the gay world; she has always lived more out
of her home than in it. To this day--for what is the use of denying
what you know as well as I do?--to this day, when our fortune is so
much impaired, and when, as I believe, the little that remains will
fall into the hands of our creditors, is it not preposterous that my
mother should keep up the house on a footing which is so far beyond
our means? It is outrageous vanity; and you may take my word, Leon,
when I tell you that I pass hours of anguish in thinking of it. When
I see the expensive entertainments she gives, the outlay to keep up
appearances while so many--so very many--necessaries are overlooked;
when I note the shameless variety of her dresses, her constant
presence at the theatres, her anxiety to vie with others who have a
great deal more to spend--when I see all this, Leon, I feel impelled
to renounce the career of which I have dreamed in my own country, and
to go and earn my bread in some foreign land.”
Leon again put in a word, but his brother-in-law replied promptly:
“I should be quite willing to go, but what would you have me do? I
cannot give up my prospects when I am on the eve of success; it is
cruel to abandon a position gained by so many years of hard study.
And indeed, the very fact that I foresee disaster for my family
makes me feel that it is my duty to stand by the wreck. We must take
life as it comes, dreary as it is.
“You can know nothing of this occult disgrace, Leon; you cannot
know what it is to live in a house where nothing is paid for, from
the carpets on the floors to the bread we eat; nor the shudder that
comes over one at the sound of that recurring knell, the front door
bell, announcing some doleful or insolent creditor come to claim his
dues; you can have no idea of the farces that have to be played day
after day by people whose name seems a guarantee of respectability
and honour; nor dream of the moments of acute misery that we, in a
more than decent position, endure for want of a sum of ready money
that would not spoil the night’s rest of a common workman. You who
are both rich, and moderate in your requirements--and that is as
good as a double fortune--cannot conceive of the anxieties of acting
this bitter comedy among scenes of vanity on the boards of poverty.
You--calm and content, with no passion but for your books, superior
to those ambitions which scare sleep from my pillow, and free from
the slips and reverses which embitter life--you are the spoilt child
of Providence; here in your own house, never besieged by creditors,
never molested by intruders, in the delightful society of your wife
who is a perfect angel.... Poor María!”
After a brief silence, during which the young lawyer seemed to be
reading something on his brother-in-law’s forehead, he went on in a
bitter tone:
“And yet Leon you have not made her happy!”
Leon answered sharply, and the lawyer retorted with the brevity and
vehemence of a rifle shot; at length, after a distinct assertion on
Leon’s part, he began again:
“Your first duty was to avoid all scandal and not to give to the
world the spectacle of a household disunited and made miserable by
questions of religion. If it is your misfortune to be an infidel, you
ought to have hidden the plague spot from your wife, you ought to
have abstained from certain scientific publications of which you have
been guilty. Atheism is hideous under every aspect, and when it has
no sense of decency, when it does not even blush to show itself, it
is most horrible of all. Deformity of whatever kind should be veiled,
above all that of the soul, so as not to be an offence to public
morality! Never hope to find me lenient on such a matter. You know
what I am; you know that I never can conceal what I feel strongly.
I esteem you highly, and fully recognise your fine qualities: your
goodness--comparatively speaking--your quiescent morality--for the
virtues and good qualities of those who deny revealed truth can
rank no higher; I admit that your life is better than that of some
who proclaim themselves believers, that you have all the cold and
immaculate merits of a heathen philosopher, and that you carry out
certain principles on the rational grounds that it is right to be
virtuous, or because the performance of a duty is always advantageous
in the long run: that you obey your frigid philosophical moral law
just as you pay your taxes and submit to the laws of health or to the
regulations of the police; I grant that you are one of the best in
this mad turmoil of folly and wickedness; I esteem you--nay I have a
great regard for you; I admire your talents, and in spite of all this
I tell you plainly if I, Leon, if I”--and he rose, extending his arm,
in an apostolic attitude. “If I had had my sister’s hand to bestow I
would never, never have given it to you. Do you hear? Never!”
Leon interposed warmly, but Gustavo went on:
“Oh! I loathe and detest hypocrisy as much as you can. I admit but
two alternatives: you are a Catholic or you are not? In our sacred
faith there is no trimming or compromise. I--I am a Catholic, and as
such I act in every phase of life; I do not carry my creed on my lips
and atheism in my heart; I scorn the ridicule of the frivolous--I go
to Mass, I confess, I communicate, I fast, I glory in defying the
outrages of the mob that seems to direct public opinion; I face its
cynicism with courage and answer its Voltairian heresies with the
holy dogmas and the authority of the Church. And these ideas, this
strictness of conduct, I purpose to carry with me into public life. I
shall take it up with all the resolution of a soldier and a martyr,
guided by the Almighty hand that will not leave me defenceless in the
blood-stained arena of human passion. Though men have dared to let
loose the wild beasts of infidelity and rationalism, be assured that
God will not fail to send among them those who can tame them.
“You need not expect a man who can express himself so frankly and
resolutely on the subject, to show you any pity, or to join issue
with you on any scheme of compromise which would divide the onus
of your differences equally between you and my sister. No! and a
thousand times no! She is in no respect to blame. The fault is yours,
entirely yours. Truth and falsehood can never effect a compromise.
It is your part to give way, and she can only remain supreme and
triumphant.”
Leon could have replied, but he was weary of his brother-in-law’s
harangue and he turned the conversation into a channel which he
judged would be more attractive to the young advocate. Gustavo gave
up his didactic vein at once.
“It is true,” he said, “the votes of your tenants at Cullera have
saved me, and I feel sure of success. Between you and me, in the
strictest confidence, I particularly wish to be returned. It will
be the high road to success for me you see--my career. When a man
has fixed principles and the immovable determination to defend them
against all comers, a public life is an honourable one. In the times
we live in, it is a duty to fight! Do you not think so? For when
all character is fast sinking into a gutter of corruption, it is
well, and very profitable, to show that one has some character, so
that men may say, ‘this is a man!’ When human reason and outraged
truth insist that there should be some flogging, is it not a worthy
and brilliant achievement to wield the lash? Christian civilisation
is like a noble forest; it has taken religion centuries to produce
it, and philosophy dreams of destroying it in a single day. We
must stay the hand of these ruthless destroyers. The civilisation
of Christianity cannot be left to perish at the mercy of a handful
of theorists, aided by a mob of lost wretches who, to escape the
stings of conscience, have suppressed God.” He flourished his large
white hand, brandishing it like a school-master’s ferule; and as he
prepared to depart he added: “My friend--almost my brother--I have
the deepest regard for you, but when I think of that black spot
I am anxious--very, very anxious. If the plague in your dwelling
increases, beware! You will find me on the side of the victim--my
poor dear sister.--Good-bye.” And he went.
As he watched him depart Leon’s soul sunk within him, and for some
time he felt quite incapable of fixing his mind on anything.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE LAST ILLUSION.
The man whom we have seen in the retirement of his study, disturbed
at intervals during many months by such scenes as we have described,
did not, however, give up his whole time to scientific work. He,
like others, was a wheel in the social machine, attached to it by
his instincts, by his marriage, nay by science itself; and he was by
no means one of those cobweb-spinning savants of whom we are told
in romances that they are inseparable from their books and their
alembics, and as ignorant of the outer world as they are of the true
mysteries of science. Leon Roch went into the world, he dressed
well, and indeed was not to be distinguished from the well-clothed
multitude which constitutes the most important, though not the most
picturesque portion of society. He never excused himself from the
methodically dull routine of the life of the wealthy classes in the
Spanish capital and he might be seen with his wife in the fashionable
employment of “taking a drive”--a pleasure which consists in going
at a fixed hour to a particular avenue and gently jolting to and fro
in single file, one carriage behind another and close together, at
a regular pace, so that the ladies who lounge in the landaus feel
the hot breath of the horses just behind them, while the quadrupeds,
mistaking the flowers in their bonnets for real ones, try to make
a mouthful of them. He frequented the theatres, on the delightful
system by which the subscribers share a seat and go in turns, and
which has the advantage of providing them indiscriminately with
emotion or amusement, quite irrespective of their frame of mind at
the time. He invited a select number of friends to dinner on one day
in the week, having asserted and won his right to choose his guests
from among the best of the few distinguished men of whom Spain can
boast. Nor did he select them by any rule of creed or opinion, but
solely to suit his personal sympathies; as a consequence his weekly
entertainments and his evening parties gathered together superior
men; independent thinkers, staunch Catholics, politicians of the
epicurean pattern, aristocrats of the most ancient coinage and
nobles all hot and shining from the press, with men who had risen
to social importance by their talents as omniscient gossips, or by
the genuine charm of their conversation; there too were rising stars
from the university--young men distinguished as professors, or who
shone in the debating societies. Perfect harmony reigned however, for
nothing is so soothing to the temper as a good dinner, the presence
of elegant women, and the necessity for observing the laws of good
breeding.
Though certain individuals, no doubt, detested each other cordially,
the general atmosphere was one of mutual consideration, and the hours
were passed in conversation always polite, tolerant, instructive and
delightful--the happy product of this friction of various minds. Art,
letters, manners, politics--all were discussed; there was a little
grumbling, of course, a little scandal; one group would take up some
serious question--of religion, for instance, a theme sure to occur
where two or three men are gathered together, and one which has a
perennial and unfailing interest. This absorbing subject, which is
so constantly discussed, in the family circle, among students, and
in the highest conclave--in the confessional, in the palace, in
the hut--among friends and among foes--with words in every human
tongue, and sometimes with the roar of cannon--with the jargon of
party-spirit, the formulas of reason, the slang of flippancy--overtly
or in secret; with ink often, and not seldom with blood--fills the
air with an incessant murmur, that rolls its ceaseless tide from pole
to pole without pause or lull. If our ears were but a little keener,
we might hear the dull unceasing soliloquy of the ages.
Leon’s outward features were a clear olive complexion, expressive
eyes, black hair and beard; his moral distinction was his inflexible
rectitude and a firm determination never to deceive. His frank gaze
captivated most people at first sight, but his uprightness of spirit
was not so immediately discernible, since a man’s conscience does
not lie on the surface. The place he held in the estimation of his
acquaintance depended consequently on their view of things; to some
he was an admirable character, to others a malignant being; and since
his person was beyond question, handsome and attractive, there were
plenty to say of him: “He is a very good fellow on the surface, but
below that he is a monster of deformity.”
He was not one of those rationalistic bigots--for there is such a
thing--who laugh the faith of others to scorn, and ridicule their
pious fervour; on the contrary, he respected all who believed--nay he
envied some. He had no spirit of propaganda and desired to convert no
one to his own way of thinking; for though his studies had brought
him great enjoyment, they had also given him many hours of isolation
and bitterness, hence he had no mania for casting souls afloat from
the blessed isles of the faith, only to see them land on the cold
solitudes of scepticism.
He had begun by devoting himself to the natural sciences, finding
in these the purest delight; then the study of philosophy had
sorely vexed his spirit, and he finally returned to the pursuit
of experimental science in which he had found _terra firma_ and
a familiar country. While natural history amused him, physiology
fascinated him; he was fond too of astronomy, to which he was led
by his taste for mathematics. “History,” he would say, “dwarfs us;
physiology restores us to our natural measure; astronomy makes giants
of us.”
There was in his spirit a certain aridity, the result of the small
play his imagination had enjoyed in childhood and youth.
He was born in a room behind a shop, where he had trotted in and out
by the side of his mother, a woman, coarse and rough by nature, of no
breeding or education. She worked hard, but she could not read. In
her vanity she had set her heart on her son being very precocious and
she firmly believed that he would rise to be a general, a bishop, or
a prime minister. After her death he had lived for some little time
at Valencia with a maternal uncle, a potter, who had made money and
whose opinions were thus formulated: “Learning is rubbish. A man who
can make a brick is of more use to the human race than if he could
write all the books that ever were printed.”
After this Leon went through a period of development utterly devoid
of follies or escapades of any kind; he never fancied himself a
dramatic poet; he never plotted schemes of elopement or duelling; he
went through no moods of melancholy, no agitations as to the choice
of a profession, no ambitious dreams. He was set to learn mathematics
and told to “get on if he could.” He did get on, it is true, and then
he was launched on an ocean of rocks where he had to struggle with
the petrified waves that bear testimony to the Plutonic and Neptunian
storms that have vexed the globe; he was thrust head foremost, as
it were, into the bowels of the earth as revealed by deduction or
represented in museums, and told: “All these pebbles, that look as if
they had been gathered out of the roadway, form a book of marvels;
each flint is a letter of it, and you must learn to read it.”
There he saw the rushing waters, roaring ere yet there were ears to
hear them, and refracting rainbows ere yet there were eyes to see
them; he read the pedigree of the world in the remains of Bivalves,
Crustaceans and Ophidians, which had left the stamp of their forms,
like the seal set by ancient dynasties to record the fact of their
supremacy; he found plants that had grown before there were teeth or
mills to grind them, or men to need them; he saw man himself, the
latest product of creation, born when the forests had succumbed to
become store-houses of fuel, before the seas and rivers had levelled
the plains, while thousands of huge volcanoes were still belching
fire and giving the finishing touches to the crests of the loftiest
mountains. All this he saw and much more.
At a later period, when he had worked hard and found himself a rich
man, when he need no longer be the slave of science but could be her
master, he to some extent cultivated his imagination. He knew full
well that he could never be an artist; still, he took in hand the
finer chisel which is commonly given to one of the muses when they
are painted on our ceilings; but his hands, which could so ably wield
the lever, were too clumsy for so delicate an instrument.
“It is quite clear,” said he, “I shall always be a bumpkin!”
He had succeeded in writing in a fairly good style, clearly rather
than elegantly; he spoke in public very badly, very badly indeed,
though in private conversation he had a certain eloquence, especially
on lofty subjects. He had a free command of similes and constantly
used them, from the habit, now so largely adopted by science, of
flattering rather than scaring the ear of the studious public; also
because a parabolic form of speech has in all ages been congenial to
superior natures. It is the instructive homage paid by Science to Art
who in return borrows the radiant lamp of truth to light her on her
glorious path.
This man, to whom it was a matter of absorbing interest whether
one pebble were more or less silurian than another, and whether
a solution crystallised in rhomboids or in prisms, had from his
earliest youth cherished a dream of ideal life--a quiet and virtuous
existence, soaring on love and study, the two wings of the spirit,
as he used to say in his figurative jargon. The end of his career of
toil was to be the beginning of such a life, secured by a marriage
that should realise his dreams, and by the growth of a family. This
family that he dreamed of--the one ideal family, the happy circle of
souls that he could call his own--constantly occupied his thoughts.
Could there be a sweeter or a brighter lot? To see himself united to
a wife he adored, loving and submissive, with a sound understanding
and a heart of inexhaustible goodness to watch the growth of tiny
creatures who might ask him with tears for the bread of learning--to
work upon them by the best methods for the development of their moral
and physical nature--to live for them, and provide the necessaries
of life for that beloved and ever charming group, whose crown
and centre, the ideal wife, would appear as the living image of
Providence, and the dispenser of its benefits; now the mother, and
now the teacher--clothing them, feeding them, guiding their first
tottering steps, checking their over-boldness--Ah! for such a dream
it would be worth while to live! His imagination painted the joys of
a rich man, who can taste all the pleasures of toil without being its
slave.... A perfect life, partly given to study, partly to the cares
of a family; divided in fair proportion between the country and the
town, since in that way nature and society, each in turn, appears
most delightful; a life neither too secluded nor too public, in a
calm retreat--not dull, but far from the bustle of life, though not
inaccessible to a few select friends.
Yes, this was the goal he must aim at and grasp as soon as possible,
before his span was run in a ceaseless and giddy whirl. He must find,
as quickly as might be, the woman who was to lay the foundation
of this happiness--a dream, no doubt, but still capable of being
realised. The choice would be difficult. She must be studious,
prudent, and grave; was he himself qualified to make such a woman
happy? Yes, he could make her happy. Was he not learned, clever,
calm-tempered, judiciously critical, accustomed to analyse human
nature?--And yet--and yet....
CHAPTER XIV.
HUSBAND AND WIFE.
“And yet I made a mistake.”
This he said to himself one night as he sat alone with his wife in
the silent quietude of his home, at the hour when the mind wanders in
the vague meditation that is the precursor of dreams, after recalling
the facts of the past day which so lately were living realities and
so soon may become a nightmare. Before him, already prepared to go to
bed, sat the noble and beautiful Minerva-like figure. Her sea-blue
eyes, by some unaccountable artistic blunder, were fixed on a book
of devotions--one of the popular and commonplace manuals, full of
magniloquent verbiage, and idle subtleties, devoid alike of piety,
of style, of suggestiveness, of spiritual feeling and of evangelical
truth--nothing but a monotonous jangle of words. But what did it
matter? As she sat, nodding to sleep over this farrago, María was
charming to look upon.
Leon had dropped his evening newspaper--no less a jangle in its
kind, of broken strings, of tuneless bells, and the vacuous clack of
rumour--and was gazing at his wife, raging inwardly at the hideous
mockery of Fate. He--he who through all his early years had been
absolute master of his fancy, had one day, all unconsciously, given
it the reins, and then, cheated and betrayed, had allowed himself
to be carried away by an illusion altogether unworthy of so sober a
character. How could he have failed to see that between himself and
this woman there could never be any community of ideas, nor that
sweet union of minds that subsists even among fools? How could he
be thus deluded by the witchery even of such perfect charms? How
had he overlooked the wall of ice--high, dense, insuperable, which
must stand for ever between them? Why had he failed to detect that
recusant will, that deeply-rooted standard, that narrowness of
purview, that absence of magnanimity, for all of which there was so
little compensation in an over-wrought religious excitability? Why
had he not foreseen the dulness, the emptiness of his home--lacking
so much that was tender and attaching, lacking above all the
tenderest and most attaching element of life: mutual confidence?
In a fit of desperate regret he raised his hand to his brow and
clutched it convulsively, as if in malediction on the uselessness of
learning. María did not notice the gesture, but kept her eyes fixed
on her book.
“I fell in love like any idiot,” he thought, looking at her again,
“but how could I help it?--she is lovely!”
All his efforts to form María’s character had been vain; at the
earliest stage of her married life she had loved him with more
passion than tenderness, but ere long, without ceasing to love
him, she had begun to regard him as an erring soul--to be pitied
but shunned. Leon had given her all liberty in the exercise of her
religion, and at first she availed herself of it in moderation; but
as he tried by degrees to influence her mind--not undermining her
beliefs, as his detractors declared--but endeavouring to bring her
intelligence as far as possible into harmony with his own, she abused
the liberty he had granted and gave up almost all her time to her
devotions. Not that she renounced all worldly pleasures and vanities;
on the contrary, she enjoyed them keenly, though in due moderation.
She went to theatres, except in Lent--she dressed well, frequented
the fashionable promenades, and gave up part of the year to the
excursions and country visits that became her position and fortune.
She took great care of her personal appearance (for she liked to be
admired by Leon), very little of her household, and none at all of
her husband; the rest of her time and thoughts she devoted to the
various pious meetings and benevolent dissipations to which she was
carried off by her mother or her friends; in short, she served in the
charmed ranks of fashionable religionism.
“And after all, is it not I who am the recalcitrant party?” Leon
said to himself with crushed resignation. “Of what can I accuse her?
Which of us is the believer? If I had faith we should be happy--why
have I none?”
* * * * *
Then there was a third phase, during which María’s devotion to him
was as great as ever, though still vehement rather than tender, and
no more sympathetic than at first. At this time María would attack
her husband with a mixture of human passion and mystic piety, which
did not exclude each other because they reacted and complemented each
other--trying to seduce him into the path of religion _à la mode_,
faint with incense, splendid with tapers, gay with flowers, smoothed
with suave sermons and graced with women of elegance and rank. Her
fondest dream was to remain a bigot without forfeiting the man who
had so completely realised the visions of her girlhood. To get him to
church--that was the hard task she had set herself.
“Leave me--pray leave me,” Leon would say, tortured by regret. “Go
and pray God for me.”
“But without you half of myself is wanting; I cannot feel as though I
were good throughout, as I want to be.”
Then she would fly to him, clasp him in her arms and rest her head
against the weary man’s breast, saying, with a sort of sob: “I love
you so much!”
Leon’s persistent refusal to take any part in her pious practices
brought them at length to that chronic state of misunderstanding, or
rather of moral divorce, in which we have seen them two years after
their marriage. They had ceased to share their ideas or to consult
each other on any opinion or plan; they never enjoyed that community
of pleasures or of trouble which is the natural marriage of souls;
they neither wept together nor rejoiced together--they did not even
quarrel. They were like those stars which look as if they were but
one, and which in reality are millions of miles apart. All their
friends could see that Leon was wretched, and suffering deeply though
in silence.
“He has set his heart on making his wife a rationalist,” they said,
“and that is as absurd as a sanctimonious man would be.”
“That is just what I say,” another would reply, “belief and disbelief
are a matter of sex.”
“The fact is that he is desperately in love with her.”
And this was the truth. Leon was bewitched by the beauty of his
wife, who every day seemed more lovely and who, without interfering
with her pious exercises, had the art of enhancing it by the luxury
and taste of her dress and the perfect care of her person. It was
equally true of María: she too was desperately in love; for no
earthly consideration would she have changed the husband with whom
fate and the church had blest her. The void in her heart had been
filled by a perfectly unspiritual passion for his extraordinarily
handsome person. Nor was he indifferent to the homage paid by the
multitude to the lord and master of a gracious and beautiful wife--on
the contrary, he was extremely proud of it, and the thought that
María could under any conceivable circumstances have belonged to any
other man, even in thought or intention, maddened him with rage. In
short, they were two divorced beings, so far as mind and feeling
were concerned, though united by the power of beauty, on the stormy
territory of imagination.
It was of this that Leon was meditating at this hour of the night. At
last he came to this bitter reflection:
“The world is governed by words and not by ideas. Hence we see that a
marriage may degenerate into mere concubinage.”
“Have you done?” he asked his wife, seeing that she had closed her
book and was praying silently with her eyes shut.
“Have you finished your newspaper?--Give it me; I want to look at
something. The Duchess de Ojos del Guadiana does not wish to be
at the whole expense of to-morrow’s ceremony. Let me see if it is
announced in the column of services.” Leon looked and read the column
aloud.
“A sermon by Padre Barrios!” exclaimed María with surprise. “We had
asked him to withdraw, because he is asthmatic and no one can hear
him--What a shame! San Prudencio is getting quite a name as the
place of refuge for all the worst preachers, and all the scoffers
congregate there to laugh at the chaplain’s stammering and Padre
Paoletti’s Italian accent; it is all the result of certain persons
undertaking to manage the services and not doing it properly.
However, some one will come down upon them and put their house
in order.--No, no; do not put down the paper; what is the opera
to-morrow night?”
“The same again,” said Leon, laying down the paper and putting his
hand on his wife’s arm as she was about to rise. “Wait, I want to
speak to you.”
“And seriously it would seem,” replied María smiling. “Are you vexed
with me? Oh, I know you are going to scold me. Yes,” she added,
curling herself up on a sofa close to his arm-chair, “you are going
to scold me for spending too much this month.”
“No.”
“Well, I have been rather extravagant, but I will make up for it by
being very economical next month.--I know, my dear, I have spent
more than my allowance. Let me see--there are three dresses, sixteen
thousand; the triduo, four thousand; the novena which I ordered, ten
thousand; the new hangings in my room--but that was all your fault,
for laughing at the white angels playing with the blue corn.--Then
I have to add the presents made to the actors who would not charge
anything for the charitable performance; two watches, two snuff-boxes
and two brooches.--But I will give you the whole account to-morrow.”
“It is not that, I tell you--nothing of the kind. You may spend as
much as you like--you may ruin me for aught I care, and waste all my
substance on dressmakers, priests, and actors. It is a much graver
matter than your extravagance that I want to discuss, María: I want
to ask you whether you do not think it high time that the emptiness
and misery of our married life should have an end--that you should
recognise that your excessive devotion to church ceremonies is almost
a form of infidelity, and that by giving up so much to the cause
of piety you are in fact doing an injury to me and to our common
interests?”
“I have told you before,” replied María very gravely, “that I
am prepared to account to God for my devotions--for good or for
evil.--Not to you, who cannot understand them. Try to do so--be
converted to the faith, and then we can talk about it!”
“Faith! it is you who do not understand. I have none--I can have none
such as you require. Indeed and if I had, your conduct and your way
of carrying out your religious duties would cure me of it. I may tell
you, once for all, that in your actions and your fevered excitement
about sacred things I see nothing that becomes a Christian wife. My
house is not a home, and my wife is no more than a beautiful dream,
as remote as she is fair. This, I tell you is not marriage--you are
not my wife nor I your husband.”
“And whose fault is that but yours?” she exclaimed eagerly. “If
harmony and confidence are absent, who is to blame?--Your atheism,
your infidelity, your separation from the Holy Church! I stand safely
within the pale of matrimony--it is you who are outside. I call you,
I invite you to enter with open arms and you will not come--Coward!”
And she stretched them to him, but Leon made no attempt to throw
himself into them.
“I should come,” he said, “come with rapture, if I saw in you the
faith which regards religion as the purest form of love. I should
admire and respect your faith, and only wish that I could share
it--but as it is I do not--I cannot--wish to follow.”
“You are mad, utterly mad! What is it that you do wish? That I should
deny God and the Church, that I should turn rationalist like you,
that I should read your books full of lies, that I should believe
that we are all apes, that materialism is truth, that Nature is the
only God, or that there is no God--all your hideous mass of heresies?
Happily I have been able to escape falling into that abyss. I am
pious and can believe all I ought to believe; I worship sincerely and
constantly, for that is the best means of keeping faith alive and
active, and of closing the soul against the entrance of any false
doctrine.--I go to church too often? I am unreasonably particular
in my attention to the rules of the Church? I am extravagant in the
services I pay for? I listen every day to the Word of God? I pray
night and morning?--This is the old story--is it not? I know I am
looked upon as a fanatic. Well, there is a reason for everything. Do
you suppose that I should cling so passionately to the Cross if I had
not you for my husband--you--an atheist; if I were not--as I am--in
constant peril of contamination by your views, and by my daily
intercourse with you, nay, by my very love for you? No--if you were
not so far from devout I should be less so. If you were a sincere
Catholic I should not be a bigot--I should fulfil the most necessary
duties but nothing more. It is like this Leon--supposing two men are
out together in a small boat on a stormy sea; if both row with equal
strength they will easily reach the shore; but no--one only lifts his
oar, and does not pull at all. Must not the other work twice as hard
or else they perish? Understand that clearly my dear--one oar must
save us both.”
“That figure of speech is not of your invention,” said Leon, who knew
full well the extent of his wife’s rhetorical powers. “Whose is it,
pray?”
“Whether it is mine or not can be of no importance to you,” retorted
María with contemptuous asperity. “The important point is that it
covers an indisputable fact. Do you wish me to learn the truth from
your miserable books?”
“No, no--I do not ask that,” said Leon sadly. “But wicked as I may
be--reprobate as you believe me, do you think I am so bad as to
deserve that you should not accept a single idea from me, and that
you must always conceal and reserve your own, and keep yourself as
far away from me as possible?”
“Nay--I accept your love which I believe to be sincere, and your
respect for my beliefs which I feel to be honest, and your personal
protection--but your views, your opinions....”
María spoke with such emphasis, and broke off with such a sparkle of
scorn in her eyes with their dazzling, cat-like gleam, that Leon felt
a chill about his aching heart like the stab of cold steel.
“Nothing that is mine!” he murmured, and his gaze fell on the ground
as though death were his only hope.
“Nothing that proceeds from your haughty and erring intellect,” said
his wife, giving what she thought was a decisive thrust. “Nothing
that can contaminate me with your diabolical philosophy.”
There was a pause, and then Leon, with a prolonged sigh, looked up at
her, pale and anxious.
“And who has taught you to say all this?” he asked.
“That matters not,” replied María, also turning pale but without
losing courage. “I have told you already that, as a devout Catholic,
I do not feel bound to render an account to an atheist of all the
secrets of my religious conscience or of what regards my devotional
practice. You need only be certain that I am faithful to you, and
that I have never been false to my marriage vows in act, intention or
thought. That is enough--I fulfil my pledge and duty as a wife and
this is all the confidence you need look for from me. As for that
part of my conscience which concerns God alone, do not hope to read
it--it is a sanctuary into which you have no right to enter. Do not
ask me: ‘Who taught me to say this or that’--You have no right to an
answer.”
“I do not require it,” he said. “I never took it into my head to be
uneasy because my wife went to the confessional three or four times a
year to make a clean breast of her shortcomings and crave absolution
in accordance with her creed. At the same time the confessional has
its abuses: it asserts its rights to spiritual control by devious
and underhand means, by daily interference, by constant and secret
discussion of details, fostered on one hand by the scruples of an
innocent soul, and on the other by the prurient curiosity of a man
who has no natural family ties.”
“Indeed!” said María sarcastically. “It would be better, no doubt,
that I should seek rules of conscience from the spiritual direction
of your atheistical friends! I am sickened as it is, by the flippancy
with which some of them speak of sacred subjects. I have told you,
before now, that the parties in our house were an ostentatious and
scandalous parade of evil principles and the day will come when
I shall resolutely refuse to countenance them. I do not deny, of
course, that some of your visitors are highly respectable; but others
are not--I know what opinions some of them hold.”
“And who has informed you?” asked Leon eagerly.
“Oh, I don’t know.--All I say is that I am tired of being civil
to them, of concealing my disgust in the society of men who have
written or who have said in public--or who have neither written nor
spoken--but I know what their opinions are all the same; yes, I
know....”
“Much indeed you know!--But you have pronounced sentence on our
evening meetings, and that sentence will be followed by others.” And
with the strange but natural revulsion of a dull persistent grief,
that relieves itself by delusive flashes of bitter amusement, Leon
laughed aloud.
“Indeed,” said María, a little abashed. “Your evenings are a constant
vexation. They are very discreditable, for with all your discussions
on politics, or music, or some invention, or perhaps on history, our
house is a hotbed of atheism.”
“And it would be a hotbed of virtue if we danced and talked
gossip?--No, in my drawing-room no one has ever discussed atheism
nor anything approaching it. Your pure and childlike conscience may
rest easy! Do not let that distress your happy and innocent soul,
if you believe that you have accomplished every duty by carrying
the external practice of religion to the verge of folly and by
worshipping words, symbols, dogma and routine with superstitious
fervency, while your spirit lies cold and torpid, devoid of joy or
sorrow, of struggle or of victory, lulled to sleep by the drone of
sermons, the braying of organs, and the rustle of silken vestments!
You believe yourself to be perfection, and you have not even the
grace of a wavering spirit held firm, of doubts sternly silenced,
of temptation resisted, or of contentment sacrificed. How easy,
how accommodating is the piety of our day! Formerly, to dedicate
yourself to the faith meant the total renunciation of every pleasure,
the abdication of self-will, hatred of the pomps and vanity of
this world, contempt for riches, luxury and comfort, so as to cast
off the flesh and spiritualise the soul and meditate more freely
on heavenly things; it meant living only the spiritual life to
the highest pitch of rapture, of frenzy even--the rich emulating
the poor, the healthy praying God for chastening disease, and the
clean craving to be covered with foulness. It was an aberration, no
doubt; but it was a sublime one, for self-sacrifice and abasement
are of all virtues those which least lose their merit by excess. It
was suicide, but it was guiltless suicide, since it was the very
madness of self-abandonment! While now....” and Leon fixed on his
wife a gaze fired with enthusiasm and scorn--“now the rules of piety
demand constant oblations and a positive competition in the matter
of ostentatious services; still, every one is dealt with according
to his rank, the poor--as being poor, and the rich as being rich;
provided, that is to say, that they do not refuse to contribute
in due proportion. The devout women of the present day attend
Mass, mortify themselves in comfortable chairs, pray kneeling upon
cushions, and sweep the dust of the sanctuary with their trains. This
only occupies their mornings; in the evening they are free to dance,
to go to the play, to cover themselves with jewels and finery, to
meet at the tables of the rich--though they may be Jews or heretics,
to display themselves in promenades, and enhance or improve their
charms to captivate men!--After all, what is the harm? The devil
is in his dotage--he has come to terms--he is grown old and has
forgotten his business!”
“Your jest is a coarse one,” exclaimed María in some confusion.
“According to that I am in mortal sin because I dress well and go
to the theatre.--You are talking of what you do not understand; you
atheists are the maddest souls that live.”
She was not angry, and to prove it she coaxingly stroked her
husband’s face. “Do you think your eloquence has brought me to
nought, my dearest?” she went on. “But when you see that I dress
carefully and go to the theatre, you must know that I have got leave
to do it, and so can please myself without staining my soul. Nay, who
has been more anxious to set me at rest on this point than yourself;
for you have always said that, as a married woman, I have no right to
break the ties that hold me to society.”
“Yes, that is the right thing to say, I know!” said Leon laughing.
“Amuse yourself as much as you can, so long as....”
“Your reservations are blasphemy--say no more, foolish man. Sooner or
later I shall yet succeed in proving to you that all your wisdom is
mere foolishness!”
“Foolishness?” said Leon, putting his hand under his wife’s
chin--soft, round and delicate.
“Think how I shall laugh at you when, at length, by the efficacy of
my prayers, of my faith, and of my piety.... You smile? Nay do not
smile; some wonderful cases have been seen--some of the instances I
could tell you of would astonish you.”
“Then do not tell me of them,” said Leon, turning his wife’s face
from side to side, as he still held her chin between his finger and
thumb.
“Yes, cases that seem incredible--cases of wicked men who have been
converted;--and you are not wicked.”
“Then I have not been denounced as a reprobate yet? Make yourself
easy my dear, all in good time. Thanks for your friends’ good opinion
of me--while it lasts!”
María threw her arms round him, and clasping his head to her bosom,
kissed his forehead.
“You will come to me yet,” she said, “you will be a devout Catholic
and be one with me in the practice of my beautiful religion....”
“I!”
“Yes, you. You will come to my arms!--How happy we may be then--I
love you; you know how I love you!”
And how handsome, how lovely she was! Leon could not but feel the
irresistible charm of such perfect beauty of face and form--of eyes
whose depths seemed as translucent and as mysterious as the sea when
we peer into the waters to find some lost treasure at the bottom.
María went across the room and stood in front of a mirror, raising
her hands to let down her hair. The black tresses fell on her
shoulders, which could not in justice be compared to cold hard marble
since they were of the tenderest texture; but there is Parian flesh,
though mysticism calls it clay, and the Divine Artificer has used it
to form some few human statues which hardly seem to need a soul to
give them life and beauty.
“She is lovely!” Leon exclaimed, as he sat sunk in his arm-chair,
gazing like a simpleton. “Lovelier every day!”
After making various little arrangements at the glass, María went
into her alcove. Leon’s head sank between his hands, and he remained
for a long time lost in thought. He was in a fever. At length he
rose--angry with himself or with some one else. “I am a fool!” he
said. “I wanted a Christian wife and not a hypocritical odalisque.”
CHAPTER XV.
A MODUS VIVENDI.
He sat in silence for some little time; suddenly María gave a loud
and terrified cry; he flew to her alcove and found her sitting up in
bed, her eyes fixed, her arms extended.
“Leon, oh Leon!” she gasped in alarm, “Are you there--oh, where are
you? Ah! Yes--here you are--Hold me--What a hideous dream!”
Leon soon succeeded in soothing her by recalling her to waking
reality, the best cure for such vagaries of the fancy.
“I was dreaming--I dreamed I had killed you, and that from the very
bottom of a deep, black hole you looked up at me, with oh! such a
face--And then you were alive again, but you loved some one else.--I
will not have you love any one else....” and she flung her arms round
her husband’s neck.
“What o’clock is it?” she asked.
“It is late. Go to sleep again; you will have no more nightmares.”
“And you--are you not going to bed?”
“I am not sleepy.”
“Are you going to sit up all night--What is the matter? Are you
reading?”
“No, I am thinking.”
“What we were talking about?”
“Of that, and of you.”
“That is right. Think over all the truths I told you and so you will
be unconsciously preparing your mind.--Hark! I hear a bell. Is it a
fire?”
They listened. They could hear the barking of the dogs, which in
the suburbs of Madrid, where every house has a wide and vacant let
attached, meet in dozens to unearth kitchen refuse and rummage in the
gutters; they could hear the distant creak and jangle of the latest
tram-cars, and the faint, steady, metallic ticking of Leon’s watch in
his waistcoat pocket--nothing else--much less a bell.
“No,” he said, “and it is not the hour for tolling for prayers.--Go
to sleep.”
“I am not sleepy--I cannot sleep,” replied María turning on her
pillow. “I feel that I shall see you again at the bottom of the pit,
staring at me. You laugh at it--and it is preposterous to dream of
seeing a man lying dead who believes and declares that this life is
the end of all things.”
“Did I ever say such a thing?” exclaimed Leon with annoyance.
“No--you never said so; but I know that is what you think--I know it.”
“How do you know it? Who told you so?”
“I know it; I know that is what philosophers think at the bottom
of their souls, and you are one of them. I do not read your books
because I do not understand them; but some one who does understand
them has read them.”
Leon rose and turned away, deeply provoked and troubled; he was about
to quit the alcove, but suddenly he came back to his wife’s bedside;
he took her hand, and said in a stern firm voice:
“María, I am going to say a last word--the last. An idea has just
flashed upon my mind which seems to me to promise salvation--which,
if we both accept it and act upon it, may yet save us from this hell
of misery.”
María, overcome by the pathos and solemnity of his address could say
nothing in reply.
“I will explain it in two words.--Happy thought! I cannot think
why it never occurred to me before--: I will promise to give up my
studies and my evening meetings--the society alike of my books and of
my friends. My library shall be walled-up like that of Don Quixote;
not a word, not an idea, that can be thought suspicious shall ever be
uttered in the house, not a remark that can be regarded as flippant
or worldly on matters of religion; there shall be no discussions on
history or science--in short, no conversation, no talk whatever....”
“What a comfort! what happiness!” cried María raising herself to kiss
her husband’s hands. “And you really and truly promise me this--and
will keep your promise?”
“I solemnly swear it. But do not sing your _Te Deum_ too soon; you
will understand that I do not propose to make such concessions
without requiring some on your part. I have told you my side of the
bargain--now for yours. I will sacrifice what you ignorantly call
my atheism--though it is an entirely different thing--now you must
sacrifice what you call your piety--doubtful piety at the best. If
we are to understand each other, you must give up your incessant,
interminable devotions, your weekly confession--always to the same
priest,--and all the scenic accessories to religion. You may go to
Mass on Sundays and Holy Days, and confess once a year, but without
previously selecting your confessor.”
“Oh! this is too much!” exclaimed María hiding her face as if in
self-pity for the miserable remnant left to her of her religious
dissipations.
“Too much!--you think this too much to ask, silly child! Well, I will
make a compromise: If you reduce your church-going I will go with
you.”
“You will go with me!” she cried starting up in her bed impulsively.
“Is it true?--do you mean it?--No, you are mocking me.”
“No indeed, I will go with you, on Sundays.”
“Only on Sundays!”
“Only on Sundays.”
“And you will confess, like me, once a year.”
“Oh! as to that....” Leon murmured.
“You will not?”
“No.--You ask too much at once. I am making an enormous sacrifice,
while yours is but a small one. You are giving up superfluous
luxuries to enjoy all that is necessary and reasonable; you are
snatching off the mask of hypocrisy and bigotry to reveal the true
beauty of a Christian wife. This is not a sacrifice. Mine on the
other hand is the loss of everything;--in laying my studies and my
friendships at your feet, I am cutting off half of my life that you
may trample it in the dust.”
“But still it is not enough,” said María passionately. “Of what use
is it that you should cease to read if you continue to think--if you
still think and always will think the same? You will go with me to
church as a mere formality; your body will go in, but your soul will
remain outside; and when you see the sacred Host raised in the hands
of the priest, a feeling of abominable mockery will laugh within
you--unless indeed you are meditating on the insects you can see with
your microscope, and which you believe to be the cause of thought and
sentiment in our souls, and which I believe to be divine.”
“Your sarcasms cannot touch me,” said her husband. “I know too well
the source of these ignorant prejudices. I can only pledge myself to
honest and reverent attention.--But I was forgetting another matter.
You will have to quit Madrid; we must go to live elsewhere. Now take
your choice.”
“You ask too much--it is a shame!” cried María in the voice of a
spoilt child. “And what do you offer in return? A sham of religion,
a mask of belief to cover your infidel’s face! No, Leon; I cannot
agree.”
“Then there is no hope for me,” cried Leon burying his head in his
hands. After a few minutes of silent anguish, he coldly looked up at
his wife and went on:
“María, then we must live apart. I cannot endure this existence.
Within a few days it shall be settled. You can remain in this house
or go to your parents, which ever you prefer; I shall go abroad,
never to return--never.”
He rose; his wife, after the manner of fashionable wives, burst into
tears, seizing his hands and pressing them to her breast.
“We must part?” she sobbed. “But you are mad--cruel....” María’s love
for her husband was as great as his for her--a gulf, an absolute
divorce of their souls she could bear, but to live apart...!
“My mind is quite made up,” said Leon sadly.
“I agree--I consent to all you propose.”
Long after, when she had been sleeping for some hours, again Leon
heard his wife wake with a cry of horror.
“I have been dreaming again--a horrible dream. I was dying and again
I saw you--you were caressing and kissing another woman.--But it is
daylight; the bells are really ringing now.”
The air was in fact full of the discordant jangle and clang of bells
from the towers of the numberless stuccoed and whitewashed structures
which, in Madrid, boast of the name of churches, and bear witness to
the piety of the natives.
“They are ringing for Matins,” thought María, “I am dying of
sleepiness--I must sleep. It is eight o’clock and still they ring,
still they call me.--But I cannot go--I have given my word. Heavens!
it is nine! Forgive me--spare me, beloved bells; I cannot go till
Sunday.”
CHAPTER XVI.
IN THE DOG-DAYS.
The season of exodus and dispersion had arrived. Madrid was swarming
and bustling like an ant-hill, every one exhausted by the heat and
eagerly seeking money. The price of gold went up as though war were
impending, and transactions in small shares were as lively as though
there were some real increase of business. Many a family drew the
rope that the extravagances of the past winter had tied round its
neck, yet a little tighter; while others, not owning even a rope
to pull, consoled themselves by singing the praises of the Madrid
Summer, and declaring the charms of its promenades and its beautiful
nights to be far superior to the solitude and dulness of the country.
A summer at Pinto or Getafe was as bad as a winter at El Escudo or
Pajares!
The Tellerías were among the number of those who would not for worlds
have stayed in town. They too were off in defiance of all the laws
and logic of arithmetic and economy. The marquesa, however, stretched
out the spring to its utmost span, saying that the heat was still
very endurable and that in the north the weather was rainy and cold.
Leon, having no motive for deferring his departure, but, on the
contrary, every reason for hastening it, fixed it for the first week
in July. But the day before they started an unexpected event upset
every body’s plans. The sons of the marquis had long known that their
brother, Luis Gonzaga, was out of health; Gustavo and Leon knew more
indeed--they knew that he was suffering from a painful and lingering
complaint, that scourge of the young, consumption, which frequently
attacks a delicate constitution or one that has been undermined by
dissipation or study. As the fathers of the seminary where the young
man was living pronounced his malady to be only at its incipient
stage, nothing had been said to his mother, with the idea that it
would come quite soon enough to her knowledge when, in the course
of the summer, she should go to see her son. But now, suddenly,
like a bolt of wrath from Heaven, came a letter from the Principal,
announcing that Luis Gonzaga’s disease had assumed an aggravated form
and that “as the young man was anxious to see his family he would
travel to Madrid next day by the express train.”
They were all startled and dismayed at the news and still more so
when, on the following day, the poor lad appeared, so surely stamped
with the marks of suffering that he looked like a spectre in a
priest’s gown. Though his features were shrunk under the cold kiss
of Death, they had a strong resemblance to the bright and lovely face
of his sister. As has been said they wer
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