XVI.

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She came on tiptoe with an air of gayety and animation that contrasted with her usual reserve of manner, and curled herself up on the floor like a pet kitten, at the foot of her master’s bed. The latter, however, did not dedicate his first words to her, but instinctively consecrated them to the real love of his life, the mother who had borne him; who was sleeping close by in the next room.

“Only think what happiness, Esclavita! Mamma is almost entirely well. I can scarcely believe it. She gave me a terrible fright. This morning when you told me how ill she felt, I could not go to sleep again.”

Esclavita gave the student a curiously penetrating and meaning glance, and then answered:

“I prayed earnestly to Our Lady of Slavery that the mistress might get better. I offered her a mass, besides. You see how the Virgin has listened to my prayers, SeÑorito.”

“Of course. You must have a great deal of influence with the saints.”

“Yes,” murmured the girl, “I have—to obtain what is against myself.”

“Against yourself!” exclaimed Rogelio, surprised and somewhat displeased. “And is it against yourself that my mother should get well?”

“That she should get well—no,” stammered Esclavita; “that she should get well, no, indeed; and I hope God will take me to himself before he takes her. But as soon as her illness is over our sitting up with her will be over. And when that is over, these pleasant times will be over.”

The explanation flattered Rogelio’s vanity, assuring him once more that he was loved, and not as a child is loved, but as a man is loved by a woman; in which consisted the whole charm of this singular intercourse, that not even to himself did he venture to call amorous. These words, that were rendered sweeter to him by the tremulous and regretful tones in which they were uttered, impelled Rogelio to put his arm around her head, and, drawing it toward him, he tenderly pressed it to his breast. Esclavita’s breath came and went so tumultuously that Rogelio said to her at last, affectionately:

“There, I will release you. I don’t want to hurt you or distress you.”

“Hurt me, no,” murmured the girl; “hurt me, no.”

Rogelio did not again attempt to caress her. It was not necessary that he should impose any restraint upon himself in order to treat Esclavita with respect here, almost at his mother’s bedside, or to refrain from these manifestations of affection, that were fraternal rather than lover-like; of whose real meaning and significance he himself was ignorant. He only permitted himself to pass his hand now and again over her loosely-flowing and luxuriant auburn hair. Esclavita’s hair looked softer than it really was, but it was certainly pleasant to pass his hand over the warm, wavy tresses.

“Don’t you want to sleep a little?” he said. “You have been sitting up for two nights, and you must be worn out. If mamma moves I will waken you. I will not sleep in any case.”

Esclavita refused. To sit up three nights! What was that? She had spent forty nights without taking off her clothes, when nursing the priest during his last illness, without other rest than such as was afforded her by leaning back in an old arm-chair and dozing for five minutes or so at a time. Do without rest for three nights! She could do without rest for three months if it were necessary.

“Well, if you don’t want to sleep, amuse me, then. Tell me something,” he said.

“Ah, SeÑorito, a good person you ask to tell you something! One who knows nothing herself.”

“Of course you know something, silly girl. Tell me something about our native place. I am dying to hear about it. When I left there I was only a child. I can scarcely remember it.”

Hearing him speak of her native land, Esclavita’s eyes glowed in the darkness like the eyes of a cat.

“Don’t you remember it at all, SeÑorito?” she asked.

“Well, I will tell you. Searching in my memory I fancy I can see a great many green fields and a rough sea, very green, too. But it is all very confused. Do you know what I can remember most distinctly? A sailor taking me in his arms to bathe me; I fancy I can see him now before me, as black as pitch and smelling of sardines.”

“And why don’t you go back there to see it all again?”

“This year it will go hard with me or I will persuade mamma to go. We will pass through Marineda and Compostela. We shall see the provinces of Pontevedra and Orense. We will feast upon oysters and lobsters. It must be like Paradise there. We will take you with us. You shall see.”

“Me?” said the girl, shaking her head. “Me? Ah, no; you will see that you will not take me.”

“Why not, silly girl?”

“When my heart tells me anything it always comes true, and my heart tells me that my eyes shall never see home again.”

“Be still, bird of ill omen! Let me get through with the worry of the examinations and you shall see. So it is a beautiful place, eh? Come, tell me all about it? What is it like? They say it is the loveliest province in all Spain.”

“Or in all the world; I have already told you so,” Esclavita answered, with profound conviction. “If you were to see the rivers of Pontevedra you would be struck dumb with admiration. If you were to see them casting the nets for sardines!”

“It must be delightful. You are already making me long to see it. And the pilgrimages with their drums and bagpipes, what do you say of them?”

“A festival like one of those,” declared the girl, very seriously, “is better than all the diversions of Madrid put together. There I was very gay and I danced every Sunday; here I feel as if my paletilla[A] had sunk in.”

[A] Paletilla: xiphisternum, metasternum, or ensiform cartilage.

“And what do you mean by that? Tell me.”

“It is a bone that we have here,” she answered, touching her breast, “that when it sinks in, it seems as if one’s soul sank, too; one keeps growing sadder and sadder, and one loses one’s color and appetite, so that after a while if one doesn’t get it raised again, one dies.”

“Do you believe that, child?”

“It is the truth. Some people say that all that about the paletilla is the effect of witchcraft, but I have seen two or three die already because they wouldn’t have it raised.”

“Well, then, SuriÑa, sometimes it seems as if my paletilla, too, had fallen, for I have fits of the spleen and I lose my appetite completely. I have got the notion into my head that as soon as I go home I shall get strong and grow as fat as a pig—so,” and he puffed out his cheeks to show how fat he expected to become. “Here, I will always be as thin as a lath. The life here is not calculated to make one grow strong. Come, tell me something about home.”

Esclavita obeyed, and began to narrate, without order or descriptive skill, incidents connected with her own history rather than having any relation to the country. “When I was a child, such or such a thing took place—” “One afternoon when I went to see the sardine fishing—” “When I was learning to make lace with the bobbins—” “Once when we were baking the bread in our oven.” The very personality of these recollections lent them a singular charm in Rogelio’s eyes. While he listened to the girl’s words, it seemed as if the vanished memories of his childhood took definite and distinct shape in his mind. The room seemed to be filled with rural scents of mint, anise, new-mown hay. The illusion was so strong that he drew Esclava’s head toward him and smelled it. “Your hair smells like—like the fields,” he said. While the girl talked, his determination to go home grew every moment stronger. “If I don’t go home,” he thought, “I shall never be a man. It is the first thing to be done. I am going to ask mamma to go when she is well. It is a wonder she has never gone there before to spend the summer instead of going to that ill-smelling, crowded San SebastiÁn. The moment I set foot in the old land I shall grow as strong as a young ox.”

“Ah, SeÑorito,” said Esclavita softly, “how ugly and arid all the country on the way coming here seemed to me! Not a solitary tree, not a streamlet, not a green bush. How can the farmers live here?”

“Better than there, foolish girl. This is the land that produces bread and wine.”

“Holy Mother! It seems impossible that people could live contented in that parched land. And then, never to see the sea! When you look at the sea, it seems the same as if you were looking at the grandeur of God. Isn’t it true that only God could create a thing so grand as the sea, and all that comes out of it? Those pretty little shells; so many, many kinds of fishes, the sardines, that are the maintenance of the poor.”

“You talk like a book, Esclavita. I am not surprised that your devoted NuÑo Rasura——”

“Who?”

“SeÑor de Febrero, child.”

“The old man with the crutch?”

“Yes. Well, he says that you are a treasure. You must know that he is head over ears in love with you.”

“Nonsense. Don’t make sport of me.”

“I am in earnest. Why, he wants to take you to his own house. They say it will end by his offering you his lily-white hand and his lame foot. He has conceived for you an insensate passion which will carry him to the tomb in the flower of his youth, in the smiling age of illusion, before he has reached his eighty-sixth April.”

“Well, well! Poor man, he hasn’t even the use of his legs.”

“Hold your tongue, ungrateful girl; hypocrite, rather. You will gain nothing by concealing the profound impression which his curling locks have made upon you.”

“Yes, taken from some dead man’s head,” said the girl, smiling humorously.

“His pearly teeth and his slender form. But lay no plans, traitress, for I will not allow you to follow that Don Juan. If you should prove false to your duty, be prepared to die at my hands. I will tear your heart out if you betray me.”

He ran his hand through her tresses caressingly, and murmured softly:

“SuriÑa will not go with the old man. SuriÑa belongs to me. Who wanted to steal her from me? Let them prepare to defend themselves; let them prepare to defend themselves. SuriÑa is mine!”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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