Segundo was the last of the guests to arrive at Las Vides. As he cared but little for games and as Nieves did not take any very active part in them either, they would often have found themselves thrown for society upon each other had it not been for Victorina, who, from the moment Segundo appeared, never left her mother's side, and Elvira Molende who, from the very instant of his arrival, clung to the poet like the ivy to the wall, directing on him a battery of sighs and glances, and treating him to sentimental confidences and rhapsodies sweet enough to surfeit a confectioner's boy. From the moment in which Segundo set foot in Las Vides, Elvira lost all her animation, and assumed a languishing and romantic air, which made her cheeks appear hollower and the circles under her eyes deeper than ever. Her form acquired the melancholy droop of the willow and, giving up sports and pranks, she devoted herself exclusively to the Swan.
As it was moonlight, and the evenings were enjoyable out of doors, as soon as the sun had set, and the labors of the day were ended, and the vintagers assembled for a dance, some of the guests would assemble together also in the garden, generally at the foot of a high wall bordered with leafy camellias, or they would stop and sit down for a chat at some inviting spot on their way home from a walk. Elvira knew by heart a great many verses, both good and bad, generally of a melancholy kind—sentimental and elegiac; she was familiar with all the flowers of poetry, all the tender verses which constituted the poetic wealth of the locality, and uttered by her thin lips, in the silvery tones of her gentle voice, with the soft accents of her native land, the Galician verses, like an Andalusian moral maxim in the sensual mouth of a gypsy, had a peculiar and impressive beauty—the sensibility of a race crystallized in a poetic gem, in a tear of love. These plaintive verses were interrupted at times by mocking bursts of laughter, as the gay sounds of the castanets strike in on the melancholy notes of the bagpipes. The poems in dialect acquired a new beauty, their freshness and sylvan aroma seemed to augment by being recited by the soft tones of a woman's voice, on the edge of a pine wood and under the shadow of a grapevine, on a serene moonlight night; and the rhyme became a vague and dreamy melopoeia, like that of certain German ballads; a labial music interspersed with soft diphthongs, tender Ñ's, x's of a more melodious sound than the hissing Castilian ch. Generally, after the recitations came singing. Don Eugenio, who was a Borderer, knew some Portuguese fados, and Elvira was unrivaled in her rendering of the popular and melancholy song of Curros, which seems made for Druidical nights, for nights illuminated by the solemn light of the moon.
Segundo's heart thrilled with gratified vanity when Elvira recited shyly, in alternation with the verses of the popular and admired poets of the country, songs of the Swan, which had appeared in periodicals of Vigo or Orense. Segundo had never written in dialect, and yet Elvira had a book in which she pasted all the productions of the unknown Swan; Teresa, joining in the animated conversation with the best intentions in the word, betrayed her sister:
"She writes verses too. Come, child, recite something of your own. She has a copy-book full of things invented, composed by herself."
The poetess, after the indispensable excuses and denials, recited two or three little things, almost without poetic form, weak, sincere in the midst of their sentimental falseness—verses of the kind which reveal no artistic faculty, but which are the sure indication that the author or authoress feels an unsatisfied desire, longs for fame or for love, as the inarticulate cry of the infant expresses its hunger. Segundo twisted his mustache, Nieves lowered her eyes and played with the tassels of her fan, impatient and somewhat bored and nervous. This occurred two or three days after the arrival of Segundo who, in spite of all his attempts, had not yet been able to succeed in saying a word in private to Nieves.
"How uncultured these young ladies are!" said SeÑora de Comba to herself, while aloud she said, "How lovely, how tender! It sounds like some of Grilo's verses."
