Benito PErez Galdos

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.