Benito PErez Galdos

DESERTERS.

In fact the doctors’ verdict was a hopeless one, though they thought the end was as yet far off, and this brought some relief and even hope to the anxious household. Time, whether future or past, is a great consoler, and a misfortune postponed, like a misfortune long past, is lost on the vague and distant horizon behind which lies the wide realm of forgetfulness. The TellerÍa family settled down into comparative ease of mind, and its members by degrees reserved their usual tone and demeanour. Gustavo was elected and spent his days in the Congress chamber. His mother, though she could not entirely throw off the anxiety that weighed upon her, resumed that sweet expression of bland conformity to the ways of the world, mixed with a certain plaintive pietism which implied that she was, on the whole, resigned to enjoy herself, and the futility of life filled up a large portion of her time.

One morning Leon found her in a state of bewildered indecision, contemplating a collection of summer hats that had come from a shop in a large basket covered with oil-cloth; there was every variety of headpiece conceived, month after month, by the ingenuity of the French mind—birds’ nests buried in ears of corn and sparkling with beetles, baskets piled up with tufts of moss, straw platters with wild flowers, round helmets, formless mats cocked into corners, saucepan-shaped erections with flat brims trimmed with hummingbirds, turban hats wreathed with gauze veils, in short every extravagant and absurd device that a milliner can create to tempt women to hasten their husbands’ ruin. The marquesa examined them all, criticising each with a sharp or a severe remark, as became a woman of superior taste. Some she tried on before the glass, turning her head from side to side to judge of the effects of shape and colour, and at last she put them all back into the basket:

“I will not take any of them,” she said. “It is quite possible that we may go to France and then I can get all I want there, as I have in former years, and bring home something new, quite new—I will make it all right with the Aduana (custom-house). Yes it is quite possible we may go to France; you did not know, Leon?”

Leon with MarÍa and Luis Gonzaga had assisted at the review of the hats, giving his opinion when it was asked. The conversation now turned from the fashions to the custom-house duties. The twins sat silent and sad, more particularly Luis, who kept his eyes fixed on the flowers in the garden which was full of rhododendrons and lovely pink-flowered azaleas.

“You did not know?” the lady repeated. “That wretched boy Leopoldo is leaving us to-day. He is off to Biarritz with some other young fellows—friends of his. I could not prevent him—I explained to him that as we had all remained at home to be with Luis, he ought to stay as well. He says that he requires sea-baths and gave no end of reasons—he is taking advantage of the convenience of going with the Duke de CeriÑola and Count de Garellano who have secured a saloon carriage.”

On enquiring of a servant for SeÑor Polito they learnt that he was breakfasting out, and that he intended to go straight from his friend’s house to the station without coming home again. His packing was done and his trunks locked. This extraordinary proceeding, proving how much family and filial feeling her worthless son could boast of, was a deep grief to the marquesa, who, with all her follies, lacked neither tenderness nor the sense of right. Leopoldo, she frankly admitted, had been shamefully ill-brought up—though by no fault of hers—and was a hardened scapegrace, impervious to all good feeling, and capable of leaving his family in the lurch in their hour of greatest need if he saw a chance of riding a borrowed horse, of driving a friend’s coach, or riding in a friend’s phaeton, of being hand and glove with some sprig of the nobility or staking a few dollars at cards.

The marquis, who had just come into the room in an elaborate light-coloured spring suit, heard the news with the utter indifference which some people assume as the very acme of good taste.

“It is natural,” he said, “boys must amuse themselves. They will be men all in good time, with the ties and troubles of a social position and public life, with rheumatism—for instance here am I, in absolute need of repairs, and I shall be obliged to have them. My doctor was quite furious when I told him I could not get away this summer: ‘What!’ he exclaimed. ‘SeÑor MarquÉs! the head of a family ought never to neglect his health. I condemn you to take baths; it is a sentence without appeal!’ In short my dears—I set out to-morrow.”

His wife’s astonishment seemed to be caused by annoyance and disappointment. All were to be free while she was to be a slave, harnessed to the dreary round of a summer in Madrid.

“Our dear Luis,” the marquis went on, stroking his son’s cheek, “gets better every day; I am not anxious about him; nothing will do him so much good as rest. A summer in Madrid with his mother at his side—how glad I should be to stay with you, but I am most unlucky!—Several friends have begged me to share their carriage in the train to-morrow.”

He stopped, finding himself alone with Leon; his wife and the twins had left the room.

“It is really no fault of mine,” he went on as he walked up and down the pretty drawing-room, crammed with a thousand costly trifles of French exportation, tapestry, porcelain, furniture, and all the expensive magnificence which fills our houses for lack of the real works of art which are taken away from their proper place and use, to be stored in museums by an Æsthetic government.—“It is no fault of mine; you can easily believe that I go very much against my will. I am truly distressed at the levity of my two sons who have deserted their father’s roof just when poor Milagros most needs their society to cheer her and when Luis is so ill—for he is very ill, it is of no use to deceive ourselves. I believe he will go on getting worse; he may get through the autumn—but the winter.—In any case the boys have behaved badly, very badly. Leopoldo is going to-night and Gustavo to-morrow. I should not have thought it of Gustavo—however, he is going, he is in love, over head and ears in love. The Marquesa de San SalomÓ starts to-morrow for Arcachon, Paris and le Havre; Gustavo accordingly is going northwards too and the labels of his luggage are addressed for le Havre via Arcachon and Paris—a very nice little journey. The marquesa is very pretty and elegant, and Gustavo is very attractive—whether all they say is true! who knows? I don’t believe a word of it. But there is no doubt that Gustavo’s fiery eloquence and his fearless and vigorous defence of the Church made a great sensation in the fashionable world. The ladies’ seats were filled quite early with pretty faces under the most elegant hats, and there was a constant murmur of discussion and approval. And it is certainly the fact that women are among the staunchest guardians of the time-honoured creed of our ancestors. Do you hope to pervert the national conscience, you atheists? Then you must begin by annihilating the fairer half of the human race.—The truth is that Gustavo is an admirable speaker; his fervid language moves the Chamber and delights the galleries. Then he has found a congenial subject, a subject that speaks for itself—that appeals to the feelings, to the heart, to all that is most sacred and precious in the soul and which is altogether consonant to the spirit of Castilian nobility. The Marquis de FÚcar said to me yesterday with a knowing wink: ‘That young fellow has struck into the right path’—and I replied: ‘Oh, yes! Gustavo knows where he is going—and how to get there.’ He is so full of talent that, as my friend Don Cayetano Polentinos said to me: ‘He is a perfect manual of hopes!’ Clever, good-looking, full of eager eloquence. However, I must own I should have liked to see him with more family feeling. I leave home because I absolutely need rest and health; but Gustavo.—Still, I can understand the attractiveness of such a woman as the Marquesa de San SalomÓ.—Yes, yes, I am coming. (This to a servant who had come in to say that breakfast was getting cold.) Are you ready for breakfast Leon? You too will be weighing anchor I suppose....”

The next day Leon went to see off his father-in-law and Gustavo, who left by the same train though in different carriages and very different society—both however with free passes due to the kindness of some member on the Company’s board.

“I could not possibly put off this journey,” Gustavo said to his brother-in-law, leading him away to the least crowded part of the station. “If anything happens at home you will telegraph to me at once.—Look, do you see that woman? I expected as much as soon as I heard that my father was going away.—Do you see her?”

“Her—who?”

“Paca, Paquira—there she goes....” And among the crowd, above which surged a mass of plumed and wreathed hats, with gaudy birds, and blue and green veils shrouding pretty faces, like clouds, Leon distinguished a young girl of pleasing appearance and elegantly dressed, disputing with the guard for two seats in a carriage.

“And there is my father with two friends who are getting in with them.—Now, I ask you—what can such folly lead to in a man who ought to remember his age and his duties, the state of his household and his own social position? That mania for remaining young is the ruin of modern society.—Well, if you do not go away be as much as you can with my mother and Luis. My mother has a soft heart and this misfortune has come upon her like a warning from Heaven—a warning that she should cease to regard this life as one long scene of amusement. Will she take the lesson to heart? I fear not. She has a kind heart but too weak a nature. I am furious when I see that swindler Leopoldo getting money out of her. But that is just like her—whatever he asks for she is ready to give him.—Ah, my father has got into another compartment; he is in the next one, with his friends. Well, so long as he saves us from any public scandal. Good-bye; write to me, or send a telegram if anything happens. Arcachon, Hotel Brisset—and then Paris, poste restante.”