Benito PErez Galdos

REMINISCENCES—ANXIETIES.

They sat down to dinner, as Pepa had said, a party of four. Happy to find herself with friends so good and few, the millionaire’s daughter showed her pleasure frankly but discreetly during the meal, after which they all went together into the drawing-room where Pepa received her more intimate acquaintance. There she had collected various treasures of art and numberless trifles of French workmanship, adding prettiness to splendour, and novelty to beauty, all so skilfully arranged to surprise or delight the eye that the palace of caprice itself could not be more delightful. They sat together for some time till the Countess de Vera left to go to the theatre, Don JoaquÍn OnÉsimo offering to escort her. Then the other two were alone.

On a crimson divan, over which hung a genre picture representing a squalid party of gypsies with their asses—fashion attributes a very high value to this class of work just now, and pays for them their weight in gold—while not far off, on a pedestal representing three elephants’ heads, stood a Chinese vase in which grew a drooping broad-leaved begonia—Pepa and Leon Roch sat side by side; she very communicative; he gloomy, and silent.

“It all happened just as I foresaw,” said Pepita. “Federico, far from improving at Havana, went from bad to worse. I told papa he would, here he had got into some absurd and discreditable business, and there ... well it would seem that distance makes men reckless. I am ashamed when I think of it; I cannot get used to the idea that my husband could be guilty of such dirty work. Why, out there he had to hide and make his escape, for my father’s correspondents there would have put him in prison ... when I think that it was my madness, my idiotic folly, that brought this disgrace on my father’s house!... All the mischief arose from that cursed passion for gambling; but who could control it? It was in his blood—part and parcel of his being. I assure you,” she added after a pause and passing her hand across her eyes, “that I have gone through hours of intense misery and untold struggles; for there were some things that I could not tell papa, and at the same time I was forced to apply to him to get out of the compromising difficulties in which my husband placed me by his enormous losses. But you too have suffered, more than enough SeÑor de Roch. I do not believe that hearts are made of flesh and blood as anatomists tell us; they are stone and iron which cannot be broken, or mine must have been crushed. I have shed so many tears,” she again wiped her eyes—“that I think I can have none left to shed if any further grief befalls me.... But how could I hope to see the fulfilment of all the fancies and bright dreams of that bygone time? Ah! reality tames us; we live to learn. Good heavens! when I think of what I have gone through for mere appearances!... Indeed Leon, I have suffered cruelly. This palace, which to others is a scene of feasting and amusement, to me is full of sorrows; there is not an object which does not bear the mark, as it were, of my sighs; there is not a spot of which I could not say: ‘Here I cried on such a day; there I thought I should die of grief.’ If I were to try to tell you all I should never come to an end.” And Pepita waved her hand to indicate the endlessness of what she might relate if she were not afraid of boring her friend.

“No, no, tell me everything. Do I not know the worst, the really incomprehensible beginning of it all: your marriage to that rascal Cimarra? That you, with your morbid imagination—a sort of moral atrophy in spite of your good heart—should have made such a mistake I cannot understand; but that your father should have consented!... To be sure, when his party came to the front and made Federico a provincial governor, he seemed for a time to have amended his ways; he was the model man in office. When he held a high position in the exchequer no one could have recognised the old Cimarra in that punctual, almost stoical functionary; he was so anxious to be thought a judicious and important personage that it was quite ridiculous, and I believe your father allowed himself to be taken in by the masquerade. Besides, your father had dealings with the exchequer in those days; I heard something of a loan on the salt tax and a mortgage on salt mines ... but it was you, Pepa, who were to be given in pledge and put in the power of that ruffian. I was not surprised at the trouble that followed, but oh! how deeply I pitied you. At the time when you married I was happy; since then ... but you see I know the worst of your miserable story, and if there is anything I do not know, lose no time in telling me.”

Pepa laughed; then turning to her friend with a reproachful air she said:

“But I like your coolness; ‘tell me, tell me,’ you say? But you tell me nothing. It is not that there is any lack of interesting chapters in your history—nay, of grand, not to say poetic passages, but that you are the most reticent soul alive. You can endure the bitterest griefs without any one ever knowing it. But I am very much interested in what goes on in your house; I know that you and MarÍa never meet but at meals, and that not every day. You see, though you are so prudent, your mother-in-law is not. She answers those that ask ... and Polito; he tells tales of what occurs—and of what does not occur as well.”

Leon sighed. Pepa hid a smile with her fan and went on:

“You have married into a delightful family!”

There was a long silence during which they both sat gazing at the flowers in the carpet. In this hushed and solitary house, where not a sound was to be heard, a sort of melancholy or sleepiness pervaded the air which was conducive to meditation. Pepa rose and paced the room as though she were racking her brain for some adequate mode of expressing something that was stirring in her mind and that must be said.

The reader has been told that she was not handsome, and why should I repeat it. But there is nothing so bad as to have good in it, nor woman so plain that she has no detail of beauty. Pepa indeed did not lack charms, and to some she possessed them in a high degree; her eyes were effective, small but very bright, with a sweet and caressing glance. What was most conspicuous in her was her thick red hair and the dead whiteness of her skin which gave her the effect of a statue of alabaster and gold. She was tall and somewhat bony, but this defect was qualified by her well-proportioned limbs and the exquisite lightness of her gait, with an air of gentle confidence that was extremely captivating. The volubility of her tongue covered a grave and thoughtful nature; she seemed to have no pride at all, and her manners, somewhat independent of etiquette, were most engagingly frank and cordial. Her caprices and eccentricities were so much changed from what they were when we first saw her at Iturburua, that she was hardly like the same woman. Sorrow, that tames all, had brandished her scourge over Pepita’s head, and there was little left of her old violence beyond a rare and transitory echo. She presently returned to her seat, and for some minutes she silently watched the intelligent but melancholy countenance of her old friend. Leon remained lost in thought, like a mathematician absorbed in the depths of a calculation.

“What are you thinking of?” Pepa suddenly asked.—But it would fill three chapters to say what Leon was thinking of at that moment.

“Of nothing,” he said with affected indifference, “of the miseries and farces of life.”

“You cannot forget your mamma-in-law?” said Pepa laughing. “Do you never go to her parties? She began them again with great display when she went out of mourning for her son Luis Gonzaga, who died just six months ago, if I remember rightly. I can keep account of the most important events in your family. Would you believe it ... her evenings are quite famous.”

“Oh, I believe it. They will no doubt become famous.”

“The Count de Vera tells me that she gave a capital supper the night before last. Do not you think that your brothers-in-law must have pledged the family standard for a good round sum? But some people really do not know what to do with their money!”

They both laughed, but Leon suddenly turned melancholy.

“Change the subject,” he said; “it is a painful one.”

“Your mother-in-law has found the philosopher’s stone,” Pepa went on, “you ought to be proud of having any one in your family who is so clever in that art!... Well, I heard—servants always have the most delightful stories, and they tell each other everything—oh! the most amusing detail ... shall I tell you?”

“No, for pity’s sake.”

“Nonsense, let me tell you.”

“I can guess it: that on the very day of the great supper there was nothing to eat; that there was a commotion in the house because some purveyor or confectioner brought a bill for twenty or thirty dollars ... oh! I know it all; it is an every day dilemma.”

“But perhaps you do not know of the scandalous flirtation that the Marquesa de San SalomÓ carries on with Gustavo, in his father’s house even. Vera told me that they were always together, sitting in a corner, whispering and cooing with an air of mystery and devotion in the most impudent, the most audacious way!... So they say, but perhaps it is slander; so many lies get about.”

“So many!”

“And have you heard of her poet?” Pepa went on with malicious enjoyment. “Has not the marquis told you about him? This inspired being whose verses are all about white doves and lilies of peace, the Christian home, the glories of Sinai, the Virgins of the Lord, pious aspirations, the azure empyrean, the spirits of the deep and the soul of Virtue—this sublime Christian poet adores your mother-in-law as his Beatrice.” Pepa could not help laughing. “It is she who inspires him with all these divine visions and metaphysical raptures. It is a pity you should not have seen him; he is quite a character. To talk to him after reading his verses is like falling from the clouds into a mud heap. You have not only dramas in your family but farces!”

“Pepita for pity’s sake do not torture me,” said Leon rising to go. “You know that I can never get accustomed to certain things which some people do not mind at all so long as they do not go on in their own houses. They do not, to be sure, go on in mine; but still, I see them in that of a man who has a right to call me his son. It crushes me ... I feel that I cannot live here, I must leave Madrid, my mind is quite made up; I must go....”

“Go! where?”

“Anywhere. I must find some excuse.—I can make one,” he said with prompt determination. “I know that it is my fate to live in isolation, to have no home, no family ... well if I must, I must. And what can be better? A very good thing is solitude....”

“And you will leave Spain?” asked Pepa, trying to conceal her emotion.

“I do not know even that.”

“Nothing calls you abroad?”

“No ... I shall not leave the country. It might seem that after all that has happened in my house and in the isolation in which I live there, I could have no interest in my home; and yet, if I am far from Madrid I feel utterly forlorn. I have friends here....”

“Stay, I can suggest a delightful retreat,” said Pepa eagerly. “Do you know that close to Suertebella there is a charming little house to let?”

“Close to Suertebella?” muttered Leon, on whose fancy the plan smiled greatly. “I will think about it; I will go and see the rooms.”

“There you can devote yourself entirely to study; no one will interrupt you. It is such a pretty place, especially just now when the corn fields are all green, and you should see the poppies! You can look over our grounds and those of Vista-Alegre, and beyond that miles of lovely fields with flocks of sheep here and there. The house is flooded with light and sunshine; you will see how cheerful it is. Then it is so snug—just big enough for one person. A splendid sitting-room for studying in—for fighting it out with your books, arranging your papers, notes, and names, and thrusting pins through your miserable insects. You will be so comfortable there. The people of the house are quiet respectable folks, and the silence, the stillness, the peace!...”

Pepa folded her hands devoutly to convey an idea of the peace she described. “They will not feed you very well perhaps, but you are not an epicure, and when you want a good dinner you can come to us. You have only to go down into the cow-yard, open a door—two steps....”

“Two steps?” said Leon, pleased by this tempting description.

“Two steps, and you are in the cow-yard and then in the little garden where Monina plays.”

“Where Monina plays.”

They had drawn closer together in their eager gestures as they had become more interested in the dialogue and their hands met now and then, like birds that flutter and coo.

“Monina may perhaps make a little noise and disturb you at your work—but you will forgive her, will you not?” As she spoke Pepa winked her eyelids to keep her tears from falling.

“Forgive her! Why Pepa, you may think it lucky if I do not devour her with kisses.”

“And it is a fortnight since you saw her, you bad man!”

“I will go to see her to-morrow,” said Leon, his face as bright now as it had before been gloomy.

“To-morrow; then I am to expect you?” said Pepa, who was half reclining on the divan so that her elbow was buried in the pillows.

“Yes, you may expect me; did you say the child was ailing?” he added with some anxiety.

Pepa was on the point of replying when a servant hurried into the room who had just arrived tired and breathless from Suertebella. Pepa gazed at him in horror. What had happened? A very simple matter. The little girl had suddenly been taken ill—very ill indeed.

“Good God!” cried Pepa starting from her seat. “And I here, idling ... amusing myself! I must be off at once. Order the carriage ... Lola, my cloak ... make haste! What is the matter? She coughs you say—is choking?... Has she had a fall? or caught cold. She got wet in the park. My poor darling. A doctor ... send at once to Dr. Moreno.”

“I will see to that, go at once,” said Leon, not less alarmed than the mother.

“She has been in a draught and I told them again and again to take the greatest care ... but servants will always give a child everything it cries for....”

“Oh go at once, do not delay. I will see that Moreno follows you in my carriage as quickly as possible ... and perhaps it will be nothing after all!”

Pepa started, and Leon went in search of the doctor.

We must go no farther in our story without explaining that Leon Roch visited at the FÚcar’s house as the friend of the marquis, no less than as a true and loyal friend of his daughter’s. Theirs was not the only house in which he was intimate; he went to many in search of some diversion from his melancholy in pleasant society and worthy friendships. At the same time it must be owned that his visits to Pepa had of late been long ones. Why? Some people would have answered the question promptly, to his discredit; but their answer lacks evidence. There had budded in Leon’s soul, without his dreaming of its strength, a pure and tender passion of which more will be told presently.