Benito PErez Galdos

THE DEVOURING OGRE—CROUP.

Quite early in the morning Leon set out in his carriage for Carabanchel. The air was fresh from the rain which had not ceased during the night, and every object was reflected dully in the liquid mud, as in a dirty mirror. Workmen and carters swearing like gentlemen—the comparison is commonly made the contrary way—were wending their way along the roads and across the bridge, met by muleteers from Fuenlabrada, and market gardeners from LeganÉs or Moraleja; while Madrid, in the dismal dawn, was sending out her pauper dead, borne on the shoulders of the living, to San Isidro or Santa MarÍa.

After passing the lower village of Carabanchel, Leon skirted a splendid park lying between the lower and the higher villages; upper Carabanchel having the advantage if not actually in point of architecture, at any rate in situation and outlook.

The demesne of Suertebella is one of those estates which ample wealth and perseverance have succeeded in creating in the neighborhood of Madrid, and which can stand comparison with the more famous grounds of Vista-Alegre, Montijo and others. There was a noble growth of elms, acacias, sophoras, with the still rarer beauty of a wide spread of turf planted with grand sequoias, Japanese medlars, magnolias and other exotic trees with huge shrubs of fuchsias, tree ferns, cactus and araucarias; aviaries full of every variety of wild and tame fowl; stables in which the horses lived like gentlemen, cow-houses and poultry-yards. There was a river running through the estate with a boat on it, a shooting-gallery, a croquet-ground, a grotto, a pond stocked with fish, and even a heap of ruins with the inevitable adjuncts of ivy and moss. The house, though recently built of brick and stucco was sumptuous and elegant; especially the interior, where a lavish hand and experienced taste had collected all the rarest and costliest luxuries that modern art can produce. All the rooms were on the ground floor, the sitting-rooms in a long suite, handsomely decorated. Of course there was an Arabian divan in the latest fashion, and a Japanese room, and a Gothic room, and an orthodox Louis XV. drawing-room. The Marquis FÚcar prided himself on each being perfectly “in keeping,” and the most beautiful object in creation would fail to meet his approval if it had not what he called “character”: “In perfect character you see,” was his favourite form of praise.

Leon made his way through half a dozen of these vast empty rooms, dismally draped in silk, like shrouded princes; their vacant spaciousness made him think of huge yawning mouths. The carpets—softer and deeper than the mattresses in some houses—deadened the sound of his steps; the splendid parcel-gilt bronzes, still smelling of the packing-case, and the varnish on the freshly-cleaned pictures reflected every intrusive ray of light, while the clocks repeated their tedious monologue, breaking the silence of the cavern-like rooms. There were historical portraits, frowning sternly; Poussinesque groups of figures dancing or playing rustic games on the tapestry; Dead Christs of jaundiced hue, reposing in the lap of the weeping Virgin; dozens of bull-fighters and mincing ladies, such as the modern Spanish school turns out by hundreds to meet the taste of the amateurs of the day; watercolours of a rather free and easy character; stalwart nymphs À la Rubens, and lean studies of racers painted with as much elaboration as though they were the most eminent portraits. Graceful vases, little porcelain kittens grinning over the edge of a jug, and flower stands supported on the backs of some hideous hippopotamus or monstrous griffin.

The servants he met, looked full of consternation and the maids had their eyes red with crying; a few hasty words put him in possession of the facts. In front of several pictures of saints, tapers were burning, and he heard the sound of prayers and sobs.

At last he reached the silent, half-darkened room which was the centre of all this woe. He approached very softly as though it were the scene of some event of transcendental importance to the whole human race. It was a very tiny, humble drama that was being enacted there; the death-struggle of a frail insignificant creature—one of those inappreciably small catastrophes which make no echo in the world since they snatch away no great man, no useful woman, though they bring anguish and terror into a thousand homes. This death would leave no one widowed or orphaned, would bring neither ruin, nor wealth, nor change, nor even mourning on any house; it would be no more than one more victim added to the hecatomb of little ones through whom Providence, by snatching them away at the very threshold of life, wrings the heart of mothers. The human race must be daily decimated it would seem, to prevent its overwhelming increase.

Pepa, still dressed as she had been at the bull-fight had sunk into a chair, her hands folded, her eyes fixed; her speechless despair terrified all who were with her, and some who could not control their grief left the room to cry. She was sitting close to a little bed so daintily pretty that the fairies themselves could make nothing more innocently fresh; it was like a little basket of gilt cane fit to contain the most delicate flowers, and the white curtains, with their lace and pink ribbands, were so fine and white that the angels might have played at hide-and-seek among the folds. Leon went up to the head of the dying child that lay heavy and motionless on the pillow; the pillow was covered with golden curls and wet with tears. Leon himself was tremulous with apprehension; his heart stood still with anguish as he looked at Monina—the little face, pale with suffering, the lips blue, the eyes wide open and the lashes wet with tears, her throat swollen and dark from the swelling of the veins—and worst of all as he heard the plaintive, stertorous groaning which was neither a cough nor a sigh—hoarse, guttural and yet sharp, as harsh as the whistle of a pipe in a demon’s mouth, a horrible, mechanical recurring crow. The child struggled with suffocation, clutching at her throat to seek relief, as if she could give a passage to the air for which her lungs were panting. This agony of an infant by strangulation with no possibility of relieving it, while neither science nor a mother’s love can loosen the invisible cord that is choking the baby throat—the little neck, generally as white as a lily and now as livid as a piece of dead flesh; the ebbing of a pure, blameless, loving, angelical life in the most tragical torments, with the convulsions of a strangled criminal and the misery of asphyxia, is one of the most appalling instances of the inexorable fate which, whether it be for trial or for punishment, oppresses humanity.

In the clutches of this monster Monina looked from one to another, at her mother and at the nurses, as if to implore them to release her from this dreadful thing, from this undreamed-of punishment—a cruel drama of Dame Nature! Despair filled every heart; in the face of this terror no one could shed a tear; through each mind flashed the sacrilegious thought, like a gleam of infernal light, that there was—there could be, no God.

Leon knew not what to say, and for a minute or two his eyes wandered in bewildered horror from the child to the mother, and noted the most trivial details; the table covered with medicine bottles, the child’s playthings scattered on the floor—shabby undressed dolls, horses without legs and cats without tails—they looked as forlorn and disconsolate as the human watchers. When he studied the child’s face and then looked into that of the doctor who was still standing by her, Leon augured the worst. Pepa looked up at him with tearful eyes and said in a low, heart-broken tone:

“She will die.”

Leon, for the sake of saying something tried to assure her that it was not certain. In vain.

“There is no hope,” she said, “Moreno says there is none. That now....” But she could say no more she covered her face and burst into floods of tears.

This form of suffering was new to Leon, a terrible and unfamiliar grief that had fallen on him like a bolt from the skies. He had first seen the child some few months since, and had found infinite delight in her bewitching little ways, though this alone perhaps hardly suffices to account for the acuteness of his pain in seeing the suffering of a child that was not his, and of a woman who was not his wife.

The croup, to make it more cruel, has deceptive intervals each invariably the precursor of a worse attack. The monster relaxes his grip that the victim may breathe once more, and know how precious air is, how sweet is life. After a violent fit of coughing a spurious amendment is perceptible. Under the influence of tartar emetic, Monina was able to cough away some portion of the false membrane that forms in the windpipe; relieved for the moment, she breathed more freely, and looked round her brightly; Pepa leaned forward to rearrange the bed clothes which she had tossed off in her struggles. When Monina caught sight of Leon she set up the peevish whimper of a sick child when it sees any one standing with its mother or nurse; it is its way of expressing jealousy which is one of the first sentiments developed in the human breast.

“But my pet, it is Leon.... Do not you want him? Then he shall go.... Go away, naughty man,” and a plaintive murmur repeated: “Naughty.”

“Go away, go away. I will punish him.... Spit it out my pretty.” The little girl did as she was bid; then her mind seemed to wander. “More, more,” she said—always a child’s cry when it is pleased or amused. Then, with her eyes shut, and as if in delirium, she put her tiny hand out from under the coverlet and waved it up and down. The infant gesture struck them to the heart; she was bidding them farewell. Its baby grace was tragical.

A moment after all the worst symptoms reappeared—the hard, rasping cough, the suffocation, the agonised struggle and the shrill, crowing noise. Leon, as he heard it, felt as if a red-hot needle was piercing his brain. The child was choking, dying.

Pepa, with a cry of anguish, fell senseless on the floor.

They carried her to her own room. Leon stayed with Monina. How many things flashed through his brain in a minute—in a single minute. He himself wondered to find that his grief completely filled and occupied his mind as if the poor little child was all that the world contained for him to love and care for. Since his father’s death he had not felt his heart so strongly drawn to any creature at the moment of death. He was not even remotely connected with the child’s parents, and yet he felt as if its death would rob him of something strangely near and dear. No doubt the mother and child were to some extent one in the passion of pity which absorbed his soul to the exclusion of every other feeling.

On their first acquaintance he and Monina had established an ardent friendship—not wholly disinterested to be sure on the child’s part, since it involved frequent visits to the toy-shop and the confectioner’s—and not unfrequently he had found himself neglecting a more important engagement in order to go to the FÚcars’ house to play with Monina. She was so sweet, so merry, so intelligent, so inquisitive. Her ungrammatical chatter was so expressive, she made such intelligent remarks, she was so lively, so graceful, so gentle, so docile! The friendship had been but brief, but in that short time Leon had played every game that a man can devise; he had carried her pick-a-back; had tried to teach her to speak, to give a penny to a beggar, to forgive when she was hurt, to pity the poor, to be kind to animals, to obey her mother, to answer as soon as she was spoken to, not to cry for nothing. He had grown accustomed to her winning smile and could not bear to miss it. How could any one help adoring such a rosy dawn even though it were veiled in mist? Monina’s real name was Ramona, after Pepa’s mother, the late Marquesa de FÚcar. She was two years old and not very like her mother, for she was very pretty—pink and white, with eyes of cherubic blue and a sweet round lisping mouth, slightly built and as restless as a bird. Her chirping jargon, with every verb made regular, fascinated him; and when she took a fancy to flit from spot to spot—fluttering like a butterfly and as busy as a bee, he could not take his eyes off her. Play brought roses to her cheeks; she was so overflowing with life that she laughed when she talked, flew rather than walked, and her innocent questions and baby comments would startle him with an innocent logic with which infants so often confound the wise.

And now, what a terrible change! A single day had sufficed to transform this bright and guileless being into a suffering wreck. In a few hours there would be left on earth of tiny Monina but a fast corrupting mass from which men must avert their gaze.—The idea was too hideous; Leon could not resign himself to it. No, Monina must not die. Without that sweet life he could not live.

Why?—but he could not tell why; all he knew was that a fibre, a nerve, an aching cord was tied—nailed, to his heart, and that Ramona was pulling at it, to fly away to heaven. Till now the bond had seemed a mere nothing, a fancy, an amusement; now he felt that it had struck deep roots which must be torn up and carry a large part of his heart with them.

All this crossed rapidly through his mind; then he turned to speak to the doctor. There was no hope; the child could not live twenty-four hours; the medicine he had given did not seem to produce the perspiration and relief which might have opened the door of hope.

“And is there nothing else to be done?” asked Leon, as pale as a corpse himself.

“We can try mercurial rubbing.”

Not a minute was wasted; the doctor suggested, Leon gave orders with fevered haste, and the nurses and servants executed them with eager promptitude.

Pepa, having recovered her senses, had returned to her post by the child’s bed, to watch the last flickering of that precious life, to give her baby, water, kisses, gentle touches, to listen to her breathing, and gaze into her dim eyes. Her face betrayed the efforts she was making in order that her anguish as a mother might not hinder her usefulness as a nurse; alert, careful, forgetful of herself and of everything else, her whole soul was absorbed in covering up the little tossing arms and in listening to the choking cough, the rattling breath, the gasping croak, more tragical than any cry—sounding now like the creak of metal that needs greasing, and now like a low, shrill whistle, or a musical note in a dream.

The hours went on—what fearful hours! And yet the day was too soon gone and it was night! No one had kept count of the time, not a sound was to be heard but that of suppressed sobs; all hearts sank under the pressure of a crushing weight. The whole great house was full of dismayed grief; and of the odour of the tapers that were burning before the Virgin and the Saints. The daughter of the house was dying; she no longer even put her hands to her throat to “take that away.” She lay there helpless, worn out, conquered in the fight; her head was sunk deep in the pillow, and her little hands, spread motionless, had ceased to twist the sheet into cords. If only the cruel scourge would let her die thus. But no; once more its clutch was relaxed for an instant and Monina again murmured: “more.”

“She is dreaming of her toys,” whispered Pepa, pressing her handkerchief to her lips as though to hush her sobs while her tears ran in streams through her fingers.

The child still murmured softly, calling Tachana and Guru, the two children of a neighbour with whom she was in the habit of playing. Then came another fit of suffocation so violent that it surely must be the last. Pepa cried aloud:

“She is dying now ... she is dying.” She flung herself over the bed, clasping the child in her arms then, wild with grief, the wretched mother clutched at her own throat as if she would strangle herself in her delirium of woe. It was a natural semi-savage gesture, a primitive instinct of suffering with the sufferer she loved.

They tried to lead her away, but it was impossible to move her; she clung to the bed.

Leon whispered to the doctor: “why do you not, as a last resource, try tracheotomy?”

But Moreno Rubio answered in a hollow voice:

“At that age it is tantamount to murder.”

“We must try everything; even murder.”

The two men looked like spectres risen from the grave to conspire.

“You desire it?”

“Yes—I desire it.”

“We must consult the mother.”

“No—I take the responsibility.”

The physician shrugged his shoulders; then he went to a table that was hidden by the curtain.

“My darling,” cried Pepa, “why must you die? Why leave me alone—more lonely than I am? O Lord God! O Blessed Virgin of Sorrows! Why do you take my child ... my only child? Monina—Mona....”

She had no suspicion of what Leon and the doctor were projecting; she did not see that Moreno held in his hand a blade—a tiny but terrible weapon, more fatal perhaps than the executioner’s axe.

“Monina, sweet angel, my cherub—open your eyes, look at me....”

Her grief was growing fierce; the terrible glare of her wild eyes, her dry, white, quivering lips, the nervous tension of her hands, all betrayed that intensity of misery which gives a bereft mother the aspect of a fury.

“Monina! my child, my darling! If you die, I die; I cannot let you go without me!” And she devoured her with kisses.

“Pepa,” said Leon, “we are going to make a last effort ... do not be frightened.”

“She is dead—I tell you she is dead....”

But Monina, as though in reply, turned over suddenly and with a violent fit of coughing threw out some more of the suffocating growth; then again she lay still, though breathing hoarsely.

“She is cold—icy cold!” exclaimed Pepa. “Doctor, doctor—”

Moreno went at once.

“No, not icy,” said Leon, laying his hand on the child’s head, “on the contrary—she is moist.”

“Yes, with perspiration,” said the doctor after a pause.

He felt the baby limbs and his eye, accustomed to watch the fluctuations of life, were intent on the flickering of this one which, when it was so nearly extinct, wavered—though perhaps only for a moment.

“Yes, her skin is moist,” Leon repeated.

“Quite moist!” Pepa echoed with a deep sigh.

Then they were silent; a faint ray of hope had fallen on them—almost adding a pang—for it was not possible—no, not possible!

“Keep her well covered,” said the doctor, in the short imperious tone of a pilot steering a life-boat; and then, unable to contain himself, he swore a mighty oath. Six hands covered Monina closely.

Leon and Pepa looked at Moreno. But they dared ask no questions; it was better to be in suspense, which is a kind of hope, and the doctor’s face revealed nothing beyond a reprieve of immediate fear.

“She is still perspiring?”

“Yes.”

“Still?”

“Yes—rather more.”

And they watched the almost imperceptible moisture on the delicate skin as if the existence of the universe depended on it.

“But is it not a favourable symptom?” Leon said at last.

“Favourable, yes. But even....”

“Can we not help nature?“ said Pepa.

“Nature does not require our aid at present.”

“But—is it possible...?”

“I can say nothing, nothing.”

“And it is still going on?”

“Yes, so far....”

“Oh, my darling! She will live....”

Behind the chair on which Pepa was sitting hung a picture of the Virgin with two tapers burning in front of it. Pepa started up, flung herself on her knees and kissed the very ground before it. For a few minutes she remained sobbing violently with her face buried in the carpet. Certain that she could not overhear him Moreno whispered low in Leon’s ear:

“If expectoration continues to any favourable extent it is possible that she may be saved; but for four chances in her favour there are ninety-six against her.—So say nothing to the mother....”

“Four in her favour,” thought Leon, “that is something—and I feel hopeful ... sure!”

His heart seemed to leap with a mad jubilation. The life of the whole human race might have been in the balance. There, under his very eyes, hanging on a thread—a breath.

Time went on; Pepa had come back to watch and was walking up and down like a wounded lioness. She did not want to ask anything; it was enough to read their faces and note their actions. There was something new and fresh in the air—the circling of the universe seemed to have been suddenly reversed. The two men were visibly anxious, but not downcast.

“What is it?” asked the mother.

“Hope,” said Leon.

“Very little,” muttered Moreno.

Pepa clasped her hands in an ecstasy of thankfulness.

“Nay, do not allow yourself to be too sanguine,” said the doctor. “The reaction that has set in is not, so far, sufficient—far from it. It may be a delusive relief, like the former ones—go and lie down for a little while.”

“I! lie down; I, rest, when my baby is getting better?”

“But still....”

“She is perspiring a good deal—a great deal,” exclaimed the mother, whose excited hopes magnified the cool moisture into a heavy dew. “God will let her live, He will give me my treasure.”

She knelt down by the bedside, clasping her hands close to the child’s little form without daring to touch her; hardly daring to breathe lest her sighs should disturb the blessed reaction. Monina was lying comfortably and her breath came less painfully.

“It is possible? say Doctor....”

“I can say nothing yet....” said the inexorable physician. “The hope—the chances, are very slight. We shall see how she goes on.”

“Oh! all will be well; the Blessed Virgin will have pity on a lonely mother ... Leon what do you think?”

“I, I cannot tell,” replied Leon. “I do not know, but I feel ... but I dare not, I dare not. Still I feel encouraged ... who can tell ... perhaps....” Pepa could hardly repress a cry of joy.

“Oh! how can I bear it? She may live! But if we are deceived, if we are mistaken. Merciful Father! Blessed Virgin! Why do you let me hope if after all you rob me of my only treasure—the joy of my life, of my home, of my soul?” And she wandered vaguely about like a demented creature, not knowing what to do.

“Let us pray, let us pray,” she said at length. “The Virgin has heard me and I will beseech her, entreat her, till I can see and feel no more. Pray, Leon, with me—why do you not pray?”

“I too am praying,” replied Leon, bowing his head.

“You! you? Those who ask in fervent humility will be heard; but you! How do you pray?”

She seized his arm and dragged him towards the picture, in her frantic energy her strength was surprising.

“As you will,” said Leon, who was no longer master of himself; and he never knew how, but he found himself on his knees, and with eyes raised to Heaven he exclaimed in piteous accents: “Merciful God! save her life, she is what I love best.”

A dying child, a despairing mother, a man on his knees praying after a fashion of his own. It strikes me that it is folly to write of such commonplace occurrences.