CHAPTER V.

THE ICE GIVES WAY.

María had not gone more than half a mile when a terrible reflection occurred to her--a thought at once so serious and so obvious that she was on the point of turning back. It struck her that her dress, having been chosen with a view to an afternoon drive, was unsuitable for so early a visit--nay, ridiculous not to say “loud.” How could she have overlooked this when she was dressing? Why had she not chosen other and simpler things, more suitable according to all the accepted laws of society for morning wear? She was really upset and distressed; however, there was now no remedy; so, though she was vexed to think that on such an occasion she should not be a model of good taste, she consoled herself with the reflection that beauty lays down the laws of fashion and has never been its slave. Other and more important matters soon put all thoughts of dress out of her head. As she drove along she tried to compose and remember appropriate phrases and speeches. She knew exactly what her husband would say, and how she, as the outraged wife, ought to reply. Sentence after sentence surged up in her brain as readily as if it were the crucible of the Spanish Academy. Now and then an adjective seemed too weak and she substituted a stronger one; here and there a statement of fact gave way to a hypothesis; and thus anticipating the utterance of her wrath and injuries, she grew so excited that she spoke aloud to herself.

She paid no heed to the road along which she was being carried, nor to any object she passed. At the same time, as frequently happens when the mind is full of a fixed group of ideas, María, while she took no conscious note of the more important details, involuntarily absorbed certain trivial and minute ones. She observed a dead bird lying by the road, and a tavern sign-board in which the letter A was missing; as she passed the tram-car she perceived that the driver was blind of one eye. This is one of the commonest and oddest of mental phenomena.

At length she reached the hamlet, or rather detached suburb--neither town nor country, but an irregular medley of mansions and dung-hills. Not knowing precisely which way to go, she enquired of some women who civilly directed her; the man drove on. Now she was near the house--it must be quite close. Her heart throbbed wildly, and all the speeches she had so laboriously prepared deserted her at once.

The carriage stopped ... she could hardly stand. She saw a gate leading into a large court-yard, full of furniture cases, and an iron bed packed for moving. There was a woman too, talking to some one she could not see. María went in and approached her; then, to her horror, she saw that she was talking to herself; was she mad? But María asked for Don Leon Roch.

“Don Leon Roch?” said Facunda with a good-humoured smile after a pause of astonishment. “He is up there.” And she pointed to a door through which a staircase was visible.

María hurried up, but about half way she was forced to stop for breath. At the top she went into a large light room; there was no one there.

She saw books, articles of furniture that she recognised, all in confusion as packed for removal, but no one ... no one.

Suddenly, like a bird that hops out of a hedge at the sound of a voice, a little girl appeared from behind a table. She held a broken doll and was eating a piece of bread. She was warmly wrapped up, and on her head she wore a little white hood, very much like a nun’s. Her face was that of a cherub, if a cherub can be supposed to have a little wet nose from a cold sharp morning. Monina fixed her eyes on the dazzling vision that had suddenly appeared in the doorway and stared at it speechless and motionless. This was not a lady; it was a doll, a very large doll dressed like a lady, and the child’s astonishment soon changed to alarm. She saw the figure come slowly towards her without taking her eyes off her ... and such eyes! Monina turned white and would have cried out but she was too frightened. This enormous doll came slowly up to her without seeming to walk, and when it had reached her it stooped down ... the poor little thing was too much terrified to scream; those eyes had turned her to stone. It put out a hand and laid it on Monina’s shoulder. Then, clutching the little arm, it squeezed it tighter--tighter--like an iron vice, while in a voice which Monina did not recognise as human, but rather as the strange croak which dwells in a doll’s body and utters “papa” and “mamma,” it asked her:

“Who are you? What is your name?”

The instinct of self preservation conquered her terrors, and at last poor Ramona found her voice. She gave a shrill cry and pulled away her arm. Leon Roch came to the door of the adjoining room where he too stood still, like a statue in a niche. Unlike St. Thomas, he saw but he could not believe. For a minute or two he could not shake off his dismay and astonishment, seeing clearly the dilemma in which he was placed. Her appearance there was extraordinary no doubt, but anything rather than absurd; what was absurd, was her coming fashionably bedizened with such extravagant elegance at this hour of the morning. It was a phenomenon which had formed no factor in his calculations and which was, so far, perfectly inexplicable. Having presently mastered his feelings and determined to face the scene that was evidently inevitable, Leon, before saying a word to his wife, took Monina’s hand, went to the top of the stairs and called some one to whom he entrusted the child; then, turning back into the room, he shut the door resolutely, like a lion-tamer who locks himself in with the savage favourites, who, to him, are, after all, only part of his family.

María had seated herself; in fact she could hardly stand.

“You did not expect me?” she said tremulously.

“No, I certainly did not.”

“You thought you were free! poor man ... free to pursue ... without a road ... free, I mean, to pursue the road of infamy without let or hindrance. No, no! you must account to ... to me....”

All the speeches that María had in fancy delivered with so much unction had evaporated, word by word. She made a desperate effort to remember a single effective phrase; in vain! they were gone. She could hardly catch at a word as they whirled through her brain, and she could only cry out in a husky voice:

“Guilty wretch!”

Leon smiled slightly and María went on: “Wretch! I am here to apprehend you.”

“Very well,” said Leon calmly accepting the idea. “But allowing that I am guilty, and a wretch, and that you are the police--you have no chain to fetter me with because you yourself have broken it.”

María had prepared her rejoinders on the supposition that her husband would answer her as she had imagined; but as Leon said something quite different she was in the position of an actor who has lost his cues.

“The chain,” she murmured, not at the instant understanding what he meant, “and I, you say, have broken it.”

“Yes, you. Who but you gave me my liberty?”

“You are a wretch, a libertine, a villain!” cried María dropping into the vulgar recrimination of every angry wife. “Liberty? What do you mean by it? You have none. You are my husband--tied to me by a bond that none but God can sever, since it was He who bound us. You abominable materialists think that the ordinance of matrimony is a thing to be played fast and loose with. I tell you it is a divine institution.”

“And a human institution as well. But we need not bandy words María. Tell me what did you come here for?”

“And now he dares to ask me what I came for!” she exclaimed, her nervousness giving way to a frenzy of wrath. “I will tell you. I came to require of you an account of your criminal behaviour, to surprise you in your lair, to put you to open shame, and then--and then to scorn you.”

“But you could have scorned me without coming here.”

“I wished to see whether you had a remnant of shame and decency; whether I could surprise you, face to face; if you would dare to confess your sin....”

“You have, you see, surprised me somewhat,” said Leon raising his eyes. “As regards my sins, if I have committed any, it is not to you that I owe a confession.”

“What audacious impudence!... But I came for something more,” added María livid with rage. “I came in the hope of finding here that abandoned woman, and of giving her the name she deserves; to ...” She clenched her fists and her eyes glared.

“What woman?”

“The hypocrite can ask! I do not name her for it would stain my lips ... do you dare to tell me that you are not on terms of disgraceful--of criminal intimacy with her?”

“With whom?”

“With her....” And she pointed in the direction of Suertebella.

“María” said Leon gravely and turning pale, “I do not like to see you a propagator of base slander. I should find it very difficult to cease to respect you; but if you wish that I should never fail in the consideration which I owe to you, never repeat that question. Be silent ... go ... leave me. You do not want my love since your religion is all in all to you; go, serve your altars, and leave me alone with my conscience.”

María drew herself up, clenching her arms against her breast like a wild beast preparing to spring; her eyes for a moment seemed dimmed, but the next instant they flashed fire.

“Coward, villain!” she exclaimed. “Do you dare to tear yourself away from me, your lawful wife, the wife to whom you belong and whom you shall never escape!... No, never--since God has pronounced us one? Who are you, a miserable wretch, to desecrate a sacrament and disobey the Father of us all?”

“Desecrate a sacrament? I ... I?” Leon stood up and went close to his wife. “It is not I,” he said, “who desecrate the sacrament.”

“Who then?”

“You,” he said, pointing with his finger so close to her face that it was as if he meant to put out her eyes.

“I?”

“You.--You cast it to the winds. When I was trying to save our home and peace you said to me: ‘My God requires me to say that I do not love you.’”

For a second María was abashed and silent; her wrath had abated a little.

“It is true that I said that. And, after all, if you desire my love, why do you not try to merit it by becoming a Christian and a Catholic. In spite of your wicked atheism I cannot say that I do not love you ... a little. But oh! why are you not like me? Why do you not imitate my piety?”

“Because it is beyond me,” he retorted sarcastically, “because there are forms of piety so unnatural, so insane, so absurd, silly and irrational.... But at least you must admit that it was you, you yourself who desecrated the sacrament.”

“But I,” replied his wife, catching at a cogent argument. “I have been faithful and you have not.”

Leon was staggered for an instant.

“I have been faithful too,” he said. “I swear it before God and by the sacred memory of my father and mother! Faithful, tender and kind to the last extremity--even when you, carried away by a sickly piety, and by the example and ardent warnings of your hapless brother, built up a wall of ice between your soul and mine. You refused to bestow on me even the commonplaces of affection, the gentle words and tones which may take the place of love when love is dead; you humiliated me with your senseless scruples and cruel recriminations, that bore a hideous resemblance to vulgar abuse; you made my home empty and dark, casting a gloom over it that oppressed my heart, dried my brain, and embittered my blood; you took a delight in neglecting your person to the extent even of sluttishness; to annoy me more deeply you dressed in absurd and shapeless clothes, and took a pride in making yourself repulsive and odious. Every word I spoke you regarded as blasphemy, and all my thoughts and feelings were crimes worthy to be punished by the inquisition. You were mad and blind! If you felt called to such a career of sanctity why did you not try to imitate the patience--a saintly patience, surely--with which I endured your proud assumption of humility, your unchristian bitterness, and your devotion, which for insolence, vexatiousness and recalcitrancy was for all the world like the pranks of a troup of demons playing the part of angels with masks on.

“And you come to me--to me who have borne all this--to me whom you have hated and tormented--to me! and call me to account instead of asking my forgiveness. ‘Pardon,’ María is the only word that it becomes you to utter this day! after all your bigotry, and hypocrisy, and insults, you desire me to account to you ... for what? A woman who has told her husband that she does not love him cannot call him to account. I have been more than considerate in not declaring our marriage as void, in still acknowledging you as my wife, in regarding myself as still bound to you by some invisible tie, in asking not for liberty but only for peace--not for compensation but only for respite!”

“You might indeed lodge some complaint against me,” retorted María, “if, since that time, you had been as faithful to me as I have been to you. But you have not; nay you have long, long been false to me.”

“It is not true.”

“Yes, false and faithless,” she insisted, clinging to the statement with feverish vehemence. “And instead of defending yourself you turn upon me! Those are the tactics of every clever criminal.... I was blind, ignorant of your perfidy. You have cheated me shamefully!”

“It is not true.”

“For a long time, for years.”

“Not true.”

“But at last it has all come to my knowledge. I have discovered the whole truth. You cannot deny it, for the present throws light on the past and your crime of to-day betrays that of yesterday. You have lost all decency; you do not even hide the distant date of your intimacy--and here, in this house, where you have buried yourself to revel in your sin, you pass whole days playing with that child ... with that sniffling little brat!...”

Leon glared at his wife with a terrible expression; his eyes darted arrows of wrath. María drew a deep breath and added in a hoarse voice: “With her child--which is yours.”

With livid lips and a murderous glare in his eyes, looking as an assassin may in the very act, Leon went up to his wife and seizing her by the arm he shook her in his fury:

“It is a calumny,” he said, “a lie....”

Then he let her go, swallowing down the rest of the words that were on his tongue.

María stung and devoured by all the serpents of jealousy, had no words for the rage that burned within her; for when jealousy has reached a certain pitch it cannot find utterance--it must act. Her revenge could not be satisfied with anything less than the destruction of the innocent cause of her indignation. To tear Monina limb from limb was what her passion prompted her to do, and without a moment’s hesitation she acted on the impulse; she snatched up the doll that Monina had left on a chair and tore it to pieces--arms, legs, hair--the trembling hands of the outraged wife wreaked her vengeance on the senseless toy. Then, flinging the fragments away, she exclaimed in broken gasps:

“There ... that ... that is how your lawful wife ought to treat her ... her....” She was almost choking.

Leon, recovering his self-command, spoke again.

“I should have thought you incapable of becoming the mouthpiece of such an infamous slander. Of what use is piety if it leaves you in ignorance of the first elements of charity? You never can have had any feelings!”

“Oh yes, I had once,” said María exhausted by her own rage. “But I can thank God that I have not transmitted them to any child of yours. He has blessed me in making me childless, as He has blessed other women in giving them children. He could not grant a family to an atheist!”

“Your blasphemy appals me,” said Leon, who could endure no more. “Can a sacrament be more utterly annulled, or a bond more effectually cut? Between you and me, María, there is a great gulf--bottomless and infinite; a space of endless desert in which, try as I may, I cannot see a single idea or feeling that we can have in common. Let us part forever; do not try to bring together two distinct worlds which cannot approach each other without tempest and lightnings. If there ever were two irreconcilable beings, we are they. For I too am a fanatic; you have taught me to be, like you, a bigot--an ardent, even a relentless bigot. We will part, each to his own shore, and let the waste that lies between us be as the ocean of oblivion. Nay, to soothe our consciences, I will say the ocean of forgiveness. Each may forgive; both may forget ... good-bye.”

While he was speaking María’s feelings of anger and revenge had given way to other and very different sentiments, calmer and more contemplative, which by degrees took absolute possession of her agitated mind. She looked at her husband and found him--why should she deny it?--worthier than ever to be the friend and companion of a loving wife. His face had a charm of its own, with the dark beard that gave it an indefinable expression of romantic melancholy, with the eager eyes and broad brow, on which a reflected gleam of sunshine at that moment fell, like a beam of glory on that wise and intelligent head. This mute contemplation of his manly good looks appealed directly to her heart and made it beat with excitement. Her first and only love revived; she remembered the happiness of the early days of their marriage and against the background of these memories the fact stood out that the man was interesting, attractive, and--why not confess it?--very good-looking; she could not take her eyes off his face. ‘But not for her--for another woman!’ This was the spark that fired the whole edifice, that scathed and rent her soul, so that all her piety leaked out, so to speak. This was the diabolical idea that turned her ice to fire, her scorn to a tenderer passion and all that was harsh in her nature to gentleness--that lent grace and elegance even to her absurd dress. She was desperately in love, in short, from jealousy rather than from sympathy. It was a fearful blow to her to hear herself calmly dismissed--with a friendly pardon, it is true--but still definitely dismissed. She could have borne to accept her dismissal and part from him for ever; she might even forget him, and forgive him for having ceased to love her ... but that he should love another....

“No, never, never!” she exclaimed, as the result of her reflections; and her eyes sparkled through tears. But she would not confess the weakness, and hastily drying her eyes she went on:

“One night you asked me....”

“Yes, I asked you....”

“And I told you that God forbid my love for you ... and it is true; God did forbid it. I felt it in my soul, but yet ... you see, you should not have taken the answer. You should have asked once more.”

“But I had asked you so often, and in so many different ways.”

“Well, now I ask you,” and she went up to him and laid her hands on his shoulders; “I ask you: ‘Do you still love me?’” Leon’s nature rebelled against a lie. He paused to question his conscience. For an instant he thought that a generous falsehood would be the nobler course; but then he revolted against the notion of a mock devotion. Almost before he had thought out the matter the truth broke from his lips.

“No.... My God ... mine, María, compels me to say No.”

She dropped back into her seat. It was with a sort of roar that she exclaimed:

“Your God is a fiend!”

“You have no claim to anything more than my respect.”

“You love some one else?” she went on, gnawing the corner of her handkerchief, “tell me the truth.... I know you are truthful ... confess it and I will leave you in peace for ever.”

“But I deny your right to ask,” said Leon after a moment’s hesitation.

“Deny my right if you will; but reply.”

Leon was on the point of saying: “Well then I do.” But there are cases in which the truth is a form of murder; when it is baser than a lie.

“Well then,” he said, “no.”

“Your face betrays you, it is false!” said María starting up.

“My face?”

“You never used to tell lies.... I know that you never told lies. But this minute you prove to me that you have lost even that grace!”

Leon made no reply, and María, after a short pause, went on:

“I have no further business here....” Still he said nothing; he did not even look at her. “None, none,” she said. “I blush to think that I should ever have crossed the threshold of this abode of scandal and wickedness.”

She moistened her parched lips with her tongue, but there was a bitter dryness on both, compared to which aloes are as honey for sweetness. Her impulse was to spit out something ... to spit out that other She whose name was as the savour of fruits plucked in the court of hell. She stammered some inarticulate words and bit her lips till the blood came.

“It is a shame ... a disgrace!” she muttered. “To have fallen to such depths ... to have flung myself at the feet of this wretch ... a woman like me ... a woman!...” She was too angry to shed tears--even tears of rage. “Scorned ... despised....”

“Despised, no,” said her husband, moving towards her with an impulse of generosity.

“Despised as if I were a....”

“Never despised....”

“Not even....”

“Well?”

“Not worthy of your consideration.”

“Consideration, certainly ...” said Leon who was as much disturbed as she was; but she was going through a phase of reaction into the depths of dejection.

“To you,” she went on, “I am not even good to look at. You hate the sight of me; I have lost....”

“No,” said Leon “I swear to you that, since I first met you, I have never seen you so beautiful as you are to-day.”

“And yet,” she cried writhing in her chair, “and yet you do not love me....”

“You,” retorted Leon “you who have so much cultivated the spiritual life must surely know that beauty of face and person is not what can best captivate the soul!”

“And to you my nature is hideous?” And she struck her forehead with a wild groan, as though she had suddenly remembered some vital fact or had come to her right mind after an interval of mental delusion. “How should it be otherwise when I am a Christian and you a reprobate atheist? Of course, of course ... and I have been so mad--mad do I say?--So wicked, as to take my eyes for a moment away from my Lord and Saviour to gaze on you--an infidel. I have put off my black serge to dress myself in this frippery, fit only for a lost woman, with the base purpose of pleasing--of courting you. My God! canst Thou ever forgive me?”

She snatched off her hat in delirious rage, and tearing it to fragments strewed them about the floor. In her haste she pulled down her hair which she had not fastened securely; the black locks fell about her temples and over her shoulders. She looked like a mad creature as she went close up to her husband and said to him in a low voice:

“I am as bad as you. I am an unworthy wretch. I forgot my God, my duty, and my dignity for your sake.... Wretch! I do not deserve to be called a saint, for a saint....” She glanced at her handsome dress with horror. “Women who devote themselves truly to God would not have put on this livery of sin. I am ashamed to see myself so tricked out. Away with you, for filthy rags!”

She tore the trimmings with unnatural strength, rending the stuff and ripping off the buttons, and at length she threw off her cloak and gloves and flung them into a corner.

“Enough, enough; I have stooped too low. I will return to God--to my seclusion and indifference to this world. I will curse my beauty for having pleased you. I will return to the peaceful practice of religion. No worldly humiliations can touch me then; I will find rest in sacred meditations, conversing with God and seeing the angels, and hearing the music of their songs in Heaven; I will go back to my peaceful life where, at any rate, I may be so happy as to forget you! In its gloom you will not come to curse my sight.... I have sinned and am unworthy of the least of the Lord’s mercies. Forgive, O Lord! Forgive! Never again will I sin thus.”

She fell on her knees and melted into tears that flowed in a ready torrent, while she covered her face with her trembling hands. They trickled through her fingers, and down on to her bosom, where she had torn her dress open. Leon was alarmed; the pathetic, helpless attitude and bitter fit of weeping touched him deeply. He bent over her and raising her in his arms placed her in a seat.

“María for God’s sake do not go mad,” he said. “Compose yourself--control yourself.” But she kept her hands clasped over her face.

Leon laid his hand on her shoulder, tried to rearrange her disordered hair and pull her dress round her--for she had really half-undressed herself in her fury. Suddenly she threw her arm round his neck with a convulsive energy and he felt her burning lips close to his cheek, but she did not kiss him; in a husky faint voice she said:

“I will strangle you--I will murder you if you love any one else.--Am I not handsomer, am I not more beautiful than she is?... Mine! you are mine.... Mine only....” But her grasp relaxed and her arms fell helplessly by her side; her head drooped on her breast, her hair veiling her face; a spasmodic quiver passed over her throat and neck--a shiver of the skin; he heard a faint murmur from her lips: “Dying--sinful....” And she sat in a heap speechless and unconscious. He felt her heart--her pulse; there was no perceptible flutter.

He rushed to the stairs, shouting for help. No sooner had he opened the door than the room was full of people. Curiosity had brought the neighbours together, for they had heard loud voices; the cries they knew were uttered by the wife of Señor Leon Roch, and a wife who cries out is a legitimate object of sympathy and curiosity. They rushed up into the room, and with them the Marquis de Fúcar, who had come to give Leon his little commission for Paris. But they all stood in helpless astonishment.

“Take her to my house at once,” said Fúcar. “Have you any brandy, any spirit? The first thing is to put her to bed, to send for a doctor.... Take her to my house.”

“No, the doctor can come here,” said Leon.

“But you have no bed,” said Fúcar looking round at the dismantled room.

“There is my bed,” said Facunda. “A king has not got a better.”

“Move away all of you--let me see. I think her heart is still beating.”

“Yes, yes, it is certainly beating,” exclaimed Leon hopefully.

“It will be nothing--merely a fainting fit--and all for a squabble! You see the consequences of exageration.... But we must get her to bed. Wrap her in a cloak--get me a cloak.”

The Marquis de Fúcar was an invaluable person in these emergencies, when prompt decision, energy, and a tone of command are indispensable. Four strong arms lifted María, wrapped her carefully in a cloak, and carried her down stairs. It was like carrying a body to be buried. Leon looked on and allowed them to act, as he would have looked on at any other step Fúcar might have taken. It was like a scene in a dream, and for some time he failed to remember that this arrangement, which from one point of view was the best thing that could be done, from another was the very reverse; but by that time the little procession had started.

Pepa’s astonishment on seeing this inanimate figure brought into her house can easily be imagined.... “Merciful Heaven! María Sudre!” and what a state she was in. She could understand the fainting fit, but it was not so easy to account for the torn dress and dishevelled hair.

They carried her into the first bed-room they came to and laid her on the bed.

“You have forgotten the most important thing of all,” said Pepa. “To undo her stays.”

“To be sure. How stupid of us!”

And, as he spoke, Don Pedro cut the laces with his pocket-knife. The village doctor now came in; he spoke of congestion of the brain, and regarded the case as serious. A messenger was at once despatched to bring the most celebrated consulting physician of Madrid. Presently, however, an improvement was evident; María turned over, opened her eyes, and breathed more easily. If it were but a fainting fit after all.

But María as she recovered her faculties was evidently delirious; she took no heed of where she was or of those who stood by her side, not recognising her husband. After talking feebly but wildly for a few minutes she fell asleep; silence, perfect silence, was indispensable. The doctor gave some instructions and prescriptions.

“Now,” he said, “leave her in silence and darkness. There is at any rate no immediate danger; but you must not allow the slightest sound in this room or in those adjoining; and she is better alone than with more than one person in the room.” He went away.

Pepa with her finger to her lips enjoined silence. Leon and the Marquis Fúcar stood speechless, gazing at the patient. At the end of half an hour Pepa said:

“She is sound asleep and seems to be comfortable. When she wakes I will come and sit with her; I will see that she has everything she needs.”

“No, no,” Leon interposed eagerly. “I beg--I entreat you not to come into the room at all.” Pepa bowed her head and she and her father went away on tiptoe.

Leon sat down by the bed. He was still under the influence of the horror and alarm of the first shock, and even now had no clear idea of the position in which he and his wife stood to each other. María lay still, sleeping as if she were quite tired out; the hapless husband looked vaguely round the room. He sighed. There was something eerie in the air. Presently Pepa returned through a door concealed by some hangings; Leon looked up, startled and vexed; but she came nearer evidently puzzled and inquisitive. She was paler even than María--as pale as death. Her footfall was inaudible on the thick carpet and she might have been a ghost. She took no notice of Leon’s anxious gesture of warning but came close to the bed, and looked down fixedly at the sleeping woman as if she were studying the most interesting, but at the same time the most appalling, object in the universe. At her heels crept Monina, as softly as a kitten that steals in and out, and clutching at her mother’s skirts in visible alarm, she pointed to the bed and whispered: “Big dolly dead.”