Part 1

MORRIÑA

(_HOMESICKNESS_)

MORRIÑA (_HOMESICKNESS_)

BY EMILIA PARDO BAZÁN, TRANSLATED BY MARY J. SERRANO

CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY

CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY.

_All rights reserved._

THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, RAHWAY, N. J.

MORRIÑA

(_HOMESICKNESS_).

I.

If the apartment which Doña Nogueira de Pardiñas and her only son Rogelio occupied in Madrid was neither the sunniest nor the most spacious to be found in the city, it possessed, on the other hand, the inestimable advantage of being situated in the Calle Ancha de San Bernardo, so close to the Central University that to live in it was, as one might say, the same as living in the university itself.

Seated in her leather-covered easy-chair by the window, widening and narrowing the stocking she was

knitting without once looking at it, Señora de Pardiñas would follow her adored boy with her gaze, which, traversing space and passing through the solid substance of the walls, accompanied him to the very lecture-room of the university. She saw him when he went in and when he came out--she noticed whether he stopped to chat with any one, whom he talked to, whether he laughed; she knew who his companions were, whom he liked and whom he disliked; who were the industrious students and whom the idle ones; who were regular and who were irregular in their attendance. She was familiar, too, with the faces of the professors, and made a study of their expression and their manner of returning the salutations of the pupils, drawing from external signs important psychological deductions bearing on the problem of the examinations: “Ah, there comes old Contreras already, the Professor of Procedure. How amiable he looks! what a saint-like face he has. How slowly he walks, poor man. ’Tis easy to see that he suffers from rheumatism as I do. The more’s the pity! I like him on that account, and not on that account alone, but because I know that he is indulgent and that he will give Rogelio a good mark in his examination. Now comes Ruiz del Monte, so stiff and so conceited. He looks as if he were made all in one piece. Poor us! Neither favor nor influence nor anything else is of any use with him. He would have the boys know the studies as well as he does himself. If he wants that let him give them his place in the college--and the pay as well. Ah, here we have Señor de Lastra. He stoops a little. What comical caricatures the boys make of him in the class! And he is familiar to a fault. There he is now clapping Benito Diaz, Rogelio’s great friend, on the back. He looks to me like a good easy-going man. My blessing upon him! I don’t know what there is to be gained by torturing poor boys and distressing their parents.”

Pausing in her soliloquy, the good lady ran her knitting needle through the coil of her hair, now turning gray, and scratched her head lightly with it. Suddenly her withered cheek flushed brightly as if a breath of youth had blown across it.

“Ah, there is Rogelio,” she cried.

The student emerged from the building, wrapped in his crimson plush cloak, his low, broad-brimmed hat slightly tipped to one side, his glance fixed, from the first moment, on the window at which his mother was sitting. Generally he would give her a smile, but sometimes, assuming a serious air, he would raise his hand to his hat, and, with the stiff movement of a marionette, mimic the salutation of the dandies of the Retiro. The mother would return his salutation, shaking her hand threateningly at him, convulsed with laughter, as if this were not a jest of almost daily repetition. Then the boy would stop to chat for a few minutes with some of his fellow-students; he would exchange a word in passing with the match-vender, the ticket-vender, the orange-girl at the corner, and the clerks of the neighboring shops, winding up with some half-jesting compliment to the servants who stood chatting at the doors; and finally he would ascend the steps of his own house, where Doña Aurora was already waiting for him in the hall. His first words were generally in the following strain:

“_Mater amabilis_, set quickly before your offspring corporeal sustenance. I have an appetite that I don’t know where I got it. Ah-h-h! If the beefsteak does not soon make its appearance, dreadful scenes of cannibalism will be enacted.”

“Yes,” his mother would answer, smiling, “and it will all amount to your eating a couple of olives and a morsel of meat. Go away with you, you humbug! You have the appetite of a bird.”

The room in which they liked best to sit was neither the parlor--which was almost always solitary and deserted,--nor Rogelio’s study, nor his mother’s room; it was the dining-room, which adjoined the reception-room. Here was the clock which informed Rogelio, negligent about winding his watch, when it was time to go to college; here the little table on which stood the work-basket with the unfinished stocking buried under a pile of numbers of _Madrid Comico_, _Los Madriles_, and all the _Ilustraciones_ that had ever been published; here the low, broad, comfortable sofa and the capacious easy-chairs; here, on the sideboard, refreshments for the inner man--a bottle of sherry and some biscuits, or, in summer, fruits, which the boy ate with enjoyment; here, in a glass, the branch of fresh lilacs, or the pinks which he wore in his button-hole; here the earthen water jar exuding moisture from its sides, and the bottle of syrup of iron, and the Japanese fan, and the unfinished novel, with the marker between the leaves, and the text-book, worn more by the ill-humor and displeasure with which it was handled than by use; and finally, the little fireplace that had so good a draught, which made up for the icy class-rooms, and the dilapidated courts and passages of the temple of Minerva. With what enjoyment did Rogelio go to warm himself by the fire before taking off his cloak when he came in from college, stretching out his hands, cold as icicles, to the blaze. The genial heat thawed his stiffened muscles, quickened his impoverished blood, and gave him strength to ask, with a comical pretense at scolding and coaxing entreaties mingled, for his breakfast, almost regretting the promptness with which it was served, since it left him a subject the less for his humorous jests. Before it had crossed the threshold of the door, Doña Aurora was already crying out:

“Fausta! Pepa! Here is the señorito; bring the breakfast. Quick! Hurry! Child, your syrup of iron. Shall I count your bitter drops for you!”

“What more bitterness do I want than the pangs of starvation! Here, you who preside over the culinary department, may I be permitted to know with what delicacies you intend to assuage to-day the pangs of hunger that are gnawing my vitals? Have you prepared for me celestial ambrosia, nectar from the calyxes of the flowers, or tripe and snails from the Petit Fornos? Relieve me from this cruel uncertainty?

(Suppressed laughter in the kitchen.)

“Bring this crazy boy his breakfast, so that he may hold his tongue!”

Mother and son being seated at the table, the drops counted out and drank, the steaming soup was set before them, followed by the couple of

fried eggs, round and crisp-edged, and the beefsteak, invariably sent in from the neighboring _café_. Only on this condition would Rogelio eat it. No matter what pains Fausta, the Biscayan, might take, she could never succeed in supplanting the cook of the _café_. The succulent piece of underdone steak would come between two plates, with its accompaniment of fried potatoes, tender, juicy, and appetizing. While Rogelio cut and ate the meat, his mother watched him eagerly and anxiously, as if she had never before seen this delicate youth, so different from the ideal of a Galician mother. Twenty summers run to seed, a pale, dull complexion, eyes black and sparkling, but with the eyelids drooping, and surrounded by purple rings, a sarcastic mouth, the lips delicately curved and somewhat pale, shaded by a light mustache, hair smooth and silky, a head narrow at the temples, a slender throat, the back of the neck slightly hollowed in, flat wrists and a graceful shape made up a figure still immature, interrupted in its development by the _chlorosis_ which is the result of a hothouse existence in which the plant that requires the pure, free air, dwindles and wilts. So that Doña Aurora did not enjoy a moment’s peace of mind because of this son who, if not exactly sickly, was of a nervous and delicate constitution, as was evidenced by his moods of childlike gayety followed by periods of causeless gloom. Therefore it was that she watched him at his meals as eagerly as if every mouthful he swallowed were entering her own stomach after a two days’ fast. In thought she said to the succulent meat: Go, strengthen the child. Give him muscle, give him blood, give him bone. Make him robust, manly, independent. Make him grow to be like a young bull--although he should have all the savageness of one. No matter, all the better, I only wish it might be so! Consider that all there is left me in the world now to love, is that puny boy. And she would say aloud to Rogelio:

“Eat, child, eat; flesh makes flesh.”

II.

Doña Aurora had her daily reception--and in the afternoon; nothing less, indeed, than a five o’clock tea, as a society reporter would say--only, without the tea or the wish for it, for if she had offered anything to her guests, the Señora de Pardiñas, who was very old-fashioned in her ideas, would undoubtedly have selected some good slices of ham or the like substantial nourishment. As her friends knew that she was accustomed to go out only in the morning wrapped in her mantle and her fur cape to make a few unceremonious calls or to do some shopping, and that she spent her afternoons at her dining-room window knitting, they attended these receptions punctually, attracted to them by the cheerful fire, by the easy-chairs, by friendship, and by habit.

The larger part of the circle of Doña Aurora’s friends was composed of the companions of her deceased husband, magistrates, or, as she called them in professional parlance, “Señores.” Some few of these, who had already retired from active official life, were the most constant in their attendance. Certain seats in the dining-room were regarded as belonging of right to certain persons--the broad-backed easy-chair was set apart for Don Nicanor Candás, the Crown Solicitor, who loved his ease; the leather-covered arm-chair with the soft seat was for Don Prudencio Rojas; the arm-chair covered with flowered cretonne by the chimney corner--let no one attempt to dispute its possession with the patriarch Don Gaspar Febrero. This venerable personage was the soul of the company, the most active, the most imposing in appearance, and the

gayest of the assemblage, notwithstanding his eighty odd years and his lame leg, broken by jumping from a horse-car. The first quarter of an hour’s conversation was generally devoted to a discussion of the weather and the health of the company; there was not one of these worthy people who was not afflicted with some ailment or other. Some of them, indeed, were full of ailments, so that neither their complaints nor the remedies they discussed were of merely abstract interest. There an account was kept of the fluctuations in the chronic catarrhs, the rheumatic pains, the flatulent attacks, and the heartburns of each one of the assemblage, and they discussed as solemnly as they had formerly discussed a judgment the virtues of salycilic acid or of pectoral lozenges.

The sanitary question being exhausted--for everything exhausts itself--they passed on, almost always following the lead of Señor Febrero, to treat of less agreeable matters. The amiable old man could not bear to hear all this talk of drugs, prescriptions, and potions. “Any one would suppose one had one foot in the grave,” he would say, smiling and showing his brilliant artificial teeth. The subject of the conversation was changed, but it scarcely ever turned on questions of the day. Like a gavotte played by a grandmother on an antiquated harpsichord, the ritornello of souvenirs and reminiscences of the past resounded here. The conversation usually began somewhat as follows:

“Do you remember when I received my appointment to the Canary Islands during the ministry of Narvaez?”

Or:

“What times those were! At least ten years before the celebrated Fontanellas case. My eldest son was not yet born.”

Señor de Febrero interposed to restrain them in these sorrowful reminiscences of bygone days also, exclaiming with youthful vivacity:

“Why, that took place only yesterday, as one might say. In the life of a nation what is a paltry twenty-five or thirty years?”

“Yes, but in a man’s life----”

“Or in a man’s life either, if it comes to that. Forty or fifty I call the prime of life.”

“Speak for yourself. You have discovered the elixir of youth. You are as fresh as a lettuce. But the rest of us look like parchment; we are only fit to be wheeled out in the sun.”

With his crutch between his knees Don Gaspar laughed, and as he shook his head the silvery curls of his wig shone in the light. I regret to be obliged to pay tribute to descriptive truth by stating that Señor de Febrero wore a wig and false teeth; but it must be added that their falseness was so true that they were superior to the genuine articles and would deceive the sharpest eye. With exquisite taste and consummate art, the old man had had his wig made of hair as white as snow, and the coronet of light white curls that encircled his ivory brow was like a majestic aureole, very different from the thick forest of hair with which would-be young old men persist in striving to repair the irreparable ravages of time. In the same way the teeth, skillfully imitating his own, somewhat uneven and worn, with a gap on the left side, would have deceived anybody. With his beautiful hair, his smooth-shaven face, his regular and still very expressive features, with his pulchritude and dignity of mien, Don Gaspar reminded one of the heads of the eighteenth century as they have come down to us in miniatures. It seemed a pity that he should not wear an embroidered satin coat; the cloth coat did not suit him. Even the ebony crutch, with its blue velvet cushion, served to enhance and complete the commanding dignity of his presence. With the gallantry of a bygone age, Don Gaspar, the moment a woman appeared in sight, was all ardor, and honied speeches flowed from his lips. Even to Señora Pardiñas, who was altogether out of the lists, he did not neglect to pay attentions that were lover-like and gallant, rather than merely polite.

It gratified the vanity of this old man, who wore his old age so serenely and so gracefully, to hear his companions, all infirm, all asthmatic, all with their chronic colds and coughs, all visibly bald, say of him enviously:

“This Don Gaspar is wonderful. He will live to bury us all.”

It was also a gratification to his vanity to prove to them the strength and clearness of his memory, and it was one which he often enjoyed, for at the reception of the Señora de Pardiñas the thread of memory was constantly spun, and intermingled with it was a strand of gold, but of tarnished gold like that of an antique chasuble. Don Gaspar’s memory was a sort of wardrobe in which were stored away among perfumes, duly labeled and classified, events, names, dates, and even words. “This Señor de Febrero is an old record-book,” Doña Aurora would say. When there was a difference of opinion regarding the date of some past event, Don Gaspar was appealed to as umpire.

“Isn’t it true, Señor de Febrero, that the Zaldivar case, at Seville, was decided in the winter of ’56.”

“No, Señor, the winter of ’57. I remember it was on the 15th of December--I mean the 16th, the birthday of our friend Don Nicanor Candás.”

“But, good Heavens!” exclaimed Don Nicanor, when this was related to him. “It is not right that any one should be endowed with a memory like that. If that infernal Galician does not remember even the date of my birth, a thing that I can never remember myself! As nobody is going to steal any of my years away from me, I don’t see the use of keeping so exact an account of them.”

Don Nicanor Candás, a retired Asturian, from Oviedo, suspicious and conceited like all his townspeople, as biting as pepper and as sharp as a thorn, afforded much amusement to the assemblage through his disputes with Señor de Febrero, whom he opposed systematically, without consideration for his patriarchal privileges or respect for his honorable seniority. The better to confound his adversary Candás adopted a singular method, which was not without humor. He pretended to be as deaf as a post, and he always carried in the pocket of his coat a little silver trumpet, which he put to his ear whenever he was able to answer and refute his opponent’s arguments, but which he would say he had forgotten to bring with him when, not being able to do this, he wished to change the subject of conversation. Such a stratagem could not fail to succeed, and by the help of it he was always enabled to avoid being worsted in a dispute. In his language Señor de Candás was as rude and ill-bred as Don Gaspar was choice, polite and mellifluous, and for this reason he was out of harmony with the other _habitués_ of the house. Nor was he so for this reason alone, but also because he was the only one of them who preferred the news of the day to reminiscences of the past, the only one who brought to this musty senate a breath of out-door air, of real life.

The portentous memory of the octogenarian grew confused and uncertain when recent events were concerned, and Candás, profiting by this defect in the admirable faculties of the patriarch, was always trying to trip him up. “Let us see,” he would say, “how our Don Gaspar would set about proving an alibi. He is impregnable in all that relates to the Calomarde ministry or the regency of Espartero, yet he does not remember what he was doing this morning.” And imitating Don Gaspar’s voice, he would add, “What did I do yesterday? Let me see. Did I go to see Rojas? I think so. What am I saying? No, no. I was walking in Recoletos. Yet I would not swear to that, either.”

This humorous criticism of the patriarch, might, to a certain extent, be applied with equal justice to all the other “Señores.” It would seem as if the present did not exist for them, as if the past only had life and color. They discussed the news of the reporter, Don Nicanor, for a few minutes with the pessimism that is characteristic of old age; then they resumed their progress up the stream of time, plunging with supreme satisfaction into the fogs of vanished years. Perhaps, along with old age, they were influenced in this to some extent by the character acquired in the practice of the law, a profession based on scientific notions already stratified, a science purely historical, in which the spirit of innovation is a heresy, and in which the judicial problems of to-day are solved according to the standard of the Roman law or the jurisdiction of the Visigoths. Thus it was that the reunions in the house of the Señora de Pardiñas might be likened to a rock standing motionless amid the ceaseless surge of the sea of life. The worthy “Señores” did not see that among dusty and worm-eaten parchments, too, living germs palpitate and the spirit of progress lives. Clinging to vain formulas, they fancied they were the custodians of a sacred liquor, when only the empty vase remained in their hands, and, treating of innovations, they placed in the same category of heterodoxy the use of the beard, inferior courts, trial by jury, and the revision of the Codes.

III.

This assembly of sleep-walkers awakened to life and became animated at the entrance Rogelio, who, before taking his afternoon drive or walk, was in the habit of showing himself for a moment at the meeting, laughing at what took place there, but good-naturedly, with the mischievousness of a spoiled child. He had nicknamed it, “The Idle Club.” Candás, on account of his bald yellow skull, he called “Lain Calvo,” and the smooth-shaven and gallant Señor de Febrero, Nuño Rasura. The servants called them by these names among themselves. Even the Señora de Pardiñas laughed in secret, although she pretended to be vexed and would say to the boy:

“It is very wrong for you to turn them into ridicule, in that way--those poor gentlemen who are all so fond of you!”

And they were indeed fond of him. The moment Rogelio appeared it was as if a ray of warm, golden sunlight had entered a closed and darkened room where furniture, hangings, paper, and pictures have all acquired the faded hue imparted by the dust and the damp. All the old men loved the boy; one of them remembered him when he was a child in arms, another had been present at his first communion; this one had brought him toys when he had the scarlet-fever; that other, a professional colleague and the intimate friend of his father, became a child again when he thought of the baptismal sweetmeats. If they had acted according to their feelings, notwithstanding the black fringe that adorned Rogelio’s upper lip, they would have showered kisses on him, and brought him caramels and peanuts. For them he was always the little one, the boy. It was true that by a curious illusion the worthy guests of Señora de Pardiñas were disposed to regard the young as children and those of mature years as young. They would say, for instance; “So Valdivieso is dead! Why, he was in the prime of life, he was only a boy!” And it was necessary for the malicious Asturian, putting his ear-trumpet, or his hand as a substitute, to his ear, to interpose, “A boy indeed! a pretty sort of children you are dreaming of, truly. Valdivieso was past fifty.” “He was not so old as that, not so old as that!” “What do you mean? And the time he was in his nurse’s arms and learning to walk, does that count for nothing?”

Where Rogelio was concerned, they carried to an extreme this whim of forgetting the passage of time, and turning a deaf ear to the striking of the clock. Every additional year he spent in the study of the law, was for them a fresh wonder; they could not fancy him a lawyer: they would have had him still at school learning to read. Once, on his return from a summer excursion to San Sebastián, Señor de Rojas had said to him with the utmost good faith:

“What a fine time you must have had, eh? Running about and playing on the beach all day, I suppose?”

And the boy answered without betraying any annoyance, but with a grimace of mischievous drollery:

“Yes, indeed, splendid! I made holes in the sand, and built little houses with it. I never enjoyed myself so much.”