Part 11

“If there is no great hurry, I will give you my answer to-morrow or the day after.”

“I understand you,” said Señora de Pardiñas, in her own mind. “You want to have a talk with the boy first. Very good. I am prepared for whatever may happen. Here I am on guard and here I mean to remain. The first thing I shall do is to see that you don’t take him by surprise. I shall be on the alert, never fear!”

That afternoon, however, she was obliged to leave the house, contrary to her habit, to go to the railway station to see Felisa Febrero off, in compliance with one of those irksome social duties which cannot be evaded and which always seem to come at the most inopportune moment. Rogelio, too, had gone out riding, but owing to the necessity of attending to his studies now that the examinations were close at hand, he shortened his ride, and it was just as he was entering the house, flushed with exercise, fanning himself with his gray hat and cracking his whip, that Esclavita caught him by the sleeve and drew him, almost by force, into the study, bringing him to a stand-still beside the very table on which Doña Aurora had that morning drawn up her army of pens.

“Has anything happened, Suriña?” he asked. “What is the matter with you?”

“Didn’t I tell you--that I wasn’t going to Galicia,” she cried, “either this year or any other year? Your mamma has dismissed me. She is going to leave me at Señor Febrero’s.”

“What are you saying? What do you mean? Tell me, tell me all about it.”

The girl told him all she herself knew. Her eyes were dry, but her mouth and chin quivered. Her bosom heaved, and in her manner of telling what had occurred, in that despairing cry for help, like the cry of a drowning man when he is about to sink beneath the waves, there was a vehemence and disorder which formed a contrast to her habitual composure, and which might well have moved one with more years and experience than Rogelio. While he stammered, “No, it cannot be possible, you won’t leave us, what nonsense,” he clasped his arms involuntarily around the girl’s slender form, and the thrill of passion he had felt four or five months before awoke within him again, more ardent than ever, inspiring him with courage to rebel, to protest, and to defend Esclavita as we defend what belongs to us and is a part of our life. “Some one must have been telling her stories,” he said; “but who and why? What motive have we given for talk, Suriña? Why, since mamma’s illness we have scarcely spoken a word together. You never put your foot here. This is very strange; this must not be. I will arrange the matter. The idea of your leaving us! No, my pretty one.”

Cheered and revived by these promises, Esclavita nestled close to Rogelio’s bosom, as if she sought there a refuge whence no one could tear her, and Rogelio, with youthful and irresistible transport, covered her with kisses and tried to lift up her head, seeking her lips. The bell rang, unheard by either. It rang again, this time energetically and impatiently, and with an abrupt and simultaneous movement they drew apart. The girl smoothed her hair, and arranged her neckerchief with trembling fingers, saying:

“I am going to open the door; it is the Señora.”

XXII.

When Señora de Pardiñas observed that her son looked pale and preoccupied that evening at dinner, and even answered her shortly when she spoke to him, she thought to herself at once, “We are in for it now. That jewel has given him her news.” She intercepted, too, furtive glances, frightened and eloquent, between them, but she bore it all in silence, saying to herself, “According to Don Nicanor one must pretend to be a fool for a quarter of an hour every day in this world. But more than that falls to my share, for I must pretend to be a fool for months to come.” She pretended to be a fool then, acting as if she did not notice anything unusual in her son’s manner, asking him with a great show of interest about the pony, the stable, his companions in his rides. When the table-cloth was removed she introduced another subject of conversation, very timely, and of immediate and vital importance, namely, the examinations. “I think your turn will come about Wednesday or Thursday, child,” she began, “so that this week I shall have my hands full. For the fact is, that with those gentlemen one never knows what course to take. If they were all like Contreras! He knows how to be reasonable. Only Contreras won’t be your professor this year. With the others one doesn’t know what course to pursue; if one were to listen to this one and that one, it would be enough to make one crazy. Lastra wants people to bow down before him, to pay him the compliment of begging him, to be indebted to him. Ruiz del Monte seems to be just the opposite; if he is spoken to in behalf of a boy, he takes a dislike to him and torments the life out of him. You know whether that is so or not; it was your friend Diaz, the one who writes verses, who told me so. Of Albirán they tell a different story--that he does not disregard intercession, but in rule and measure; according to whom it comes from. The safest thing would be for you to study, child.”

“I do study, mamma,” answered the student laconically.

During the whole of the evening it was impossible to draw another word from him. He turned over the illustrated papers, he took them up and laid them down, he changed his seat, passing from the chair to the sofa and from the sofa to the chair; he sighed profoundly, and, in short, gave every possible sign of distress, making no effort to conceal this distress, but, on the contrary, seeming to desire that his mamma should notice it. At last, when the latter said to him, “Are you not going for a while to the theater to-night?” he answered, in a hard and resolute tone:

“No, I am going to bed. My head aches a little.”

And he left the room and walked noisily through the hall to his study, which he entered, slamming the door behind him.

“It is as I said; we are in for it now,” she said to herself. “I have made a great mistake. I should have waited to settle this affair until the examinations were over, a few days before our departure. It was a piece of stupidity on my part. Well, you see, I wanted to get out of the mess quickly; but I was wrong. There are things that it is better to go slowly about. I must only see if I can remedy matters now by putting off the girl’s departure; otherwise the boy will be all upset when he most needs to keep a cool head. We must wait a while. I must see if I can persuade Don Gaspar to wait. I shouldn’t wonder if it would be harder to make the old man listen to reason than the boy. What complications! That perfidious Rita Pardo was right. One ought to consider well whom one receives into one’s house.”

There then took place in the little domestic drama that was now drawing near to its _dénouement_ one of those byplays, like momentary truces, during which the actors, while appearing to be occupied with other interests, or while thus occupied in reality, do not yet lose sight of the main subject of the drama, continuing still to play a part, so to speak, and maintaining silence regarding the matter which chiefly occupies their minds, without deceiving anybody by this silence. Señora de Pardiñas put off the girl’s departure from day to day, calming the puerile impatience of Don Gaspar Febrero at the delay, with the excuse of the nearness of the examinations and the impossibility of remaining at such a time without a servant. Esclavita waited, hiding in the depths of her heart a tenacious hope, based on the words and the promises of Rogelio; and Rogelio, preoccupied and agitated, waited in vain for an opportunity to say something--something very serious and decided--to his mother. To speak the truth, however, if his mother had given him this opportunity he would not have known how to avail himself of it. As time passed, the courage which he had felt at first evaporated by degrees, like the essence in a vial which is left uncorked. It requires more resolution than appears at first sight for a good son to place himself in direct opposition to a good mother, and take a step, which to a certain extent emancipates him from maternal authority, but which at the same time wrings the inmost fibers of his heart. So blended together are natural duty, habit, and even that excusable selfishness which counsels us to place ourselves without reserve in the hands of one who loves us better than ourselves, that the breaking of this bond is an act of supreme courage, one of those efforts from which the will shrinks, unless it be of finely-tempered metal. Against a severe father there is always energy; his very severity serves as a tonic to the will; but a mother like Rogelio’s, whose first thought had always been her son, who had made him the object of so much solicitude, sparing him even the trouble of considering and the effort of desiring; a widowed mother, delicate in health, who had made it a practice to anticipate the wishes of her son, in this way preventing the will of her son from ever acquiring the robustness which struggles and privations give, was an adversary against whom Rogelio had not the strength to measure himself. “If she herself would introduce the subject,” he thought. But the truth is that if she had introduced it, the result would have been the same. All he ventured to do was to enter a mute protest, to show himself melancholy at times, and at times ill-tempered and sullen. “Mamma, in order not to see me looking unhappy, is capable of anything,” he reasoned, with the logic of a spoiled child. Only that his mamma knew how to discriminate between toys.

The examinations, too, had their effect in weakening his resolution still more. What with his studies, his fears of failure, and the coming and going of the friends who brought him an account of the rise and fall, so to say, of the marks, Rogelio found himself outside the magic circle by which an absorbing passion surrounds us, and if it were not that occasionally a pair of greenish eyes looked steadily into his, he would even have forgotten the danger which, by a curious illusion, seemed to him every day less imminent, being in reality more so, for the departure for Galicia was inevitably to take place immediately after the examinations.

And the examinations came, and Rogelio found that he had passed in two branches, but in one--the most difficult and uncongenial to him--there came upon him, like a dash of cold waiter, a _conditioned_. “I know who is to blame for this!” thought his mother, looking through the half-closed door at Esclava, who was dusting the pictures in the parlor. “This is what comes of flirtation; but what is to be done? every age has its tastes. He will gain in September what he loses now; he is young enough, provided he keeps well. And let us be just; the pony, too, made him lose his head in this last term. It is true that that was all the better. About the time lost in that way I don’t complain. The pony has behaved well. It deserves a lump of sugar.”

XXIII.

On the last evening spent in Madrid by Doña Aurora and her son, before setting out for their native place, a great many friends came to bid them good-by, and there was a pleasant informal reception at the house. It was now the end of June, and the most enjoyable hour for a social gathering was really between ten and eleven at night, when a fresh and healthy breeze blows even through the heated streets of old Madrid, the Madrid which is not shaded by trees and which enjoys little of the benefit of the municipal watering. The neighbors on the second floor, nieces of a brigadier, came down, and they were also joined by the Marchioness de Andrade, a compatriot of Doña Aurora, a handsome and elegant woman who moved in aristocratic circles, and was consequently accustomed to keep late hours. Señora de Pardiñas, finding herself surrounded by visitors, gave herself up to the task of entertaining them to the best of her ability, without seeking to guide the conversation, which soon drifted to subjects connected with the country to which she was about to return after an absence of so many years. The Marchioness, who was of a vain and lively disposition, said that she thought of going to Vigo soon, displaying at the same time a new bracelet of sapphires and diamonds, with an air of mystery. “She is evidently thinking of marrying again,” thought Doña Aurora. “Who may her intended be? God grant she may choose well.”

Rogelio had quietly slipped away without saying a word to any one. His retreat did not pass unnoticed by his mother, but, besides there being no remedy for it, she discovered other reasons for resignation. “Bad luck is not always going to follow us, and, at the worst, we are going away to-morrow,” she thought. (Esclavita still foreboded danger and trouble, but far in the distance.) “To-morrow at this hour we shall be near Avila. When shall I hear the whistle of the train?”

Rogelio retired to his study, impelled by a vague hope of seeing the girl, explaining to her his attitude during these days, and the impossibility of his acting differently, of rebelling and refusing to go with his mother. He foresaw that Esclavita, availing herself of the occasion, would soon join him, and to attract her attention he lighted a lamp, striking a great many matches in the operation, and walking about the room noisily; he opened the drawers and made the door creak two or three times. He did not venture to call her, through fear of his mother’s keen ear, for, according to his paradoxical and hyperbolical expression, she could hear better than the deaf Candás.

He was not obliged to wait long. After ten minutes or so he heard a knock at the door, and before he had time to say, “Come in,” Esclavita entered. The light of the lamp standing on the table of the study which communicated with the bedroom and dressing-room of the student, fell full on the girl’s face, and Rogelio suddenly realized how thin and pale her face had grown during the last fortnight, presenting now a spiritual and refined type of beauty that might have served as a model for one of those waxen images which are used to inclose the bones of unknown martyrs.

Rogelio went up to Esclavita and took her hand in his--it was burning with fever.

Without exchanging a word, they involuntarily looked around for a seat where they could sit down side by side. There was none in the study, which was furnished with a high stool and half a dozen chairs, and without reflecting they went into the inner room, where Rogelio, putting his arm around the girl’s neck drew her toward the couch and made her sit down beside him. They remained silent for a space of five minutes or so, Rogelio pressing and stroking the girl’s hand, hardened somewhat by labor, the fingers marked by the pricking of the needle, as if to communicate to it the coolness of his palms and draw from it its fever. But he could think of nothing to say except the commonplaces usual on parting, and at last, unwilling to remain silent any longer, he resolved to avail himself of that poor resource.

“Suriña, silly girl, don’t be like that,” he began. “See, I have been thinking a great deal; this has troubled me more than you. Nothing would be gained by opposing mamma now. We should afflict her greatly. She might even become ill on account of it, but she would not change her resolution. Have patience. Within three months, or even less, we shall be back here again, and we shall see each other, for you will enjoy a great deal more liberty at Señor Febrero’s than here. You know already that I shall always love you, foolish girl. Don’t desert me for the tender Nuño Rasura. There, silly girl, there, my dove, don’t look like that. If you do, you will make me very unhappy.”

Esclavita only answered by shaking her head with persistent melancholy. After a while she responded in a tolerably firm voice;

“Gay I cannot be; but I am not sad, either. Don’t be troubled on my account. Only my head is--as if there was something wrong going on inside.”

“Suriña! child!”

“It is as I say. I am here, eh? I am listening to you? I answer you? Well, it is as if I were listening to some person--far away, from the other world, talking to me.”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed the student shuddering. “I would rather see you cry. If you cried you would not have such wild notions, Sura. Cry and give way to your grief; but don’t say those dreadful things.”

“I cry inwardly, not with my eyes. I cannot shed a tear. I was the same way once before, when my father died,” responded the girl quietly, without either of them taking notice of the word _father_, which, perhaps, for the first time in her life, Esclavita uttered without mystery or circumlocution.

“Child, you seem to me to be ill. Ah! you have fever. Promise me that you will go to-morrow to see Sanchez del Abrojo.”

“No, it isn’t sickness. I was never better in my life. It is a _warning_.”

“Sura, be silent, for Heaven’s sake! You are talking wildly----”

He bent toward the girl and kissed her cold cheek; she made no resistance. She seemed to be more resigned, and it was in a tone that was natural and almost confidential that she uttered the following extravagances:

“Rogelio, there are certain things that the dead warn the living about; don’t doubt it. Three days before my father’s death I saw a large black bird at the foot of my bed. Yesterday I saw the same bird again. He flew so fast that I couldn’t see where he disappeared to, but I saw him as surely as that we are here now. I shall never go home again, never. Time will show, and then you will see that what I tell you is true and you will say, ‘Esclavita was right.’ If I was as sure of having a million ounces I should be considering now where to hide them so that they should not be stolen from me. Last night----”

She lowered her voice and whispered to Rogelio:

“A dog in the next house howled till morning, and that means that some one is going to die.”

“Heavens! Suriña,” for the second time exclaimed Rogelio, now superstitiously affected by this strange conversation, “you are crazy! Don’t you know, Suriña, that scores of people die or are at the point of death every night in Madrid? Just imagine; if the dogs have to announce all those deaths they have enough to do. There would be announcements enough to fill an extra sheet of _La Correspondencia_. The fact is, Sura, that you feel badly because we are going away and you remain behind. I, too, have been troubled for some time past about the trip. I have had some frightful moments. Afterward I reflected--and--I think it is better to be resigned to things as they are, for if we rebel it will only make matters worse. In three months, Suriña--in ninety days (and perhaps even less) you will have me here again. My first visit shall be to Doña Sura. Come, don’t look like that. I love you dearly, believe it. We shall be able in time to win mamma over. You haven’t yet told me to-day that you care for me. Come!”

With the gesture of a child asking for a caress he approached his cheek to Esclavita’s lips, and the latter, without protest, as if she were performing an accustomed act, pressed her lips to it. Like her palms, they were hot and dry, and it seemed to Rogelio as if they burned his flesh, causing him a sensation that was painful rather than pleasant. Only, caresses were a resource to render this last painful interview a little less intolerable, and the student, in default of arguments by which to console the poor deserted girl, had recourse to caresses, without being influenced by a motive less pure or noble....

“Suriña, Suriña, I think I hear the marchioness saying good-by in the hall. If she is going, it is because every one else has gone. Mamma will be here directly, I am certain. Try to slip away without being seen. Good-by; go quietly so that no one may hear you.”

The girl obeyed with the same passiveness she had shown throughout, in her utter submissiveness, not even claiming the last embrace. Rogelio lighted the lamp again, carefully straightening the wick. He then closed the bedroom window, and standing before his bureau glass, brushed his hair and parted it with a little comb. Then putting his hands into his trousers pockets he stood for a while studying carefully, with eager curiosity, his own countenance, questioning his own eyes in the mirror, as if to convince himself that, after this vertigo had passed away, he still preserved his individuality, and that there did not remain in him a something belonging to another individuality, a something which could not be effaced and which would betray him. Then the thought of his mother came again to oppress his heart. But this feeling, suddenly gave way to a burst of joy, and running to the window he threw it open, allowing the pure night air to blow in upon him and, grasping the window bars, drew a long, deep breath.

EPILOGUE.

Punctual as the sun, Don Gaspar made his appearance at four in the afternoon with a little carriage, to take his future housekeeper back with him to his house. Being told that Esclavita was on her way there, he again got into his shabby landau and told the coachman to drive quickly home. His impatience would not permit him to walk with his lame foot.

At the last moment Doña Aurora had called Esclavita and put into her hands, in addition to her wages, a handsome present of money and a pair of torquoise earrings. “I don’t want her to go away dissatisfied,” she said to herself. “And, indeed, the poor girl looked greatly altered. I really believe she had a liking for the boy, which makes my resolution all the more prudent. I pity her, and I know that it is folly for me to do so. Where could she find a home like the one I have provided for her? I am doing her a very great service; that is what sets my mind at rest. She has a sinecure.”

With all this, Señora de Pardiñas could not repress a certain feeling of disquietude, of secret pain, of overwhelming pity, which she afterward interpreted as a presentiment of coming evil. “The idea of my pitying her,” she said to herself, “when I am certain that I have found her the best situation a girl of her class could possibly desire.” And Señora de Pardiñas was firmly convinced of the truth of what she said. Like many good-hearted people, incapable of hating or injuring any one, who like to think that they are acting in the interests of others when they are really prompted by self-interest, she wished to persuade herself that she had at heart Esclava’s good, and not, primarily, her son’s welfare, just as this motive might seem to her, and as it really was.

She was somewhat reassured when she heard Fausta joking Esclavita in the kitchen, humming, “And now I serve a doting old man, and I am the mistress of the house.”

“Fausta is right,” she thought. “She will be mistress in Señor de Febrero’s house. If she doesn’t make herself too much so----”

The train for Galicia started at thirty-five minutes past seven, and at that pleasant twilight hour the platform of the Northern Depot was filled with a hurried and animated crowd of travelers and their friends who had come to see them off, the latter envying those who were going to see beautiful scenery, to breathe the sea air, to enjoy a cool temperature, and to spend a few months pleasantly in a healthy and