Part 2

In reality the good heart of the young man had grown attached to the assemblage of worthy old oddities who frequented the house. This very Señor de Rojas, for example, inspired him with a feeling of affectionate respect, on account of the justness of his views, and his unquestioned probity. If Themis should descend to this lower sphere, she might take up her abode in the house of Señor Rojas and she would find there an altar erected to her and her image (of wood, according to Candás). A jealous interpreter of the law in its literal signification, Rojas walked along the narrow path that lay before him, without turning to the right hand or to the left, with head erect, and with a tranquil conscience. Convinced of the exalted dignity of his position, he complied with the requirements of social decorum at the expense of incredible privations in his house, sympathized with and seconded in this heroic conduct by his wife. In the exercise of his functions he was influenced neither by considerations of politics nor of friendship. Interests involving millions had been intrusted to him, without awakening in him the faintest touch of cupidity, which is only the instinct of conservation expressing itself in the guise of acquisitiveness. For this reason the honorable name of Prudencio Rojas was pronounced, sometimes with veneration, sometimes with the disguised and caustic irony which vice employs to discredit virtue. The sarcastic Don Nicanor called Rojas a “puppet of the law.” He said that everything about him, mind and character alike, was wooden, neither seeing nor wishing to see that this kind of men, if laws were perfect as far as it is possible for human laws to be, might, by their firmness and integrity in applying them, bring back the golden age.

Often, of an afternoon, especially if it was very cold, or if it snowed or rained, Rogelio, instead of going out, would settle himself comfortably in a corner of the broad sofa and listen to the drowsy chat of the old people. Whenever he could he tried to turn the conversation toward a subject for him full of interest, and one of which he never tired--his native Galicia, which he had left when he was very young. Almost all the party were either natives of that province or had spent long periods of time there, filling positions in the court of Marineda, and they expatiated on the benignity and salubrity of the climate, the cheapness and the excellent quality of the food, the easy and cordial manners of the people and the extraordinary beauty of the scenery.

“I cannot understand why our amiable friend, Doña Aurora, does not take the child to see his native place,” Señor de Febrero would say, stroking the cushion of his crutch.

“I am always intending to do so,” Señora Pardiñas would answer, “but it is one of those plans that something always happens to interfere with. The truth is, as you know, that up to the present there has always been some difficulty or other in the way.”

“Say that you are very fond of your ease, _mater amabilis_,” her son would interpose. “If it had depended upon you, you would have been a tree that you might have taken root where you had happened to be planted.”

“Just as I take you to San Sebastián I might have taken you to Galicia, child, but it has not been possible to do so. Do you think I don’t often long myself to see my native place again? We who were born there--it is foolishness--but our dearest wish is to go back to the old spot, and our love for it never changes.”

“And we who were not born there love it too,” added Don Nicanor Candás, armed with his trumpet. “I would give my little finger now to spend a year in Marineda; I would rather go there than to Oviedo or to Gijón.

“But with me,” continued Señora Pardiñas, “something always occurred to prevent me from carrying out my plan, as if the witches had interfered in the matter. Do you long to see your native place again, before you die? Well, wear yourself out with waiting until you are bent double with old age. You shall hear the causes of my never going back there”--and she would count them upon her fingers: “First, the difficulties in the way of doing so. You leave your family, your home, your possessions, to wander about the world, with a young child who is always delicate--from Oviedo to Saragossa, then, on account of the Regency, to Barcelona, then to the Supreme Court here. I was always saying to Pardiñas, ‘Resign your position, man, resign your position, and let us return to the old land and not leave our bones in a foreign soil. With what we have, we have more than enough to live, and our family is not so large as to be a burden to us.’ But you know what my poor husband was, there is no need for me to tell you.”

(A murmur of sympathy in the audience.)

“He believed it was his duty to continue at his post to the end. And whenever duty was in question--at any rate, that was his idea, and it was necessary to respect it. And afterward, his health became so wretched----”

Here Señora Pardiñas’ voice grew slightly husky. She put her hand into her pocket, and taking out her handkerchief blew her nose and then wiped her eyes.

“So that,” she repeated, with a sigh and a shrug of the shoulders, “when the time came--And afterward you know how I was with my sisters-in-law, the law-suits and the difficulties I was involved in. I thought I should never be able to extricate myself from them. From home my old friends wrote to me, ‘Come back, come back; in a day you will accomplish more here than you could in a year there. What would you have?’ I was afraid of the undertaking. With my rheumatism, to think of shutting myself up in one of those coaches that you couldn’t open a window in if it was to save your life! And when, well or ill, things were at last settled and the tangle of the will was straightened out, lo and behold, they put a railroad direct to Marineda. But by that time I had lost the wish to go, for to return home to find myself at variance with all my connections----”

“Not with all of them, mamma; according to your own account there are several who have taken our part.”

“Bah, how can I tell? In our place, child, it is hard to know who is for and who is against you. On that point I have had terrible disappointments. When you least expect it, your friends betray you and drive the knife into you up to the handle. To speak the truth, there we are not frank and loyal, so to say, like the old Castillians.”

“You talk like a book,” assented Señor de Candás, who never let slip an opportunity of showing his claws. “The Galicians may have all the good qualities you please, but so far as being tricky and slippery and deceitful is concerned, there is no one who can beat them. Don’t trust to the word of a Galician, for they have no faith; or, if they have, it is Punic faith. What must the Galicians be when the gypsies don’t venture to pass through their country lest they should be cheated by them?”

“Take care how you insult the old land,” said Rogelio.

“Why, that is a well-known fact. No gypsy will go to Galicia. They are trickier and more crafty than all the gypsies put together. And as for going to law--Good Lord! They are born litigants. And they will be sure to get the best of you; the most ignorant peasant there could wind you around his finger.”

“That is a proof,” responded Señor de Febrero, “that we are an intelligent race; you will not deny that?”

Señor de Candás, removing the silver tube from his ear so as not to find himself in the necessity of replying to this observation, and, in order to finish his argument to his own satisfaction, continued:

“And there are simpletons, who call the Galicians clever! I call them crafty. If they were clever, they would not be always sunk in poverty, eaten up with envy, without ever making an effort to be anything better than beggars and grumblers. They are more given to complaining than any people I know. They are always crying and groaning about something.”

The ivory skin of Señor de Febrero flushed a little, for he found it impossible to accustom himself to the malignant rudeness of Lain Calvo.

“You are a little severe, Señor Don Nicanor,” he said, “remember that we Galicians are in the majority here. How would you like it if I were to repeat to you now the vulgar saying, ‘Asturian, vain, bad Christian, insane’?”

“There are plenty of fools,” continued the imperturbable Crown Solicitor, “who make a great show of surprise when they hear these things, but every one knows them so well that no one thinks it necessary to repeat them. The Galician, it is true, possesses some shrewdness, especially when the question is how to cheat his neighbor, but for all that he can neither cultivate any industry nor better his miserable condition. There he is, contented with his crust of corn bread, a poor creature, without clothes to his back, who never eats meat and who does not drink a glass of wine even once in the year. With all his reputation for smartness, he sometimes seems more stupid than the Aragonese themselves. He is stingy and he would save an _ochavitu_ even if he had to scrape it from his skin with a file; but you need not fear that he will ever think of investing this _ochavo_, or that he will have the energy to work in earnest in the hope of saving a dollar. Nothing of the kind. All he asks is to be let go on undisturbed in his lazy ways. See, for instance, the network of railroads they have, and what use do they make of them? They would not move a finger to attract summer visitors. None of that desire to please, that neatness of the people of our country.”

“One must either choke this Don Nicanor or take no notice of what he says,” exclaimed Nuño Rasura, furious, “for he won’t listen to argument. Where is that network of railroads he talks about? A pretty network! Full of holes. He wants everything to be done in a day; no one but God can work miracles! Everything needs time and patience. Let Don Nicanor take note of the growing importance of beautiful Vigo. Its cool climate, its coasts and rivers are the admiration of the newspapers. And the women--always excepting those present, but then my good friend is from there, too. And the fish, the like of which is to be found nowhere else, what do you say of that? My dear Doña Aurora, I have eaten neither sardines nor soles since I left there. Just before the downfall of O’Donnell, I remember we were taking baths in Marin, and they brought a turbot to the door that----”

Here the old man went on spinning the thread of memory, and Rogelio, leaning with his elbow on the sofa, his cheek in the palm of his hand, listened absorbed. It seemed to him as if he

were listening to some family tradition. The apartment, and the people in it assumed an air of friendly intimacy; the atmosphere, moral and material, was genial; the world was as comfortable and easy for him as the cushion against which he leaned. Each of the company was for him, if not a father, at the least an uncle. Around him reigned sweet security; and as in certain luxurious abodes embarrassment and privation betray themselves, so in this modest dining-room was plainly visible domestic comfort, the most perfect golden mediocrity that poet could dream or philosopher desire. Harmony and moderation are always beautiful, and Rogelio, without being able to define this beauty that surrounded him, felt it and sheltered himself in it as the bird shelters itself among the feathers of its nest. And while the blazing logs crackled in the fireplace, and the sounds of the mortar came softened from the kitchen, and the old men chatted and his mother knitted her stocking, the boy, plunged in vague reverie, tried to picture to himself what that beautiful country, that green Galicia, abounding in rivers, in flowers, and in lovely girls was like.

IV.

The whole street--shopkeepers, peddlers, servants, and inhabitants--all knew Rogelio; as the saying is, every one had some account to settle with him. He was familiar with all the establishments, or rather, the modest little shops for the sale of crockery, imported provisions, novelties, cordage and periodicals, interspersed among the ancient and imposing ancestral houses of the Calle Ancha, which was animated by the presence of the students and by the passing up and down of the street cars.

But those with whom Rogelio was most intimate were the drivers of the hackney coaches, of which there was a stand in the little square of Santo Domingo. Doña Aurora seldom went out that a twinge of her rheumatism or the cold or the heat did not decide her to send for one of those vehicles, so shabby in appearance but so comfortable and convenient. She called them, emphatically, her “equipages,” and declared laughingly that her coach stood always waiting at the door with so punctual a driver that he had never once kept her waiting. Rogelio, as the only son of wealthy parents, indulged in a more luxurious mode of conveyance; his mother allowed him to keep a dashing brougham and a pair of spirited horses at the livery stable of Augustin Cuero, so that on feast days he might drive in the Retiro, or wherever he might like. She would not consent to his keeping a saddle horse, through fear of an accident. But nothing in the world would have induced Señora Pardiñas herself to make use of that toy equipage. She was perfectly satisfied with her quiet hacks. Except on some special occasion--to make visits of ceremony or the like--she cared not a jot whether her carriage had a little extra varnish or her coachman wore gloves or a goat-skin cape. Owing to the frequency with which she employed them and to judicious tips all the drivers of the square were devoted to Doña Aurora, as well as greatly attached to the Señorito, though he loved to torment them, especially his compatriots, the Galicians, whom he was never tired of teasing. He ridiculed their native land, he sang the _Muñeira_ for them, he spoke to them in the Galician dialect, like the servants in Ayála’s comedies, and if by a miracle they were vexed, he would say:

“I too, swift charioteer, am a Galician, a Galician of the Galicians.”

To which they would answer:

“What a droll señorito!”

Whenever he went to engage a carriage for his mother the moment they caught sight of him, if he was a league away, they would laugh and lower the sign. And he would appear upon the scene addressing them something in this fashion:

“Winged Automedon, touch your fiery courser with the whip that he may fly to my enchanted palace. Already the generous steed, impatient, champs the golden bit. Behold him flecked with snowy foam. _Buloniu_, of what were you thinking, that you did not perceive my approach?”

“I was reading _La Correspondencia_, Señorito.”

“_La Correspondencia!_ What name have thy sacrilegious lips pronounced? _La Correspondencia!_ By the tail of Satan! A revolutionary, an anarchical, a nihilistic sheet. Quick! Cast away that venom before thou comest near the honorable dwelling of peaceful citizens. Hasten, run, fly, coachman! Hurrah, Cossack of the desert! On, drunkard, demagogue!”

The more extravagant the absurdities he strung together the more delighted were the drivers.

One morning Rogelio left the house wrapped up to the eyes in his cloak, for these closing days of October were bitterly cold, although the bright Madrid sun was shining in all its splendor. As usual, his errand was to go in search of a carriage for Doña Aurora. On reaching the corner of the square he caught sight of one of his favorite equipages--a landau whose lining of Abellano shagreen was less soiled and worn than that of the generality of those vehicles. The driver, a stout man, fair and ruddy, answering to the name of Martin, was a Galician. Rogelio made signs to him as he approached, crying:

“Martin, Martin of the cape! Ho, with the imperial chariot!”

The driver was conversing with a woman whose face was hidden from the student, but at the sound of Rogelio’s voice she turned around and he saw that she was young and not ill-looking, of humble appearance and dressed in mourning.

“Señorito, what a coincidence!” exclaimed Martin, as he recognized Rogelio. “This young girl is looking for the señorito’s house and she was just asking me the way there. She is a country-woman of ours. She brings a letter----”

“Will you let me look at the direction?” said the student, changing his manner and the tone of his voice completely, as he addressed the young girl.

The girl handed him the note, for it was only a note.

“Why, it is for mamma!” he said, as he looked at the superscription. “Come with me; I will show you where the house is. Do you, driver, follow in our resplendent wake with your imperial chariot, drawn by that stately swan.”

“Many thanks, Señorito,” said the girl in a sweet and well modulated voice, and with the sing-song accent peculiar to the Galicians of the coast. “There is no need for you to trouble yourself. I can see the door of the house from here; the driver pointed it out to me.”

“It is no trouble; I am going that way,” replied the young man.

Without offering any further objection the girl walked with him in the direction of the house. Rogelio instinctively took her left as he would have done with a lady. He had not gone a dozen steps, however, before he repented of his gallantry. In the first place, his companions would ridicule him unmercifully if they should chance to meet him accompanying so politely a girl wearing a shawl over her head and dressed in a plain merino skirt. In the second place, Rogelio was at the age when a boy brought up under maternal influence in the pure atmosphere of home cannot avoid a feeling of painful shyness when brought in contact with persons of the other sex with whom he is unacquainted. It is true that women of an inferior station did not confuse him so much; young ladies were like death to him; he always fancied they were making fun of him, that everything they said to him was only in sport; to draw him out, enjoy his confusion, and ridicule him afterward among themselves with malicious and pitiless irony. Walking at the side of this girl dressed in mourning, however, he experienced the same sort of confusion, for, notwithstanding her humble dress, neither in her manner nor in her appearance was there a trace of vulgarity. “Shall I speak to her?” he said to himself. “Will she laugh at me? She will laugh at me more if I say nothing. No, I must say something to her.” What he said--and with the utmost seriousness, was:

“Do you know whom that letter is from that you are taking to mamma?”

“Why, certainly;” she replied; “it is from the young ladies at General Romera’s. Don’t you know them?”

“Of course I do. General Romera was a friend of papa’s. We have not seen them for a long time.”

“Doña Pascuala, the elder, has been sick. She had something they call _tonsilitis_. Ah, she was very ill!”

“And is she better now?” asked Rogelio, for the sake of saying something, for anxiety for Doña Pascuala’s tonsils would never have deprived him of his sleep.

“She is entirely well now. If she was not well I should not have left her.”

“Were you--living there?” (Rogelio did not venture to say _at service_.)

“Yes, Señor, ever since I came from the old land.”

“Ah, you are a Galician, then?”

“There is no reason why I should be ashamed of it.”

“Nor I either, _caramba_!”

“No, Señor, no indeed. It is a very good country, better than Madrid or than any other place in the world.”

Rogelio smiled, pleased with the girl’s patriotism, and beginning to feel at home with her, for she seemed to him incapable of ridiculing any one. They were now near the house; Martin, who had gone on in advance, stopped his hack, a task which was easier than to make him start, and at the door stood Doña Aurora, making signs to her son.

V.

“Mamma, here is some one with a love-letter for you.”

“Who? This girl?”

“Yes, Señora--from the Señoritas Romera,” said the young Galician.

“Come here, let me see. Perhaps it is something that requires immediate attention.”

But no sooner had she torn open the envelope than she burst into a laugh.

“How crazy I am! Without my glasses--Here, child, read it you.”

Rogelio unfolded the missive and began in a pompous voice:

“High and mighty and most tormented lady: if your beauty----”

“See, child; have sense and read what is set down there; there is a terrible draught and the rheumatism in my joints won’t allow me to stand here listening to nonsense.”

In his natural tone of voice Rogelio read as follows:

“Most respected friend: Esclavita Lamas, the bearer, will inform you of the favor she desires; all we can say is that during the time she was with us, she was most exemplary in her conduct and fulfilled her duties faithfully; so much so that we are very sorry to lose her, as we have no fault to find with her; quite the contrary.

“Your old and affectionate friends,

“Pascuala and Mercedes Romera.”

“Is there nothing more, child?”

“There is a foolish postscript that it is not necessary to read.”

“A foolish postscript?”

“Yes; asking why no one ever sees me now and saying that I must be grown a fine-looking young fellow. The stereotyped, silly compliments----”

“I am always telling you so, child!” exclaimed his mother, with vexation. “You never go to spend ten minutes at the house of these poor ladies, who are so fond of you. They have seen you so petted that they will think it is all my fault. Well, I speak to you often enough about them. Pascuala and Mercedes! If you don’t go, I shall.”

“But, _mater terribilis_, when I put my foot in that reception room, I get so sleepy that I can do nothing but yawn!”

“Well, they are a pair of saints.”

“Amen; I don’t dispute their sanctity; I am only saying that they are very tiresome and that they never stop talking. They keep up a duet like the Germans in _La Diva_. ‘Rogelio, how is mamma?’ ‘And how are you getting on with your studies?’” And he imitated the husky voice and Malagan accent of the old maids.

“What nonsense you talk,” said Señora de Pardiñas, repressing a smile, “I don’t know why Pascuala and Mercedes should make you sleepy.”

“Unfathomable mysteries of the human heart. Profound arcana. In that _dimora casta e pura_ a fatal narcotic pervades the atmosphere.”

“Humbug!”

During this skirmish between mother and son the girl stood waiting, motionless, with her eyes fixed upon the ground. Doña Aurora, at last remembering her presence, turned toward her:

“Excuse me, child; this letter says that you will tell me what you have come to see me about. Will you come upstairs?”

“No, Señora. Don’t put yourself to any trouble on my account. Here will do just as well.”

“Well, let me hear. Is it some favor you wish to ask of me?”

“Favor? No, Señora. I would like to enter into service in your house--or in the house of some other Galician family,” she added, after a pause.

Doña Aurora looked fixedly at the petitioner and fancied she reddened slightly under her gaze.

“You--were not contented at the Señoritas de Romera’s, then?”