Part 3

“Yes, Señora, I was contented enough--and I think they were pleased with me, too. You can see that from the letter they gave me. As far as the Señoritas are concerned I would be in glory, for they are as good as they can be, not belittling others. God grant them every prosperity! Only that sometimes--there are good people that one doesn’t find one’s self at home with. Those ladies are from Malaga, in the Andalusian country, and they have customs and dishes that I don’t understand. Even their way of talking is strange to me. When they tell me to do a thing and I don’t understand, I feel as if I had heard my death sentence. And, then, Señora, the truth before all--not to be among people of one’s own country, never to hear it mentioned, even, makes one’s heart very sad. For the half of the wages and with double the work I would rather serve a person from my own place.”

All this she said with an air of so much sincerity that Doña Aurora’s good-will toward her increased, prepossessed in her favor as she already was by the respectable and decorous bearing of the girl, so different from the bold manners of the Madrid Menegildas. Only there was something in the girl’s story that was not altogether clear to her. There must be some mystery in all this. Before the door the driver was smoking his cigarette, while the hack, with drooping head and projecting lower lip, was dreaming of abundant fodder and delightful meadows.

“Child,” said Señora Pardiñas. “I am going to sit down in the carriage. As I am not as young as you are I feel tired standing, and my legs are bending under me. If you don’t want to go upstairs, come over to the carriage with me.”

The little Galician helped Doña Aurora to settle herself in the vehicle, and the latter when she was seated said:

“Tell me, if you were so greatly attached to your country how was it that you came here?”

Ah, this time there was not the slightest doubt of it; it was a blush, and a vivid blush, that dyed the girl’s cheeks. And when she answered one must be deaf, and very deaf, not to perceive that she stammered, especially at the first words.

“Sometimes--one has--to do what one’s heart least prompts one to do, Señora. We are children of fate. I was brought up by my uncle, the parish priest of Vimieiro. It was the will of God to take him to himself and I was left without a protector. To get one’s bread one must work. I was a queen in my own house; now I am a servant. God be praised, and may we never lose the power of our hands or our health.”

“Why did you not go out to service there?” persisted Señora Pardiñas, who had a keener scent than a bloodhound where a secret was concerned. And that the secret was there she could not doubt on seeing that it was not now a blush but a hot flame that passed over Esclavita’s face.

“I--I couldn’t find a place,” she answered, in choking accents. “And then, as everybody there knows me, I was ashamed.”

Doña Aurora Pardiñas reflected for some two minutes, and speaking gently to soften the harshness of the words:

“Let us see,” she said. “You can refer only to the Señoritas de Romera who--knew nothing about you before you went to their house. Isn’t it so? It would be well, then,--you will see that yourself,--if you could find some one here who knew you at home who would recommend you.”

The girl hesitated for an instant, and then said:

“The Señorito Gabriel Pardo de la Lage and his sister know who I am.”

“Rita Pardo? The wife of the engineer? I am very well acquainted with her. And you say that she knows you?”

The girl answered by raising her hand and shrugging her shoulders as much as to say, “Why, ever since I was born!”

“Well, child,” rejoined Señora Pardiñas, frankly, “I am sorry that you should leave the Romeras. You could not find a better house or better ladies.”

“I do not deny that,” replied Esclavita with greater emphasis than before, if possible; “only that I have told you the truth, Señora, as if I were talking to my dead mother or to the confessor. I was seized with homesickness, and if I hadn’t left them I think I should have lost my reason or have gone straight to my grave. I couldn’t eat. I would go off by myself to a corner to think. I grew paler and paler every day, and so thin that my clothes hung loose on me. At night I had fits of choking, as if some one was tightening a rope about my neck. But in spite of all that I was loth to say anything to the Señoritas. They saw it themselves, though, and they were the first to advise me, if I did not go back home, to look for a place with some family from there! ‘Child, you are so altered that you don’t look like the same person,’ were the very words they used.”

As she said this, Esclavita’s chin trembled like a child’s when it is making an effort to keep from bursting into sobs. Her eyes could not be seen, as she had cast them down, according to her wont.

“Calm yourself,” Señora Pardiñas said kindly. She was beginning to conceive an irresistible sympathy for this girl, whose bearing was so modest and whose heart was apparently so tender. How different she was from the impudent servants of Madrid, the gadabouts of the suburbs, shameless termagants who could not stay in any decent house. It was not two hours ago that Pepa, the house-maid, for a mere nothing had thrown aside all decency and scolded like a fishwoman. This little Galician might have had--well, some slip--for the reasons she gave for leaving her native place did not seem all clear; but her whole appearance was so--well, so like that of an honest woman--God alone knew how the poor thing had been tempted.

“See,” she said, putting her head out of the carriage door, “for the present I cannot give you a decided answer as to whether I will take you or not. Come to the house to see me to-morrow morning about this time. I should be glad to--but I must think the matter over. If I should not be able to take you myself, I will look for a place for you with some other Galician family. Tell me your conditions, in case any one else should want to know.”

Esclavita, meantime, stood rolling an end of her black silk handerchief between her thumb and forefinger.

“May God reward you!” she answered. “As for the wages, a dollar more or a dollar less makes no difference to me. Work does not frighten me. I would not engage as a cook, for I don’t know how to make those fine dishes that are the fashion now. I understand simple dishes like those of my native place. In everything else I think I could give satisfaction--in the cleaning, the mending, and the ironing. All I ask is that in the family you look for there should not be--well, men, who----”

“I understand, I understand,” interrupted Doña Aurora. And she added jestingly, “But in that case, tell me why you want to come to my house. Haven’t you seen that there is a man in it?”

And she pointed to Rogelio who, relieved from his embarrassment by his mother’s presence, stood leaning against the carriage door, looking at the girl. Esclavita followed the direction of Señora Pardiñas’ hand; for the first time her eyes, green, changeful, sincere, rested on the student. After a pause she said with a smile:

“Is that young gentleman your son? May God spare him to you for many years. That isn’t the kind of man I mean, he is only a boy.”

Rogelio changed countenance as if he had received the most outrageous insult. He tried to disguise his annoyance by a laugh, but the laugh died away in his throat. It must be confessed that he even felt his eyes fill with tears of vexation. It was one of those moments of insensate and profound rage which must come at one time or another to the man whose childhood has been unduly prolonged; moments in which he desires, as if it were the highest good, to possess the bitter treasure of experience--sorrows, disappointments, trials, struggles, sickness, gray hairs, wrinkles, calamities, betrayal of friendship and of love--all, all, so that he may hear the supreme word, so that he may taste the fruit of good and evil, the immortal apple, golden on the one side, blood-red on the other. All, so that he may fulfill the destiny of humanity, all, so that he may pass through the cycle of life.

VI.

When the driver whipped up his horse, Señora Pardiñas called out to her son, who was on the box:

“Give him Rita Pardo’s direction.”

Rogelio obeyed; but when they reached the house in the dingy Calle del Pez, in which the engineer’s wife lived, he jumped down and opening the carnage door, said to his mother:

“I won’t go in. To make your inquiries you have no need of me.”

“And where are you going now?”

“Oh, to take a turn,” responded the student, indifferently, with a farewell gesture of the hand which betrayed the impatience of the boy growing into manhood to assert his manly independence, something like the nervous fluttering of the wings of the bird when his cage door is opened to him. Without further explanation he drew his cloak more closely about him and disappeared around the nearest corner. His mother followed him with her eyes as long as he remained in sight, then she sighed to herself and half smiled. “It must come some day,” she thought. “He is at an age when the reins cannot be held too tightly. Of course, the poor boy does not impose upon me, that is only to show his independence; he will look in at a few shop-windows, buy half-a-dozen periodicals, and take a turn or two with any friend he chances to meet, and then go to the apothecary’s. If I could only see him strong, robust, burly--there are boys at his age that are perfect giants that have a beard like a forest. He is so delicate, and so puny! Our Lady of Succor, bring me safely through!”

These maternal anxieties had calmed down by the time Señora Pardiñas, releasing her grasp on the banister of the stairs, had rung the bell of Rita Pardo’s apartment--a third floor with the pretensions of a first. The door was opened by a girl of eleven or twelve, pale, black-eyed, with her hair in disorder, her dress in still greater disorder, who as soon as she saw the visitor ran away, crying:

“Mamma! Mamma! Señora de Pardiñas!”

“Show her into the parlor; I will come directly,” answered a woman’s voice from the inner regions of kitchen or pantry. Doña Aurora, without waiting for the permission, was already entering the parlor, a perfect type of middle-class vulgarity, full of showy objects, and without a single solid or artistic piece of furniture. There were three or four chairs covered with plush of various colors, an _étagère_ on which were some cast-metal statuettes; several trumpery ornaments and silver articles which were there only because they were silver; two oil-paintings in oval frames, portraits of the master and the mistress of the house, dressed in their Sunday finery; on the floor was a moquette carpet, badly swept. It was evident that the parlor was seldom cleaned or aired, and the carpet gave unmistakable indications of the presence of children in the house.

At the end of ten minutes, Rita Pardo, the engineer’s wife, made her appearance. She came in fastening the last button of a morning gown, too fine for the occasion, of pale blue satin trimmed with cream-colored lace, which she had put on without changing her undergarments soiled in her household tasks. She had powdered her face, and put on her bracelets. Although she was no longer young and her figure had lost its trimness, neither maternity nor time had been able to dim her piquant beauty, but the coquette whom we remember laying her snares for her cousin, the Marquis of Ulloa, had been transformed into a circumspect matron, with that veneering of decorum under which only the keen eye of the student of human nature could discover the real woman, such as she was, and would ever remain; for the real man and the real woman, however they may disguise themselves, do not change. She greeted Señora de Pardiñas cordially, with her usual, “What a pleasure to see you, Aurora! Heavens! in this life of Madrid months may pass without seeing one’s friends or knowing whether they are living or dead. You have caught me like a fright. The mornings are terrible--they slip away in listening to idle chatter and sending and receiving messages. How sorry Eugenio will be----”

No sooner had Doña Aurora broached the subject of her visit than Rita Pardo suspended the flow of her talk and waited to hear further, with evident curiosity depicted in her voluptuous black eyes, and on her hard, fresh mouth. A series of ambiguous gestures and malicious little laughs was the prelude to the following commentary:

“What do you tell me? What do you tell me? Esclavita Lamas. The rector of Vimieiro’s Esclavita Lamas! Ta, ta, ta, ta, ta! And how has Esclavita Lamas happened to come across you?--Isn’t she a girl with auburn hair?”

“I don’t know whether her hair is auburn or not. She wears a shawl over her head. She is in deep mourning and looks very neat. Her appearance is greatly in her favor.”

“Well, well, well! Esclavita Lamas! Who would have thought it! Yes, she is, as we say in our part of the country, very demure, very mannerly; she talks so soft and low that at times you can scarcely hear her. She smells a hundred leagues off of the sacristy and of incense. A little saint!”

Doña Aurora was more discouraged than was reasonable by this preamble; she resolved, however, to disguise her feelings and to find out the truth, the whole truth, even though it should grieve her to the heart to hear any ill of the girl, in whom she was deeply interested.

“So that you know her very well?” she said.

“Heavens! As well as I know my own fingers. Indeed I know her! Lamas Tarrío was a great friend of the family even while he was in the other parish in the mountains before papa presented him for Vimieiro. He always lived in our house, and he was very fond of making presents. What lard, what cheese, what eggs at Easter and what capons at Christmas he used to give us! Papa thought a great deal of him, for in the mountains he took charge of the collecting of the rents. In short, he was devoted to us. He was indebted to papa, too, for a great many favors, important favors, Doña Aurora.”

“Well, what I want to know is what relates to the girl. If her antecedents are good, and I can admit her into my house, I shall be glad of it. I am not satisfied with Pepa, and I have taken a liking to this girl.”

Rita Pardo smiled maliciously, as she smoothed out the lace of her left sleeve, a little crumpled with use. She arched her eyebrows, and made a grimace difficult of interpretation.

“Um! Good antecedents may mean much or little, as you know. What is good for one is only middling for another. In that matter, some people are more particular than others. If the girl pleases you so much----”

“No, not so fast!” exclaimed Señora de Pardiñas, alarmed. “For me good antecedents are good antecedents, neither more nor less. Be frank and tell me all you know, for that is what I have come for; and now with the thorn of suspicion you have planted in my mind, I would not take the girl, not if she were crowned with glory, unless you explain to me----”

Rita smoothed out her lace again, and gave a little sigh of embarrassment as she answered:

“Aurora, there are certain things that, no matter how public they may be, one cannot have it on one’s conscience to reveal them. You know nothing about the matter, eh? Then it would be very ugly on my part to enlighten you. So much the better if it has not reached your ears; it is an advantage for Esclavita. And you can take her without any hesitation; I am certain she will turn out an excellent servant.”

“You are jesting, Rita,” said Señora de Pardiñas, letting her growing irritation get the better of her, “You envelop the affair in mystery, you make a mountain out of it, and then you tell me that I may take Esclavita. No, child; in my house people are not received in that way, without knowing anything about them. Explain what you mean----”

When the interview had reached this point Rita assumed a manner that was almost discourteous; she threw herself back, her nostrils dilated, her bosom swelled, and she began to excuse herself from answering with an air of offended dignity and wounded modesty.

When, after exhausting all her arguments, Doña Aurora obtained for her sole response, “I am very sorry, but it is impossible,” she rose, without troubling herself to conceal the annoyance this impertinent affectation of modesty had given her. She was just saying angrily, “Excuse my having come to trouble you,” when after a loud ring at the bell, followed by exclamations in a childish voice in the hall, the eldest girl--the twelve-year-old madcap, rushed joyfully into the parlor, crying:

“Mamma! mamma! Uncle Gabriel!”

Then, the widow Pardiñas, with sudden inspiration, planted her feet firmly on the floor, saying to herself:

“Now I shall have my revenge. Now you shall see, hypocritical cat, impostor, humbug!”

VII.

The commandant, dressed in the costume of a peasant, unceremoniously entered the room with his niece, who was the apple of his eye, his arm encircling her waist as if he was going to dance a waltz with her. In the salutation he exchanged with his sister, however, Doña Aurora could detect a shade of coldness, not far removed from dislike, a feeling which can sometimes be dissimulated where strangers are concerned, but never where its object is a member of one’s family. After the customary salutations and compliments, Señora de Pardiñas, who did not belie her race so far as wiliness and obstinacy were concerned, said tentatively:

“Well, I will leave you now. After all, I did not find out what I had come to learn, and consequently---- Your sister is very reserved, Señor de Pardo.”

“Upon my faith, I have never thought so,” answered the artilleryman bluntly, almost rudely.

“Well, every one speaks of the fair according to the bargain he has made. With me she has shown herself extraordinarily reticent.” And without heeding the gesture or the glance of Rita, she continued undaunted: “For the last quarter of an hour I have been asking information from her in vain about a young countrywoman of ours, Esclavita Lamas, the niece of the rector of Vimieiro.”

Pardo listened like one in whose memory some vague recollection has been awakened.

“Stay--let me think--Vimieiro--Lamas--Lamas Tarrío. He was an intimate friend of papa’s. Rita knows all about him; she has the whole story at her fingers’ ends.--What objection have you to tell it to Doña Aurora?”

A caricaturist desiring to represent _bourgeois_ dignity in its most exaggerated form might have copied with exactness the features and expression of Rita as, arching her brows and pointing to her eldest daughter leaning against the commandant’s knees, she exclaimed impressively:

“The child!”

“Well, what of the child?” responded Don Gabriel, imitating his sister’s tragic tone. “Is it one of those shocking things that innocent ears must not hear--that the cat has had kittens, for instance?”

“Gabriel, you are dreadful,” groaned Rita, casting up her beautiful southern eyes. “When one is killing one’s self, trying to make your nieces what they ought to be in society, you must do your best to--there is no use in trying to struggle against people’s dispositions.”

“Well,” insisted the obstinate Doña Aurora, “I come back to my complaint. Rita, don’t say that it was for the child’s sake that you refused to give me the information I asked. The child was not present, and even if she had been, by sending her out of the room----”

“Which is what I am going to do now. Eugenita, child, go practice your Concone.”

The girl left the room, much against her will, casting on her uncle, as she went, a couple of affectionate farewell glances; but no scale or study was heard to tell that she had shut herself in the musical torture-chamber in which our young ladies, worthy of a better fate, are condemned to dislocate their fingers daily.

“You shall hear,” said Doña Aurora, emphatically, “now that we can speak freely. The question is that that girl, Esclavita Lamas, wants to enter my service; and that I, for my part, am greatly pleased with what I have seen of her. But I know nothing about her past, nor why she left her native place. There seems something odd in the whole affair. Your sister knows the story, and neither for God’s sake nor the saints’ will she tell it to me. There you have the cause of our dispute. It was beginning to grow serious when you came in.”

“The story,” said Gabriel, nervously wiping his gold-rimmed spectacles, and putting them on again carefully. “Wait a moment, Señora; for if my treacherous memory does not deceive me--Rita, is not that the Father Lamas who took a poor girl off the street into his house for charity? Tell the truth, or I shall write this very day to Galicia to inquire.”

“Heavens! What notions you have! You are growing more unbearable every day--Was I not going to tell you the truth? Yes, that was the Lamas, and since you insist upon opening his grave, and dragging him out to public shame, do it you, for I don’t want to have such a thing on my conscience.”

“It should weigh more heavily upon your conscience,” replied Gabriel, with vehemence, “to try to prevent the girl getting her place on account of the sins of others. Now I can tell you the whole story, Doña Aurora, by an end I have unwound the skein; it is the same with stories as with an old tune--if one remembers the first bar, one can sing the whole of it through without a mistake. And I can tell you that it is a novel, a real novel.”

“It may seem so to you,” said Rita, venomously, pulling the lace of her sleeves again. “As for me--there are certain things---- Well, I wash my hands of it.”

Doña Aurora concealed the satisfaction her victory gave her, but, a woman after all, she said to herself, casting a side glance at Rita:

“I’ve got the best of you, hypocrite!”

“You shall hear,” began the commandant. “This Father Lamas was a simple-minded man, illiterate as all the rural clergy were at that time,--now they are much more enlightened,--and not over-intelligent; but he performed all his parochial duties faithfully, and if he committed faults he succeeded in hiding them. If you cannot be chaste, be cautious, as the saying is. Well, one night there came to the door of the rectory a girl, about tea years old, an orphan, who lived upon charity; in one house they gave her a piece of corn bread, in another a bundle of corn leaves to sleep upon, here a ragged shawl, there a pair of old shoes. In this way the wretched girl managed to live. The rector took pity upon her and said to her: ‘Stay here; you can learn housework; you will have clothes to wear, a bed to sleep in, and good hot soup to nourish you.’ And so it was decided--the girl stayed.”

“The girl was Esclavita?”

“No, Señora, no Señora. Wait a while. The girl turned out bright and capable; she put away from her her melancholy, as they say in our country, and she even grew rosy and handsome. And--” here the voice of the commandant took a sarcastic tone--“when the flower of maidenhood bloomed--”

“Oh, Gabriel,” remonstrated Rita, “certain things should be spoken of in a different way. There is no need of entering into details that----”

“Bah!” said Doña Aurora. “We are all of us married and I am an old woman. We know all about it and are not to be so easily shocked as that comes to, my dear. Go on. What came afterward?”

“Afterward came Esclavita.”

Although Señora Pardiñas had affirmed that she _knew all about it_, this piece of information, given thus suddenly, almost made her jump in her chair.

“Ah!” she exclaimed, and then looked very thoughtful. “That is why the poor girl--well, and afterward?”