Part 6

The precepts of morality, which others learn as a rational necessity and a compulsory duty, or as a part of their religion, Rogelio, who as an only son, had been petted and spoiled, had learned through the medium of his feelings. All his ideas of decorum, of goodness, of rectitude, had come to him by this indirect but pleasant path. “Ah! what a grief it would be to me, child, if you were to do such or such a thing!” his mother used to say. “Heavens! what a mortification for me if you should commit this or that fault!” Thus it was that, without being conscious of it, what Rogelio first considered in all his actions was the effect they would be apt to produce on his mother’s feelings; and this was now his first thought when the vertigo passed away that had obscured his reason, while the girl was close beside him. When Esclavita had left the room his very want of confidence in himself made him take an honorable resolve, that of avoiding fresh temptations and still greater dangers. These resolutions are difficult to keep when the temptation is close at hand. Rogelio felt his first desire return to him continually, and the same fumes mount into his brain, like puffs of hot air. At table; when she came to his room, bringing the light, or some message, or his linen, he could not help devouring her with his eyes, following the perfect lines of her slender form, noting the grace and lightness of her movements. The stronger and more passionate his desire, the more embarrassed did he feel himself in the girl’s presence. When with her it seemed to him impossible that he should ever venture to pay her a serious compliment; while in the solitude of his own room at night, unable to sleep, and tossing about restlessly in his narrow bed, he felt himself equal to any undertaking, no absurdity seemed to him unreasonable, and he even thought--strange effect of passion--that it was his bounden duty to do what in the light of day he regarded as a crime and an act of madness. “And then,” he said to himself, “no one can call me a child any longer, and I shall be fully convinced myself that I am not one.” This absurd idea vanished in the morning, when his mother, according to her old affectionate habit, brought him his chocolate. When he saw Doña Aurora, dressed in her plaid morning gown, come into his room with the tray in her hands, when he tasted the fresh biscuit, the spoiled child felt all the power of the moral law imposing itself upon him with apodictic force; and precepts, unknown or denied a few moments before, now presented themselves to him clearly, significantly, plainly. “To give mamma cause for grief--it makes me shudder even to think of it; it would be unpardonable. Even though she should not discover it I should fancy she was reading it in my eyes, in my very breathing. And she would discover it,--she would discover it, there is not a doubt of it. Mamma is very shrewd, easy-going and good-natured as she appears. No one can throw dust in her eyes. She knows me so well that before the words were out of my mouth she can tell what I am going to say. As she cares for no one and thinks of nothing but me. God grant I may never give her cause for grief.”

Thus this criminal in thought studied Doña Aurora’s countenance attentively, fearful lest some glance he might chance to cast at Esclavita should betray him. At times he exposed himself to the risk of attracting attention by going to the opposite extreme, affecting not to look at the girl, and avoiding even the contact of her dress when she waited on him at table. It is true that this simple contact affected him so powerfully as to cause him pain from the intensity of the emotion. His was the passionate desire of youth that has not learned either how to control itself or how to attain its object. After avoiding Esclavita for two or three days, he would devise some excuse to go and surprise her in the little room where she ironed and where the basket containing the mending was kept, and when he was there, the only thing that occurred to him to do was to sit down in a chair and cheat his passionate longing by contemplating the girl who, rosy and perspiring, her right arm curved out firmly, leaned with all her weight on the iron as she smoothed the bosoms and the cuffs of his shirts. When the impulse to embrace her became too violent, Rogelio would rise and take refuge in his little study. There, on the polished desk were the hateful text-books, printed on brown paper with worn and blurred type,

exhaling aridity and tedium from their musty leaves and gray covers. Rogelio had never had any liking for these books, but now, whenever he opened one of them to go over a lesson, a thick fog seemed to envelop his faculties, and a sort of moral dissolution to take place in his spirit, where a rebellious voice would whisper softly such heresies as these: “Go, child, give up those futilities, renounce that dry, worthless, empty, sapless science of the schools. Real life and humanity are something altogether different from this. This pretended nourishment for the mind is a collection of antiquities, the rind of a lemon which the hand of history has been squeezing dry for nineteen centuries. All that you are studying is out of date. They wish to store your mind with mummified remains, dusty rags, and old cobwebs. They wish to fill your head with antiquated juridical rubbish, and they desire that at a bound you should be as old as your mother’s guests, Lain Calvo, Nuño Rasura, and the honorable Puppet. They would have you be of wood, like him. No, you are of flesh and blood, you are a man; life calls to you, and life, at your age, in default of a pursuit which would unfold your faculties harmoniously is--Esclavita.”

To these vague promptings, translated here into plain and vulgar speech, the student responded by yawning, rising nervously from his chair, and taking down from the book-shelf a novel or the latest number of _Madrid Comico_, which, throwing himself on the bed, he would eagerly devour, seeking thus to forget his feverish longings.

He had not the resource of a cigar, for he belonged to the younger generation who do not smoke; and who, unless God take pity upon them, will come in time to faint like an Englishwoman at the smell of a Havana. He was deprived of this sweet soother of impatience, this great counselor in trouble, this powerful sedative, this most spiritual of material distractions. One day he thought about it a great deal. “What would happen to me if I should smoke?” he said to himself. “The first thing would be that I should grow dizzy, perhaps sick at my stomach--yes, there is not the least doubt of it. And then mamma would know that I had been smoking, from the smell. No, the remedy is worse than the disease.”

The idea of smoking, which pleased him, because there was something manly and rakish about it, suggested another expedient, more effective, besides being easy and pleasant to put in practice. How was it that it had never occurred to him before when it was so simple, so extremely simple, and even so natural and right, and especially when it would be so efficacious as a consolation in his present suffering. “Why, the only thing to be wondered at is, that I should not have a sweetheart already,” he said to himself. “Every one I know has one. And they are quite right. If I had one, I should get rid of these crazy notions. I shall take a sweetheart, yes, indeed. There is nothing wrong in having a sweetheart, and even if mamma should find it out, she will not be vexed on account of it. One nail drives out another. That will be my chief distraction.”

The post being created, it now only remained to find some one to fill it. Rogelio passed in mental review all the young ladies with whom he was acquainted. Some of them were ugly; others were already engaged; this one was too old; that one was never to be met outside her house; one would turn him into ridicule; another would require him to prove his affection for her by performing some difficult task. He remembered at last that in a little street opening on to the Calle Ancha de San Bernardo, just in front of his house, there lived three or four young girls, daughters of an employee in the Colonial Department. They were not bad-looking, especially the youngest, a pale blonde, whose complexion, eyes, and hair were all the same color, which was becoming to her, giving her a certain resemblance to the Infanta Eulalia. Rogelio looked at her occasionally, receiving prompt payment of every one of his glances. “The little blonde will suit me,” he thought. “It will not be necessary for me even to move from the dining-room.” Accordingly, the very day on which the thought occurred to him he took up his post before breakfast by the window, and, opening it slightly, looked toward the windows of the third floor opposite. At one of them was the blonde, dressed in a soiled and crumpled morning-gown of dotted percale. On the railing of the window hung various undergarments, more than half worn, drying, and on a bureau he could see some bottles covered with dust, the empty cage of a lark, some old rags, and an old shoe. As he contemplated this interior, in no wise resembling a Dutch interior, Rogelio abandoned his purpose of looking there for a sweetheart. He remained for the space of ten minutes or so, perplexed. Then he said to himself: “I shall look somewhere else, that’s all. As for remaining without a sweetheart, I cannot make up my mind to that; it would be absurd.”

XII.

One Sunday morning Señora de Pardiñas awoke her son with the following intimation: “To-day we must make some visits; there is no help for it; we owe visits to everybody. I sent to Augustin’s livery stable for the landau; he says it will be at the door punctually at two o’clock. Ah, and what do you think? I shall go dressed so that if I look at myself in the glass I won’t know myself. The dressmaker brought me my black velvet gown, trimmed with jet and lace, yesterday; the hat to match is ready, too. I shall put on all my finery. You must stop in at the barber’s after breakfast; your hair needs cutting.”

Rogelio grumbled not a little; he declared that he had two or three indispensable tasks to perform that day, but all in jest, for he saw very well that Señora Pardiñas was resolved not to go to bed that night without having laid a grand sacrifice on the altar of social duty. At a quarter before two Rogelio had finished fastening the first row of buttons of his English frock-coat, before his bureau glass. Fortunately it was Sunday, when the neighborhood of the University is of all places the one where a student is least likely to be met with. For a pretty teasing he would have to stand if any of his college companions should chance to meet him in his present guise, dressed like a _gentleman_, with gloves and a silk hat. Accustomed to the cloak and the low, broad-brimmed hat, he felt at first as if to wear a frock-coat were like going disguised. There lay the silk hat, shining and resplendent, on the table of the study, and beside it the gloves, the cane, the Russian leather card-case and the handkerchief with its handsome embroidered initial. He took note of all these articles, placed his hat a little to one side, over his carefully smoothed hair, and was proceeding to draw on his gloves with the ill humor that was habitual to him when performing this operation, when his mother entered.

“Heavens! _mater admirabilis!_” he exclaimed. “How magnificent you look! Ho! for our handsome women, our stately and aristocratic dames.”

What Doña Aurora really looked was very uncomfortable, with all this finery, which only on state occasions could she bring herself to wear. She never wanted anything better than her comfortable mantle, her merino gown, and her large fur cape. All this frippery was enough to put one out of temper. The weight of the hat, with its high bows, obliged her to bend her head; the steels of the skirt impeded her movements. But there was nothing for it but to submit to this tyranny of fashion at least twice a year. She, like Rogelio, carried a card-case, and a list of the houses where she owed visits. Peeping out from her mink muff was a handsome lace handkerchief, perfumed with some delicate extract, and in her ears were two fine solitaires--the modest elegance of a lady who aspires only to dress in a style suited to her station. And yet such is the power of the arts of the toilet and of dress that Doña Aurora seemed to have left ten of her fifty odd years inside the door of her dressing-room; her face glowed with pleasurable animation, and in her bearing there was an unaccustomed dignity.

Esclavita stood behind with her wrap, which she was to take in the carriage lest the afternoon should turn cold, busying herself--with that admiring interest which attached servants display when they see their masters or mistresses in gala dress--in giving a touch here and there to her gown, smoothing out its folds and brushing off some almost imperceptible speck of dust from the bottom of the flounce. Suddenly the girl raised her eyes and exclaimed, casting a glance of frank admiration at Rogelio:

“Our Lady of the Hermitage! how fine the Señorito is!”

“He looks like a fashion-plate, does he not? Turn round, Rogelio, turn round--so. The coat looks as if it grew upon you.”

“Mamma!” protested Rogelio. But he was obliged to allow himself to be examined and re-examined by Esclavita, and even to consent to her giving the collar of his coat a touch with the brush. The girl’s eyes told him with innocent speech that he looked _well_. She arranged his cuffs and when they were going downstairs, she even called after him:

“There! There is a bit of the wool of the carpet on the right leg of your trousers.”

The first visit was to the house of Don Gaspar Febrero, to see the daughter of the worthy dean, who was on the eve of her departure for the Philippine Islands with her husband, a staff-officer, who had been ordered to Manilla. They talked about the voyage, the climate, the hurricanes, the clearness of living there, and of the old gentleman, who was to be left behind alone. Fortunately, he had never been in better health, never more animated nor more gay. Only a moment before, taking advantage of the pleasant weather, he had gone out, leaning on his crutch, for a little walk in the sun. Gratified by this satisfactory account, they left the abode of Nuño Rasura, and proceeded to make other visits more or less of the same ceremonious nature. At some of the houses they merely left cards, and these were the most pleasing visits for Rogelio, who, as he approached each door, repeated under his breath the customary aspiration: “I pray the saints they be not in!”

But his desperation reached its height when his mother announced to him that they were now going for a moment to the house of the Señoritas Pascuala and Mercedes de Romera.

“Mother mine, if it be possible, spare me this sacrifice!” he cried. “_Carapuche_, as our friend of the ear-trumpet says, don’t you know that I shall be obliged to pinch myself to keep from falling asleep at that house?”

“So nice as you look and you don’t want to make a good impression on the pretty girls? Come, come, give the direction--Calle del Barquillo.”

The house of the old maids had a surprise in store for the student, in the person of the sprightly girl who came out to receive the visitors and show them into the parlor, saying that her aunts would come immediately. In saying this she practiced a thousand witcheries with her features and her eyes, which were black, small, sparkling, and very expressive. The niece of the de Romeras wore a rather short dress, a token that she had not yet reached the dignity of the mantilla, and an apron with a bib, with a bright-colored embroidered border. A blue ribbon, tied in a bow, fastened the end of her short braid, and her shoes, worn at the toes, gave evidence of the restlessness of the small feet with their arched insteps within. Pascuala, the elder of the old maids, soon came into the parlor, sniffling and coughing, declaring that her sister was unable to leave her room, as she was suffering from a cold still worse than her own, which made it necessary for her to avoid a change of temperature. “And to keep my sister in-doors is like giving her a stab,” she added. Presently she presented her niece as she might have presented a frisky little dog who disturbed the drowsy quietude of that peaceful abode. “This is my god-daughter, Inocencia, the second eldest girl of my brother Sebastian, who resides in Loja. He has left the poor thing with us because she requires to have her teeth attended to; she has a tooth growing over another, and it will have to be extracted. She is very lively and can’t remain still for a moment; there is no kind of shoe that is strong enough for her; that is why you see her so badly shod.” These explanations being made, it was in order to speak of Esclavita; and in view of the fact that the matter could not be discussed before a child, and as Mercedes, besides, wished to enjoy the society of Doña Aurora, the two ladies went into the dressing-room, leaving Rogelio and Inocencia alone. “Go show him the albums and the views of Granada, child,” was the order the girl received from her aunt as the latter left the parlor.

Inocencia obeyed--playing off all her coquettish arts as she walked over to the table--and cried precipitately and with an affected lisp:

“Come here, come here, and look at the pictures Aunt Pascua told me to show you! They are lovely!”

Although the idea of looking at pictures was little to the taste of the _gentleman_ with frock-coat and silk hat, ashamed to refuse, he went and seated himself beside the girl who, as she opened the album, darted at him, with all the boldness of fourteen, an incendiary glance--a glance impossible to be misunderstood. When he found himself alone with the girl, it occurred to the student that there could not be a more propitious occasion to provide himself with a sweetheart than the present one. His vanity was a little piqued, it is true, at the thought that she was so young; a sweetheart of eighteen or twenty would have done him some credit, while this would look like playing at lovers; but when he was beside her, and looked at her more closely, with her well-formed little figure, developed with Southern precocity, and her full upper lip, slightly raised by the projecting tooth, she seemed to him a woman in miniature, and he thought to himself:

“I will declare myself now!”

He declared himself accordingly, without further preamble or preface, with high-sounding phrases culled from farces and comedies, magazines and college jests. The girl, without manifesting the slightest surprise, listened with a serious air, rolling between her thumb and finger an end of the ribbon tying her braid, which she had brought forward to show off the beauty of her hair, putting in practice at the same time all the airs and graces of a finished coquette. The student raising his voice a little, the girl whispered:

“Hshh! They are in the dressing-room there!”

Rogelio lowered his voice and redoubled his entreaties, although he began to feel a strong inclination to burst out laughing. After making three or four gestures in the negative, the girl all at once, and without further preface, said yes.

“Give me a token of your love!” implored Rogelio; and without waiting for permission he bent his head and kissed her on the cheek, feeling as if he were kissing the painted cheek of a doll--smooth, rosy, and insensible. Inocencia betrayed no emotion whatever--neither pleasure nor coyness--at receiving the kiss; on the contrary, seizing the student by the lapel of his coat, she declared, with an air of conviction:

“I think we ought to say _thou_ to each other. All my girl friends and their sweethearts do.”

“Very well, I will say _thou_ to _thee_. See, I am doing so now!”

She continued, with the same decision and eagerness:

“We ought to write to each other every day, too; every day, without missing a single one. My sister Lucia’s sweetheart writes a letter that long to her every morning; and another, every afternoon, that is longer still.”

“Very well; we will write to each other, too. I will make arrangement with the servant to carry our letters.”

“And you must give me your likeness. Have you a photograph? My parents would not let me have mine taken until I have my tooth drawn, but I can give you some of my hair for a locket. Shall I cut you some now?” she added, playing with the curly ends of her braid.

“No, it will be time enough when I give you my likeness.”

The girl rose quickly and walked on tiptoe to the door of the room where the grown people were chatting. She returned with the same caution, a look of satisfaction on her face.

“I thought god-mother was coming,” she said. “But I was mistaken; they are having a great chat.”

She resumed her seat beside the student, and three or four minutes passed without either speaking. The girl waited, surprised that her lover should have nothing to say to her; but the young man, ransack his brain as he would, could not find a word to say. All he felt was a wild desire to laugh, and to keep from doing so he covered his mouth with his handkerchief. His _sweetheart_, looking at the handkerchief, observed the richly-embroidered initial, and asked quickly:

“What letter is that?”

“R. My name is Rogelio.”

“I was going to ask you what your name was. How shall I address your letters? Señor Don Rogelio----”

“Pardiñas.”

“Pardiñas, Pardiñas, Pardiñas.” The girl repeated the name several times to herself as if afraid of forgetting it, and then, looking the student straight in the face, she said to him, in solemn accents:

“Are we to be married?”

Here Rogelio could no longer restrain his hysterical inclination to laugh. He laughed with his mouth, with his eyes, with his whole body, holding his sides, that ached with the violence of his laughter; and throwing himself back in his chair, he sighed:

“Ah, I shall die! I shall die!”

“What are you laughing at?” asked the girl, a little offended. “You act like a fool. Tell me whether we are to be married or not.”

“Of course we are to be married. Only I can’t help laughing. Let me laugh or I shall become ill.”

As soon as his laughter had exhausted itself, Inocencia whispered in his ear:

“Will you pass by the house to-morrow at nine? I will be at the window. At that time I always stand at the window to see the mounted artillery pass. It is a very pretty sight. What are you going to be?”

“A lawyer.”

“That’s a pity; then you won’t wear a uniform.”

XIII.

Rogelio was still laughing at himself at the idea of his engagement when they were nearing the bottom of the stairs, for which reason he neglected to offer Doña Aurora his arm, as was his custom. A sudden cry and the sound of a fall froze the blood in his veins as he saw his mother slip and fall headlong down the stairs on the tiled floor of the hall. It is only on supreme occasions that the real depth of our sentiment is revealed to us. Rogelio did not know that there were chords in his larynx or tones in his voice capable of the heart-rending pathos with which he uttered the words:

“Mother! my darling mother!”

He cleared at a bound the steps down which his mother had fallen, and in an instant had her on her feet and was holding her in his arms and pressing her to his heart, examining her wildly to assure himself that she was not dead and that she had no bones broken. Suddenly he uttered a terrified cry.

“Blood, mamma! you are bleeding. Where are you bleeding? Here. Good heavens, blood!”