Part 9
But whether he were or were not on a level with his Pachita (and perhaps the only superiority he possessed over her was his masculine acuteness of intellect and his learning), it was certain that Don Nicanor seemed at times a little ashamed of his better half. A concealed observer, stationed at Doña Aurora’s door and noting first Señor de Rojas and then Señor de Candás, each accompanied by his wife, as they entered the house on the day in question, might, from this observation alone, have been able to form a correct idea of the psychic natures of each of the couples and of the moral atmosphere of their houses. Rojas offered his arm to his wife as they were going upstairs, hurried forward to ring the bell, and then stood aside courteously at the door to allow her to enter first, afterward drawing aside the portière of the dining-room (where the receptions were once more held). His manner of seating himself beside her, of associating her with him in his inquiries for the health of Rogelio’s mother, was full of the same consideration, the same delicate feeling of reverential familiarity, if I may say so, and the magistrate, in respecting his partner, showed that he respected himself. Señor de Candás, on the contrary, entered with the same want of ceremony as on the other days, and almost left his wife in the corner where he left his umbrella. One might have thought that Pachita and her husband were strangers to each other who had met by chance on the staircase. But further: while Señor de Rojas, conversing with his wife in the same deferential tone as with Doña Aurora, made no motion to go until Señora de Rojas gave the customary signal, saying: “When you wish, Prudencio, we will go home,” Señor de Candás, brusquely cutting short a harangue of Pacha on the dearness and the rancidness of bacon in Madrid, said, with the greatest rudeness:
“Eh, Pacha, hold your tongue and come on; it is time for us to go.”
Señor de Candás left the room first, doubtless to show the way to his wife, who was floundering through the ceremonies of leave-taking, and was just in time to surprise two persons who were whispering earnestly together at the further end of the hall. No one could excel the sly Asturian in the art of appearing not to see what was not meant for him to see, but as for seeing, _carapuche_, he saw so much that long after he had quitted the house a smile still played among the wrinkles of his Voltairian countenance.
What Rogelio was saying to the girl with so much eagerness was:
“Great news, Suriña! This summer we are to go home--all of us. Mamma has promised me.”
XVIII.
Señora de Pardiñas was now pronounced entirely well, and the advisability of her going out for a walk was being considered, when one morning, at the hour when Rogelio had his lecture on Political Economy, an hour which was unusually early for visitors, Don Nicanor arrived, smiling, and seemingly in a very good humor. He pretended to be surprised at finding none of the accustomed visitors there, whereupon Doña Aurora, who was knitting a woolen stocking, answered with much show of reason that as it wanted at least two hours to the usual time of their arrival, it was not strange that none of them had yet come. But apparently Lain Calvo did not hear this answer, for he had kept his ear trumpet in his pocket, using his hand as a substitute.
“Tell me, Doña Aurora, have you not noticed something?” he asked, settling himself comfortably in his easy-chair, whose broad back already bore the impress of his form.
Doña Aurora raised her eyes with an expression that seemed to say: No--that is to say, I don’t know. Do me the favor to explain yourself.
“Did you not notice the other day, the day that Pacha and I were here----”
“Yes, yes; I know--Friday.”
“How dejected the wife of Rojas seemed?”
“Poor woman! She is never very cheerful; but she never seems discontented, either. She is an excellent woman! As good as gold!”
“Well, she tried hard to conceal her grief, but it was very evident, especially to those of us who were already aware of the circumstances.”
“Why, what has happened? Have they had any trouble?” asked Señora de Pardiñas in alarm, for she sincerely esteemed and liked Señora de Rojas.
“Joaquin--the son, the judge--they have transferred him again from one end of Spain to the others, two months after the first transfer, and just when his wife is about to be confined. That will convince him that one cannot play the Quixote here, _carapuche_. Fancy a young man, who is beginning his career, making his début by opposing so powerful a chief as Colmenar, who has at his back the Minister of the Department. He will soon see, he will soon see that they are not the people to be trifled with. And he will see, too, of how much consequence the law is. A judge can be transferred only at his own instance? Well, put in the royal order, ‘at his own instance,’ and that settles it. Why, there have been people who were placed on the retired list ‘at their own instance.’ And when they protested, they were told they were wanting in respect for the Minister.”
“But, Señor Don Nicanor, that is very creditable to the Rojases. It is evident the young man is of his father’s school. People as upright as that are seldom seen nowadays. I understand nothing about those things, but I remember the affair was discussed here, and it was said that they wanted Joaquin Rojas to be a party to a dreadful piece of dishonesty--a robbery of----”
“The idea of a jackanapes like that,” continued Lain Calvo, persisting in his deafness, “wishing to set himself up in opposition to the Minister. The Rojases are as stubborn as mules. _Talis pater_--a fanatic the father, a fanatic the son. That is to say, a still greater fanatic, although that might seem to be impossible. For the father at least does not get himself into a fix; he adheres to the letter of the law and that is the end of it. The code says white? White let it be, then. Does it say black? Then let it be black. Rojas is a machine for carrying out the law. If the law to flog criminals or to cut off their ears were still in force, Rojas would himself go about seeing it carried into execution. But the boy! Because he has read a few trashy German and Italian books, translated into worse gibberish, he plays the learned man and the phi-los-o-pher. A judge a phi-los-o-pher! Fancy! What pretentiousness!”
“Well, for my part,” protested Doña Aurora, without raising her voice, for she knew how much faith to put in the Crown Solicitor’s deafness, “I think that in every situation in life a man should behave himself with dignity and propriety. For that reason I have a great deal of sympathy for the Rojases.”
“And as a natural consequence,” continued Lain Calvo, “they are very straitened in their circumstances. They never light a fire in that house, they eat only the plainest food, they drink no coffee. The salary is not enough to meet the expenses of moving from one place to another; he has married a girl without a penny, and as soon as things come to a crisis the young gentleman will lower his tone. Necessity teaches more than all the universities put together. They will tame him yet. He will be as soft as a glove before the year is over.”
Convinced that she would gain nothing by argument, Doña Aurora went on narrowing the heel of her stocking, contenting herself with shaking her head in dissent from time to time, for her quick temper would not allow her to listen quietly to the spiteful remarks of the malicious Asturian.
“We all begin life with the idea that we are going to reform the world,” he went on, “but very soon we take in our sails. Oh, yes, we soon take in our sails. Or if we do not, we lead a miserable existence. You will see that the storm that has caught Joaquin will reach his father also. It is brewing for him. Before the year is out they will give him a lesson he won’t forget. They cannot transfer him? They will superannuate him, then. I am no lover of the past like Don Gaspar and the others, but I must acknowledge that in my day politics had less to do with the magistracy than it has now. That is the way things come and that is how we must take them. Those gentlemen are always in the clouds, _carapuche_. Complete fools! The new generation understand things better. I am the only one of our circle who lives in the world. If it were not for this cursed deafness----”
“Don’t come to me with stories about your deafness,” protested Señora de Pardiñas. “God deliver me from deaf people like you. You hear more than you ought to hear. Give over your nonsense with me, eh? I wasn’t born in the year of the fools.”
“And the craziest of them all,” continued Lain, pretending not to have heard, “is the worthy Don Gaspar. He is a perfect simpleton. He has gone back to his childhood. We shall have to give him a nurse, or at the least a maid to take care of him. That is what he wants, and that is what he sighs for, and he is trying to steal away from you the one you have chosen for your boy. I am speaking in earnest; as sure as my name is Nicanor he is crazy for your maid, for Esclava, or whatever her name is. No boy of twenty could be more desperately in love than he is with her. I am certain that Rogelio is not half so deeply smitten.”
On hearing Rogelio’s name, and observing the tone in which it was uttered by Candás, Señora de Pardiñas started, and let her knitting fall on her lap.
“As for Rogelio,” continued the Asturian, with the same affectation of indulgence, “what has happened to him is so natural at his age that the wonder would be if it had not happened. It is plain. A woman of twenty-five, good-looking and affectionate; a boy of twenty, what was to happen? A glance to-day, a touch to-morrow, a caress in the hall, a romp in the reception-room--youthful follies that come to an end of themselves.”
Señora de Pardiñas jumped in her chair as if she had been moved by a spring.
“Do you know what you are saying?” she exclaimed. “Do you think it is right to say such things for no other reason than your own pleasure, without any proof or foundation whatever? Are you to let your tongue gallop away with you without caring whom you knock down? Rogelio, poor boy, is incapable of such conduct in his mother’s house.”
“Of course I can understand your attaching little importance to the matter, and turning it into ridicule, for those things are follies natural to youth; and for that reason when I caught them the other day in the reception-room billing and cooing like a pair of turtle-doves, I said to them in my own mind: ‘That’s right, children, amuse yourselves; that is the law of God.’ But when I think of that other driveler, with his eighty odd years, playing the love-sick swain, I vow I could lay him across my knee and give him a sound flogging for an arch fool.”
And Doña Aurora felt that she could with the greatest pleasure have performed the same operation on the person of the incorrigible Asturian. To say these dreadful things to her and to say them in that treacherous way, that did not even give her a chance to set him right, for with the pretense of his deafness, he might assert what he chose regardless of all that might be said either in denial or disproof of his words. It was enough to make one’s blood boil with rage. It was a stupid, shameless, insufferable jest. And was she going to let it pass? No, indeed. Señora de Pardiñas’s anger was aroused; the blood boiled in her veins. “Hypocrite! liar! fire-brand! tale-bearer! fox!” she said to the Asturian in her own mind. “Now I am going to settle accounts with you.” She rose from her chair, went up quickly to him, put her hand in the pocket of his coat with the dexterity of a professional pickpocket, and took from it the case which contained his ear-trumpet. And before the astonished Lain Calvo could make a movement to defend himself, Doña Aurora had taken the silver tube out of its case, introduced it into his ear, and screamed with all her might:
“Whenever you talk to me in future, either use your trumpet or else make up your mind to hear what I say in answer to you. All that about Rogelio and Esclava is the suggestion of your own vile thoughts, do you hear? My boy is not in the habit of flirting with his mother’s servants, do you hear? People are not so loose and so shameless in their conduct as you try to make them out to be, do you hear? do you hear? And decent people are not the same as villains, do you hear? And I am not so great a simpleton, listen well to what I say, that such things could take place under my very nose without my seeing them. And malicious people are not to my taste, do you hear? For I always think of the saying, ‘Ill-doers, ill-deemers,’ do you hear?”
Her philippic ended, she let herself fall on the sofa, agitated and unstrung, while the Asturian, putting both his hands up to his bald crown, exclaimed in distressed accents:
“_Carapuche_, Aurorina, you have broken the drum of my ear. Another such outbreak as that and you would leave me deaf.”
XIX.
But no sooner had the hypocritical Lain Calvo taken his departure than Doña Aurora, whose agitation had now subsided, and in whose mind anger had given place to reflection, scratched her head with her knitting needle, as was her habit, and put to herself the question invariably suggested by mistrust.--“And why should it not be true?” Without the need of any great perspicacity, without possessing the Crown Solicitor’s evil-mindedness, her own good sense suggested to her that such proverbs as, ‘Fire and tow,’ etc., were not without foundation. And by a natural process of reasoning, based on common sense, Señora de Pardiñas arrived at a conclusion exactly the reverse of her first conviction, and accused herself of being simple-minded and credulous, because not only the possibility but the probability also of so obvious a result had not occurred to her until it had been maliciously brought to her notice by a stranger, when it was her duty to have foreseen the danger. “We mothers make the mistake of thinking that boys will always remain boys,” she said to herself, “and time passes, and they become men without their mustaches waiting for our permission to grow. When we don’t imagine they are still children we go to the opposite extreme and think that they are old men, and ought to have as much sense as we have ourselves--another absurdity, another mistake. Youth will have what belongs to it, and it is a folly to shut our eyes to it. The worst of it here is that we have the enemy within our very gates. And it was I myself who admitted her. I opened the door and invited her in. Besides putting myself in a humiliating and unbecoming position, I have placed the temptation in his way and increased the seriousness of the consequences that may follow--and how serious they may be! Of course I never supposed that Rogelio was going to live all his life like a saint, but this--here, in the very house----”
Another scratching of the head suggested to her the logical counterpoise to these reflections. “It is very likely that that vile old man may have slandered my boy and poor Esclava merely for the pleasure of slandering. I am not so easily deceived where birds of that feather are in question, and it was precisely on account of her modest and serious appearance that I took a liking to Esclava. It is true her family antecedents are not in her favor, and that she has bad blood on both sides, but in that--in that one is sometimes apt to be greatly mistaken; people are not like peppers, that grow good or bad according to the seed they spring from. No, there is only one course to be pursued here--to observe, to be on the alert, and to provide some outside distraction for the boy. I will be guided by circumstances. I am not going to commit the cruelty of turning the girl away without a word of warning. If all this should turn out to be only stories of Don Nicanor, I should have it on my conscience. And if it is the truth, the lad might rebel and we should have a fine time. These first fancies are apt to be very violent with boys. I must proceed with caution. Aurora, imagine that you are a policeman, and that they have set you to track a crime. Keep your eyes open, be prudent, and suspect everything.”
Never was programme more literally carried out. Señora de Pardiñas occupied herself from that very instant in making up for lost time. In proportion as she had been trusting and credulous before, did she become incredulous and mistrusting from the moment when suspicion first suddenly laid its cold touch upon her. She watched them adroitly, without betraying her suspicions or allowing her uneasiness to be perceived. In every woman, in the most innocent and frankest even, there is the germ of the detective. The habits of dissimulation, practiced from childhood, make it easy for her to play the part. In order not to awaken suspicion, Doña Aurora resolved to exercise her surveillance over one only of the supposed criminals. And, indeed, in the circumstances it cannot be denied that watching Esclavita it was unnecessary to watch Rogelio. And this was what Señora de Pardiñas did. Making use of her indisputable right she studied, without a moment’s cessation, every action, every step, every movement of her servant. She knew at what hour she awoke in the morning, what she did when she arose, how often and with what object she entered Rogelio’s room; how she spent the afternoon; in what way she was occupied when there were visitors; when she retired for the night, and when she put the light out. And it must be confessed that at first this espionage was absolutely without result. Esclavita, when she left the room, attended at once to the making of the chocolate, and afterward to her toilet, which was simple; she did not even arrange her hair in the coil at the back of the head which is the only adornment indulged in by the domestics of Madrid. She put Rogelio’s study and bed-room in order while he was at college or out walking; she never entered either room when he was there. Esclavita never went out on Sundays except to go to church, consequently Rogelio did not go out either. During the receptions Rogelio did not stir from his corner on the sofa, nor the girl from her basket of mending, except to open the door. And the evenings, which, unless some college friend came to see him, Rogelio spent reading the magazines or at the theater, Esclavita spent in her room sewing or doing some other work for herself. There was nothing in all this to arouse suspicion, and Señora de Pardiñas would have slept with a tranquil mind if her powers of observation had been of a more vulgar order.
But she was not a woman to let pass unnoticed certain things, insignificant in appearance, but in reality very significant and even alarming for a suspicious mother--loose threads which her maternal perspicacity divined to belong to a tangled skein. These indications, signs or guides for the investigations of the watchful mother, were something of the following nature: At breakfast, when Esclava brought Rogelio his pills or his syrup of iron, or when she handed him some favorite dish, there passed between them (and it would have been useless to try to persuade Doña Aurora to the contrary, for she had seen it only too well) an exchange of glances, at times languishing and sentimental, at times flashing and ardent. When Esclavita went to open the door at Rogelio’s ring she showed an eagerness which she was very far from showing when it was one of the tiresome old men who rang the bell; it was evident that she recognized the Señorito’s ring, and even the sound of his step upon the stairs. When Esclavita was ironing Rogelio’s linen, she took the greatest possible pains with it, and this sign was also observable in the manner in which she arranged his room and waited on him at the table. Sometimes, when Rogelio was going out of an evening, the girl would be in the hall and they would exchange a few words, but always in so low a tone that it was impossible to catch what they said; the same thing happened when Rogelio came in from college in the morning, if Doña Aurora did not chance to be in the reception-room at the time. Finally, and this last was the most significant sign of all, Rogelio had, on two or three occasions, objected to accompanying his mother when she went out, and although he always finally yielded, it was with much grumbling and evident dissatisfaction.
This was all Señora de Pardiñas perceived, but this was enough and more than enough to keep her in a state of constant anxiety, and to inspire her with an ardent desire to put an end, in the quietest way possible, to this ambiguous situation, and to unwind the skein which threatened otherwise to become, with time, an inextricable tangle. She did not dare to stir from the house lest she should thus afford them dangerous opportunities. Such a course may be followed for a time, but it cannot be continued through a whole winter without arousing suspicion. Rogelio had already, on several occasions, manifested much surprise at the discontinuance of the morning drives. “_Mater_,” he said to her jestingly, “we are soon destined to witness grave disturbances if you persist in your seclusion, disdaining the gilded chariots that wait impatiently to receive you at the foot of our palace walls, that, reclining luxuriously on their embroidered cushions, you may resume your accustomed matutinal drives. An imposing demonstration is being organized in which ten thousand of the most distinguished Phætons are to take part; discourses in the sweet tongue of the troubadour Macías and the eloquent jargon of Duke Pelayo are to be pronounced. Martin the _Buloniu_ and José the _Cabaleiro_ are to speak. The government has adopted precautionary measures and the affair will come off in the tavern.”
When the _habitués_ of the house learned of Doña Aurora’s seclusion, they, too, felt themselves obliged to enter their protest against it on hygienic grounds. “Friend Aurora, you must not give way to indolence. Take care how you create humors that may afterward give you trouble. Look at me, I owe my good health and my cheerful spirits to my habit of never letting a day pass without walking a certain distance. Less than a league will not thin the blood. Since the accident to my foot I walk more than that.” This advice came from the worthy Nuño Rasura. “Exercise is very necessary,” added Señor de Rojas, with his accustomed sententiousness, “for the body, and, if it goes to that, for the mind as well. Walking, the mind is diverted. There is nothing like a little walk, and if one finds it tiresome, why one can count the stones, or the trees, or the numbers on the houses.” These counsels at last put Doña Aurora out of patience. “People have a sort of mania for giving advice without knowing what is the matter or where the shoe pinches,” she said to herself. “These gentlemen seem determined on having happen here what shouldn’t happen. That intermeddler, Don Nicanor, is right in saying that they all live in the clouds.”
Doña Aurora, however, was not long in convincing herself that her plan of remaining always at home was impracticable, and it irritated her to think that perhaps she was taking unnecessary trouble, for the inclination of the young people for each other did not seem so strong as to justify all these