Part 12

As if by tacit agreement the hero and heroine of the adventure made light of the danger they had run, to their companions in the excursion in the first place, and afterward to the elders at Las Vides. Segundo observed a certain reticence regarding the particulars of the occurrence. Nieves, on the contrary, was more talkative than usual, speaking with nervous loquacity, going over the most insignificant details a hundred times. She had slipped; García had reached out his hand to her; she had caught it, and as she was--well--timid, she had been a little frightened, although there was not the slightest occasion for being so. But the obstinate Tropiezo, with mild scorn, contradicted her. Good Heavens, how mistaken she was! No danger? Why, it was only by a miracle that Nieves was not now floating in the Avieiro. The ground there was as slippery as soap, and the stones below were as sharp as razors, and the current was so strong that----Nieves denied the danger, making an effort to laugh; but the terror of the accident had left unmistakable traces upon her countenance, changing its warm healthy pallor to a sickly hue, producing dark circles under her eyes, and making her features twitch convulsively.

Segundo longed to say a few words to her, to ask her to grant him an interview; he comprehended that he must avail himself of these first moments, while her soul was still under the softening influence of gratitude and fright which made her cold heart palpitate beneath the whalebone of her stays. In the brief scene of the precipice the arrival of Tropiezo had allowed Nieves no time to respond explicitly to the poet's ardor, and Segundo wished to come to some agreement with her, to devise some means of seeing each other and talking to each other alone, to establish the fact at once that all these anxieties, these vigils, these intrigues, were love and requited love--a mutual passion, in short. When and how should he find the desired opportunity of establishing an understanding with Nieves?

It may be said that in the history of every love affair there exists a first period in which obstacles accumulate and difficulties, seemingly insurmountable, arise, driving to despair the lover who has made up his mind to conquer them, and that there comes, too, a second period in which the mysterious force of desire and the power of the will sweep away these obstacles, and circumstances, for the moment favorable, aid the lovers. So it happened on the night of this memorable day. As Victorina had been somewhat frightened, hearing of the danger her mother had been in, she had been sent to bed early, and Carmen Agonde had remained with her to put her asleep by telling her stories. The principal witnesses being thus removed and the elders plunged in one of their interminable viticultural, agricultural, and sociological discussions, Nieves, who had gone out on the balcony for air--for she felt as if she had a lump in her throat which prevented her from breathing--had an opportunity to chat for ten minutes with Segundo, who was standing near the window, not far from the rocking-chairs.

Occasionally they would raise their voices and speak on indifferent subjects--the afternoon's accident, the strange singing of the pines. And low, very low, the diplomatic negotiation of the poet followed its course. An interview, a conversation with some degree of freedom. Why, of course it could be! Why could it not take place in the gallery that very night? No one was going to think of going there to spy out what was passing. He could let himself down easily into the garden----He could not? She was very timid----It would be wrong? Why?--She was tired and not very well----Yes, he understood. She would prefer the daytime, perhaps. Well, the other would be better, but----Without fail? At the hour of the siesta? In the parlor? No; nobody ever went there; everyone was asleep. On her word of honor?--Thanks. Yes, it was necessary to dissemble so as not to attract attention.

Meantime the gentlemen at the tresillo table talked of the vintage and its consequences. The poor country girls earned a good deal of money at the work. Apropos of which Don Victoriano gave expression to some of his favorite ideas, referring to English legislature, and eulogizing the wisdom of that great nation whose laws regulating labor give evidence of a careful study of the problems it involves, and of some regard for the welfare of women and children. With these serious disquisitions the evening ended, every owl retiring to his olive tree.

Nieves, seated at her toilet table, her open dressing-case and a small silver-framed mirror before her, was taking out, one by one, the tortoise-shell hair-pins which fastened her hair. Mademoiselle gathered them together and arranged them neatly in a box and braided Nieves' hair, after which the latter threw herself back in her seat and drew a deep breath; suddenly she looked up.

"If you could make me a cup of lime tea," she said, "in your own room, without troubling anybody?"

The Frenchwoman left the room and Nieves leaned her elbow thoughtfully on the table, resting her cheek in the palm of her hand, without moving her eyes from the mirror. Her face was deathly pale. No, this life could not continue; if it did it would carry her to her grave. She was very nervous--what terrors! What anxiety, what moments of anguish she had suffered! She had seen death face to face, and had had more frights, more fears, more misery in a single day than in all the previous years of her existence put together. If this were love in truth there was little that was pleasing in it; such agitations were not suited to her. It was one thing to like to be pretty, and to be told so, and even to have a passionate adorer, and another to suffer these incessant anxieties, these surprises that bring one's heart to one's mouth and expose one to the risk of disgrace and destroy one's health. And the poets say that this is happiness. It may be so for them--as for the poor women----And why had she not the courage to tell Segundo that there must be an end to this, to say to him: "I can endure these alarms no longer. I am afraid. I am miserable!" Ah, she was afraid of him, too. He was capable of killing her; his handsome black eyes sent forth at times electric sparks and phosphoric gleams. And then he always took the lead, he dominated her, he mastered her. Through him she had been on the point of falling into the river, of being dashed to pieces on the rocks. Holy Virgin! Why, only half an hour ago did he not almost force her to agree to a meeting in the gallery? Which would be a great piece of madness, since it would be impossible for her to go to that part of the house without her absence being noticed by Mademoiselle, or someone else, and its cause being discovered. Good Heavens! All this was terrible, terrible! And to-morrow she must go to the parlor at the hour of the siesta. Well, then, she would take a bold resolution. She would go, yes, but she would go to clear up this misunderstanding, to give Segundo some plain talk that would make him place some restraint upon himself; that he should love her, very good; she had no objection to that, that was well enough; but to compromise her in this way, that was a thing unheard of; she would entreat him to return to Vilamorta; they would soon go to Madrid. Ah, how long that blessed Mademoiselle delayed with the lime tea.

The door opened to admit, not Mademoiselle, but Don Victoriano. There was nothing to surprise her in his appearance; he slept in a sort of cabinet near his wife's room and separated from it by a passageway, and every night before retiring he gave a kiss to the child, whose bed was beside her mother's; nevertheless Nieves felt a chill creep over her, and she instinctively turned her back to the light, coughing to hide her agitation.

The truth was that Don Victoriano looked very serious, even stern. He had not indeed been very cheerful or communicative ever since his illness had assumed a serious character; but in addition to his air of dejection there was an indefinable something, a darker gloom on his face than usual, a cloud pregnant with storm. Nieves, observing that he did not approach the child's bed, cast down her eyes and affected to be occupied in smoothing her hair with the ivory comb.

"How do you feel, child? Have you recovered from your fright?" asked her husband.

"No; I am still a little----I have asked for some lime tea."

"You did well. See, Nieves----"

"Well--well?"

"See, Nieves, we must go to Madrid at once."

"Whenever you wish. You know that I----"

"No, the thing is that it is necessary, indispensable. I must put myself seriously under treatment, child; for if things continue as they are now it will soon be all over with me. I had the weakness to put myself in the hands of that ass, Don Fermin. God forgive me for it! and I fear," he added, smiling bitterly, "that I have made a fatal mistake. Let us see if Sanchez del Abrojo will get me out of the scrape--I doubt it greatly."

"Heavens, how apprehensive you are!" exclaimed Nieves, breathing freely once more and availing herself of the resource offered to her by Don Victoriano's illness. "Anyone would think you had an incurable disease. When you are once in Madrid and Sanchez has you under his care--in a couple of months you will not even remember this trifling indisposition."

"Bravo! child, bravo! I don't wish to hurt your feelings or to seem unkind, but what you say proves that you neither look at me, nor care a straw about my health, nor pay any attention to me whatever, which--forgive me--is not creditable to you. My disease is a serious, a very serious one--it is a disease that carries people off in fine style. I am being converted into sugar, my sight is failing, my head aches, I have no blood left, and you, serene and gay, sporting about like a child. A wife who loved her husband would not act in this way. You have troubled yourself neither about the state of my body nor the state of my mind. You are enjoying yourself, having a fine time, and as for the rest--a great deal it matters to you!"

Nieves rose to her feet, tremulous, almost weeping.

"What are you saying? I--I----"

"Don't distress yourself, child; don't cry. You are young and well; I am wasted and sickly. So much the worse for me. But listen to me. Although I seem to you dry and serious, I loved you tenderly, Nieves, I love you still, as much as I love that child who is sleeping there, I swear it to you before God! And you might--you might love me a little--like a daughter--and take some interest in me. The trouble would not be for long now--I feel so sick."

Nieves drew near him with an affectionate movement and he touched her forehead with his parched lips, pressing her to him at the same time. Then he added:

"I have still another observation to make, another sermon to preach to you, child."

"What is it?" murmured his wife smiling, but terrified.

"That boy García--don't be alarmed, child, there is no need for that--that boy looks at you sometimes in a very curious way, as if he were making love to you. No, I am not doubting you. You are and you have always been an irreproachable wife--I am not accusing you, nor do I attach any importance to such folly. But, although you may not believe it, the young men here are very daring; they are shyer in appearance than those of the capital, but they are bolder in reality. I spent my youthful years here, and I know them. I am only putting you on your guard so that you may keep that jackanapes within bounds. For the rest of the time we are to remain in this place, avoid those long walks and all those other rusticities which they indulge in here. A lady like you among these people is a sort of queen, and it is not proper that they should take the same liberties with you as with the Señoritas de Molende or others like them--but I have already told you that such a thought has not even crossed my mind. It is one thing that this village Swan should have fallen in love with you, and have given you his hand to help you over the rocks, and another that I should insult you, child!"

Shortly afterward Mademoiselle entered with the steaming cup of tea. And greatly Nieves needed it. Her nerves were in a state of the utmost tension. She was on the verge of a hysterical attack. She even felt nausea when she took the first few spoonfuls. Mademoiselle offered her some anti-hysterical drops. Nieves drank the remedy, and with a few yawns and two or three tears the attack passed off. She thought she would go to bed, and went into her bedroom. There she saw something which renewed her uneasiness--Victorina, instead of being asleep, lay with eyes wide open. She had probably heard every word of the conversation.

XXII.

She had in fact heard it all, from beginning to end. And the words of the conjugal dialogue were whirling around in her brain, mingling confusedly together, stamping themselves in characters of fire on her virgin memory. She repeated them to herself, she tried to understand their meaning, she weighed them, she drew conclusions from them.

No one can tell which is the precise moment that divides day from night, sleeping from waking, youth from maturity, and innocence from knowledge. Who can fix the moment in which the child, passing into adolescence, observes in herself that undefinable something which may perhaps be called consciousness of sex, in which vague presentiment is changed into swift intuition, in which, without an exact notion of the realities of life, she divines all that experience will corroborate and accentuate later on, in which she understands the importance of a sign, the significance of an act, the character of a relationship, the value of a glance, and the meaning of a reticence. The moment in which her eyes, hitherto open only to external life, acquire power to scrutinize the inner life also, and losing their superficial brilliancy, the clear reflection of her ingenuous purity, acquire the concentrated and undefinable expression which constitutes the _glance of a grown person_.

This moment arrived for Victorina at the age of eleven, on the night we have mentioned, overhearing a dialogue between her father and mother. Motionless, with bated breath, her feet cold, her head burning, the child heard everything, and afterward, in the dim light of the bedroom, united broken links, remembering certain incidents, and at last understood without attaching much importance to what she understood, reasoning, however, with singular precocity, owing, perhaps, to the painful activity with which imagination works in the silence of night and the repose of the bed.

It is certain that the child slept badly, tossing about restlessly in her monastic little bed. Two ideas, especially, seemed to pierce her brain like nails. Her father was ill, very ill, and he was annoyed and displeased, besides, because Segundo had fallen in love with her mamma. With her mamma. Not with her! With her who preserved all the flowers he had given her like relics.

The sorrows of childhood know neither limit nor consolation. When we are older and more storms have passed over us, and we have seen with astonishment that man can survive griefs which we had thought unsurvivable, and that the heavens do not fall because we have lost what we love, it may almost be said that absolute despair, which is the heritage of childhood, does not exist. It was evident to Victorina that her father was dying and that her mother was wicked, and Segundo a villain, and that the world had come to an end--and that she too, she too, desired to die. If it were possible for the hair to turn white at eleven, Victorina would have become white on the night in which suffering changed her from a bashful, timid, blushing child to a moral being, capable of the greatest heroism.

Nor did Nieves enjoy the balmy sweets of slumber. Her husband's words had made her thoughtful. Was Don Victoriano's illness a fatal one? It might be so! He looked greatly altered, poor fellow. And Nieves felt a touch of grief and apprehension. Why, who could doubt that she loved her husband, or that she should regret his death? She did not feel for him any passionate love, such as is described in novels--but affection--yes. Heaven grant the malady might be a trifling one. And if it were not? And if she were to be left a wi---- She did not dare to complete the word even in her thoughts. To think of such a thing seemed like indulging in wicked desires. No, but the fact was that women, when their husbands die, were--Holy Virgin! It must be a terrible grief. Well, but _if it happened_? Segundo--Heavens, what folly! Most assuredly such an absurdity had never entered his head. The Garcías--nobodies. And here a vivid picture of all Segundo's relations and their manner of living presented itself to her mind.

She would willingly have absented herself from the rendezvous on the following day, because her husband had begun to suspect something and the situation was a compromising one, although in the place designated for the interview the meeting between them might always be attributed to chance. On the other hand if she failed to meet him, Segundo, who was so enamored, was fully capable of creating a scandal, of going to look for her in her room, of forcing an entrance into it through the window.

After all, thinking well over the matter, she judged it most prudent to comply with her promise and to entreat Segundo to--forget her--or at least not to compromise her. That was the best course to pursue.

Nieves passed the morning in a state of complete prostration; she scarcely tasted a morsel at breakfast and during the meal she kept her eyes turned away from Segundo, fearing lest her husband should surprise some furtive glance of intelligence between them. To make matters worse, Segundo, desirous of reminding her with his eyes of her promise, looked at her on this day oftener than usual. Fortunately Don Victoriano's attention seemed to be all given to satisfying his voracious appetite for eating and drinking. The meal being finished everyone retired as usual to take the siesta. Nieves went to her room. She found Victorina there, lying on the bed. For greater precaution she asked her:

"Are you going to sleep the siesta, my pet?"

"To sleep, no. But I am comfortable here."

Nieves looked at herself in the glass and saw that she was pale. She washed her teeth, and after satisfying herself by a rapid glance that her husband was resting in the other room, she stole softly into the parlor. She was trembling. This atmosphere of storm and danger, grateful to the sea-fowl, was fatal to the domestic bird. It was no life to be always shuddering with fear, her blood curdled by fright. It was not to live. It was not to breathe. She would end by becoming crazy. Had she not fancied just now that she heard steps behind her, as if someone were following her? Two or three times she had stopped and leaned, fainting, against the wall of the corridor, vowing in her own mind that she would never put herself in such a dilemma again.

When she reached the parlor she stopped, half startled. It was so silent and drowsy in the semi-obscurity, with the half-closed shutters through which entered a single sunbeam full of dancing golden motes, with its sleepy mirrors that were too lazy to reflect anything from their turbid surfaces, its drowsy asthmatic clock, whose face looked like a human countenance watching her and coughing disapprovingly. Suddenly she heard quick, youthful foot-steps and Segundo, audacious, impassioned, threw himself at her feet and clasped his arms around her. She tried to restrain him, to advise him, to explain to him. The poet refused to heed her, he continued pouring forth exclamations of gratitude and love and then, rising to his feet, he drew her toward him with the irresistible force of a passion which does not stop to consider consequences.

When Don Victoriano saw the child enter his room, white as wax, livid, almost, darting fire from her eyes, in one of those horror-inspired attitudes which can neither be feigned nor imitated, he sprang from the bed where he had been lying awake smoking a cigar. The child said to him, in a choking voice:

"Come, papa! come, papa!"

What were the thoughts that passed through her father's mind? It was never known why he followed his daughter without putting to her a single question. On the threshold of the parlor father and child paused. Nieves uttered a shrill scream and Segundo, with an impassioned and manly gesture, placed himself before her to shield her with his body. An unnecessary defense. In the figure of the man standing on the threshold there was nothing of menace; what there was in it to inspire terror was precisely its air of stupor and helplessness; it seemed a corpse, a specter overwhelmed with impotent despair--the face, green rather than sallow, the eyes opened, dull and fixed, the hands and feet trembling. The man was making fruitless efforts to speak; paralysis had begun with the tongue; he tried in vain to move it in his mouth, to form sounds. Horrible conflict! The words struggled for utterance but remained unuttered; his face changed from livid to red, the blood becoming congested in it, and the child, clasping her father around the waist, seeing this combat between the spirit and the body, cried:

"Help! help! Papa is dying!"

Nieves, not daring to approach her husband, but comprehending that something very serious was the matter, screamed too for help. And at the various doors appeared one after another Primo Genday and Tropiezo in their shirt-sleeves, and Mendez with a cotton handkerchief tied over his ears.

Segundo stood silent in the middle of the room, uncertain what course to pursue. To leave the room would be cowardly, to remain----Tropiezo shook him.

"Go, flying, to Vilamorta, boy!" he said. "Tell Doroteo, the cabman, to go to Orense and bring back a doctor with him--the best he can find. I don't want to make a trip this time," he added with a wink. "Run, hurry off!"

The Swan approached Nieves, who had thrown herself on the sofa and was weeping, her face covered with her dainty handkerchief.

"They want me to go for a doctor, Nieves. What shall I do?"

"Go!"

"Shall I return?"

"No--for God's sake leave me. Go bring the doctor! go bring the doctor!" And she sobbed more violently than before.

* * * * *

In spite of all Segundo's haste, the physician did not arrive in Las Vides until early on the morning of the following day. He did not think the case an unusual one. This disease often terminated in this way, in paralysis; it was one of the most frequent complications of the terrible malady. He added that it would be well to remove the patient to Orense, taking suitable precautions. The removal was effected without much difficulty, and Don Victoriano lived for a few days longer. Twenty-four hours after the interment Nieves and Victorina, attired in the deepest mourning, departed for the capital.

XXIII.

The black pall of winter has fallen over Vilamorta. It is raining, and in the wet and muddy main street and plaza no one is to be seen but occasionally some countryman, riding enveloped in his grass cloth cloak, his horse's hoofs clattering on the stone pavement, raising showers of mud. There are now no fruit-venders for the simple reason that there is no fruit; all is deserted, damp, muddy, and gloomy; Cansin, in listing slippers, a comforter around his neck, walks up and down unceasingly before his door, to prevent chilblains; the Alcalde avails himself of a very narrow arch in front of his house to pass away the afternoon, walking ten steps up and ten steps down, stamping energetically to keep his feet warm--an exercise which he affirms to be indispensable to his digestion.