ladies company, smiled sadly as he saw him leave, shaking his head.
"It's bad. Mariano married too soon. Now that he is almost an old man,
he's doing what he didn't do in his youth in his fever for work and
glory." Many people were laughing at him already, divining his passion
for the Alberca woman, that love without practical results, that made
him live with her and Monteverde, acting as a good-natured mediator, a
tolerant kindly father. When the famous master took off his mask of
fierceness, he was a poor fellow about whom people talked with pity:
they compared him with Hercules, dressed as a woman and spinning at the
feet of his fair seducer.
He had contracted a close friendship with Monteverde as a result of
meeting him so often at the countess's. He no longer seemed foolish and
unattractive. Renovales found in him something of the woman he loved and
therefore his company was pleasing. He experienced that calm attraction,
free from jealousy, that the husband of a mistress inspires in some men.
They sat together at the theater, went to walk, conversing amiably, and
the doctor frequently visited the artist's studio in the afternoon. This
intimacy quite disconcerted people, for they could no longer tell with
certainty which one was the Alberca woman's master and which the
aspirant, even going so far as to believe that by a mutual agreement
they all three lived in an ideal world.
Monteverde admired the master and the latter, from his years and the
superiority of his fame, assumed a paternal authority over him. He
chided him when the countess complained of him.
"Women!" the doctor would say with a bored expression. "You don't know
what they are, master. They are only a hindrance to obstruct a man's
career. You have been successful because you haven't let them dominate
you because you are strong."
And the poor strong man looked at Monteverde narrowly suspecting that he
was making sport of him. He felt tempted to knock him down at the
thought that the doctor scorned what he craved so keenly.
Concha was more communicative with the master. She confessed to him what
she had never dared to tell the doctor.
"I tell you everything, Mariano. I cannot live without seeing you. Do
you know what I think? The doctor is a sort of husband to me and you are
the lover of my heart. Don't get excited; don't move or I'll call. I
have spoken from my heart. I like you too much to think of the coarse
things you want."
Sometimes Renovales found her excited, nervous, speaking hoarsely,
working her delicate fingers as if she wanted to scratch the air. They
were terrible days that stirred up the whole house. Marie ran from room
to room with her silent step, pursued by the ringing of the bells; the
count slipped out of doors, like a frightened school-boy. Concha was
bored, felt tired of everything, hated her life. When the painter
appeared she would almost throw herself in his arms.
"Take me out of here, Mariano; I'm tired of it, I'm dying. This life is
killing me. My husband! He doesn't count. My friends! Fools that flay
me as soon as I leave them. The doctor! as untrustworthy as a
weathercock. All those men in my coterie, idiots. Master, have pity on
me. Take me far away from here. You must know some other world; artists
know everything."
If she only was not such a familiar figure and if people only did not
know the master in Madrid! In her nervous excitement she formed the
wildest projects. She wanted to go out at night arm in arm with
Renovales. She in a shawl and a kerchief over her head and he in a cape
and a slouch hat. She would be his grisette; she would imitate the
carriage and stride of a woman of the streets and they would go to the
lowest districts like two night-hawks, and they would drink, would get
into a brawl; he would defend her and they would go and spend the night
in the police station.
The painter looked shocked. What nonsense! But she insisted on her wish.
"Laugh, master, open that great mouth of yours, you ugly thing. What is
strange about what I said? You, with all your artist's hair and soft
hats, are humdrum, a peaceful soul that is incapable of doing anything
original in order to amuse yourself."
When she thought of the couple they had seen one afternoon at Moncloa,
she grew melancholy and sentimental. She, too, thought it would be fun
to play the grisette, to walk arm in arm with the master as if she were
a poor dressmaker and he a clerk, to end the trip in a picnic park, and
he would give her a ride in the green swing, while she screamed with
pleasure, as she went up and down with her skirts whirling around her
feet. That was not foolishness. Just the simplest, most rustic pleasure!
What a pity that they were both so well known. But what they would do,
at least, was to disguise themselves some morning and go house-hunting
in some low quarter, like the Rastro, as if they were a newly married
couple. No one would recognize them in that part of Madrid. Agreed,
master?
And the master approved of everything. But the next day, Concha received
him with confusion, biting her lips, until at last she broke out into
hearty laughter at the recollection of the follies she had proposed.
"How you must laugh at me! Some days I am perfectly crazy."
Renovales did not conceal his assent. Yes, she was a trifle crazy. But
with all her absurdities that made him alternate between hope and
despair, she was more attractive, with her merry nonsense, and her
transitory fits of anger, than the woman at home, implacable, silent,
shunning him with ceaseless repugnance, but following him everywhere
with her weeping, uncanny eyes, that became as cutting as steel, as soon
as, out of sympathy or remorse, he gave the least evidence of
familiarity.
Oh, what a heavy, intolerable comedy! Before his daughter and his
friends they had to talk to each other, and he, looking away, so that
their eyes might not meet, scolded her gently, for not following the
advice of the doctors. At first they had said it was neurasthenia, now
it was diabetes, that was increasing the invalid's weakness. The master
lamented the passive resistance she opposed to all their curative
methods. She would follow them for a few days and then give them up with
calm obstinacy. Her health was better than they thought: doctors could
not cure her trouble.
At night, when they entered the bed-chamber, a deathly silence fell on
them; a leaden wall seemed to rise between their bodies. Here they no
longer had to dissemble; they looked at each other face to face with
silent hostility. Their life at night was sheer torment, but neither of
them dared to change their mode of living. Their bodies could not leave
the common bed; they found in it the places they had occupied for years.
The habit of their wills subjected them to this room and its
furnishings, with all its memories of the happy days of their youth.
Renovales would fall into the deep sleep of a healthy man, tired out
with work. His last thoughts were of the countess. He saw her in that
vague mist that shrouds the portal of unconsciousness; he went to sleep,
thinking of what he would say to her the next day. And his dreams were
in keeping with his desires, for he saw her standing on a pedestal, in
all the majesty of her nakedness, surpassing the marble of the most
famous statues with the life of her flesh. When he awakened suddenly and
stretched out his arms, he touched the body of his companion, small,
stiff, burning with the fire of fever or icy with deathly cold. He
divined that she was not asleep. She spent the nights without closing
her eyes, but she did not move, as if all her strength was concentrated
on something that she watched in the darkness with a hypnotic stare. She
was like a corpse. There was the obstacle, the leaden weight, the
phantom that checked the other woman when sometimes in a moment of
hesitation, she leaned toward him, on the point of falling. And the
terrible longing, the hideous thought came forth again in all its
ugliness, announcing that it was not dead, that it had only hidden in
the den of his brain, to rise more cruelly, more insolently.
"Why not?" argued the rejected spirit, scattering in his fancy the
golden dust of dreams.
Love, fame, joy, a new artistic life, the rejuvenation of Doctor
Faustus; he might expect everything, if kindly death would but come to
help him, breaking the chain that bound him to sadness and sickness.
But straightway a protest would arise within him. Though he lived like
an infidel, he still had a religious soul that in the trying moments of
his life led him to call on all the superhuman and miraculous powers as
if they were under an inevitable obligation to come to his aid. "Lord,
take this horrible thought from me. Take away this temptation. Don't let
her die. Let her live, even if I perish."
And the following day, filled with remorse, he would go to some doctors,
friends of his, to consult with them minutely. He would stir up the
house, organizing the cure according to a vast plan, distributing the
medicines by hours. Then he would calmly return to his work, to his
artistic prejudices, to his passionate longing, forgetting his
determinations, thinking his wife's life was already saved.
One afternoon after luncheon, she came into the studio and as the master
looked at her, a sense of anxiety crept over him. It was a long time
since Josephina had entered the room while he was working.
She would not sit down; standing beside the easel she spoke slowly and
meekly to her husband, without looking at him. Renovales was frightened
at this simplicity.
"Mariano, I have come to talk to you about our daughter."
She wanted her to be married: it must come some day and the sooner, the
better. She would die before long and she wanted to leave the world with
the assurance that her daughter was well settled.
Renovales felt forced to protest loudly with all the vehemence of a man
who is not very sure of what he is saying. Shucks! Die! Why should she
die? Her health was better now than it had ever been. The only thing she
needed was to heed what the doctors told her.
"I shall die before long," she repeated coldly; "I shall die and you
will be left in peace. You know it."
The painter tried to protest with a greater show of righteous
indignation but his eyes met his wife's cold look. Then he contented
himself with shrugging his shoulders in a resigned way. He did not want
to argue; he must keep calm. He had to paint; he must go out that
afternoon as usual on important business.
"Very well, go ahead. Milita is going to be married. And to whom?"
Led by his desire to maintain his authority, to take the lead, and
because of his long-standing affection for his pupil, he hastened to
speak of him. Was Soldevilla the suitor? A good boy with a future ahead
of him. He worshiped Milita; his dejection when she treated him ill was
pitiful. He would make an excellent husband.
Josephina cut short her husband's chatter in a cold, contemptuous tone.
"I don't want any painters for my daughter; you know it. Her mother has
had enough of them."
Milita was going to marry López de Sosa. The matter was already settled
as far as she was concerned. The boy had spoken to her and, assured of
her approval, would ask the father.
"But does she love him? Do you think, Josephina, that these things can
be arranged to suit you?"
"Yes, she loves him; she is suited and wants to be married. Besides she
is your daughter; she would accept the other man just as readily. What
she wants is freedom, to get away from her mother, not to live in the
unhappy atmosphere of my ill health. She doesn't say so, she doesn't
even know that she thinks it, but I see through her."
And as if, while she spoke of her daughter, she could not maintain the
coldness she had toward her husband, she raised her hand to her eyes,
to wipe away the silent tears.
Renovales had recourse to rudeness in order to get out of the
difficulty. It was all nonsense; an invention of her diseased mind. She
ought to think of getting well and nothing else. What was she crying
for! Did she want to marry her daughter to that automobile enthusiast?
Well, get him. She did not want to? Well, let the girl stay at home.
She was the one who had charge; no one was hindering her. Have the
marriage as soon as possible? He was a mere cipher, and there was no
reason for asking his advice. But steady, shucks! He had to work; he had
to go out. And when he saw Josephina leaving the studio to weep
somewhere else, he gave a snort of satisfaction, glad to have escaped
from this difficult scene so successfully.
López de Sosa was all right. An excellent boy! Or anyone else. He did
not have time to give to such matters. Other things occupied his
attention.
He accepted his future son-in-law, and for several evenings he stayed at
home to lend a sort of patriarchal air to the family parties. Milita and
her betrothed talked at one end of the drawing-room. Cotoner, in the
full bliss of digestion, strove with his jests to bring a faint smile to
the face of the master's wife, but she stayed in the corner, shivering
with cold. Renovales, in a smoking jacket, read the papers, soothed by
the charming atmosphere of his quiet home. If the countess could only
see him!
One night the Alberca woman's name was mentioned in the drawing-room.
Milita was running over from memory the list of friends of the
family,--prominent ladies who would not fail to honor her approaching
marriage with some magnificent present.
"Concha won't come," said the girl. "It's a long time since she has been
here."
There was a painful silence, as if the countess's name chilled the
atmosphere. Cotoner hummed a tune, pretending to be thinking of
something else; López de Sosa began to look for a piece of music on the
piano, talking about it to change the subject. He too seemed to be aware
of the matter.
"She doesn't come because she doesn't have to come," said Josephina from
her corner. "Your father manages to see her every day, so that she won't
forget us."
Renovales raised his eyes in protest, as if he were awakening from a
calm sleep. Josephina's gaze was fixed on him, not angry, but mocking
and cruel. It reflected the same scorn with which she had wounded him on
that unhappy night. She no longer said anything, but the master read in
those eyes:
"It is useless, my good man. You are mad over her, you pursue her, but
she belongs to other men. I know her of old. I know all about it. Oh,
how people laugh at you! How I laugh! How I scorn you!"
IV
The beginning of summer saw the wedding of the daughter of Renovales to
López de Sosa. The papers published whole columns on the event, in
which, according to some of the reporters, "the glory and splendor of
art were united with the prestige of aristocracy and fortune." No one
remembered now the nickname "Pickled Herring."
The master Renovales did things well. He had only one daughter and he
was eager to marry her with royal pomp; eager that Madrid and all Spain
should know of the affair, that a ray of the glory her father had won
might fall on Milita.
The list of gifts was long. All the friends of the master, society
ladies, political leaders, famous artists, and even royal personages,
appeared in it with their corresponding presents. There was enough to
fill a store. Both of the studios for visitors were converted into show
rooms with countless tables loaded with articles, a regular fair of
clothes and jewelry, that was visited by all of Milita's girl friends,
even the most distant and forgotten, who came to congratulate her, pale
with envy.
The Countess of Alberca, too, sent a huge, showy gift, as if she did not
want to remain unnoticed among the friends of the house. Doctor
Monteverde was represented by a modest remembrance, though he had no
other connection with the family than his friendship with the master.
The wedding was celebrated at the house, where one of the studios was
converted into a chapel. Cotoner had a hand in everything that concerned
the ceremony, delighted to be able to show his influence with the people
of the Church.
Renovales took charge of the arrangements of the altar, eager to display
the touch of an artist even in the least details. On a background of
ancient tapestries he placed an old triptych, a medieval cross; all the
articles of worship which filled his studio as decorations, cleaned now
from dust and cobwebs, recovered for a few moments their religious
importance.
A variegated flood of flowers filled the master's house. Renovales
insisted on having them everywhere; he had sent to Valencia and Murcia
for them in reckless quantities; they hung on the door-frames, and along
the cornices; they lay in huge clusters on the tables and in the
corners. They even swung in pagan garlands from one column of the façade
to another, arousing the curiosity of the passers-by, who crowded
outside of the iron fence,--women in shawls, boys with great baskets on
their heads who stood in open-mouthed wonder before the strange sight,
waiting to see what was going on in that unusual house, following the
coming and going of the servants who carried in music stands and two
base viols, hidden in varnished cases.
Early in the morning Renovales was hurrying about with two ribbons
across his shirt front and a constellation of golden, flashing stars
covering one whole side of his coat. Cotoner, too, had put on the
insignia of his various Papal Orders. The master looked at himself in
all the mirrors with considerable satisfaction, admiring equally his
friend. They must look handsome; a celebration like this they would
never see again. He plied his companion with incessant questions, to
make sure that nothing had been overlooked in the preparations. The
master Pedraza, a great friend of Renovales, was to conduct the
orchestra. They had gathered all the best players in Madrid, for the
most part from the Opera. The choir was a good one, but the only notable
artists they had been able to secure were people who made the capital
their residence. The season was not the best; the theaters were closed.
Cotoner continued to explain the measures he had taken. Promptly at ten
the Nuncio, Monsignore Orlandi,--a great friend of his--would arrive; a
handsome chap, still young, whom he had met in Rome when he was attached
to the Vatican. A word on Cotoner's part was all that was necessary to
persuade him to do them the honor of marrying the children. Friends are
useful at times! And the painter of the popes, proud of his sudden rise
to importance, went from room to room, arranging everything, followed by
the master who approved of his orders.
In the studio, the orchestra and the table for the luncheon were set.
The other rooms were for the guests. Was anything forgotten? The two
artists looked at the altar with its dark tapestries, and its
candelabra, crosses and reliquaries, of dull, old gold that seemed to
absorb the light rather than reflect it. Nothing was lacking. Ancient
fabrics and garlands of flowers covered the walls, hiding the master's
studies in color, unfinished pictures, profane works that could not be
tolerated in the discreet, harmonious atmosphere of that chapel-like
room. The floor was partly covered with costly rugs, Persian and
Moorish. In front of the altar were two praying desks and behind them,
for the more important guests, all the luxurious chairs of the studio:
white armchairs of the 18th Century, embroidered with pastoral scenes,
Greek settles, benches of carved oak and Venetian chairs with high
backs, the bizarre confusion of an antique shop.
Suddenly Cotoner started back as if he were shocked. How careless! A
fine thing it would have been if he had not noticed it! At the end of
the studio, opposite the altar that screened a large part of the window,
and directly in its light, stood a huge, white, naked woman. It was the
"Venus de Medici," a superb piece of marble that Renovales had brought
from Italy. Its pagan beauty in its dazzling whiteness seemed to
challenge the deathly yellow of the religious objects that filled the
other end of the studio. Accustomed to see it, the two artists had
passed in front of it several times without noticing its nakedness that
seemed more insolent and triumphant now that the studio was converted
into an oratory.
Cotoner began to laugh.
"What a scandal if we hadn't seen it! What would the ladies have said!
My friend Orlandi would have thought that you did it on purpose, for he
considers you rather lax morally. Come, my boy, let's get something to
cover up this lady."
After much searching in the disorder of the studio, they found a piece
of Indian cotton, scrawled with elephants and lotus flowers; they
stretched it over the goddess's head, so that it covered her down to her
feet and there it stood, like a mystery, a riddle for the guests.
They were beginning to arrive. Outside of the house, at the fence
sounded the stamping of the horses, the slam of doors as they closed. In
the distance rumbled other carriages, drawing nearer every minute. The
swish of silk on the floor sounded in the hall, and the servants ran
back and forth, receiving wraps and putting numbers on them, as at the
theater, to stow them away in the parlor that had been converted into a
coat-room. Cotoner directed the servants, smooth shaven or wearing
side-whiskers, and clad in faded dress-suits. Renovales meanwhile was
wreathed in smiles, bowing graciously, greeting the ladies who came in
their black or white mantillas, grasping the hands of the men, some of
whom wore brilliant uniforms.
The master felt elated at this procession which ceremoniously passed
through his drawing-rooms and studios. In his ears, the swish of skirts,
the movement of fans, the greetings, the praise of his good taste
sounded like caressing music. Everyone came with the same satisfaction
in seeing and being seen, which people reveal on a first night at the
theater or at some brilliant reception. Good music, presence of the
Nuncio, preparations for the luncheon which they seemed to sniff
already, and besides, the certainty of seeing their names in print the
next day, perhaps of having their picture in some illustrated magazine.
Emilia Renovales' wedding was an event.
Among the crowd of people that continued to pour in were seen several
young men, hastily holding up their cameras. They were going to have
snap-shots! Those who retained some bitterness against the artist,
remembering how dearly they had paid him for a portrait, now pardoned
him generously and excused his robbery. There was an artist that lived
like a gentleman! And Renovales went from one side to another, shaking
hands, bowing, talking incoherently, not knowing in which direction to
turn. For a moment, while he stood in the hall, he saw a bit of sunlit
garden, covered with flowers and beyond a fence a black mass: the
admiring, smiling throng. He breathed the odor of roses and subtle
perfumes, and felt the rapture of optimism flood his breast. Life was a
great thing. The poor rabble, crowded together outside, made him recall
with pride the blacksmith's son. Heavens, how he had risen! He felt
grateful to those wealthy, idle people who supported his well-being; he
made every effort so that they might lack nothing, and overwhelmed
Cotoner with his suggestions. The latter turned on the master with the
arrogance of one who is in authority. His place was inside, with the
guests. He need not mind him, for he knew his duties. And turning his
back on Mariano, he issued orders to the servants and showed the way to
the new arrivals, recognizing their station at a glance. "This way,
gentlemen."
It was a group of musicians and he led them through a servants' hallway
so that they might get to their stands without having to mingle with the
guests. Then he turned to scold a crowd of bakerboys, who were late in
bringing the last shipments of the luncheon and advanced through the
assemblage, raising the great, wicker baskets over the heads of the
ladies.
Cotoner left his place when he saw rising from the stairway a plush hat
with gold tassels over a pale face, then a silk cassock with purple sash
and buttons, flanked by two others, black and modest.
_"Oh, monsignore! Monsignore Orlandi! Va bene? Va bene?"_
He kissed his hand with a profound reverence, and after inquiring
anxiously for his health, as if he had not seen him the day before,
started off, opening a passage way in the crowded drawing-rooms.
"The Nuncio! The Nuncio of His Holiness!"
The men, with the decorum of decent persons, who know how to show
respect for dignitaries, stopped laughing and talking to the ladies, and
bent forward, as he passed, to take that delicate, pale hand, which
looked like the hand of a lady of the olden days, and kiss the huge
stone of its ring. The ladies, with moist eyes, looked for a moment at
Monsignor Orlandi,--a distinguished prelate, a diplomat of the Church,
a noble of the Old Roman nobility,--tall, thin, pale as chalk, with
black hair and imperious eyes in which there was an intense flash of
flame.
He moved with the haughty grace of a bull-fighter. The lips of the women
rested eagerly on his hand, while he gazed with enigmatical eyes at the
line of graceful necks bowed before him. Cotoner continued ahead,
opening a passage, proud of his part, elated at the respect which his
illustrious friend inspired. What a wonderful thing religion was!
He accompanied him to the sacristy, which once was the dressing-room for
the models. He remained outside, discreetly, but every other minute some
one of the Nuncio's attendants came out in search of him,--sprightly
young fellows with a feminine carriage and a faint suggestion of perfume
about them, who looked on the artist with respect, believing he was an
important personage. They called to Signor Cotoner, asking him to help
them find something Monsignor had sent the day before, and the Bohemian,
in order to avoid further requests, finally went into the dressing-room,
to assist in the sacred toilette of his illustrious friend.
In the drawing-rooms the company suddenly eddied, the conversation
ceased, and a throng of people, after crowding in front of one of the
doors, opened to leave a passage.
The bride, leaning on the arm of a distinguished gentleman, who was the
best man, entered, clad in white, ivory white her dress, snow white her
veil, pearl white her flowers. The only bright color she showed was the
healthy pink of her cheeks and the red of her lips. She smiled to her
friends, not bashfully nor timidly, but with an air of satisfaction at
the festivity and the fact that she was its principal object. After her
came the groom, giving his arm to his new mother, the painter's wife,
smaller than ever in her party-gown that was too large for her, dazed by
this noisy event that broke the painful calm of her existence.
And the father? Renovales was missing in the formal entrance; he was
very busy attending to the guests; a gracious smile, half hidden behind
a fan, detained him at one end of the drawing-room. He had felt some one
touch his shoulder and, turning around, he saw the solemn Count of
Alberca with his wife on his arm. The count had congratulated him on the
appearance of the studios; all very artistic. The countess had
congratulated him too, in a jesting tone, on the importance of this
event in his life. The moment of retiring, of saying good-by to youth
had come.
"They are shelving you, dear master. Pretty soon they will be calling
you grandfather."
She laughed with pleasure at the flush of pain these pitying words
caused him. But before Mariano could answer the countess, he felt
himself dragged away by Cotoner. What was he doing there? The bride and
groom were at the altar; Monsignor was beginning the service; the
father's chair was still vacant. And Renovales passed a tiresome
half-hour following the ceremonies of the prelate with an absent-minded
glance. Far away in the last of the studios, the stringed instruments
struck a loud chord and a melody of earthly mysticism poured forth from
room to room in the atmosphere laden with the perfume of crumpled roses.
Then a sweet voice, supported by others more harsh, began a prayer that
had the voluptuous rhythm of an Italian serenade. A passing wave of
sentimentality seemed to stir the guests. Cotoner, who stood near the
altar, in case Monsignor should need something, felt moved to tenderness
by the music, by the sight of that distinguished gathering, by the
dramatic gravity with which the Roman prelate conducted the ceremonies
of his profession. Seeing Milita so fair, kneeling, with her eyes
lowered under her snowy veil, the poor Bohemian blinked to keep back the
tears. He felt just as if he were marrying his own daughter. He who had
not had one!
Renovales sat up, seeking the countess's eyes above the white and black
mantillas. Sometimes he found them resting on him with a mocking
expression, at other times he saw them seeking Monteverde in the crowd
of gentlemen that filled the doorway.
There was one moment when the painter paid attention to the ceremony.
How long it was! The music had ceased; Monsignor, with his back to the
altar, advanced several steps toward the newly married couple, holding
out his hands, as if he were going to speak to them. There was a
profound hush and the voice of the Italian began to sound in the silence
with a sing-song mellowness, hesitating over some words, supplying them
with others of his own language. He explained to the man and wife their
duties and expatiated, with oratorical fire, in his praises of their
families. He spoke little of him; he was a representative of the upper
classes, from which rise the leaders of men; he knew his duties. She was
the descendant of a great painter whose fame was universal, of an
artist.
As he mentioned art, the Roman prelate was fired with enthusiasm, as if
he were speaking of his own stock, with the deep interest of a man whose
life had been spent among the splendid half-pagan decorations of the
Vatican. "Next to God, there is nothing like art." And after this
statement, with which he attributed to the bride a nobility superior to
that of many of the people who were watching her, he eulogized the
virtues of her parents. In admirable terms, he commended their pure love
and Christian fidelity, ties with which they approached together,
Renovales and his wife, the portal of old age and which surely would
accompany them till death. The painter bowed his head, afraid that he
would meet Concha's mocking glance. He could hear Josephina's stifled
sobs, with her face hidden in the lace of her mantilla. Cotoner felt
called upon to second the prelate's praises with discreet words of
approval.
Then the orchestra noisily began Mendelssohn's "Wedding March"; the
chairs ground on the floor as they were pushed back; the ladies rushed
toward the bride and a buzz of congratulations, shouted over the heads
of the company, and of noisy efforts to be the first to reach her,
drowned out the vibration of the strings and the heavy blast of the
brasses. Monsignor, whose importance disappeared as soon as the ceremony
was over, made his way with his attendants to the dressing-room, passing
unnoticed through the throng. The bride smiled with a resigned air amid
the circle of feminine arms that squeezed her and friendly lips that
showered kisses on her. She expressed surprise at the simplicity of the
ceremony. Was that all there was to it? Was she really married?
Cotoner saw Josephina making her way across the room, looking
impatiently among the shoulders of the guests, her face tinged with a
hectic flush. His instinct of a master of ceremonies warned him that
danger was at hand.
"Take my arm, Josephina. Let's go outside for a breath of fresh air.
This is unbearable."
She took his arm but instead of following him, she dragged him among the
people who crowded around her daughter until at last, seeing the
Countess of Alberca, she stopped. Her prudent friend trembled. Just what
he thought--she was looking for the other woman.
"Josephina, Josephina! Remember that this is Milita's wedding!"
But his advice was useless. Concha, seeing her old friend, ran toward
her. "Dear! So long since I've seen you! A kiss--another." And she
kissed her effusively. The little woman made one attempt to resist; but
then she submitted, dejectedly, smiling sadly, overcome by habit and
training. She returned her kisses coldly with an indifferent expression.
She did not hate Concha. If her husband did not go to her, he would go
to some one else; the real, the dangerous enemy was within him.
The bride and groom, arm in arm, smiling and somewhat fatigued by the
violent congratulations, passed through the groups of people and
disappeared, followed by the last chords of the triumphal march.
The music ceased, and the company crowded around the tables covered with
bottles, cold meats and confections, behind which the servants hurried
in confusion, not knowing how to serve so many a black glove or white
hand that seized the gold-bordered plates and the little pearl knives
crossed on the dishes. It was a smiling, well-bred riot, but they pushed
and trod on the ladies' trains and used their elbows, as if, now the
ceremony was over, they were all gnawed with hunger.
Plate in hand, stifled and breathless after the assault, they scattered
through the studios, eating even on the very altar. There were not
servants enough for so great a gathering; the young men, seizing bottles
of champagne, ran in all directions, filling the ladies' glasses. Amid
great merriment the tables were pillaged. The servants covered them
hastily and with no less speed the pyramids of sandwiches, fruits, and
sweets came down and the bottles disappeared. The corks popped two and
three at a time, in ceaseless crossfire.
Renovales ran about like a servant, loaded with plates and glasses,
going back and forth from the crowded tables to the corners where some
of his friends were seated. The Alberca woman assumed the airs of a
mistress; she made him go and come with constant requests.
On one of these trips he ran into his beloved pupil, Soldevilla. He had
not seen him for a long time. He looked rather gloomy, but he found some
consolation in looking at his waistcoat, a novelty that had made a "hit"
among the younger set; of black velvet with embroidered flowers and gold
buttons.
The master felt that he ought to console him,--poor boy! For the first
time he gave him to understand that he was "in the secret."
"I wanted something else for my daughter, but it was impossible. Work,
Soldevilla! Courage! We must not have any mistress except painting."
And content to have delivered this kindly consolation, he returned to
the countess.
At noon, the reception ended. López de Sosa and his wife reappeared in
traveling costume; he in a fox-skin overcoat, in spite of the heat, a
leather cap and high leggings; she in a long mackintosh that reached to
her feet and a turban of thick veils that hid her face, like a fugitive
from a harem.
At the door, the groom's latest acquisition was waiting for them--an
eighty horse-power car that he had bought for his wedding trip. They
intended to spend the night some hundred miles away in a corner of old
Castile, at an estate inherited from his father which he had never
visited.
A modern wedding, as Cotoner said, a honeymoon at full speed, without
any witness except the discreet back of the chauffeur. The next day they
expected to start for a tour of Europe. They would go as far as Berlin;
perhaps farther.
López de Sosa shook hands with his friends vigorously, like a proud
explorer, and went out to look over his car, before leaving. Milita
submitted to her friends' caresses, carrying away her mother's tears on
her veil.
"Good-by, good-by, my daughter!"
And the wedding was over.
Renovales and his wife were left alone. The absence of their daughter
seemed to increase the solitude, widening the distance between them.
They looked at each other hostilely, reserved and gloomy, without a
sound to break the silence and serve as a bridge to enable them to
exchange a few words. Their life was going to be like that of convicts,
who hate each other and walk side by side, bound with the same chain, in
tormenting union, forced to share the same necessities of life.
As a remedy for this isolation that filled them with misgivings they
both thought of having the newly married couple come to live with them.
The house was large, there was room for them all. But Milita objected,
gently but firmly, and her husband seconded her. He must live near his
coach house, his garage. Besides, where could he, without shocking his
father-in-law, put his collection of treasures, his museum of bull's
heads and bloody suits of famous toreadors, which was the envy of his
friends and an object of great curiosity for many foreigners.
When the painter and his wife were alone again, it seemed as though they
had aged many years in a month; they found their house more huge, more
deserted,--with the echoing silence of abandoned monuments. Renovales
wanted Cotoner to move to the house, but the Bohemian declined with a
sort of fear. He would eat with them; he would spend a great part of the
day at their house; they were all the family he had; but he wanted to
keep his freedom; he could not give up his numerous friends.
Well along in the summer, the master induced his wife to take her usual
vacation. They would go to a little known Andalusian watering-place, a
fishing village where the artist had painted many of his pictures. He
was tired of Madrid. The Countess of Alberca was at Biarritz with her
husband. Doctor Monteverde had gone there too, dragged along by her.
They made the trip, but it did not last more than a month. The master
hardly finished two canvases. Josephina felt ill. When they reached the
watering-place, her health improved greatly. She appeared more cheerful;
for hours at a time she would sit in the sand, getting tanned in the
sun, craving the warmth with the eagerness of an invalid, watching the
sea with her expressionless eyes, near her husband who painted,
surrounded by a semicircle of wretched people. She sang, smiled
sometimes to the master, as if she forgave him everything and wanted to
forget, but suddenly a shadow of sadness had fallen on her; her body
seemed paralyzed once more by weakness. She conceived an aversion to the
bright beach, and the life of the open air, with that repugnance for
light and noise which sometimes seizes invalids and makes them hide in
the seclusion of their beds. She sighed for her gloomy house in Madrid.
There she was better, she felt stronger, surrounded with memories; she
thought she was safer from the black danger that hovered about her.
Besides, she longed to see her daughter. Renovales must telegraph to his
son-in-law. They had toured Europe long enough; it was time for them to
come back; she must see Milita.
They returned to Madrid at the end of September, and a little later the
newly married couple joined them, delighted with their trip and still
more delighted to be at home again. López de Sosa had been greatly vexed
by meeting people wealthier than he, who humiliated him with their
luxury. His wife wanted to live among friends who would admire her
prosperity. She was grieved at the lack of curiosity in those countries
where no one paid any attention to her.
With the presence of her daughter, Josephina seemed to recover her
spirits. The latter frequently came in the afternoon, dressed in her
showy gowns, which were the more striking at that season when most of
the society folk were away from Madrid, and took her mother to ride in
the motor in the suburbs of the capital, sweeping along the dusty roads.
Sometimes, too, Josephina summoning her courage, overcame her bodily
weakness and went to her daughter's house, a second-story apartment in
the Calle de Olòzaga, admiring the modern comforts that surrounded her.
The master seemed to be bored. He had no portraits to paint; it was
impossible for him to do anything in Madrid while he was still saturated
with the radiant sun and the brilliant colors of the Mediterranean
shore. Besides, he missed the company of Cotoner, who had gone to a
historic little town in Castile, where with a comic pride he received
the honors due to genius, living in the palace of the prelate and
ruining several pictures in the Cathedral by an infamous restoration.
His loneliness made Renovales remember the Alberca woman with all the
greater longing. She, on her part, with a constant succession of letters
reminded the painter of her every day. She had written to him while he
was at the little village on the coast and now she wrote to him in
Madrid, asking him what he was doing, taking an interest in the most
insignificant details of his daily life and telling him about her own
with an exuberance that filled pages and pages, till every envelope
contained a veritable history.
The painter followed her life minute by minute, as if he were with her.
She talked to him about Darwin, concealing Monteverde under this name;
she complained of his coldness, of his indifference, of the air of
commiseration with which he submitted to her love. "Oh, master, I am
very unhappy!" At other times her letter was triumphant, optimistic; she
seemed radiant, and the painter read her satisfaction between the lines;
he divined her intoxication after those daring meetings in her own
house, defying the count's blindness. And she told him everything, with
shameless, maddening familiarity, as if he were a woman, as if he could
not be moved in the least by her confidences.
In her last letter, Concha seemed mad with joy. The count was at San
Sebastian, to take leave of the king and queen,--an important diplomatic
mission. Although he was not "in line," they had chosen him as a
representative of the most distinguished Spanish nobility to take the
Fleece to a petty prince of a little German state. The poor gentleman,
since he could not win the golden distinction, had to be contented with
taking it to other men with great pomp. Renovales saw the countess's
hand in all this. Her letters were radiant with joy. She was going to be
left alone with Darwin, for the noble gentleman would be absent for a
long time. Married life with the doctor, free from risk and disturbance!
Renovales read these letters merely out of curiosity; they no longer
awakened in him an intense or lasting interest. He had grown accustomed
to his situation as a confidant; his desire was cooled by the frankness
of that woman who put herself in his power, telling him all her secrets.
Her body was the only thing he did not know; her inner life he possessed
as did none of her lovers and he began to feel tired of this possession.
When he finished reading these letters, he would always think the same
thing. "She is mad. What do I care about her secrets?"
A week passed without any news from Biarritz. The papers spoke of the
trip of the eminent Count of Alberca. He was already in Germany with all
his retinue, getting ready to put the noble lambskin around the princely
shoulders. Renovates smiled knowingly, without emotion, without envy, as
he thought of the countess's silence. She had a great deal to take up
her time, no doubt, since she was left alone.
Suddenly one afternoon he heard from her in the most unexpected manner.
He was going out of his house, just at sunset, to take a walk on the
heights of the Hippodrome along the Canalillo to view Madrid from the
hill, when at the gate a messenger boy in a red coat handed him a
letter. The painter started with surprise on recognizing Concha's
handwriting. Four hasty, excited lines. She had just arrived that
afternoon on the French express with her maid, Marie. She was alone at
home. "Come, hurry. Serious news. I am dying." And the master hurried,
though the announcement of her death did not make much impression on
him. It was probably some trifle. He was used to the countess's
exaggeration.
The spacious house of the Albercas was dark, dusty and echoing like all
deserted buildings. The only servant who remained was the concierge. His
children were playing beside the steps as if they did not know that the
lady of the house had returned. Upstairs the furniture was wrapped in
gray covers, the chandeliers were veiled with cheese-cloth, the house
and glass of the mirrors were dull and lifeless under the coating of
dust. Marie opened the door for him and led the way through the dark,
musty rooms, the windows closed, and the curtains down, without any
light except what came through the cracks.
In the reception hall he ran into several trunks, still unpacked,
dropped and forgotten in the haste of arrival.
At the end of this pilgrimage, almost feeling his way through the
deserted house, he saw a spot of light, the door of the countess's
bedroom, the only room that was alive, lighted up by the glow of the
setting sun. Concha was there beside the window, buried in a chair, her
brow contracted, her glance lost in the distance, her face tinged with
the orange of the dying light.
Seeing the painter she sprang to her feet, stretched out her arms and
ran toward him, as if she were fleeing from pursuit.
"Mariano! Master! He has gone! He has left me forever!"
Her voice was a wail; she threw her arms around him, burying her face in
his shoulder, wetting his beard with the tears that began to fall from
her eyes drop by drop.
Renovales, under the impulse of his surprise, repelled her gently and he
made her go back to her chair.
"Who has gone away? Who is it? Darwin?"
Yes; he. It was all over. The countess could hardly talk; a painful sob
interrupted her words. She was enraged to see herself deserted and her
pride trampled on; her whole body trembled. He had fled at the height of
their happiness, when she thought that she was surest of him, when they
enjoyed a liberty they had never known. He was tired of her; he still
loved her,--as he said in a letter,--but he wanted to be free to
continue his studies. He was grateful to her for her kindness, surfeited
with so much love, and he fled to go into seclusion abroad and become a
great man, not thinking any more about women. This was the purpose of
the brief lines he had sent her on his disappearance. A lie, an absolute
lie! She saw something else. The wretch had run away with a cocotte who
was the cynosure of all eyes on the beach at Biarritz. An ugly thing,
who had some vulgar charm about her, for all the men raved over her.
That young "sport" was tired of respectable people. He probably was
offended because she had not secured him the professorship, because he
had not been made a deputy. Heavens! How was she to blame for her
failure? Had she not done everything she could?
"Oh, Mariano. I know I am going to die. This is not love; I no longer
care for him. I detest him! It is rage, indignation. I would like to get
hold of the little whipper-snapper, to choke him. Think of all the
foolish things I have done for him. Heavens! Where were my eyes!"
As soon as she discovered that she had been deserted, her only thought
was to find her good friend, her counselor, her "brother," to go to
Madrid, to see Renovales and tell him everything, everything! impelled
by the necessity of confessing to him even secrets whose memory made her
blush.
She had no one in the world who loved her disinterestedly, no one except
the master, and with the panicky haste of a traveler who is lost at
night, in the midst of a desert, she had run to him, seeking warmth and
protection.
This longing for protection came back to her in the master's presence.
She went to him again, clinging to him, sobbing in hysteric fear, as if
she were surrounded by dangers.
"Master, you are all I have; you are my life! You won't ever leave me,
will you? You will always be my brother?"
Renovales, bewildered at the unexpectedness of this scene, at the
submission of that woman who had always repelled him and now suddenly
clung to him, unable to stand unless her arms were clasped about his
neck, tried to free himself from her arms.
After the first surprise, the old coldness came over him. He was
irritated at this proud despair that was another's work.
The woman he had longed for, the woman of his dreams came to him, seemed
to give herself to him with hysteric sobs, eager to overwhelm him,
perhaps without realizing what she was doing in the thoughtlessness of
her abnormal state; but he pushed her back, with sudden terror,
hesitating and timid in the face of the deed, pained that the
realization of his dreams came, not voluntarily but under the influence
of disappointment and desertion.
Concha pressed close to him, eager to feel the protection of his
powerful body.
"Master! My friend! You won't leave me! You are so good!"
And closing her eyes that no longer wept, she kissed his strong neck,
and looked up with her eyes still moist, seeking his face in the shadow.
They could hardly see each other; the room was dim with mysterious
twilight,--all its objects indistinct as in a dream, the dangerous hour
that had attracted them for the first time in the seclusion of the
studio.
Suddenly she drew away in terror, fleeing from him, taking refuge in the
gloom, pursued by his eager hands.
"No, not that. We'll be sorry for it! Friends! Nothing more than friends
and always!"
Her voice, as she said this, was sincere, but weak, faint, the voice of
a victim who resists and has not the strength to defend himself.
When the painter awakened it was night. The light from the street lamps
shone through the window with a distant, reddish glow.
He shivered with a sensation of cold, as if he were emerging from under
an enticing wave where he had lain, he could not remember how long. He
felt weak, humiliated, with the anxiety of a child who has done
something wrong.
Concha was sobbing. What folly! It had been against her will; she knew
they would be sorry for it. But she was the first to recover her
calmness. Her outline rose on the bright background of the window. She
called the painter who stood in the shadow, ashamed.
"After all, there was no escape," she said firmly. "It was a dangerous
game and it could not end in any other way. Now I know that I cared for
you; that you are the only man for whom I can care."
Renovales was beside her. Their two forms made a single outline on the
bright background of the window, in a supreme embrace as though they
desired to take refuge in each other.
Her hands gently parted the heavy locks that hid the master's forehead.
She gazed at him rapturously. Then she kissed his lips with an endless
caress, whispering:
"Mariano, dear. I love you, I worship you. I will be your slave. Don't
ever leave me. I will seek you on my knees. You don't know how I will
care for you. You shall not escape me. You wanted it,--you ugly darling,
you big giant, my love."
V
One afternoon at the end of October, Renovales noticed that his friend
Cotoner was rather worried.
The master was jesting with him, making him tell about his labors as
restorer of paintings in the old church. He had come back fatter and
merrier, with a greasy, priestly luster. According to Renovales he had
brought back all the health of the clerics. The bishop's table with its
succulent abundance was a sweet memory for Cotoner. He extolled it and
described it, praising those good gentlemen who, like himself, lived
free from passion with no other voluptuousness in life than a refined
appetite. The master laughed at the thought of the simplicity of those
priests who in the afternoon, after the choir, formed a group around
Cotoner's scaffold, following the movements of his hands with wondering
eyes; at the respect of the attendants and other servants of the
episcopal palace, hanging on Don José's words, astonished to find such
modesty in an artist who was a friend of cardinals and had studied in
Rome.
When the master saw him so serious and silent that afternoon after
luncheon he wanted to know what was worrying him. Had they complained of
his restoration? Was his money gone? Cotoner shook his head. It was not
his affairs; he was worrying over Josephina's condition. Had he not
noticed her?
Renovales shrugged his shoulders. It was the usual trouble:
neurasthenia, diabetes, all those chronic ailments of which she did not
want to be cured, refusing to obey the physicians. She was thinner, but
her nerves seemed calmer; she cried less; she maintained a sad silence,
simply wanting to be alone and stay in a corner, staring into space.
Cotoner shook his head again. Renovales' optimism was not to be wondered
at.
"You are leading a strange life, Mariano. Since I came back from my
trip, you are a different man; I wouldn't know you. Once, you could not
live without painting and now you spend weeks at a time without taking
up a brush. You smoke, sing, walk up and down the studio and all at once
rush off, out of the house and go--well. I know where, and perhaps your
wife suspects it. You seem to be having a good time, master. The deuce
take the rest! But, man alive, come down from the clouds. See what is
around you; have some charity."
And good Cotoner complained bitterly of the life the master was
leading--disturbed by sudden impatience and hasty departures, from which
he returned absent-minded, with a faint smile on his lips and a vague
look in his eyes, as if he still relished the feast of memories he
carried in his mind.
The old painter seemed alarmed at Josephina's increasing delicacy, acute
consumption that still found matter to destroy in her organism wasted by
years of illness. The poor little woman coughed constantly and this
cough, that was not dry but prolonged and violent, alarmed Cotoner.
"The doctors ought to see her again."
"The doctors!" exclaimed Renovales, "What's the use? A whole medical
faculty has been here and to no avail. She doesn't mind them; she
refuses everything, perhaps to annoy me, to oppose me. There's no
danger; you don't know her. Weak and small as she is, she will outlive
you and me."
His voice shook with wrath, as if he could not stand the atmosphere of
that house where the only distractions he found were the pleasant
memories that took him away from it.
Cotoner's insistence finally forced him to call a doctor who was a
friend of his.
Josephina was provoked, divining the cause of their anxiety. She felt
strong. It was nothing but a cold; the coming of winter. And in her
glances at the artist there was reproach and insult for his attention
which she regarded as hypocrisy.
When the doctor and the painter returned to the studio after the
examination of the patient and stood face to face, the former hesitated
as if he was afraid to formulate his ideas. He could not say anything
with certainty; it was easy to make a mistake in regard to that weak
system that maintained itself only by its extraordinary reserve power.
Then he had recourse to the usual evasive measure of his profession. He
advised him to take her away from Madrid, a change of air,--a change of
life.
Renovales objected. Where could she go, now that winter was beginning,
when at the height of summer she had wanted to come home? The doctor
shrugged his shoulders and wrote out a prescription, revealing in his
expression the desire to write something, not to go away without leaving
a piece of paper as a trace. He explained various symptoms to the
husband in order that he might observe them in the patient and he went
away shrugging his shoulders again with a gesture that revealed
indecision and dejection.
Pshaw! Who knows? Perhaps! The system sometimes has unexpected
reactions, wonderful reserve power to resist disease.
This enigmatic consolation alarmed Renovales. He spied on his wife,
studying her cough, watching her closely when she did not see him. They
no longer spent the night together. Since Milita's marriage, the father
occupied her room. They had broken the slavery of the common bed that
tormented their rest. Renovales made up for this departure by going into
Josephina's chamber every morning.
"Did you have a good night? Do you want something?"
His wife's eyes greeted him with hostility.
"Nothing."
And she accompanied this brief statement by turning over in the bed,
disdainfully, with her back to the master.
The painter received these evidences of hostility with quiet
resignation. It was his duty; perhaps she might die! But this
possibility of death did not stir him; it left him cold and he was angry
at himself, as if two distinct personalities existed within him. He
reproached himself for his cruelty, his icy indifference before the
invalid who now produced in him only a passing remorse.
One afternoon at the Alberca woman's house, after one of their daring
meetings with which they defied the holy calm of the noble, who had now
returned from his trip, the painter spoke timidly of his wife.
"I shall have to come less; don't be surprised. Josephina is very ill."
"Very?" asked Concha.
And in the flash of her glance, Renovales thought he saw something
familiar, a blue gleam that had danced before him in the darkness of the
night with infernal glow, troubling his conscience.
"No, maybe it isn't anything. I don't believe there is any danger."
He felt forced to lie. It consoled him to discount her illness. He felt
that, by this voluntary deceit, he was relieving himself of the anxiety
that goaded him. It was the lie of the man who justifies himself by
pretending not to know the depth of the harm he has caused.
"It isn't anything," he said to his daughter, who, greatly alarmed at
her mother's appearance, came to spend every night with her. "Just a
cold. It will disappear as soon as good weather comes."
He had a fire in every fireplace in the house; the rooms were as hot as
a furnace. He declared loudly, without any show of excitement, that his
wife was merely suffering from a slight cold, and as he spoke with such
assurance, a strange voice seemed to cry within him: "You lie, she is
dying; she is dying and you know it."
The symptoms of which the doctor had spoken began to appear with ominous
regularity in fatal succession. At first he noticed only a constant high
fever that seemed to grow worse with severe chills at the end of the
afternoon. Then he observed sweats that were terrifying in their
frequency--sweats at night that left the print of her body on the
sheets. And that poor body, which grew more fragile, more like a
skeleton, as if the fire of the fever were devouring the last particle
of fat and muscle, was left without any other covering and protection
than the skin, and that too seemed to be melting away. She coughed
frequently; at all hours of the day and night her painful hacking
disturbed the silence of the house. She complained of a continual pain
in the lower part of her chest. Her daughter made her eat by dint of
coaxing, lifting the spoon to her mouth, as if she were a child. But
coughing and nausea made nutrition impossible. Her tongue was dry; she
complained of an infernal thirst that was devouring her.
Thus passed a month. Renovales, in his optimistic mood, strove to
believe that her illness would not last long.
"She is not dying, Pepe," he would say in a convinced tone, as if he
were disposed to quarrel with anyone who opposed this statement. "She is
not dying, doctor. You don't think she is, do you?"
The doctor would answer with his everlasting shrug. "Perhaps,--it's
possible." And as the patient refused to submit to an internal
examination, he was forced to inquire of the daughter and husband about
the symptoms.
In spite of her extreme emaciation, some parts of her body seemed to be
undergoing an abnormal swelling. Renovales questioned the doctor
frankly. What did he think of these symptoms? And the doctor bowed his
head. He did not know. They must wait: Nature has surprises. But
afterward, with sudden decision, he pretended that he wanted to write a
prescription, in order that he might talk with the husband alone in his
working studio.
"To tell you the truth, Renovales, this pitiful comedy is getting
tiresome. It may be all right for the others but you are a man. It is
acute consumption; perhaps a matter of days, perhaps a matter of a few
months; but she is dying and I know no remedy. If you want to, get some
one else."
"She is dying!" Renovales was dazed with surprise as if the possibility
of this outcome had never occurred to him. "She is dying!" And when the
doctor had gone away, with a firmer step than usual, as if he had freed
himself of a weight, the painter repeated the words to himself, without
their producing any other effect than leaving him abstracted in
senseless stupidity. She is dying! But was it really possible that that
little woman could die, who had so weighed on his life and whose
weakness filled him with fear?
Suddenly he found himself walking up and down the studio, repeating
aloud,
"She is dying! She is dying!"
He said it to himself in order that he might make himself feel sorry,
and break out into sobs of grief, but he remained mute.
Josephina was going to die--and he was calm. He wanted to weep; it
seemed to him a duty. He blinked, swelling out his chest, holding his
breath, trying to take in the whole meaning of his sorrow; but his eyes
remained dry; his lungs breathed the air with pleasure; his thoughts,
hard and refractory, did not shudder with any painful image. It was an
exterior grief that found expression only in words, gestures and excited
walking, his interior continued its old stolidness, as if the certainty
of that death had congealed it in peaceful indifference.
The shame of his villainy tormented him. The same instinct that forces
ascetics to submit themselves to mortal punishments for their imaginary
sins dragged him with the power of remorse to the sick chamber. He would
not leave the room; he would face her scornful silence; he would stay
with her till the end, forgetting sleep and hunger. He felt that he must
purify himself by some noble, generous sacrifice from this blindness of
soul that now was terrifying.
Milita no longer spent the nights caring for her mother and would go
home, somewhat to the discomfiture of her husband, who had been rather
pleased at this unexpected return to a bachelor's life.
Renovales did not sleep. After midnight when Cotoner went away he walked
in silence through the brilliantly lighted rooms; he prowled around the
chamber--entered it to see Josephina in bed, sweating, shaken from time
to time by a fit of coughing or in a deathlike lethargy, so thin and
small that the bed-clothes hardly showed the childlike outline of her
body. Then the master passed the rest of the night in an armchair,
smoking, his eyes staring but his brain drowsy with sleep.
His thoughts were far away. There was no use in feeling ashamed of his
cruelty; he seemed bewitched by a mysterious power that was superior to
his remorse. He forgot the sick woman; he wondered what Concha was doing
at that time; he saw her in fancy; he remembered her words, her
caresses; he thought of their nights of abandon. And when, with a
violent effort, he threw off these dreams, in expiation he would go to
the door of the sick chamber and listen to her labored breathing,
putting on a gloomy face, but unable to weep or feel the sadness he
longed to feel.
After two months of illness, Josephina could no longer stay in bed. Her
daughter would lift her out of it without any effort as if she were a
feather, and she would sit in a chair,--small, insignificant,
unrecognizable, her face so emaciated that its only features seemed to
be the deep hollows of her eyes and her nose, sharp as the edge of a
knife.
Cotoner could hardly keep back the tears when he saw her.
"There isn't anything left of her!" he would say as he went away. "No
one would know her!"
Her harrowing cough scattered a deathly poison about her. White foam
came to her lips where it seemed to harden in the corners. Her eyes grew
larger, they took on a strange glow as if they saw through persons and
things. Oh, those eyes! What a shudder of terror they awakened in
Renovales!
One afternoon they fell on him, with the intense, searching glance that
had always terrified him. They were eyes that pierced his forehead, that
laid bare his thoughts.
They were alone; Milita had gone home; Cotoner was sleeping in a chair
in the studio. The sick woman seemed more animated, eager to talk,
looking on her husband with a sort of pity as he sat beside her, almost
at her feet.
She was going to die; she was certain of death. And a last revolt of
life that recoils from the end, the horror of the unknown, made the
tears rise to her eyes.
Renovales protested violently, trying to conceal his deceit by his
shouts. Die? She must not think of that! She would live; she still had
before her many years of happy existence.
She smiled as if she pitied him. She could not be deceived; her eyes
penetrated farther than his; she divined the impalpable, the invisible
that hovered about her. She spoke weakly but with that inexplicable
solemnity that is characteristic of a voice that emits its last sounds,
of a soul that unbosoms itself for the last time.
"I shall die, Mariano, sooner than you think, later than I desire. I
shall die and you will be free."
He! He desire her death! His surprise and remorse made him jump to his
feet, wave his arms in angry protest, writhe, as if a pair of invisible
hands had just laid him bare with a rude wrench.
"Josephina, don't rave. Calm yourself. For God's sake don't talk such
nonsense!"
She smiled with a painful, horrible expression, but immediately her poor
face became beautiful with the serenity of one who is departing this
life without hallucinations or delirium, in perfect mental poise. She
spoke to him with the immense sympathy, the superhuman compassion of one
who contemplates the wretched stream of life, departing from its
current, already touching with her feet the shores of eternal shadow, of
eternal peace.
"I should not want to go away without telling you. I die knowing
everything. Do not move; do not protest. You know the power I have over
you. More than once I have seen you watching me in terror, so easily do
I read your thoughts. For years I have been convinced that all was over
between us. We have lived like good creatures of God--eating together,
sleeping together, helping each other in our needs. But I peered within
you; I looked at your heart. Nothing! Not a memory, not a spark of love.
I have been your woman, the good companion who cares for the house, and
relieves a man of the petty cares of life. You have worked hard to
surround me with comforts, in order that I might be contented and not
disturb you. But Love? Never. Many people live as we have--many of them;
almost all. I could not; I thought that life was something different and
I am not sorry to go away. Don't go into a rage; don't shout. You aren't
to blame, poor Mariano--It was a mistake for us to marry."
She excused him gently with a kindness that seemed not of this world,
generously passing over the cruelty and selfishness of a life she was
about to leave. Men like him were exceptional; they ought to live alone,
by themselves, like those great trees that absorb all the life from the
ground and do not allow a single plant to grow in the space which their
roots reach. She was not strong enough to stand isolation; in order to
live she must have the shadow of tenderness, the certainty of being
loved. She ought to have married a man like other men; a simple being
like herself, whose only longings were modest and commonplace. The
painter had dragged her into his extraordinary path out of the easy,
well-beaten roads that the rest follow and she was falling by the
wayside, old in the prime of her youth, broken because she had gone with
him in this journey which was beyond her strength.
Renovales was walking about with ceaseless protests.
"Why, what nonsense you are talking! You are raving! I have always loved
you, Josephina. I love you now."
Her eyes suddenly became hard. A flash of anger crossed their pupils.
"Stop; don't lie. I know of a pile of letters that you have in your
studio, hidden behind the books in your library. I have read them one by
one. I have been following them as they came; I discovered your hiding
place when you had only three of them. You know that I see through you;
that I have a power over you, that you can hide nothing from me. I know
your love affairs."
Renovales felt his ears buzzing, the floor slipping from under his feet.
What astounding witchcraft! Even the letters so carefully hidden had
been discovered by that woman's divining instinct!
"It's a lie!" he cried vehemently to conceal his agitation. "It isn't
love! If you have read them, you know what it is as well as I; just
friendship; the letters of a friend who is somewhat crazy."
The sick woman smiled sadly. At first it was friendship--even less than
that, the perverse amusement of a flighty woman who liked to play with a
celebrated man, exciting in him the enthusiasm of youth. She knew her
childhood companion; she was sure it would not go any farther; and so
she pitied the poor man in the midst of his mad love. But afterward
something extraordinary had certainly happened; something that she could
not explain and which had upset all of her calculations. Now her husband
and Concha were lovers.
"Do not deny it; it is useless. It is this certainty that is killing me.
I realized it when I saw you distracted, with a happy smile as if you
were relishing your thoughts. I realized it in the merry songs you sang
when you awoke in the morning, in the perfume with which you were
impregnated and which followed you everywhere. I did not need to find
any more letters. The odor around you, that perfume of infidelity, of
sin, which always accompanied you, was enough. You, poor man, came home
thinking that everything was left outside the door, and that odor
follows you, denounces you; I think I can still perceive it."
And her nostrils dilated, as she breathed with a pained expression,
closing her eyes as though she wished to escape the images which that
perfume called up in her. Her husband persisted in his denials, now that
he was convinced that she had no other proof of his infidelity. A lie!
An hallucination!
"No, Mariano," murmured the sick woman. "She is within you; she fills
your head; from here I can see her. Once a thousand mad fancies occupied
her place,--illusions of your taste, naked women, a wantonness that was
your religion. Now it is she who fills it. It is your desire incarnated.
Go on and be happy. I am going away--there is no place for me in the
world."
She was silent for a moment and the tears came to her eyes again at the
memory of the first years of their life together.
"No one has cared for you as I have, Mariano," she said with tender
regret. "I look on you now as a stranger, without affection and without
hate. And still, there was never a woman who loved her husband so
passionately."
"I worship you. Josephina, I love you just as I did when we first met
each other. Do you remember?"
But in spite of the emotion he pretended to show, his voice had a false
ring.
"Don't try to bluff, Mariano; it is useless; everything is over. You do
not care for me nor have I either any of the old feeling."
In her face there was an expression of wonder, of surprise; she seemed
terror-stricken at her own calmness that made her forgive thus
indifferently the man who had caused her so much suffering. In her
fancy, she saw a wide garden, flowers that seemed immortal and they were
withering and falling with the advent of winter. Then her thoughts went
beyond, over the chill of death. The snow was melting; the sun was
shining once more; the new spring was coming with its court of love and
the dry branches were growing green once more with another life.
"Who knows!" murmured the sick woman with her eyes closed. "Perhaps,
after I am dead, you will remember me. Perhaps you will care for me
then, and be grateful to one who loved you so. We want a thing when it
is lost."
The invalid was silent, exhausted by such an effort; she relapsed into
that lethargy which for her took the place of rest. Renovales, after
this conversation, felt his vile inferiority beside his wife. She knew
everything and forgave him. She had followed the course of his love,
letter by letter, look by look, seeing in his smiles the memory of his
faithlessness. And she was silent! She was dying without a protest! And
he did not fall at her feet to beg her forgiveness! And he remained
unmoved, without a tear, without a sigh!
He was afraid to stay alone with her. Milita came back to stay at the
house to care for her mother. The master took refuge in his studio; he
wanted to forget in work the body that was dying under the same roof.
But in vain he poured colors on his palette and took up brushes and
prepared canvases. He did nothing but daub; he could make no progress,
as if he had forgotten his art. He kept turning his head anxiously,
thinking that Josephina was going to enter suddenly, to continue that
interview in which she had laid bare the greatness of her soul and the
baseness of his own. He felt forced to return to her apartments, to go
on tiptoe to the door of the chamber, in order to be sure that she was
there.
Her emaciation was frightful; it had no limits. When it seemed that it
must stop, it still surprised them with new shrinking, as if after the
disappearance of her flesh, her poor skeleton was melting away.
Sometimes she was tormented with delirium, and her daughter, holding
back her tears, approved of the extravagant trips she planned, of her
proposals to go far away to live with Milita in a garden, where they
would find no men; where there were no painters--no painters.
She lived about two weeks. Renovales, with cruel selfishness, was
anxious to rest, complaining of this abnormal existence. If she must
die, why did she not end it as soon as possible, and restore the whole
house to tranquillity!
The end came one afternoon when the master, lying on a couch in his
studio, was re-reading the tender complaints of a scented little letter.
So long since she had seen him! How was the patient getting on? She knew
that his duty was there; people would talk if he came to see her. But
this separation was hard!
He did not have a chance to finish it. Milita came into the studio, in
her eyes that expression of horror and fright, which the presence of
death, the touch of his passage, always inspires, even if his arrival
has been expected.
Her voice came breathlessly, broken. Mamma was talking with her; she was
amusing her with the hope of a trip in the near future,--and all at once
a hoarse sound,--her head bent forward before it fell onto her
shoulder--a moment--nothing--just like a little bird.
Renovales ran to the bedroom, bumping into his friend Cotoner who came
out of the dining-room, running too. They saw her in an armchair,
shrunken, wilted, in the deathly abandon that converts the body into a
limp mass. All was over.
Milita had to catch her father, to hold him up. She had to be the one
who kept her calmness and energy at the critical moment. Renovales let
his daughter lead him; he rested his face on her shoulder, with sublime,
dramatic grief, with beautiful, artistic despair, still holding
absent-mindedly in his hand the letter of the countess.
"Courage, Mariano," said poor Cotoner, his voice choked with tears. "We
must be men. Milita, take your father to the studio. Don't let him see
her."
The master let his daughter guide him, sighing deeply, trying in vain to
weep. The tears would not come. He could not concentrate his attention;
a voice within him was distracting him,--the voice of temptation.
She was dead and he was free. He would go on his way, light-hearted,
master of himself, relieved of troublesome hindrances. Before him lay
life with all its joys, love without a fear or a scruple; glory with its
sweet returns.
Life was going to begin again.