VII.

While she distributed their tasks among the children, saying to

one, "Take care to make this hem straight," to another, "Make this

seam even, the stitch smaller," to a third, "Use your handkerchief

instead of your dress," and to still another, "Sit still, child,

don't move your feet," Leocadia cast a glance from time to time

toward the plaza in the hope of seeing Segundo pass by. But no

Segundo was to be seen. The flies settled themselves to sleep,

buzzing, on the ceiling; the heat abated; the afternoon came, and the

children went away. Leocadia felt a profound sadness take possession

of her and, without waiting to put the house in order, she went to

her room and threw herself on the bed.

The glass door was pushed gently open, and some one entered

softly.

"Mamma," said the intruder, in a low voice.

The schoolmistress did not answer.

"Mamma, mamma," repeated the hunchback, in a louder voice.

"Mamma!" he shouted at last.

"Is that you? What do you want?"

"Are you ill?"

"No, child."

"As you went to bed----'

"I have a slight headache. There, leave me in peace."

Minguitos turned round and walked in silence toward the door. As

her eyes fell on the protuberance of his back, a sharp pang pierced

the heart of the schoolmistress. How many tears that hump had cost

her in other days. She raised herself on her elbow.

"Minguitos!" she called.

"What is it, mamma?"

"Don't go away. How do you feel to-day? Have you any pain?"

"I feel pretty well, mamma. Only my chest hurts me."

"Let me see; come here."

Leocadia sat up in the bed and, taking the child's head between

her hands, looked at him with a mother's hungry look. Minguitos' face

was long and of a melancholy cast; the prominent lower jaw was in

keeping with the twisted and misshapen body that reminded one of a

building shaken out of shape by an earthquake or a tree twisted by a

hurricane. Minguitos' deformity was not congenital. He had always

been sickly, indeed, and it had always been remarked that his head

seemed too heavy for his body, and that his legs seemed too frail to

support him. Leocadia recalled one by one the incidents of his

childhood. At five years old the boy had met with an accident--a fall

down the stairs; from that day he lost all his liveliness; he walked

little and never ran. He contracted a habit of sitting Turkish

fashion, playing marbles for hours at a time. If he rose his legs

soon warned him to sit down again. When he stood, his movements were

vacillating and awkward. When he was quiet he felt no pain, but when

he turned any part of his body, he experienced slight pains in the

spinal column. The trouble increased with time; the boy complained of

a feeling as if an iron band were compressing his chest. Then his

mother, now thoroughly alarmed, consulted a famous physician, the

best in Orense. He prescribed frictions with iodine, large doses of

phosphates of lime, and sea-bathing. Leocadia hastened with the boy

to a little sea-port. After taking two or three baths, the trouble

increased; he could not bend his body; his spinal column was rigid

and it was only when he was in a horizontal position that he felt any

relief from his now severe pains. Sores appeared on his skin, and one

morning when Leocadia begged him with tears to straighten himself,

and tried to lift him up by the arms, he uttered a horrible cry.

"I am broken in two, mamma--I am broken in two," he repeated with

anguish, while his mother, with trembling fingers sought to find what

had caused his cry.

It was true! The backbone had bent outward, forming an angle on a

level with his shoulderblades, the softened vertebræ had sunk and

_cifosis_, the hump, the indelible mark of irremediable calamity, was

to deform henceforth this child who was dearer to her than her life.

The schoolmistress had had a moment of animal and sublime anguish,

the anguish of the wild beast that sees its young mutilated. She had

uttered shriek after shriek, cursing the doctor, cursing herself,

tearing her hair and digging her nails into her flesh. Afterward

tears had come and she had showered kisses, delirious, but soothing

and sweet, on the boy, and her grief took a resigned form. During

nine years Leocadia had had no other thought than to watch over her

little cripple by night and by day, sheltering him in her love,

amusing with ingenious inventions the idle hours of his sedentary

childhood. A thousand incidents of this time recurred to Leocadia's

memory. The boy suffered from obstinate dyspnoea, due to the pressure

of the sunken vertebræ on the respiratory organs, and his mother

would get up in the middle of the night and go in her bare feet to

listen to his breathing and to raise his pillows. As these

recollections came to her mind Leocadia felt her heart melt and

something stir within her like the remains of a great love, the warm

ashes of an immense fire, and she experienced the unconscious

reaction of maternity, the irresistible impulse which makes a mother

see in her grown-up son only the infant she has nursed and protected,

to whom she would have given her blood, if it had been necessary,

instead of milk. And uttering a cry of love, pressing her feverish

lips passionately to the pallid temples of the hunchback, she said,

falling back naturally into the caressing expressions of the dialect:

"_Malpocadiño._ Who loves you? say, who loves you dearly? Who?"

"You don't love me, mamma. You don't love me," the boy returned,

half-smiling, leaning his head with delight on the bosom that had

sheltered his sad childhood. The mother, meantime, wildly kissed his

hair, his neck, his eyes--as if to make up for lost time--lavishing

upon him the honeyed words with which infants are beguiled, words

profaned in hours of passion, which overflowed in the pure channel of

maternal love.

"My treasure--my king--my glory."

At last the hunchback felt a tear fall on his cheek. Delicious

assuagement! At first, the tears were large and round, scorching

almost, but soon they came in a gentle shower and then ceased

altogether, and there remained where they had fallen only a grateful

sense of coolness. Passionate phrases rushed simultaneously from the

lips of mother and son.

"Do you love me dearly, dearly, dearly? As much as your whole

life?"

"As much, my life, my treasure."

"Will you always love me?"

"Always, always, my joy."

"Will you do something to please me, mamma? I want to ask

you----"

"What?"

"A favor. Don't turn your face away!"

The hunchback observed that his mother's form suddenly grew stiff

and rigid as a bar of iron. He no longer felt the sweet warmth of her

moist eyelids, and the gentle contact of her wet lashes on his cheek.

In a voice that had a metallic sound Leocadia asked her son:

"And what is the favor you want? Let me hear it."

Minguitos murmured without bitterness, with resignation:

"Nothing, mamma, nothing. I was only in jest."

"But what was the favor you were going to ask me?"

"Nothing, nothing, indeed."

"No, you wanted to ask something," persisted the schoolmistress,

seizing the pretext to give vent to her anger. "Otherwise you are

very deceitful and very sly. You keep everything hidden in your

breast. Those are the lessons Flores teaches you; do you think I

don't notice it?"

Saying this, she pushed the boy away from her, and sprang from

the bed. In the hall outside almost at the same moment was heard a

firm and youthful step. Leocadia trembled, and turning to Minguitos,

stammered:

"Go, go to Flores. Leave me alone. I do not feel well, and you

make me worse,"

Segundo's brow was clouded, and as soon as the joy of seeing him

had subsided Leocadia was seized with the desire to restore him to

good humor. She waited patiently for a fitting opportunity, however,

and when this came, throwing her arms around his neck, she began with

the complaint: Where had he kept himself? Why had he stayed away so

long? The poet unburdened himself of his grievances. It was

intolerable to follow in the train of a great man. And allowing

himself to be carried away by the pleasure of speaking of what

occupied his mind he described Don Victoriano and the radicals, he

satirized Agonde's reception of his guests, his manner of

entertaining them, spoke of the hopes he founded in the protection of

the ex-Minister, giving them as a reason for the necessity of paying

court to Don Victoriano. Leocadia fixed her dog-like look on

Segundo's countenance.

"And the Señora and the girl--what are they like?"

Segundo half-closed his eyes the better to contemplate an

attractive and charming image that presented itself to his mental

vision, and to reflect that in the existence of Nieves he played no

part whatsoever, it being manifest folly for him to think of Señora

de Comba, who did not think of him. This reflection, natural and

simple enough, aroused his anger. There was awakened within him a

keen longing for the unattainable, that insensate and unbridled

desire with which the likeness of a beautiful woman dead for

centuries may inspire some dreamer in a museum.

"But answer me--are those ladies handsome?" the schoolmistress

asked again.

"The mother, yes"--answered Segundo, speaking with the careless

frankness of one who is secure of his auditor. "Her hair is fair, and

her eyes are blue--a light blue that makes one think of the verses of

Becquer." And he began to recite:

"'Tu pupila es azul, y cuando ries

Su claridad suave me recuerda----'"

Leocadia listened to him at first with eyes cast down; afterward

with her face turned away from him. When he had finished the poem she

said in an altered voice, with feigned calmness.

"They will invite you to go there."

"Where?"

"To Las Vides, of course. I hear they intend to have a great deal

of company."

"Yes; they have given me a pressing invitation, but I shall not

go. Uncle Clodio insists upon it that I ought to cultivate the

friendship of Don Victoriano so that he may be of use to me in Madrid

and help me to get a position there. But, child, to go and play a

sorry part is not to my liking. This suit is the best I have, and it

is in last year's fashion. If they play tresillo or give tips to the

servants--and it is impossible to make my father understand this--and

I shall not try to do so: God forbid. So that they shall not catch a

sight of me in Las Vides."

When she heard what his intentions were, Leocadia's countenance

cleared up, and rising, radiant with happiness, she ran to the

kitchen. Flores was washing plates and cups and saucers by the light

of a lamp, knocking them angrily together and rubbing savagely.

"The coffee-pot--did you clean it?"

"Presently, presently," responded the old woman. "Anyone would

think that one was made of wood, that one is never to get tired--that

one can do things flying."

"Give it to me, I will clean it. Put more wood on the fire; it is

going out and the beefsteak will be spoiled." And so saying Leocadia

washed the coffee-pot, cleaning the filter with a knitting-needle,

and put some fresh water down to boil in a new saucepan, throwing

more wood on the fire.

"Yes, heap on wood," growled Flores, "as we get it for nothing!"

Leocadia, who was slicing some potatoes for the beefsteak, paid

no attention to her. When she had cut up as many as she judged

necessary, she washed her hands hastily in the jar of the drain, full

of dirty water, on whose surface floated large patches of grease. She

then hurried to the parlor where Segundo was waiting for her, and

soon afterward Flores brought in the supper, which they ate, seated

at a small side-table. By the time they had got to the coffee Segundo

began to be more communicative. This coffee was what Leocadia most

prided herself on. She had bought a set of English china, an

imitation lacquer-box, a _vermeil_ sugar-tongs and two small silver

spoons, and she always placed on the table with the coffee a

liquor-stand, supplied with cumin, rum, and anisette. At the third

glass, of cumin, seeing the poet amiable and propitious, Leocadia put

her arm around his neck. He drew back brusquely, noticing with strong

repulsion the odor of cooking and of parsley with which the garments

of the schoolmistress were impregnated.

At this moment precisely Minguitos, after letting his shoes drop

on the floor, was drawing the coverlet around him with a sigh.

Flores, seated on a low chair, began to recite the rosary. The sick

child required, to put him to sleep, the monotonous murmur of the

husky voice which had lulled him to rest, ever since his mother had

ceased to keep him company at bedtime. The Ave Marias and Gloria

Patris, mumbled rather than pronounced, little by little dulled

thought and, by the time the litany was reached, sleep had stolen

over him, and, half-unconscious, it was with difficulty he made the

responses to the barbarous phrases of the old woman: "Juana celi--Ora

pro nobis--Sal-es-enfermorun--nobis--Refajos

pecadorum--bis--Consolate flitorum--sss----"

The only response was the labored, restless, uneven breathing

that came through the sleeping boy's half-closed lips. Flores softly

put out the tallow candle, took off her shoes, in order to make no

noise, and stole out gently, feeling her way along the dining-room

wall. From the moment in which Minguitos fell asleep there was no

more rattling of dishes in the kitchen.