Nieves was what is called an exemplary wife, without a dark page
in her history, without a thought of disloyalty to her husband, a
coquette only in her dress and in the adornment of her person, and
even in these practicing no alluring arts, content to obey slavishly
the dictates of fashion.
Her ideal, if she had any, was to lead a comfortable, elegant
existence, enjoying the consideration of the world. She had married
when she was very young, Don Victoriano settling on her some
thousands of dollars, and on the wedding-day her father had called
her into his magisterial office and, keeping her standing before him
as if she were a criminal, had charged her to respect and obey the
husband she had chosen. She obeyed and respected him.
And her obedience and respect were a torture to Don Victoriano,
who sought in marriage a compensation for the long years he had spent
in his law office; years of loneliness during which his arduous
labors and confinement to business had prevented him from forming any
tender tie or cultivating gentle affections, permitting him at the
most some hasty pleasure, some reckless and exciting adventure, which
did not satisfy his heart. He fancied that the beautiful daughter of
the President of the Court would requite him for all the tender joys
he had missed and he found with vain and bitter disappointment that
Nieves saw in him only the grave husband who is accepted with
docility, without repugnance, nothing more. Respecting against his
will the peace of this superficial being, he neither could nor dared
disturb it, and he fretted his soul with unavailing longings,
hastening to the crisis of maturity and multiplying the white patches
that streaked his black hair.
When the child was born Don Victoriano hoped to repay himself
with interest in new and holy caresses, to take solace in a pure
oasis of affection. But the requirements of his position, the hurry
of business, the complex obligations and the implacable cares of his
existence, interposed themselves between him and a father's joys. He
saw his daughter only from a distance, barely succeeding, when the
coffee was brought in, in having her for awhile on his knee. And then
came the first warnings of his disease.
From the time in which his malady declared itself with all its
afflicting symptoms, Nieves had still less of her husband's society
than before; it seemed to her as if she had returned to the rosy days
of her girlhood, when she flitted about like a butterfly and played
at lovers with her companions, who wrote her fictitious love-letters
of an innocent nature, which they put under her pillow.
She never had had much amusement since that time. A great deal of
amusement was to be found in the routine of a methodical Madrid life!
Yes, there was a period during which the Marquis de Cameros, a rich
young client of Don Victoriano's, had come to the house with some
frequency, and he had even been asked to dine with them three or four
times, without ceremony. Nieves remembered that the Marquis had cast
many furtive glances at her, and that they had always met him, by
chance, at whatever theater they went to. It did not go beyond this.
Nieves was now in the bloom of her second youth--between
twenty-nine and thirty--terrible epoch in a woman's life; and if it
brought her no red passion flowers, at least she wished to adorn
herself with the romantic forget-me-nots of the poet. It seemed to
Nieves that in the porcelain vase of her existence a flower had been
wanting, and the fragile blue spray came to complete the beauty of
the drawing-room toy. Bah! What harm was there in all this? It was a
childish adventure. Those flowers, preserved between the leaves of a
costly prayer-book, inspired her only with thoughts as pallid and
sapless as the poor petals now pressed and dry.
She had fastened the blue spray in her bosom. How well it looked
among the folds of the écru lace!
"Tell me, mamma," Victorina had said to her that night before
going to bed, "did Segundo give you those pretty flowers?"
"Oh, I don't remember--yes, I think that García picked them for
me."
"Will you give them to me to keep in my little satchel?"
"Go, child, go to bed quickly. Mademoiselle, see that she says
her prayers!"