Segundo was the last of the guests to arrive at Las Vides. As he
cared but little for games and as Nieves did not take any very active
part in them either, they would often have found themselves thrown
for society upon each other had it not been for Victorina, who, from
the moment Segundo appeared, never left her mother's side, and Elvira
Molende who, from the very instant of his arrival, clung to the poet
like the ivy to the wall, directing on him a battery of sighs and
glances, and treating him to sentimental confidences and rhapsodies
sweet enough to surfeit a confectioner's boy. From the moment in
which Segundo set foot in Las Vides, Elvira lost all her animation,
and assumed a languishing and romantic air, which made her cheeks
appear hollower and the circles under her eyes deeper than ever. Her
form acquired the melancholy droop of the willow and, giving up
sports and pranks, she devoted herself exclusively to the Swan.
As it was moonlight, and the evenings were enjoyable out of
doors, as soon as the sun had set, and the labors of the day were
ended, and the vintagers assembled for a dance, some of the guests
would assemble together also in the garden, generally at the foot of
a high wall bordered with leafy camellias, or they would stop and sit
down for a chat at some inviting spot on their way home from a walk.
Elvira knew by heart a great many verses, both good and bad,
generally of a melancholy kind--sentimental and elegiac; she was
familiar with all the flowers of poetry, all the tender verses which
constituted the poetic wealth of the locality, and uttered by her
thin lips, in the silvery tones of her gentle voice, with the soft
accents of her native land, the Galician verses, like an Andalusian
moral maxim in the sensual mouth of a gypsy, had a peculiar and
impressive beauty--the sensibility of a race crystallized in a poetic
gem, in a tear of love. These plaintive verses were interrupted at
times by mocking bursts of laughter, as the gay sounds of the
castanets strike in on the melancholy notes of the bagpipes. The
poems in dialect acquired a new beauty, their freshness and sylvan
aroma seemed to augment by being recited by the soft tones of a
woman's voice, on the edge of a pine wood and under the shadow of a
grapevine, on a serene moonlight night; and the rhyme became a vague
and dreamy melopoeia, like that of certain German ballads; a labial
music interspersed with soft diphthongs, tender _ñ_'s, _x_'s of a
more melodious sound than the hissing Castilian _ch_. Generally,
after the recitations came singing. Don Eugenio, who was a Borderer,
knew some Portuguese _fados_, and Elvira was unrivaled in her
rendering of the popular and melancholy song of Curros, which seems
made for Druidical nights, for nights illuminated by the solemn light
of the moon.
Segundo's heart thrilled with gratified vanity when Elvira
recited shyly, in alternation with the verses of the popular and
admired poets of the country, songs of the Swan, which had appeared
in periodicals of Vigo or Orense. Segundo had never written in
dialect, and yet Elvira had a book in which she pasted all the
productions of the unknown Swan; Teresa, joining in the animated
conversation with the best intentions in the word, betrayed her
sister:
"She writes verses too. Come, child, recite something of your
own. She has a copy-book full of things invented, composed by
herself."
The poetess, after the indispensable excuses and denials, recited
two or three little things, almost without poetic form, weak, sincere
in the midst of their sentimental falseness--verses of the kind which
reveal no artistic faculty, but which are the sure indication that
the author or authoress feels an unsatisfied desire, longs for fame
or for love, as the inarticulate cry of the infant expresses its
hunger. Segundo twisted his mustache, Nieves lowered her eyes and
played with the tassels of her fan, impatient and somewhat bored and
nervous. This occurred two or three days after the arrival of Segundo
who, in spite of all his attempts, had not yet been able to succeed
in saying a word in private to Nieves.
"How uncultured these young ladies are!" said Señora de Comba to
herself, while aloud she said, "How lovely, how tender! It sounds
like some of Grilo's verses."