Leocadia did not vacillate on the following day. She knew the way
and she went straight to the lawyer's house. The latter received her
with a frowning brow. Did people think he was coining money? Leocadia
had now no land to sell; what she brought was of trifling value. If
she made up her mind to mortgage the house he would speak to his
brother-in-law Clodio, who had some money saved, and who would like
to have some such piece of property. Leocadia breathed a sigh of
regret, it was not with her as with the peasantry--she had no
attachment to land, but the house! So neat, so pretty, so
comfortable, arranged according to her own taste!
"Pshaw, by paying the amount of the mortgage you can have it back
the moment you wish."
So it was settled. Clodio handed out the money, tempted by the
hope of obtaining, at half its value, so cozy a nest in which to end
his bachelor existence. In the evening Leocadia asked Segundo to show
her the manuscript of his poems and to read some of them to her.
Frequent mention was made in them, with reticences and transparent
allusions, of certain blue flowers, of the murmur of a pine wood, of
a precipice, and of various other things which Leocadia knew well
were not inventions, but had their explanation in past, and to her
unknown, events. The schoolmistress divined a love story whose
heroine could be no one but Nieves Mendez. But what she could not
understand, what she could not explain, was how Señora de Comba, now
a widow, and free to reward Segundo's love, did not do so
immediately. The verses breathed profound despondency, ardent
passion, and intense bitterness. Now Leocadia understood Segundo's
sadness, his dejection, his mental anguish. How much he must suffer
in secret! Poets, by their nature, must suffer more and crueler
tortures than the rest of humanity. There was not a doubt of it--this
separation, these memories were killing Segundo slowly. Leocadia
hesitated how to begin the conversation.
"See, listen. Those verses are beautiful and deserve to be
printed in letters of gold. It just happens, child, that I received
some money a few days ago from Orense. Do you know what I was
thinking of the other night while you were asleep in the little bed I
arranged for you? That it would be better for you to go yourself to
publish them--yonder--to Madrid."
To her great surprise she saw that Segundo's face clouded. To go
to Madrid now! Impossible; he must first learn something of Nieves.
The last tragic scene of his love affair, the dénouement of her
sudden widowhood, raised between them a barrier difficult to pass.
Nieves was rich, and if Segundo should go to her now and throw
himself at her feet, he would not be the lover asking her to requite
his love, but the suitor to her hand, alleging anterior rights and
basing on them his aspirations to replace her defunct husband. And
Segundo, who had accepted money from Leocadia, felt his pride rebel
at the thought that Nieves might take him for a fortune-hunter, or
might scorn him for his obscurity and his poverty. But did not Nieves
love him? Had she not told him so? Why, then, did she not send him
some message. True, he had made no attempt to communicate with the
beautiful widow, or to refresh her memory. He feared to do it
awkwardly, inopportunely, and so reopen the wound caused by the death
of her husband.
The volume of verses--an excellent idea! The volume of verses was
the one means of recovering his place in Nieves' recollection
worthily, borne on the wings of popular applause. If this volume were
read, admired, praised, it would win fame for its author; the
difference between his own and Nieves' social position, which might
now make his pretensions appear ridiculous, would disappear. "To
marry!" said Segundo to himself. Marriage seemed to him a secondary
matter. Let Nieves only love him. It was love he asked, not marriage.
Sitting at Leocadia's very table he wrote to Blanquez, giving him
instructions, and prepared the manuscript to post it, and made out
the index and the title-page with the impatient joy of one who,
expecting to win a fortune, buys a ticket in the lottery. When he was
gone Leocadia remained sunk in thought. Segundo had no desire to go
to Madrid. Then the gleam of happiness that flashed across her mind
at the thought that Segundo should establish himself in Vilamorta was
quenched by two considerations--one was that Segundo would die of
tedium here; the other that she could not long continue to supply his
wants. In mortgaging the house she had burned her last cartridge.
What should she mortgage now--herself? And she smiled sadly. In the
hall resounded the steps of the neglected little cripple, on his way
to bed, where Flores would soon lull him to sleep with her solecisms
and barbarous litanies. The mother sighed. And this being, this being
who had no support but her--what should he live on? When ruin had
overtaken her, and she could no longer give him food or shelter, what
a mute and continual reproach would the presence of the unhappy child
be to her! And how could she set him to work?
To work! This word brought to her mind the plans she had matured
in those hours of sleeplessness and despair in which all the past is
retraced in thought and new plans are formed for the future and every
possible course of action is deliberated upon. It was plain that
Minguitos was unfitted for the material labor of cultivating the
ground, or for making shoes, or grinding chocolate, like that
good-looking Ramon; but he knew how to read and write and in
arithmetic, with a little help from Leocadia, he would be a prodigy.
To sit behind a counter kills nobody; to attend to a customer, to
answer his questions, take the money, enter down what is sold, are
rather entertaining occupations that cheer the mind than fatiguing
labors. In this way the little hunchback would be amused and would
lose a little of his terror of strangers, his morbid fear of being
laughed at.
A few years before if anyone had proposed to Leocadia to separate
her from her child, to deprive him of the shelter of her loving arms,
she would have insulted him. Now it seemed to her so easy and natural
a solution of the question to make him a clerk in a shop. Something,
nevertheless, still thrilled in the depths of her mother's heart,
some fibers still closely attached to the soul, that bled, that hurt.
She must tear them away quickly. It was all for the good of the
child, to make a man of him, so that to-day or to-morrow----
Leocadia held two or three consultations with Cansin, who had a
cousin in Orense, the proprietor of a cloth shop; and Cansin,
dilating upon his influence with him, and the importance of the
favor, gave the schoolmistress a warm letter of recommendation to
him. Leocadia went to the city, saw the shopkeeper, and the
conditions on which he agreed to receive Minguitos were agreed upon.
The boy would be fed and lodged, his clothes washed, and he would
receive an occasional suit, made from the remnants of cloth left over
in the shop. As to pay, he would be paid nothing until he should have
acquired a thorough knowledge of the business--for a couple of years
or so. And was he very much deformed? Because that would not be very
pleasant for the customers. And was he honest? He had never taken any
money out of his mother's drawer, had he?
Leocadia returned home with her soul steeped in gall. How should
she tell Minguitos and Flores? Especially Flores! Impossible,
impossible--she would create a scandal that would alarm the
neighborhood. And she had promised to take Minguitos without fail on
the following Monday! A stratagem occurred to her. She said that a
relative of hers lived in Orense and that she wished to take the
child there to make his acquaintance. She depicted the journey in
glowing colors, so that Minguitos might think he was going on a
pleasure trip. Did he not want to see Orense again? It was a
magnificent town. She would show him the hot springs, the Cathedral.
The child, with an instinctive horror of public places, of coming in
contact with strangers, sorrowfully shook his head; and as for the
old servant, as if she divined what was going on, she raged and
stormed all the week. When Sunday came and mother and son were about
to take their departure in the stage-coach Flores threw her arms
around the neck of the boy as he was mounting the step, and embraced
him with the tremulous and doting fondness of a grandmother, covering
his face with kisses, and moistening it with the saliva on her
withered lips. She spent the rest of the day sitting in the doorway,
muttering words of rage, or of tender pity, her forehead pressed
between her hands in an attitude of despair.
Leocadia, once they were in the diligence, tried to convince the
boy that the change was for his good; describing to him the pleasant
life that awaited him in that fine shop situated in the most central
part of Orense, which was so lively, where he would have very little
to do, and where he had the hope of earning, if not to-day,
to-morrow, a little money for himself. At her first words the boy
fixed on his mother his astonished eyes, in which a look of
intelligence gradually began to dawn. Minguitos was quick of
comprehension. He drew up close to his mother, and laid his head down
on her lap without speaking.
As he continued silent, Leocadia said to him:
"What is the matter with you? Does your head ache?"
"No; let me sleep so--for a little--until we reach Orense."
And thus he remained, quiet and silent, lulled to sleep,
apparently, by the creaking of the diligence and the deafening noise
of the windows rattling in their sashes. When they reached the city
Leocadia touched him on the shoulder, saying:
"We have arrived."
They alighted from the stagecoach and then only did Leocadia
observe that her lap was moist and that, on the spot where the boy
had rested his forehead, sparkled two or three crystal drops. But on
finding himself among strangers, in the gloomy shop crowded with
rolls of dark cloth, the hunchback's attitude ceased to be resigned;
he caught hold of his mother's skirt with a despairing impulse,
uttering a single cry in which were concentrated all his reproaches,
all his affection:
"M-a-a-a-m-m-a--m-a-a-a-m-m-a!"
This cry still resounded through Leocadia's heart when, on her
arrival at Vilamorta, she saw Flores lying in wait for her in the
doorway. Lying in wait is the exact expression, for Flores threw
herself upon her, the moment she appeared, like a bulldog, like a
wild animal asking for and demanding her young. And as a man in a fit
of rage throws at his adversary whatever he finds nearest his hand so
Flores heaped on Leocadia every species of insult, all sorts of
injurious and opprobrious epithets, crying, in a voice that trembled
with rage and hatred:
"Thief, thief, wretch! What have you done with your child, thief?
Go, drunkard, vagabond, go drink your liqueurs--and your child,
perhaps, dying of hunger! Reprobate, wolf, traitress, where is the
child? Where is the little angel? Where have you hidden him, schemer?
In such a hurry you were to get rid of him so as to be left alone
with your trumpery young gentleman! Wolf, wolf--if I had a gun, as
sure as I am standing here, I would send a charge of shot into you!"
Leocadia, her face pale, her eyes red with weeping, put out her
hand to stop the mouth of the frenzied old woman; but the latter
caught her fingers between her toothless gums, biting them and
slavering them with the foam of her fury, and when the schoolmistress
went upstairs, the old woman followed her, crying after her in hoarse
and sinister accents:
"You will never have the grace of God, wolf--God and the Holy
Virgin will punish you! Go, go, rejoice now because you have carried
out your evil designs! May you be forever accursed, accursed,
accursed!"
The malediction made Leocadia shudder. The house, with Minguitos
away, seemed like a tomb. Flores had neither made the dinner nor
lighted the lamp. Leocadia, too sick at heart to do either, threw
herself on the bed, dressed as she was, and, later on, undressed
herself and went to bed without tasting a morsel of food.