With what interest did Segundo read the letters of Roberto
Blanquez giving him news of his book. Roberto was a few years older
than the Swan; the difference in their ages was not so great as to
prevent their having been very good friends when they were at college
together, though it was great enough to have given Blanquez so much
more experience than the poet as to enable him to serve as his guide
and mentor. Blanquez, too, had had his poetic epoch, when he had
written Galician verses; he now devoted himself to the prose of a
modest clerkship, and wrote official articles. Madrid was
enlightening him, and, with the natural penetration of one in whose
veins flowed Galician blood, he was gradually acquiring a knowledge
of practical life. He entertained for Segundo a fanatic admiration
and a sincere attachment, one of those college attachments which last
a lifetime. Segundo wrote to him with entire confidence--some cousins
of Blanquez were acquainted with the mother of Nieves Mendez, and
through this channel Segundo occasionally received tidings of his
lady-love. Blanquez was not ignorant of the episodes of the summer.
And in the beginning his news was very satisfactory: "Nieves lives in
the greatest retirement--my cousins have given me news of her. She
scarcely ever leaves the house except to go to mass. The child is not
well. The physicians say it is the age. They are going to send her to
a convent of the Sacred Heart to be educated. They say the mother
looks superb, my boy. It seems they have been left very well off. The
book will soon appear now. Yesterday I chose the paper for the
edition and the linen paper for the hundred copies _de luxe_. The
type will be Elzevir, which is at present the most fashionable. The
title-page--they make them beautiful now, in six colors--would you
like it to represent something fanciful, something allegorical?" In
this style were Roberto's letters, source of illusions for Segundo,
sole food for his imagination through all that long and gloomy
winter, in that out-of-the-way corner of the world, in the midst of
his prosaic domestic surroundings, his mind filled with the
recollections of his unhappy passion.
March had arrived, that uncertain month of sunshine and showers
which heralds in the spring with affluence of violets and primroses,
when the cold begins to lessen, and in the pale blue sky white clouds
float like streamers, when Segundo received that most precious of all
objects, that object the sight of which makes the heart palpitate
with joy and longing, mingled with an undefinable fear resembling,
somewhat, the feeling with which the new-made father regards his
first-born--his first printed book. It seemed to him a dream that the
book should be there, before his eyes, in his hands, with the
satin-smooth white cover on which the artist had gracefully twined
around a group of pine trees a few sprays of forget-me-nots; with its
pea-green paper, that gave it an antique air, the compositions headed
by three mysterious asterisks. Looking at his verses thus, free from
blots, finished and correct, the thought standing out clearly in
distinct black characters on the delicately tinted page, he almost
felt as if they had issued from his brain just as they were, smoothly
flowing and with perfect rhymes, without corrections or unmeaning
syllables put in to fill out the meter.
Leocadia was even more moved by the sight of the book than its
author had been. She shed tears of joy. The fame of the poet was, in
a sense, her work! For two or three days she was happy, forgetting
the bad news which Flores brought her every Sunday from Orense; from
Orense, where Leocadia did not dare to go herself, fearing to yield
to the entreaties and melt before the prayers of the child, but where
palpitated those fibers of her heart which still bled, and which
Flores wrung with torture by her account of the sufferings of
Minguitos, who declined visibly in health, and who always complained
that they made sport of him in the shop and cast up his deformity to
him.
Unsolvable mysteries of the human heart! Segundo, who despised
his native place, who believed--nor was he mistaken--that there was
not in Vilamorta a single person capable of judging of the merits of
a poem, could not refrain from going one evening to Saturnino
Agonde's and drawing carelessly the volume from his pocket, throwing
it on the counter and saying with affected indifference:
"What do you think of that book, my boy?"
On the instant he repented of his weakness, so many were the
nonsensical remarks and absurd jokes with which the beautiful volume
inspired the irreverent assemblage. He wished he had never shown it.
He had drawn all this upon himself. If the public did not treat him
better than his fellow-townsmen! Man can never isolate himself
completely from his surroundings--the circle in which he moves must
always have an interest for him. However little importance Segundo
might attach to the opinions of the Vilamortans, and although their
approbation would assuredly not have raised him in his own
estimation, their stupid mockery wounded and embittered his soul. He
went home hurt and pained. He spent a feverish night--one of those
nights in which great projects are conceived and decisive resolutions
adopted.
His resolutions and his plans he summed up in the letter he wrote
to Blanquez. The latter did not answer by return of mail; days
passed, and Segundo went every morning to the post-office, always
meeting with the same laconic answer. At last one day he received a
voluminous registered letter.