The Swan has left his native lake, or rather, his pool; he has
crossed the Atlantic on the wings of steam. Will he ever return? Will
he come back with a sallow countenance, a disordered liver, and some
thousands of dollars, in bills of exchange, in his pocketbook, to end
his life where it began, as the ship disabled by storms receives its
last repairs in the dockyard in which it was built? Will the black
vomit, that terrible malady of the Antilles, the scourge of the
Iberians who seek to emulate Columbus conquering a new world, attack
him on his arrival on the young continent? Will he remain in the
tropics, riding in his carriage, united in the bonds of matrimony to
some Creole? Will he preside one day over one of those diminutive
republics, in which the doctors are generals and the generals
doctors? Will his melancholy be cured by the salty kiss of the ocean
breeze, by the contact of virgin soil, the sharp spur of necessity,
that, pushing him into the conflict, will say to him, "Work"?
History may perhaps at some future day relate the story of the
metamorphosis of the Swan, of his wanderings and his vicissitudes;
but years must first elapse, for it was only yesterday, as one might
say, that Segundo García quitted Vilamorta, leaving the
schoolmistress behind him dissolved in tears. And the story of the
schoolmistress is the only episode in the chronicle of the Swan which
we can at present bring to an end.
Leocadia was the theme of much gossip in Vilamorta. She was
seriously ill, according to some, according to others, ruined, and
according to many, touched in her mind. She had been seen haunting
the neighborhood of Segundo's house on various nights during the
poet's illness; it was affirmed that she had sold her land and that
her house was mortgaged to Clodio Genday; but the strangest thing of
all, that which was most bitterly censured, was her neglect of her
son after having cared for him and watched over him from his infancy,
never going to Orense to see him, while old Flores went there
constantly, bringing back worse and worse news of the child every
time she went--that he was wasting away, that he spit blood, that he
was dying of grief, that he would not last a month. Leocadia, as she
listened, would let her chin fall upon her breast, and at times her
shoulders would move convulsively, as if she were weeping. Otherwise
she appeared calm, although she was very silent and had lost her
former activity. She helped Flores in the kitchen, attended to the
children of the school, swept and dusted--all like an automaton,
while Flores, who pitilessly spied out every occasion to find fault
with her, took pleasure in crying:
"Woman, you have left this side of the pan dirty--woman, you
haven't mended your skirt--woman, what are you thinking about? I am
going to Orense to-day and you will have to take care of the
_puchero_."
At the end of the summer Clodio demanded the interest on his loan
and Leocadia was unable to pay it; she was notified accordingly that,
after the necessary legal proceedings, the creditor would avail
himself of his legal right to take possession of the house. This was
a terrible blow for Leocadia.
It will sometimes happen that a prisoner, a distinguished
personage, a king, it may be, shut up through an adverse fate within
the walls of a dungeon, stripped of his grandeur, deprived of all
that once constituted his happiness, will bear his ills for years
with resignation, calm in appearance although dejected, but if some
day, by the cruel tyranny of his jailors, this prisoner is deprived
of some bauble, some trifling object for which he had conceived an
affection, the grief pent up within his bosom will burst its bounds,
and the wildest manifestations of grief will follow. Something like
this happened to Leocadia when she learned that she must abandon
forever the beloved little house where she had spent in Segundo's
company hours unique in her existence; the little house in which she
was mistress, which had been rebuilt with her savings, the little
house lately so neat and so attractive, of which she was so proud.
Flores heard her on several nights sobbing loudly, but when on
one or two occasions, moved by an involuntary feeling of pity, the
old woman went into her room to ask her what ailed her, if she could
do anything for her, Leocadia, covering her face with the bedclothes,
had answered in a dull voice: "There is nothing the matter with me,
woman; let me sleep. You will not even let me sleep!"
During those days her moods varied constantly and she formed a
thousand different plans. She talked of going to live in Orense, of
giving up the school and taking sewing to do in the house; she
talked, too, of accepting the proposal of Clodio Genday, who, having
dismissed his young servant, for what reason no one knew, offered to
take Leocadia as his housekeeper, by which arrangement she would
remain in her house, Flores, of course, being dismissed. None of
these plans lasted for more than a very short time, but were all in
turn rejected to give place to others no less ephemeral; and while
the schoolmistress was thus engaged in forming and rejecting plans
the time was fast approaching when she should find herself without a
shelter.
One market day Leocadia went to purchase various articles
urgently needed by Flores, among others a sieve and a new
chocolate-pot, the old one being no longer fit for use. The movement
of the crowd, the jostling of the hucksters, and the glare of the
autumnal sun made her head, weak from want of sleep, from fasting,
and from suffering--slightly dizzy. She stopped before a stall where
sieves were sold, a sort of variety booth, where innumerable
indispensable trifles were for sale--chocolate-beaters, frying-pans,
saucepans, kerosene lamps. In a corner were two articles of
merchandise in great request in the place--consisting of pink paper,
soft, like brown paper, and some whitish powder, resembling spoiled
flour. Leocadia's glance fell on these, and the vender, thinking she
wished to buy some, began to extol their properties, explaining that
the pink sheets moistened and placed on a plate, would not leave a
fly alive in the neighborhood, and that the white powder was
_seneca_, for killing mice, the manner of using it being to mix it
well with cheese and place the mixture, made into little balls, in
their haunts. Leocadia asked the price and told the vender to give
her a small quantity, and the woman, to appear generous, took up a
good portion on the spatula, wrapped it up in paper, and gave it to
her for a trifling sum. The drug indeed was of little value, being
very common in that part of the country, where native arsenic abounds
in the calcareous spar forming one of the banks of the Avieiro, and
arsenic, acid--rat-poison--is sold openly in the fairs, rather than
in drug shops. The schoolmistress put away the powder, bought,
through complaisance, half a dozen of the pink slips of paper, and on
her return home punctually delivered to Flores the articles she had
been commissioned to purchase.
Flores noticed that after dinner Leocadia shut herself up in her
bedroom, where the old woman could hear her talking aloud as if she
were praying. Accustomed to her eccentricities the servant thought
nothing about the matter. When she had ended her prayer, the
schoolmistress stepped out on the balcony, where she stood gazing for
a long time at the flower-pots; she then went into the parlor and
looked for a good while also at the sofa, the chairs, the little
table, the spots which reminded her of the past. Then she went into
the kitchen. Flores declared afterward--but in such cases who is
there that does not lay claim to a prophetic instinct--that
Leocadia's manner on entering had attracted her attention.
"Have you any fresh water?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Give me a glass of it."
Flores affirmed that, as she took the glass, the hand of the
schoolmistress trembled, as if she had a chill, and the strangest
part of the matter was that, although there was no sugar in the
water, Leocadia asked for a spoon, which she put into the glass. An
hour, or perhaps an hour and a half passed, when Flores heard
Leocadia groan. She hurried to her room and saw her lying on the bed,
her face frightfully pale, making desperate and fruitless efforts to
vomit. Then a cold perspiration broke out on the forehead of the sick
woman, and she remained motionless and speechless. Flores, terrified,
ran for Don Fermin, urging him to hurry, saying this was no jesting
matter. When Don Fermin arrived out of breath, he asked:
"What is this, Leocadia? What is the matter with you; my dear
woman, what is the matter with you?"
Opening her dilated eyes, she murmured:
"Nothing, Don Fermin, nothing."
Standing on the table at the head of the bed was the glass; it
contained no water, but the bottom and the sides of the vessel were
coated with a white powder which had remained undissolved and which
the schoolmistress, not wishing to leave it there, had scraped off in
places with the spoon. It is proper to say, on this occasion also,
that the illustrious Tropiezo made no mistake in the treatment of so
simple a case. Tropiezo had already fought some battles with this
common toxic substance and knew its tricks; he had recourse, without
a moment's delay, to the use of powerful emetics and of oil. Only the
poison, having gained the start of him, had already entered into the
circulation and ran through the veins of the schoolmistress, chilling
her blood. When the nausea and the vomiting ceased several little red
spots--an eruption similar to that of scarlet-fever--made their
appearance on Leocadia's pallid face. This symptom lasted until death
came to set her sad spirit free and release it from its sufferings,
which was toward daybreak. Shortly before her death, during an
interval of freedom from pain, Leocadia, making a sign to Flores to
come nearer, whispered in her ear: "Promise me--that the child shall
not know it--by the soul of your mother--don't tell him--don't tell
him the manner of my death."
A few days later Tropiezo was defending himself to the party at
Agonde's who, for the pleasure of making him angry, were accusing him
of being responsible for the death of the schoolmistress.
"For one thing, they called me too late, much too late," he said;
"when the woman was almost in her death agony. For another, she had
taken a quantity of arsenic which was not large enough to produce
vomiting, but which was too small to cause merely a colic and be done
with it. Where I made the mistake was in waiting so long before
sending for the priest. I did it with the best intentions, so as not
to frighten her and hoping we might yet pull her through. When
extreme unction was administered she had no senses left to know what
was going on."
"So that," said Agonde maliciously, "where you are called in,
either the soul or the body is sure to meet with a trip."
The company applauded the joke, and there followed funereal jests
mingled with expressions of pity. Clodio Genday, the creditor of the
deceased, moved about uneasily in his chair. What stupid
conversation, _canario_! Let them talk of more cheerful subjects!
And they talked of very cheerful and satisfactory subjects
indeed. Señorito de Romero had promised to put a telegraph-office in
Vilamorta; and the newspapers were saying that, owing to the
increasing importance of the viticultural interests of the Border, a
branch railroad was needed for which the engineers were soon coming
to survey the ground.