The storm had passed. Calm had returned to the world.
Monsalvat was living in a sanatorium at Almagro, to which his friends
had taken him. Tranquil and silent, he spent nearly the entire day in
the small park, with its lofty eucalyptus groves, thinking of nothing,
trying not to think. He was new-born. What did the past matter? He was
going to look ahead! Life lay before, not behind, him! Even Nacha no
longer existed; or rather, had ceased to exist for him! With her, a
whole universe--all that he knew and loved, all that his feelings and
thought had created in him--had vanished from his heart and mind. Not
that he denied the reality of the past year; but, the storm weathered,
he found himself looking at a new world, and he could not live in its
presence with the same opinions and feelings as before.
Peace had come to him; but he lacked something that he loved even more
than peace: freedom; and now that he felt sane and sound, he wanted to
escape from his present surroundings. Moreover, two inoffensive maniacs
had recently come to the sanatorium. Their presence annoyed Monsalvat,
for he could not see that they differed very much from himself. At
times he wondered if his attempts to reform the world might not become
a mania also, and bring him down to the level of these harmless
lunatics.
His friends came but rarely to see him, for the sanatorium was a little
distance out of town. Their consciences were clear since they were
paying Monsalvat's expenses.
One afternoon, however, after Monsalvat's complete recovery, Ruiz de
Castro and Torres called on him. They sat in the garden, talking and
for the first time since his illness, touched on the forbidden subject.
Monsalvat had perhaps led them on, by confiding to them his curious
sensation of having just come to life, as fresh and new as a new-born
baby. With a view to determining his friend's actual state of mind,
Torres observed:
"So you see how useless all those efforts of yours really are...."
"Not at all," Monsalvat declared. "It is never useless to try to help
people."
"Granted that you help others," de Castro broke in, "just the same, you
did yourself a lot of harm!"
"You are quite mistaken. I have done myself a great deal of good--so
much good that today I am not the discontented, dejected man I was
a year ago. I don't know what I shall do tomorrow; but I know that
if I am really a different man, I shall owe the transformation to my
idealistic view of life."
"So you're going right on with that fool business!" Torres exclaimed.
"I fail to see the new man in you. On the contrary, I should say your
trouble is that life doesn't teach you anything. After a year of
failure--failure in every sense of the word--you are still planning to
reform the world, and all by yourself!"
Monsalvat was silent a moment. Then he answered calmly:
"It is life--not my failures, because I didn't fail--that has taught me
how powerless individual effort is. I believe now that not only would I
fail to reform the world, but also that a million men setting about it
each on his own hook, as I did, would fail too."
"Well, at last!" exclaimed Ruiz de Castro. "It's about time you became
convinced that the world can't be changed."
"I didn't say that. On the contrary I consider it more capable of
reform now than ever it was. But I also know that a program is
necessary, and a method, and training! I know now that the idealism
of one individual, the action of one man, does not help much to bring
about ultimate success. But I do not go back on individual ideals,
individual accomplishment; because it is the individual who provides
the impulse, the forward push, the motive power, if you like, without
which nothing can move. The only trouble is that all these energies are
isolated, uncoordinated.... However, you see my point: before you can
have action to accomplish a purpose, you must have a vision of what the
purpose is. The ideal precedes and accompanies the accomplishment of
reform--that you understand! The world must be reformed, must be built
up again rather, from its foundations. We must go about such a matter
slowly--but not too slowly--and so, little by little...! But every so
often the idealist, the dreamer, the madman and the fool, all those who
fight the great battle with their hearts, must give a vigorous thrust
forward!"
His two friends looked at one another.... A hopeless case!
"But why so many reforms in the world? Just so that you can marry a
prostitute?" Torres brutally rejoined.
Monsalvat did not reply; and the doctor, ashamed of his outbreak, tried
to make up for it by a show of affection. Monsalvat sat beside him on a
bench; and as Torres went on to trivial matters, he patted his patient
on the shoulder now and then.
After a while they went away, none too well pleased. Monsalvat saw
plainly that everything about him--his opinions, his recent life, his
feelings--were compromising these friends of his. They were kindly and
relatively generous fellows, but he knew that they were weak in the
presence of social pressure. However much they might care for him, if
they should have to choose between him and society, they would without
question side with the latter.
The moment this became clear to him, he thought of nothing but of
making his escape. He did not want his friends to know where he was
going. If he was compromising them he would spare them the trouble and
the annoyance of having to desert him. He would desert them. He would
rather appear ungrateful than accept the unpleasant situation which is
bound to arise when people want to cut a friendship short, and have
not the courage to do it. Monsalvat wished to be free also; free, not
economically,--for he could earn a living somehow--but free from those
friends who constituted the only bond still tying him to society.
One day he fled from the sanatorium. As he possessed only the clothes
he was wearing and his pockets were empty, he walked from Almagro to
the capital. It was dawn when he started out. The limpid sky deepened
into a blue which still showed a few stars. In the streets the shadows
were slowly drawing back into such retreats as the trees offered,
hanging veil-like about their trunks and branches, and in the distance,
out towards the harbor, a delicate rose light had risen to view. What
an extraordinary sensation, this first contact with living things,
after months of isolation! How innocent life seemed, and young! Oh,
surely, the world was new, it had been born again!
Passing along the solitary streets, he lived in his dream, feeling
neither cold nor fatigue. Everything had been made over. The sky was
clearer than before, objects had an unknown beauty, men were living in
harmony.
Then it occurred to him that so it must always seem to one who wanders
alone under a sky, and amid colors that offer love to a world awakening
to the day; and then he remembered that of all men, only the humble of
the earth see this dawn-light, and carry something of its tenderness in
their hearts. Was it this, perhaps, which kept them from noticing the
approach of another dawn, already sending its heralds across the sky?
He had left the tree-bordered avenues now. The city was awakening.
Poor folk, laborers for the most part, passed him now at every step.
House doors were opening. The deep blue of the sky had given place to a
luminous clarity, and the world was rosy for a moment, enveloped in a
shining softness. Then the sun rose, and morning filled with sounds and
lights, joys and sorrows. Life! Monsalvat took a deep breath; for it
seemed that with this air he breathed in freedom too. He felt that he
was sound and good.
But suddenly fatigue overtook him. He tried to distance it, but in
vain. It hung on his legs, weighting down his body, making it hard
for him to walk. When he reached the Plaza del Once he sat down on a
bench, and rested there for an hour, dozing a little. Then he began to
consider his situation. Where should he go? First of all he must find
lodgings. In a miserable hotel on the Plaza, they refused to give him
a room because he had no luggage; and be met with the same refusal in
other cheap inns. So the morning passed. Finally he bethought him of a
Spaniard whose wife kept a boarding house on the Plaza Lavalle, and for
whom he had once done a favor; so he set out for this address.
It was already past noon and he began to feel the pangs of hunger. He
tried to pass quickly by the Court buildings in the Plaza Lavalle,
anxious to escape the notice of his former colleagues. But suddenly, as
he was crossing the street, he saw in front of him a shabbily dressed
individual who was bowing to him with exaggerated servility. It was
none other than Moreno, still haunting the courts in quest of copying
to do, or errands to run. Monsalvat inquired after his wife and Irene.
"Oh, Doctor, misfortune has taken possession of my hearth and home!
Irene--but why speak of past troubles? Some other time, Doctor, I'll
tell you this melancholy story. Now we are struggling, with a little
success, I may say, against the cruel persecutions of the Fates. My
wife has a position as janitress in a tenement house. It's a little
distance out, over Barracas way, near the bridge. But we manage to keep
alive."
As he went on talking it occurred to Monsalvat that he had found a
solution for his problem. He asked Moreno if there were any unoccupied
rooms in the house he spoke of.
"Yes, Doctor, there are. But why this question?"
"Because I wish to take one of them at once."
Moreno stood open-mouthed with astonishment. Then he protested in a
welter of words. He could never permit Doctor Monsalvat, that light of
the Law, to live in the wretched hovel which he inhabited. Monsalvat,
however, insisted that that was his affair. Moreno concluded that
Monsalvat had chosen that section of the city to carry out some kind
of philanthropical scheme, and consented to take him home. Besides,
he was sure to profit eventually by Monsalvat's presence in the same
house! A _peso_ here and there, for a quiet little session in a
saloon now and then, to say nothing of the pretexts he could find for
borrowing--urgent creditors, need of clothing, food, and so on!
Moreno was giving his address when some words of Monsalvat's thrust
him into unfathomable depths of bewilderment. The doctor was actually
asking him for carfare! Moreno stood transfixed, his arms outspread, a
look of terror on his sallow face.
"You're surely joking, Doctor!" he exclaimed, incredulous. "Can it be
that Moreno, poor pariah that he is, Moreno, stepson of Providence,
should be asked to lend a--a nickel--to the learned and illustrious
Doctor Fernando Monsalvat?"
He looked at his admired protector and saw that now, at least, the man
was not to be envied. He was on the point of taking back what he had
said about a room to let in his tenement house. Finally, in a burst of
generosity, he took a dime from his pocket and gave it to Monsalvat.
As the latter walked away, Moreno stood a full quarter of an hour,
his arms crossed on his chest, meditating and philosophizing on the
vicissitudes of human destiny.
Monsalvat took up his abode in the tenement. He wrote to his father's
wife, suggesting a cash compromise for the rights to his father's
property that he might claim from the surmised existence of an early
will, rights that Ruiz de Castro had always urged him to assert. As
long as he had enough to live on, he had seen no reason why he should
claim any of the Monsalvat property. His letter was modest in its tone,
intimating that only a distressing financial situation could have
persuaded him to bring up the question of his father's testamentary
provisions. Moreno delivered the letter.
His father's wife had never been kindly disposed toward him, had in
fact injured him in every way she could. Determined that her daughters
should know nothing of their father's illegitimate family, she had
never permitted him even to meet his half-sisters. They had been led
to believe that Fernando Monsalvat was a distant relative. The letter
itself remained unanswered; but its recipient sent back a fifty _peso_
bill. Money meant nothing to Monsalvat and, always slow to perceive bad
intentions in others, he did not catch the offensive tone of the reply.
On the contrary, he acknowledged the remittance in cordial fashion, and
felt quite happy about having received it. He purchased a few articles
of clothing, paid his rent, and rewarded Moreno for his services.
During the next month he lived on the good will of Moreno's wife, who
let him stay on without paying, telling the landlord that the room
occupied by her protégé was without a tenant. She also saw to it that
he had something to eat, giving him whatever was left over from her own
table; and that was little enough.
Meanwhile he wrote articles and sent them out to newspapers and
periodicals. He was convinced that he now had something to say, and
decided henceforth to give his energies to writing. One review accepted
an article, sending him thirty _pesos_, which he at once handed over to
his protectress.
Two months passed, two strange months during which he lived indoors,
entirely shut up within himself, far from everyone and everything.
Often he spent the day in bed, talking only to Moreno, who frequently
came to provide him with conversation. More than once the man recalled
Irene's tragic story; but Monsalvat listened to it with interest every
time, stirred by the curious spectacle of this father, who in telling
of his daughter's sufferings, lost something of his absurdity; and not
unmindful of the part he himself had played in the girl's unhappy life.
According to Moreno, Irene had fallen in love with someone who could
not share her passion; as a result she had for several weeks been
crazed with grief. At the slightest provocation she would fly into a
rage, threaten her mother, insult Moreno, attack the children. Then a
suitor presented himself, a young man who worked in a barber-shop near
by. He was an ugly, dark-skinned, almost grotesque fellow; but Irene
accepted him, no one knew why, for plainly she cared nothing for him.
However, someone in the neighborhood told her that her betrothed had
a mistress. As a matter of fact he had put an end to these relations;
but Irene, humiliated, hurt and angered by the deception, went out of
her head, called a man in from the street, told him what had happened,
and offered herself to him. Her suitor heard gossip of the incident,
rushed to Irene's room, and tried to shoot her. He missed his aim, was
arrested, tried, and imprisoned. Then Irene ran away. All that Moreno
could discover about her after that was that every week she visited the
fellow at the prison. How she made a living, he did not know.
"She's lost, doctor, lost!" Moreno would sob. "The flower of the
family! So good, and such a worker--as pretty as they make them! And
to think that I am the guilty one, I, most contemptible of drunkards!
There you see the consequences of vice--for my poor little girl is the
child of alcohol! That's why she turned out as she did--my fault!"
And he covered his unwashed face with his two hands, and occupied
Monsalvat's only chair while the latter dressed.
One day Monsalvat decided to go out. He had just put on a summer
overcoat--directly over his shirt, for his jacket and waistcoat he had
pawned--when Moreno's wife came in to announce some ladies who were
asking to see him. He looked sternly at the woman. He was sure she had
reported the sad case of "the poor fellow starving on the top floor" to
some charitable society! He went out to the _patio_ resolved to pay no
attention to the ladies.
Noisy outcries were coming from one of the rooms--a woman's voice
cursing these charity visitors who had refused her any help, because
she had a child and wasn't married, and screaming denunciations of
charity organizations in general and of the poor wretches who toadied
to these fine ladies so as to get money out of them. The visitors
seemed neither angered nor intimidated. Evidently they were accustomed
to such scenes.
"Is what that woman says true?" asked Monsalvat.
"Why I know you!" exclaimed the other--the plump lady who, at a dinner
at Ruiz de Castro's, had been so oratorical in her defense of the
established order.
Monsalvat shook hands coldly with both ladies. They tried to conceal
the surprise and pain his obviously distressful circumstances caused
them.
"Is what that woman says true?" Monsalvat inquired again.
"Yes, Monsalvat, but--"
He paid no attention to Isabel's excuses.
"Then this woman is quite right. You have no charity in you. You are
doing this kind of thing for selfish motives, and nothing else--just to
occupy your time, fill conspicuous positions in charity organizations!"
Launched on this theme, he drove harshly, savagely ahead, as though
executing judgment. Wrapped in his overcoat which was too loose for
him, now and then moving his shoulders in a gesture of scorn, his
eyes wide open, and seemingly larger so emaciated was his face, he
presented an extraordinary spectacle as he denounced these stylish,
distinguished, perfumed ladies, so out of place in that dreary
courtyard of the slums. They listened to him without a word. Isabel,
indeed, unnoticed by Monsalvat, softly stole from the group and went
up to the woman whose outcries had started the scene, giving her all
the money she had in her purse. Nor did Monsalvat observe that when she
returned she removed a glove and took a ring from her finger. Suddenly,
and quite humbly she said:
"Here, Monsalvat, take this, please sell it; and give the money to this
woman."
Monsalvat took the ring.
"And if you--"
She looked at him fearful of offending: he was shaking his head.
Drawing him aside, she began to talk with him more in confidence.
"You need to, Monsalvat! Please accept part of the ring's value! We all
have to live. Don't think us so bad--When I spoke as I did that night,
you remember, it was because I knew nothing about life--I too have
suffered since then, and now I understand many things...."
Though Monsalvat was unyielding on this point, he shook hands with
his callers in far more friendly fashion, and left the building
accompanied by Moreno, who could not get over his amazement at what was
going on before his eyes. He did not lose much time before offering,
unsuccessfully, to sell the ring himself. Monsalvat saw that as a
matter of fact these two women like many others of their class were not
thoroughly bad as he had believed. If they appeared to disadvantage it
was because of the atmosphere of gross selfishness in which they had
been brought up, in which they had lived all their lives. The bad in
them was not an individual thing inherent in their characters, but the
result of prevailing ideas, the collective product of a self-satisfied
and unintelligent, rather than unfeeling, society.
They took a street-car going towards the business section of the city.
Monsalvat was glad of Moreno's company; for a sudden fit of weakness
had come over him. He had scarcely been able to walk the three blocks
to the car line, so unsteady were his legs under him. In the tram he
felt quite nauseated. Houses and sidewalks were being pushed by some
mysterious force out of their true plane, and were rising, sinking,
retreating. The car was crowded. Moreno moved forward to find a seat,
leaving Monsalvat sitting in the rear of the tram.
They were passing through Piedras Street. At the corner of Méjico,
the man beside him rose to give his place to a woman. Monsalvat did
not look at her, merely noticing that she was in mourning. In a few
moments, however, he felt that she was looking at him. An acquaintance
perhaps who had recognized him! And he grew uneasily conscious of his
bedraggled appearance. Then he reflected that with his week's growth of
beard and his thread-bare coat, his startling emaciation, his whole air
of weakness and sickness, he must be quite secure. No one would know
him. The thought consoled him, but he turned carelessly towards the
window, so as to hide his face.
Suddenly he heard a soft voice murmuring his name. He turned pale, and
his hands began to tremble. A whole row of houses plunged several yards
into the ground, changing color as they sank. The car seemed to lurch
to one side threatening to fall over on itself.
"It's so long since we have seen one another," the voice was
saying. "My mother died, and I am living in Tacuarí Street, in our
boarding house. I have been there some time. My sister runs the
house--and I--"
Monsalvat had regained a more normal state of consciousness, but he
said nothing. He could not speak. Nacha's voice was like a music
infinitely sweet, echoing in his ears as in a delicious dream,
something vague and hazy like a memory from a past beyond any but the
vaguest sort of remembering....
Finally he looked into her eyes.
In his stained clothing, in his pitiful weakness Nacha read his tragic
story at a glance. Here was a sick man! His eyes had lost the keenness
they once possessed. They were faded and glazed, apparently incapable
of concentrating on any object.
As the car crossed the Avenida de Mayo a fellow of very ordinary
appearance, apparently a rustic, came up to Nacha and touched her on
the shoulder. She introduced him to Monsalvat.
"We are to be married soon," she said. "I met him in the boarding house
where I live. We are going to the country, to his ranch--"
Nacha's fiancé was looking at Monsalvat with evident mistrust, and
showed his impatience to get off the car.
"Where do you live?" asked Nacha, as they were leaving.
"Where do I live?" he exclaimed, as though that were the most singular
of inquiries.
Then he grew pale again; and again his hands began to tremble.
"I want you to be a witness at our marriage," she pleaded as she
pressed his hand with a tenderness he could not remember ever to have
felt before.
"Come, come, we must be going!" the fiancé protested with ill-concealed
annoyance.
"You can't refuse, Monsalvat. Please! Be good to me for this last
time--Tell me where you live!"
Monsalvat heard a voice giving his address.
"He lives in my house, Madame. I am Moreno, the attorney, at your
service. I consider myself a faithful friend of this illustrious
gentleman. I belong to the ancient family of the Morenos of Chivilcoy;
and though the unkind Fates...."
Monsalvat no longer felt the pressure of that warm hand.
Nacha, on the arm of her future husband, had stepped down from the car.