The first act was finished. Enrique Darlés went down to the foyer. His
provincial curiosity drew him thither. He felt an eagerness to absorb
the vast, motley spirit of the city. He wanted to behold many things, to
school himself, strengthen himself with all these new impressions. Above
all he wanted to feel the life-currents of Madrid beating about his
migratory feet.
A few minutes before he had been sitting up there in the "peanut
gallery" of the Teatro Real. And from that vulgar place he had beheld
the theater with its vast ranges of seats and its boxes all drenched
under the blinding dazzle of hundreds of electric lights. The theater
had looked to him like some rare and beautiful garden; or maybe it had
been a kind of gigantic nosegay, where the sparkling diamonds on women's
throats had seemed dew-drops caught on great silk petals, on glossy
velvets, on white, bare shoulders.
So entirely absorbed had he been in this spectacle that he had hardly
paid any attention at all to what the orchestra and the actors had been
about. Every other emotion had been shut from his soul by these dazzling
sight-impressions, that had never wearied him. The wonderful, human
garden spread out below him had exhaled rare perfumes. A sensual and
soporific kind of vapor had risen all about him--an incense blent of the
odors of new-mown hay, of jasmine, musk and Parmesan violets, of
daintily-bathed women's flesh, of wonderful lingerie. And he had studied
all this luminous picture, resplendent as the climax of a brilliant
play. Above all he had studied the women, with their sensuous bodies;
their unashamed bosoms that had been the targets of analytical eagerness
through many opera-glasses; their gay and laughing faces, whereof the
beauty had been enhanced by the placid security of wealth. He had
observed their deftly combed and curled little heads, their jewel-laden
hands--hands that had waved big feather-fans to and fro over the gauzy
stuff of their gowns.
Enrique wanted to see all this wonderful world at close range, so he
went down to the foyer. And there he stopped, just a bit ashamed of
himself. For the first time he was beginning to realize that his
out-of-date slouch hat, his skimpy black suit that made him look like a
high-school boy, and his old boots that needed a shine were greatly out
of place. He felt that his flowing necktie, which he had tried to knot
up with student-like carelessness, was just as ugly as all the rest of
him. Correctly dressed men were passing all about him, with elegant
frock-coats that bore flowers in their buttonholes and with impeccable
Tuxedos. Women were regally trailing grosgrain and watered-silk skirts
over the soft, red carpet. It all seemed a majestic symphony of silks,
brocades and splendid furs, of wonderful ankles glimpsed through the
perverse mystery of open-work stockings, of fascinating adornments, of
bracelets whose bangles tinkled their golden song on the ermine
whiteness of soft arms.
Abashed, feeling himself wholly out of place, young Darlés
self-consciously strolled over to look at a bust of Gayarre--a bronze
bust that showed the man with short, up-tossed hair. Its energy made one
think of Othello. Quite at once, a hand dropped familiarly on Darlés'
shoulder. The young man turned.
"Don Manuel! You? What a surprise!"
Don Manuel was a man of middle height, thick-set and just a trifle bald.
He looked about fifty. A heavy, curling red beard covered his
full-blooded, fleshy, prosperous cheeks and chin. He wore evening-dress.
His short, thick, epicurean nose supported gold-bowed spectacles.
"Well, my boy," he exclaimed. "You, here?"
Enrique blushed violently, without exactly understanding why, as he
answered:
"Yes, I came to--to see----"
Hardly knowing what he was about, he took off his hat, with that respect
we learn even as children, when confronted by our parents' friends. Now
he stood there, holding the hat with both hands across his breast. Don
Manuel, you know, was a deputy in the National Assembly. The great man
made Enrique put his hat on, again.
"What are you doing in Madrid?" asked he.
"Studying."
"Law?"
"No, sir. Medicine."
"That's a first-rate profession. What year are you in?"
"Freshman," answered Darlés, and smiled in a shamefaced sort of way. He
knew his answers were short and clumsy, and the feeling of shabbiness
oppressed him more than ever. Don Manuel glanced about him, with a kind
of arrogant ease. Two or three times he murmured: "I'm waiting for
somebody." Then he began to talk to the student again, asking him about
his father and the political boss of the home town. Darlés kept on
answering every question just the same way:
"No change, down there. Everything's all right."
And again the conversation was broken off by Don Manuel's expectant
glancing about for the friend he was to meet.
The deputy asked, after a minute or two:
"You're living in a boarding-house, aren't you?"
"No, sir."
"Where, then?"
"In Calle Ballesta. I've rented a little inside room, on the fourth
floor. It costs me thirteen pesetas a month, and I eat at a little
tavern on the same street."
"I see you know how to rub along. You can save money, if you're willing
to fight with landladies. After you've got thoroughly used to Madrid,
nothing can make you ever go back home. Madrid is wonderful! With money,
a clever man can have all kinds of amusement here."
Don Manuel added, using that confidential air with which fools and
parvenus try to impress people they think beneath them:
"See here! You're not a boy, any more. And I--hang it all!--you can't
call me old, yet. I don't see my friend showing up, anywhere, so we can
have a little talk. I've got--I've got something bothering me. You
understand?"
Enrique nodded.
"You know her? Alicia Pardo?"
"No, sir."
"She's very popular, in the gay set. A beauty! At the Casino we call her
'Little Goldie'."
His whole expression suddenly changed. His eyes began to gleam, with
joyful gluttony. The congested redness of his cheeks grew deeper, and he
turned round, stroking his beard and straightening up his top-hat with
the vanity of a fool who thinks people are admiring him.
The long, sharp trilling of electric bells announced that the second act
was about to begin. Everybody began crowding back into the theater; and
now, in the solitude of the foyer, the bust of Gayarre seemed higher.
Don Manuel exclaimed:
"Come along with me. I'll introduce you to Alicia."
Don Manuel noticed the student's dismayed look, and added:
"That's all right about your not having a dress-suit on. You can stay in
the rear of the box."
He started off with a firm step, trying to assume the ease and grace of
youth. Enrique followed him without a word. He felt both happy and
afraid.
They reached the outer box, that Don Manuel judged good enough for the
young fellow. The deputy murmured:
"This is all right, isn't it? I'll see you later. You can see
everything here."
Enrique made no answer. The play was already going on, and in the
religious stillness of the theater the chorus of the piece was rising in
triumphal harmony. It was one of those pleasant Italian operas,
freighted for all of us with memories of youth. Darlés ventured to raise
one of the heavy curtains just a little, that shut the outer box off
from the inner one. A young woman was sitting there, with her back to
him and her elbows on the railing of the box. She was all in white. He
could see the tempting outlines of her firm hips, beneath the childish
insufficiency of her girdle. Her shoulders were plump and of flawless
perfection. On the snow of her bare neck her blonde hair, tinged with
red, shadowed tawny reflections. Two splendid emeralds trembled, green
as drops of absinthe, in the rosy lobes of her small, fine ears.
Don Manuel was beside her. Darlés noted that Alicia and the deputy had
very little to say to each other. Suddenly she turned her head with an
inquisitive air, graceful and fascinating; and the student received full
in the eyes the shock of two large, green, luminous pupils--living
emeralds, indeed. Her scrutiny of him was short, searching and curious;
it changed to an expression of scorn.
Darlés flushed red and began to tremble. He let the curtain fall, and
took refuge at the rear of the outer box. His first impulse was to
escape; but presently he changed his mind, for it seemed to him more
than a little rude to take French leave. The student thought he was
bored, but in reality he was afraid. In spite of his agitation, he
waited. And bit by bit the magic spell of the opera took possession of
him and freed him from embarrassment.
The piece now going on was one of those romantic, wholly lyric poems in
which the actors are everything. The environment about them, the sense
of objectivity, played no rôle. The 'cellos, sighing with lassitude and
pity, lamented in gentle accord; the violins cut through the harmony
with sharp cries of rebellion and gay arpeggios. And the voice of the
tenor rose above that many-toned, protean, orchestrated poem with warm
persuasion, wailing into inconsolable laments.
Enrique got up again, and once more timidly drew apart the curtains of
the outer box. Nobody noticed him. Alicia still sat there with her back
toward him, transfixed by the fairy magic of the opera. Her emotions
seemed almost to transpire through the white skin of her back and
shoulders. Enrique Darlés once more began to tremble. His ideas grew
fantastic. When he had seen the young woman's eyes, they had appeared
two emeralds; and now the emeralds twinkling beneath the blaze of her
hair seemed to be looking at him like two pupils. But this absurdity
soon faded from his mind. The orchestra was languorously beginning a
_ritornelle_; and all through the main motif independent musical phrases
were strung like beads. These slid into chromatics, rising, beating up
to lose themselves in one vast chord of agony supreme. And, in that huge
lamentation, there mingled depths of disillusion, whispers of hope,
desires and wearinesses, laughter and grimaces--the whole of life,
indeed, seemed blent there, swift-passing, tragic, knotted in the
bitterness of everything that ever has been and that still must be.
Enrique sat down again. Nameless suffering clutched his throat, so that
he felt a profound desire for tears. Like a motion-picture film, both
past and present flashed across his vision in swift flight. His poor,
old father and the little chemist's shop at home appeared before
him--the miserable shop that hardly eked out a penurious living for the
old man. Then he saw himself, as soon as his studies should be finished,
condemned to go back to that hateful, monotonous little town. There he
would labor to pay back his parents everything they had given him; and
there all his years of youth, all his love-illusions, all his artistic
inspirations would soon fade. There he must bury all the finest of his
soul. Then, no doubt, he would marry and have children; and then--well,
life would stretch out into a long, straight line, unwavering, with
never any depths or heights, lost in the monotony of a blank desert.
What could be more terrible than to know just what we are destined to be
in ten years, in twenty years, in thirty?
The poor student tugged at his hair, in desperation, and tears blurred
his sight. How he would have loved to be rich, to have no family, to be
the sport of the unforeseen! For is not the unforeseen pregnant with all
the vicissitudes of poetry? He felt the blood of conquerors pulsing in
his arteries, the energies of bold adventurers who dare brave perils and
emprise, and leave their bones on far-off shores. This fighting strain,
this crave for danger, filled him with boundless melancholy as he
reflected that he must live on, on to old age, and do no differently
than all other men do, year by year. Destiny meant for him no more than
this: to follow a costly, hard and tedious career merely that he might
make a pittance, get a wife and find some hole or corner to live
in--some poor, mean little house in a world of palaces, some commonplace
love in a world throbbing with so many passions, some paltry dole in a
world crowded with so many fortunes!
Whipped by the music, the foolish grief of Enrique Darlés broke into
sobs.
Now the second act was done, and Don Manuel and Alicia came into the
outer box. The young woman's eyes--green, eloquent eyes--filled with
astonishment.
"What?" she asked. "You're crying?"
Before the student could answer, she turned to her companion and said:
"What do you think about that, now? He's been crying!"
In shame, Enrique answered:
"I don't know. I--I'm upset. But--yes, maybe----"
She smiled, and asked:
"You've got a sweetheart, haven't you?"
"No, no, Señorita."
"Well then, why----?"
"It's all foolishness, I know, but every time I hear music--even bad
music--it makes me sad."
"That's funny! _I_ don't feel that way!"
The red-faced, thick-set Don Manuel shrugged his square shoulders as
much as to say it mattered nothing, and introduced them to each other.
Enrique's feverish hand held for a moment the cool, soft hand--snow and
velvet--of Little Goldie. Then all three sat down on the same divan,
Alicia between the two men. Don Manuel drew out his cigar-case.
"Smoke?" asked he.
"No, thanks."
"Good boy!" exclaimed the deputy. "You haven't any vices, have you?"
"What?" asked Alicia. "You don't smoke?"
"No, Señorita."
"How funny you are! Well, _I_ do!"
Enrique blushed again, and looked down. He saw quite clearly that this
little detail made the beggarliness of his clothes even more noticeable.
Women always seem to like a man to smoke. Tobacco is their best perfume.
The student felt furious at himself. To regain countenance before this
girl he would gladly have consumed all the Egyptian or Turkish
cigarettes in Don Manuel's case. But it was too late, now. Opportunity
was gone; opportunity, that master-magic which endues everything with
grace and worth.
The young woman's self-possession was quite English in its cool
perfection as she lighted up and fell to smoking, with one leg crossed
over the other. She leaned her shoulders against the dun-hued back of
the divan. And now, all about her diabolical, reddish-gold hair, the
cigarette-smoke mounted thinly on the quiet air, and wove blue veils.
Darlés observed her, from the corner of his eye. Her face was aquiline,
with wide nostrils, with a little blood-red, cruel mouth and a low
forehead that gave the impression of hard, instinctive selfishness. Her
big, greenish eyes peered out with boredom and command. Her whole
expression was cold, keen, probing, pitiless.
A string of seed-pearls girdled her soft, rosy throat. Her fingers
blazed with the fire of her rings. Her nails were sharp as claws. In the
well-harmonized rhythms of her every attitude, in all her perfect
modelings, in every nuance and detail of her--wonderful plaything for
men's dalliance--Enrique, untutored country boy though he was, discerned
a supremely selfish ego. He realized this woman was one of those
emotionless creatures of willfulness, wholly self-centered, who are
incapable of sorrow.
Don Manuel's mood was brusque, with that brusquerie of a rich, healthy
man who has a pretty woman in tow, as he exclaimed:
"Well now, Enrique, how do you like my Little Goldie? I bet you never
saw anything like her, back home!" Triumphantly he added: "She doesn't
cost much, either. When I first met her, I asked: 'What shall I give
you?' She answered: 'A box at the Teatro Real.' Why, that's a bagatelle!
Only a little more than thirteen hundred pesetas for fourteen plays. And
here we are. I tell you the little lady doesn't ask much."
Darlés answered nothing. His emotions choked him--the novelty of this
new world that till now he had not even known by hearsay; a topsy-turvy,
unmoral world where, as in art, beauty formed the only criterion of
worth; a world where women sold themselves for an opera-box.
All this time Alicia Pardo had been studying Enrique. The downright
frankness of her look was alarming in its amusement. Enrique's extreme
youth; the simplicity of his answers; the Apollo-like perfection of his
features; the obsidian hue of his wavy hair which marked him as from the
south of Spain; the black ardor of eyes, that in their eager curiosity
contrasted with the boyish smoothness of his face; yes, even his
proneness to blush, had all greatly interested her. Above all, Alicia
found her attention wakened by the artistic spirit in him, which had
wept at the sound of the music. Alicia had never seen men weep except
through jealousy, or through some other even baser and more ignoble
emotion. Therefore in the tears of this boy she discovered something
wonderful and great.
And through her little head, all filled with curious whims, the idea
drifted that it would be passing strange and sweet to let herself be
loved by such a boy. Suddenly she exclaimed:
"What are _you_ doing in Madrid?"
"I'm studying."
"Ah, indeed? A student, eh? I read a novel, a while ago, that I liked
very much indeed. The hero was a student. Quite a coincidence, eh?"
Darlés nodded "Yes." The childish simplicity of the remark amazed him.
Goldie went on:
"How old are you?"
"Twenty."
"Honest and true?"
"Fact! Why? Maybe I look older?"
"No, you don't. Younger, I think. I'm not quite nineteen, but _I_ do
look older."
Don Manuel had opened a newspaper, and was reading the latest market
quotations. Alicia felt a desire to know the boy's name. She asked him
what it was.
"Enrique?" she repeated. "That's a pretty name. Very!"
Then she grew silent a while, remembering all the Enriques she had ever
known--and there had been plenty of them. She recalled they'd all been
nice. Thus, reviewing her life-history, she reached her childish years;
quiet years of peace, lived in the Virgilian simplicity of the country.
And she seemed to see in this boy, innocent, healthy and sun-browned,
something of what she herself had been.
Quite beside himself with new emotions, ecstatic and open-mouthed, the
student looked at her, too, like a man studying some unusually beautiful
work of art.
Now many footfalls echoed in the corridors again and bells began to
ring. A flood of spectators began to fill up the seats. The third act
was going to begin. Alicia and Don Manuel got up.
"Going to stay?" the deputy asked Darlés.
"No, thanks."
"Why not?"
"Because--well, I've got to go to bed early. To-morrow I'm going to get
up early."
He felt so sure that Alicia might be able to love him, and so
overpowered by the happy embarrassment of this thought, that he wanted
to be alone, to enjoy it more fully. Don Manuel added:
"Well, suit yourself. Any time you want to see me, don't go to my house.
I'm never there. Better go to Alicia's. You'll find me there every
evening, from six to eight."
They took leave of each other. Enrique turned his head, as he left the
box, and his eyes met the girl's. Their look was a meeting of caresses,
as if they had given each other a kiss and made a rendezvous. It was one
of those terrible looks, capable of changing the whole current of a
man's life--a look such as a man will sometimes receive in his youth,
only to find it hounding and pursuing him his whole life long.