Alicia seemed to ponder. She peered at her friend.
"Do you understand this?" asked she. "It's from Enrique Darlés. Remember
him? A young chap--Manuel's friend."
Then she asked Teodora:
"Who brought this?"
"An old woman."
"What kind of a looking woman?"
"I don't know. Well--she looked like a janitress."
Alicia lacked decision how to act. The curt authority of those few words
had created a good deal of an impression on her. This was the letter of
a man; children cannot speak thus. An impatient hand, perhaps a
desperate one, had written with vigorous letters the one word, "Urgent,"
on the envelope.
"What shall we do?" asked she.
"When he summons you, that way," judged Candelas, "something serious
must have happened to him. Well----"
Alicia looked at her watch. It was just six. Without upsetting the
program for the evening, she could still afford the luxury of a little
condescension. She ordered the coachman:
"Number X, Calle Ballesta. Hurry!"
For a moment the two young women remained silent. Suddenly Candelas
exclaimed:
"Have you seen what the papers have been saying about the robbery in
Calle Mayor, last night?"
"No. What about it?"
"Oh, a jeweler's shop was robbed."
"A jeweler's!" repeated Alicia.
Her face assumed an expression of unspeakable anxiety and alarm. She
remembered the emerald necklace she had spoken of, so often; and she
remembered the evening, too, when Candelas and she had come across
Enrique standing motionless in front of the shop window. Suddenly the
student's sad face seemed to rise up in her memory. She seemed to be
hearing his last words: "You've never proved me. You don't know what
kind of a man I am!" And those words, that she had never paid any
attention to, now sounded in her ears with prophetic tones.
"What did they steal?" she asked.
"I can't say. I only just glanced over the paper."
"And who's the thief?"
"No one knows."
"Haven't they caught him?"
"No. He was too quick for them."
"And he got away?"
"Yes."
The mystery surrounding the criminal increased Alicia's uneasiness.
Still, it was an agreeable sensation, which caused her a certain vanity.
"Suppose the robbery really has been done for me!" she thought. She felt
a proud, unhealthy emotion, like that of man when he meets his friends
and they know some woman has killed herself for love of him.
Candelas, who could read Alicia's thoughts, exclaimed:
"Strange if the criminal were Enrique Darlés!"
"I don't think it could be!"
"Well, now--it might."
"That would be a terribly bad thing for him to have done."
"Of course!"
"But if he really did do it, I don't care! Let the fool suffer for it.
Did _I_ tell him to? When you come right down to it, even if I had, what
the devil? The one that does a thing is more to blame than the one that
asks him to!"
The carriage stopped, and Alicia and Candelas got out. They made their
way in under a poverty-stricken doorway. Candelas called:
"Janitress! Janitress!"
No answer.
"Follow me," said Alicia. "I know the way."
She started along, daintily holding up her pearl-hued petticoat and
shaking the big plume of her hat with a graceful motion. They went
through a damp, ugly yard, then another, and began to climb a high
stairway. The silken frou-frou of their skirts and the tinkling of their
bangled bracelets broke the stillness. They reached the fourth story,
and stopped in front of a door that stood ajar. Alicia tapped with her
knuckles. No one answered. She knocked again. A voice, the voice of
Enrique, feebly answered from within:
"Come!"
The girls found themselves in a dark room that stank of blood. Alicia
could not repress a coarse exclamation of disgust.
"How sickening! Phew!" she cried. "What's this smell?"
At the end of the room, the silhouette of the bed was dimly visible.
From that bed, Enrique Darlés stammered:
"There, on the little table--you'll find matches. Light--the lamp."
Candelas stood motionless, near the door, afraid of stumbling over
something. When Alicia had made a light, the two friends cast a rapid
glance about the room. The only furniture was a writing-table, a bureau
with a looking-glass on it, and, along the walls, half a dozen
rush-bottomed chairs. The student was lying, fully dressed, on the bed.
Against the whiteness of the pillow, his crisp and very black hair lay
motionless. He opened his eyes, a moment, and then, very slowly, closed
them again. Over his beardless face, saddened by the pallor of his lips,
wandered the ethereal, luminous whiteness of the last agony.
The two girls drew near him. Alicia called:
"Enrique! Enrique!"
He half-opened his eyes. His dark pupils fixed their gaze on Little
Goldie, in a look of gratitude. She repeated:
"Enrique! Can you hear me?"
"Yes."
"They shot you, did they?"
"Yes."
"You--committed that--robbery in the Calle Mayor?"
"Yes."
Alicia looked exultingly at Candelas, as if asking her to take full
cognizance of this exploit of hers. Her expression showed the same kind
of pride that people sometimes manifest when they are exhibiting a work
of art. She had just won a great triumph, because men dare such crimes
only for women capable of inspiring mad love. Then the girl lowered her
head again, to look more carefully at the student's clothing; and as she
found it all stained with blood she felt a new attack of nausea. The
contrast was too sharp between the hot, sickening air of that
long-closed room and the life-giving breeze of the street.
"Shall I open the window?" asked she.
"No, no," murmured Enrique. "I'm very weak. The cold would kill me."
Alicia, seated on the bed--that poor bed one night perfumed with violets
by her body--silently looked at him. A broad-brimmed crimson hat, decked
with a splendid white plume, shaded her pale face. Her green eyes shone
wickedly in the livid, bluish circles under them. The free-and-easy
grace of her manner, the childish shortness of her waist, the robust
fullness of her hips and breast, and the uneasiness with which her
impatient, dancing little feet tapped the floor as if they wanted to run
away, strongly contrasted with the ugliness of the room--the bare,
half-furnished room heavy with the odors of death.
Candelas seemed truly moved. But Alicia felt as if she were choking. The
terrible nausea kept gaining on her. Now and then she raised her lace
handkerchief to her pleasure-loving nose--her nose which all the
afternoon had breathed the free, fresh air of the race-track. Her
growing disgust overcame her distress. She could not weep. And after
all, why should she? Just so she could get away from there quickly,
little cared she whether Enrique lived a few hours more or less. In her
abysmal ingratitude, Alicia Pardo wondered that women could love a man
so much as to kiss his dead lips.
Suddenly, anxious to have it all over, she asked:
"But--how did they wound you?"
Enrique opened his eyes again, and then his lips.
"I'll tell you," said he.
Despite the terrible bleeding he had suffered, some little strength
still remained in him. This last, dying strength enabled him to speak.
"I stole for you, Alicia," he gasped, "because you told me, that evening
you sent me away, I could see you again when I should bring you the
necklace you wanted."
Alicia exclaimed:
"I don't remember that!"
"Well, I do! You told me so. I remember it all."
The young woman shrugged her shoulders. Her impure eyes, of absinthe
hue, were moistened by no tear. Candelas, on the other hand, was showing
herself more human, far more a woman. Her eyes were drowned with grief.
Enrique continued speaking. His manner was grave. Quite suddenly the
youth had become a man.
"I decided to win you back," said he, "to offer you the thing you wanted
so much. Last night, when I went into that shop, I wasn't perfectly sure
what I was going to do. Still, I went up to the counter, and told them I
wanted to see the emerald necklace in the window. When they brought it,
with some others, a kind of dizziness came over me. It veiled my eyes
with dark, terrible shadows. I thrust out my hand, swiftly took one of
the necklaces--I didn't know which, because they all looked green to
me--and ran. But the proprietor must have been spying every movement of
mine. He pulled a revolver, and fired. His aim was good. At that moment
I felt nothing, and kept on running. Voices shouted after me: 'Stop
thief! Stop thief!' I seemed to see revengeful hands, eager to catch me,
opening and shutting like claws, behind me.
"When I came to my senses, I was in a deserted alleyway. My pursuers
hadn't been able to catch me. Then I noticed my clothes were all soaked
with blood, and my knees were shaking. What should I do? Night sheltered
me. Slowly I came back here. To-day, I sent for you."
The ring-laden fingers of the girl twisted together with a twofold
motion of interest and horror.
"And you haven't had any treatment?" asked she. "You haven't called a
doctor?"
"No. I didn't want to do that. Because if anybody had seen me, they'd
have suspected. And I preferred to die, Alicia, rather than to have them
take away the necklace I stole for you."
Then, feeling that his last strength was running out, he added with a
little gesture:
"There it is, on the bureau. Just raise up those papers--"
The scene was poignant, melodramatic with sad romanticism. At last the
Magdalene's eyes grew wet.
"Boy, boy!" she sobbed. "What have you done?"
Darlés only repeated:
"You'll find it there, on the bureau."
She did as the student bade her in his eagerness not to die before
seeing his gift in the well-beloved's hands of snow and pearl. Under
some papers her fingers came upon a black pearl necklace.
"Oh, how beautiful!" she cried, enchanted.
Without opening his eyes, and like a man talking in his sleep, Darlés
answered:
"It's not the one you wanted, I know. I found that out, afterward.
But--at that moment, they all looked green to me."
Thus befell one more event, one more caprice of the bitter and eternal
irony of things. To give one's life for a necklace, an emerald necklace,
and then to get the wrong one! The student murmured:
"Good-by!"
A long shudder trembled through his body. Suddenly the shadow of death
gave his face a stern, manly severity. His lips twisted. Candelas,
kneeling beside the bed, wept and prayed. Alicia, more violent in
disposition, caught Enrique by the shoulder.
"Enrique!" she cried. "Enrique!"
And for a moment she looked at him with one of those tragic, passionate
expressions that sometimes explain the sacrifice of a life. The student
could still whisper:
"Remember--!"
This was his final word. His eyes drooped shut. He died quietly, with no
bleeding at the lips. A whitish aura spread over his face. Alicia
exclaimed:
"Enrique! Can you hear me? Enrique!"
She felt of his forehead, his hands. He was dead.
"He's gone," said she.
This too, in her way of thinking, was admirable. Came a pause. Candelas
had got up, and now the two friends questioned each other with their
eyes. The same idea, the same terror had just struck them both.
Enrique's death would compromise them. The law would institute
researches, and the girls might easily be called upon to testify.
Instincts of self-preservation drove memories of the dead man from them.
"We're in a terrible position," said Alicia. "It's all your fault. I
didn't want to come."
Angrily Candelas retorted:
"It's _your_ fault!"
"Mine?"
"Of course! Who made him steal, but you?"
"I did? _I_?"
"Yes, you idiot!"
In Candelas' voice quivered that envious anger felt by all women against
any for whose sake a man has ruined himself. Then she added, more
calmly:
"It's lucky, anyhow, the janitress didn't see us coming up here."
Alicia Pardo examined the necklace. Her egotistic soul, enamored of
luxury, her little soul, that worshiped loot and gain, was now thinking
of nothing but the beauty of the jewels. Standing in front of the
looking-glass, she clasped the necklace round her throat and began to
turn her head from side to side. The contrast made by the blackness of
the pearls on the ermine whiteness of her throat gave her pleasure. And
for a moment her eyes burned with the insolent strength of happiness.
What had happened was by no means causing her any remorse. Why should
it? Was it her fault if Enrique had taken in earnest what she had asked
him by way of jest? Philosophically she reflected that the history of
every courtesan always contains at least one tragic chapter. Then her
mind drifted toward a shade of irony. Poor Enrique! The unfortunate boy,
she pondered, was one of those luckless ones who never realize their
dream, even though they lay down their lives for it.
At last, moved more by a feeling of tenderness than by any artistic
delicacy, she drew near the corpse, to say farewell with one last look.
At the door, Candelas summoned her:
"Let's be going! Come!"
Alicia Pardo turned. There was really nothing more for her to do there.
The thick air of that room, the tiled floor all covered with crimson
blotches, stifled her. Out in the street she would breathe deeply again.
And she reflected that her necklace of black pearls would attract
attention, that night, at the Teatro Real. She felt no sadness. As she
passed in front of the mirror, she cast a sidelong glance at herself.
"It's a pretty necklace, all right," thought she.
Then she added, with a vague regret:
"Still, I'd have liked the emeralds better----"