of wrinkles; she is talkative, gay, and skillful, as few are. She
married the son of Master Cencias, and has inherited from the father
what the son did not inherit--a wonderful facility for the mechanical
arts, with this difference; that while Master Cencias could set the
screw of a wine-press, or repair the wheels of a wagon, or make a plow,
this daughter-in-law of his knows how to make sweetmeats, conserves of
honey, and other dainties. The father-in-law practiced the useful arts,
the daughter-in-law those that have for their object pleasure, though
only innocent, or at least lawful pleasure.
Antoñona--for such is her name--is permitted, or assumes, the greatest
familiarity with all the gentry here. She goes in and out of every house
as if it were her own. She says _thou_ to all the young people of
Pepita's age, or four or five years older; she calls them _niño_ and
_niña,_ and treats them as if she had nursed them at her breast.
She behaves toward me with the same familiarity; she comes to visit me,
enters my room unannounced, and has asked me several times already why I
no longer go to see her mistress, and has told me that I am wrong in not
going.
My father, who has no suspicion of the truth, accuses me of
eccentricity; he calls me an owl, and he, too, is determined that I
shall resume my visits to Pepita. Last night I could no longer resist
his repeated importunities, and I went to her house very early, as my
father was about to settle his accounts with the overseer.
Would God I had not gone!
Pepita was alone. When our glances met, when we saluted each other, we
both turned red. We shook hands with timidity and in silence.
I did not press her hand, nor did she press mine, but for a moment we
held them clasped together.
In Pepita's glance, as she looked at me, there was nothing of love;
there was only friendship, sympathy, and a profound sadness.
She had divined the whole of my inward struggle; she was persuaded that
divine love had triumphed in my soul; that my resolution not to love her
was firm and invincible.
She did not venture to complain of me; she had no reason to complain of
me; she knew that right was on my side. A sigh, scarcely perceptible,
that escaped from her dewy, parted lips, revealed to me the depth of her
sorrow.
Her hand still lay in mine; we were both silent. How say to her that she
was not destined for me, nor I for her; that we must part forever?
But, though my lips refused to tell her this in words, I told it to her
with my eyes; my severe glance confirmed her fears; it convinced her of
the irrevocableness of my decision.
All at once her gaze was troubled; her lovely countenance, pale with a
translucent pallor, was contracted with a touching expression of
melancholy. She looked like Our Lady of Sorrows. Two tears rose slowly
to her eyes, and began to steal down her cheeks.
I know not what passed within me--and how describe it, even if I knew?
I bent toward her to kiss away her tears, and our lips met in a kiss.
A rapture unspeakable, a faintness full of peril, invaded our whole
being. She would have fallen, but that I supported her in my arms.
Heaven willed that we should at this moment hear the step and the cough
of the reverend vicar, who was approaching, and we instantly drew apart.
Recovering myself, and summoning all the strength of my will, I brought
to an end this terrible scene, that had been enacted in silence, with
these words, which I pronounced in low and intense accents:
"The first and the last!"
I made allusion to our profane kiss, but, as if my words had been an
invocation, there rose before me the vision of the Apocalypse in all its
terrible majesty. I beheld Him who is indeed the First and the Last,
and, with the two-edged sword that proceeded from his mouth, he pierced
my soul, full of evil, of wickedness, and of sin.
All that evening I passed in a species of frenzy, an inward delirium,
that I know not how I was able to conceal.
I withdrew from Pepita's house very early.
The anguish of my soul was yet more poignant in solitude.
When I recalled that kiss, and those words of farewell, I compared
myself with the traitor Judas, who made use of a kiss to betray; and
with the sanguinary and treacherous assassin Joab, who plunged the sharp
steel into the bowels of Amasa while in the act of kissing him.
I had committed a double treason; I had been guilty of a double perfidy.
I had sinned against God and against her.
I am an execrable wretch.
_June 11th._
Everything may still be remedied.
Pepita will, in time, forget her love and the weakness of which we were
guilty.
Since that night I have not returned to her house. Antoñona has not made
her appearance in ours.
By dint of entreaties I have obtained a formal promise from my father
that we shall leave here on the 25th, the day after St. John's day,
which is here celebrated with splendid feasts, and on the eve of which
there is a famous vigil.
Absent from Pepita, I begin to recover my serenity, and to think that
this first appearance of love was a trial of my virtue.
All these nights I have prayed, I have watched, I have performed many
works of penance.
The persistence of my prayers, the deep contrition of my soul, have
found favor with the Lord, who has manifested to me his great mercy.
The Lord, in the words of the prophet, has sent fire to the stronghold
of my spirit, he has illuminated my understanding, he has kindled my
resolution, and he has given me instruction. The working of the Divine
love which animates the Supreme Will has had power, at times, without my
deserving it, to lead me to that condition of prayerful contemplation in
which all the faculties of the soul are in repose. I have cast out from
the lower faculties of my soul every species of image--even her image;
and I am persuaded, if vanity does not deceive me, that, mind and heart
in reconciliation, I have known and enjoyed the Supreme Good that dwells
within the depths of the soul.
Compared with this good, all else is worthless; compared with this
beauty, all else is deformity. Who would not forget and scorn every
other love for the love of God?
Yes, the profane image of this woman shall depart, finally and forever,
from my soul. I shall make of my prayers and of my penance a sharp
scourge, and with it I will expel her therefrom, as Christ expelled the
money-lenders from the temple.
_June 18th._
This is the last letter I shall write to you. On the 25th I shall leave
this place without fail.
I shall soon have the happiness of embracing you. Near you I shall be
stronger; you will infuse courage into me, and lend me the energy in
which I am wanting.
A tempest of conflicting emotions is raging now in my soul. The disorder
of my ideas may be known by the disorder of what I write.
Twice I returned to the house of Pepita. I was cold and stern. I was as
I ought to have been, but how much did it not cost me!
My father told me yesterday that Pepita was indisposed, and would not
receive.
The thought at once assailed me that the cause of her indisposition
might be her ill-requited love.
Why did I return her glances of fire? Why did I basely deceive her? Why
did I make her believe I loved her? Why did my vile lips seek hers with
ardor, and communicate the ardor of an unholy love to hers?
But no; my sin shall not be followed, as its unavoidable consequence, by
another sin!
What has been, has been, and can not be undone; but a repetition of it
may be avoided, shall be avoided in future.
On the 25th, I repeat, I shall depart from here without fail.
The impudent Antoñona has just come to see me. I hid this letter from
her, as if it were a crime to write to you.
Antoñona remained here only for a moment.
I arose, and remained standing while I spoke to her, that the visit
might be a short one.
During this short visit she gave utterance to a thousand absurdities
that afflict me profoundly. Finally, as she was going away, she
exclaimed, in her half-gypsy jargon:
"Get away, you deceiver! you villain! my curse upon you! You have made
the child sick, and now you are killing her with your subterfuges. May
witches fly away with you, body and bones!"
Having said this, the fiendish woman gave me, in a coarse plebeian
fashion, six or seven ferocious pinches below the shoulders, as if she
would like to tear the skin from my back in strips; and then went away,
looking daggers at me.
I do not complain. I deserve this brutal jest, granting it to be a jest.
I deserve that fiends should tear my flesh with red-hot pincers.
Grant, my God, that Pepita may forget me; let her, if it be necessary,
love another, and be happy with him!
Can I do more than ask thee this, O my God?
My father knows nothing, suspects nothing; it is better thus.
Farewell for a few days, till we see and embrace each other again.
How changed will you find me! How full of bitterness my heart! How lost
my innocence! How bruised and wounded my soul!
II.
PARALIPOMENA.
Here end the letters of Don Luis de Vargas. We should therefore be left
in ignorance of the subsequent fortunes of these lovers, and this simple
and ardent love-story would have remained without an ending, if one
familiar with all the circumstances had not left us the following
narrative:
No one in the village found anything strange in the fact of Pepita's
being indisposed, or thought, still less, of attributing her
indisposition to a cause of which only we, Pepita herself, Don Luis, the
reverend dean, and the discreet Antoñona, are thus far cognizant.
They might rather have wondered at the life, of gayety that Pepita had
been leading for some time past, at the daily gatherings at her house,
and the excursions into the country in which she had joined. That Pepita
should return to her habitual seclusion was quite natural.
Her secret and deeply rooted love for Don Luis was hidden from the
searching glances of Doña Casilda, of Currito, and of all the other
personages of the village of whom mention is made in the letters of Don
Luis. Still less could the public know of it. It never entered into the
head, of any one--no one imagined for a moment that the theologian, the
_saint,_ as they called Don Luis, could become the rival of his father,
or could have succeeded where the redoubtable and powerful Don Pedro de
Vargas had failed--in winning the heart of the lovely, graceful, coy,
and reserved young widow.
Notwithstanding the familiarity of the ladies of the village with their
servants, Pepita had allowed none of hers to suspect anything. Only the
lynx-eyed Antoñona, whom nothing could escape, and more especially
nothing that concerned her young mistress, had penetrated the mystery.
Antoñona did not conceal her discovery from Pepita, nor could Pepita
deny the truth to the woman who had nursed her, who idolized her, and
who, if she delighted in finding out and gossiping about all that took
place in the village, being, as she was, a model scandal-monger, was
yet, in all that related to her mistress, reticent and loyal as but few
are.
In this manner Antoñona made herself the confidante of Pepita; and
Pepita found great consolation in unburdening her heart to one who,
though she might be cross and vulgar in the frankness with which she
expressed her sentiments, was not so either in the sentiments or the
ideas that she expressed.
In this may be found the explanation of Antoñona's visits to Don Luis,
as well as of her words, and even of the ferocious and disrespectful
pinches, given in so ill-chosen a spot, with which she bruised his flesh
and wounded his dignity, on the occasion of her last visit to him.
Not only had Pepita not desired Antoñona to carry messages to Don Luis,
but she did not even know that she had gone to see him. Antoñona had
taken the initiative, and had interfered in the matter simply because
she herself had wanted to do so.
As we have already said, she had, with wonderful perspicacity, made
herself acquainted with the state of affairs between her mistress and
Don Luis.
While Pepita herself was still scarcely conscious of the fact that she
loved Don Luis, Antoñona already knew it. Scarcely had Pepita begun to
cast on him those furtive glances, ardent and involuntary, that had
wrought such havoc--glances which had been intercepted by none of those
present when they were given--than Antoñona, who was not present, had
already spoken of them to Pepita. And no sooner had those glances been
returned in kind, than Antoñona also knew it.
There was but little left, then, for the mistress to confide to a
servant of so much penetration, and who was so skilled in divination of
what passed in the inmost recesses of her breast.
* * * * *
Five days after the date of Don Luis's last letter, our narrative
begins.
It was eleven o'clock in the morning. Pepita was in an apartment on an
upper floor, contiguous to her bedroom and dressing-room, where no one
ever entered without being summoned, save Antoñona.
The furniture of this apartment was simple, but comfortable and in good
taste. The curtains and the covering of the easy-chairs, the sofas and
the arm-chairs, were of a flowered cotton fabric. On a mahogany table
were writing materials and papers, and in a book-case, also of mahogany,
were many books of devotion and history. The walls were adorned with
pictures--engravings on religious subjects, but with this particularity
in their selection, unheard-of, extraordinary, almost incredible in an
Andalusian village, that, instead of being bad French lithographs, they
were engravings in the best style of Spanish art, as the _Spasimo di
Sicilia_, of Rafael; the _St. Ildefonso and the Virgin_, the
_Conception_, the _St. Bernard_, and the two _Lunettes_ of Murillo.
On an antique oak table, supported by fluted columns, was a small
writing-desk, or escritoire, inlaid with shell, mother-of-pearl, ivory,
and brass, and containing a great many little drawers, in which Pepita
kept bills and other papers. On this table were also two porcelain vases
filled with flowers; and, finally, hanging against the walls, were
several flower-pots of Seville Carthusian ware, containing ivy,
geranium, and other plants, and three gilded cages, in which were
canaries and larks.
This apartment was the retreat of Pepita, where no one entered during
the daytime except the doctor and the reverend vicar, and, in the
evening, only the overseer to settle accounts. This apartment was called
the library, and served the purpose of one.
Pepita was seated, half reclining, on a sofa, before which stood a small
table with some books upon it.
She had just risen, and was attired in a light summer wrapper. Her
blonde hair, not yet arranged, looked even more beautiful in its
disorder. Her countenance, somewhat pale, and, although it still
preserved its fresh and youthful aspect, showing dark circles under the
eyes, looked more beautiful than ever under the influence of the malady,
that robbed it of color.
Pepita showed signs of impatience; she was waiting for some one.
At last the person she was awaiting, who proved to be the reverend
vicar, arrived, and entered without announcement.
After the usual salutations the reverend vicar settled himself
comfortably in an easy-chair, and the conversation thus began:
"I am very glad, my child, that you sent for me; but, even without your
doing so, I was just coming to see you. How pale you are! What is it
that ails you? Have you something of importance to tell me?"
Pepita began her answer to this series of affectionate inquiries with a
deep sigh; she then said:
"Do you not divine my malady? Have you not discovered the cause of my
suffering?"
The vicar made a gesture of denial, and looked at Pepita with something
like terror in his gaze; for he knew nothing of all that had taken
place, and was struck by the vehemence with which she spoke.
Pepita continued:
"I ought not to have sent for you, father. I should have gone to the
church myself instead, to speak with you in the confessional, and there
confess my sins. But, unhappily, far from repenting of them my heart has
hardened itself in wickedness. I have neither the courage nor the
desire to speak to the confessor, but only to the friend."
"What are you saying about sins and hardness of heart? Have you taken
leave of your senses? What sins can you have committed, you who are so
good?"
"No, father, I am not good. I have been deceiving you; I have been
deceiving myself; I have tried to deceive God."
"Come, come, calm yourself; speak with moderation and common sense, and
don't talk foolishly."
"And how shall I avoid talking foolishly when the spirit of evil
possesses me?"
"Holy Virgin! Don't talk nonsense, child; the demons most to be feared
that take possession of the soul are three, and none of them, I am
certain, can have dared to enter into yours. One is Leviathan, or the
spirit of Pride; the other is Mammon, or the spirit of Avarice; and the
other is Asmodeus or the spirit of Unholy Love."
"Well, I am the victim of all three; all three hold dominion over me."
"This is dreadful! Calm yourself, I repeat. The real trouble with you is
that you are out of your head."
"Would to God it were so! The contrary, unhappily for me, is the case. I
am avaricious, because I possess riches, and do not perform the works
of charity I ought to perform; I am proud, because I scorn the addresses
of my many suitors, not through virtue, not through modesty, but because
I thought them unworthy of my love. God has punished me; God has
permitted the third enemy you have named to take possession of me."
"How is this, child? What diabolical notion has entered into your mind?
Have you by chance fallen in love? And, if you have, what harm is there
in that? Are you not free? Get married, then, and stop talking nonsense.
I am certain it is my friend Don Pedro de Vargas who has wrought the
miracle. That same Don Pedro is the very devil! I confess I am
surprised, though. I did not think matters had gone quite so far as that
already."
"But it is not Don Pedro de Vargas I am in love with."
"And with whom, then?"
Pepita rose from her seat, went to the door, opened it, looked to see if
any one was listening outside, drew near to the reverend vicar, and,
with signs of the deepest distress, in a trembling voice, and with tears
in her eyes, said, almost in the ear of the good old man:
"I am hopelessly in love with his son."
"With whose son?" cried the reverend vicar, who could not yet bring
himself to believe what he had heard.
"With whose son should it be? I am hopelessly, desperately in love with
Don Luis."
Consternation and dolorous surprise were depicted on the countenance of
the kind and simple priest. There was a moment's pause; the vicar then
said:
"But this is a love without hope; a love not to be thought of. Don Luis
will not love you in return."
In the midst of the tears that clouded the beautiful eyes of Pepita
gleamed a joyful light; her rosy, dewy lips, contracted by sorrow,
parted in a smile, disclosing to view her pearly teeth.
"He loves me," said Pepita, with a faint and ill-concealed accent of
satisfaction and triumph that rose exultant over her sorrow and her
scruples of conscience.
The consternation and the astonishment of the reverend vicar here
reached their highest pitch. If the saint to whom he paid his most
fervent devotions had been suddenly cast down from the altar before him,
and had fallen, broken into a thousand fragments at his feet, the
reverend vicar could not have felt greater consternation than he did. He
still looked at Pepita with incredulity, as if doubting whether what she
had said were true, or only a delusion of feminine vanity, so firmly
did he believe in the holiness of Don Luis, and in his
spiritual-mindedness.
"He loves me," Pepita repeated, in answer to his incredulous glance.
"Women are worse than the very devil!" said the vicar. "You would set a
snare for the old boy himself."
"Did I not tell you already that I was very wicked?"
"Come, come! calm yourself. The mercy of God is infinite. Tell me all
that has happened."
"What should have happened? That he is dear to me; that I love him; that
I adore him; that he loves me, too, although he strives to conquer his
love, and, in the end, may succeed in doing so; and that you, without
knowing it, are very much to blame for it all!"
"Well, this caps the climax! What do you mean by saying I am very much
to blame?"
"With the extreme goodness that is characteristic of you, you have done
nothing but praise Don Luis to me; and I am sure that you have
pronounced still greater eulogies on me to him, although very much less
deserved. What is the natural consequence? Am I of bronze? Have I not
the passions of youth?"
"You are more than right; I am a dolt: I have contributed, in great
part, to this work of Lucifer."
The reverend vicar was so truly good, and so full of humility, that,
while pronouncing the preceding words, he showed as much confusion and
remorse as if he were the culprit and Pepita the judge.
Pepita, conscious of her injustice and want of generosity in thus making
the reverend vicar the accomplice, and scarcely less than the chief
author of her fault, spoke to him thus:
"Don't torment yourself, father; for God's sake, don't torment yourself!
You see now how perverse I am. I commit the greatest sins, and I want to
throw the responsibility of them on the best and the most virtuous of
men. It is not the praises you have recited to me of Don Luis that have
been my ruin, but my own eyes, and my want of circumspection. Even
though you had never spoken to me of the good qualities of Don Luis, I
should still have discovered them all by hearing him speak; for, after
all, I am not so ignorant, nor so great a fool. And, in any case, I
myself have seen the grace of his person, the natural and untaught
elegance of his manners, his eyes full of fire and intelligence, his
whole self, in a word, which seems to me altogether amiable and
desirable. Your eulogies of him have indeed pleased my vanity, but they
did not awaken my inclinations. Your praises charmed me because they
coincided with my own opinion, and were like the flattering
echo--deadened, indeed, and faint--of my thoughts. The most eloquent
encomium you have pronounced, in my hearing, on Don Luis, was far from
being equal to the encomiums that I, at each moment, at each instant,
silently pronounced upon him in my own soul."
"Don't excite yourself, child," interrupted the reverend vicar.
Pepita continued, with still greater exaltation:
"But what a difference between your encomiums and my thoughts! For you
Don Luis was the exemplary model of the priest, the missionary, the
apostle, now preaching the gospel in distant lands, now endeavoring in
Spain to elevate Christianity, so degraded in our day through the
impiety of some, and the want of virtue, of charity, and of knowledge,
of others. I, on the contrary, pictured him to myself handsome, loving,
forgetting God for me, consecrating his life to me, giving me his soul,
becoming my stay, my support, my sweet companion. I longed to commit a
sacrilegious theft: I dreamed of stealing him from God and from his
temple, like the thief who, proclaiming himself the enemy of Heaven,
robs the sacred monstrance of its most precious jewel. To commit this
theft I have put off the mourning garments of the widow and orphan, and
have decked myself with profane adornments; I have abandoned my
seclusion, and I have sought and gathered around me society. I have
tried to make myself look beautiful; I have cared for every part of this
miserable body--that must one day be lowered into the grave, and be
converted into dust--with an unholy devotion; and, finally, I have
looked at Don Luis with provoking glances, and on shaking hands with him
I have sought to transmit from my veins to his, the inextinguishable
fire that is consuming me."
"Alas! my child, what grief it gives me to hear this! Who could have
imagined it?" said the vicar.