THE TEMPTRESS
WORKS OF VICENTE BLASCO IBAÑEZ
Novels
THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE
MARE NOSTRUM (_Our Sea_)
BLOOD AND SAND
THE SHADOW OF THE CATHEDRAL
THE ENEMIES OF WOMEN
WOMAN TRIUMPHANT (_La Maja Desnuda_)
LA BODEGA (_The Fruit of the Vine_)
THE MAYFLOWER
THE TORRENT (_Entre Naranjos_)
THE TEMPTRESS (_La Tierra de Todos_)
Other Works
IN THE LAND OF ART
An unconventional tour of Italy
and its treasures of art, architecture
and scenery.
MEXICO IN REVOLUTION
Acute and brilliant chapters on
Mexican affairs as seen by the author
while on the spot.
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
THE TEMPTRESS
(_LA TIERRA DE TODOS_)
BY
VICENTE BLASCO IBAÑEZ
AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY
LEO ONGLEY
[Illustration: colophon]
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
Copyright, 1923
By E. P. Dutton & Company
_All Rights Reserved_
First Printing, July, 1923
Second Printing, July, 1923
Third Printing, July, 1923
Fourth Printing, July, 1923
Fifth Printing, July, 1923
Sixth Printing, July, 1923
Seventh Printing, July, 1923
Eighth Printing, July, 1923
Ninth Printing, July, 1923
Tenth Printing, July, 1923
Eleventh Printing, July, 1923
Twelfth Printing, July, 1923
Thirteenth Printing, Jury, 1923
Fourteenth Printing, July, 1923
Fifteenth Printing, July, 1923
Sixteenth Printing, July, 1923
PRINTED IN THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA
THE TEMPTRESS
CHAPTER I
As usual the Marquis de Torre Bianca got up late. Leaving the security
of his bedroom, he cast an uneasy glance at the letters and newspapers
waiting for him on a silver salver in the library. Some of the postmarks
were foreign. At sight of these he breathed a sigh of relief. That much
respite at least.... But some of the letters were from Paris; and at
these he frowned. He knew what they would be like. They would be long
and full of unpleasant allusions, to say nothing of reproaches and
threats.... He noted uncomfortably the addresses printed on some of the
envelopes, and at their names, his creditors appeared before him, an
indignant and vociferous crowd.... Alas! He knew what was in those
letters.
If they had only been addressed to his wife! She received letters like
that with the utmost serenity, as though debts and clamorous creditors
were her native element--“The Fair Elena” her friends called her,
acknowledging a beauty which couldn’t be denied, but which her women
friends liked to allude to as “historic”--it had lasted so long. The
Marquis, however, had a more antiquated conception of honor than the
historically fair Elena. He went so far as to believe that it is better
not to contract debts if there is no possibility of paying them.
Fearful lest the servant should find him still dubiously eyeing his
mail, the Marquis began opening his letters.... After all, they were not
so bad! One was from the firm which had sold the Marquise her most
recently acquired automobile. Of the ten installments to be paid, it had
collected only two.... And there were numerous other letters from shops
that supplied the Marquise with her needs. From her establishment near
the Place Vendome her debts had reached out and permeated the
neighborhood. The maintenance, to say nothing of the comfort, of the
establishment, necessitated the services of innumerable tradespeople.
The servants had just as good a reason to write him letters as the
tradespeople. But instead they relied upon the worldly arts of the
Marquise to provide them with a means of compensating themselves for
long unpaid services. So they expressed their disgust by a reluctant and
unbending attitude in the discharge of their duties.
The Marquis was wont, when he had finished the perusal of his morning
mail, to look about him with something very like alarm. There was his
Elena, giving parties and going to all the most distinguished
festivities in Paris; occupying the most desirable apartment of an
elegant house on a fashionable street, keeping a luxurious automobile,
and never less than five servants. By what mysterious adjustments and
manoeuvres could his wife and he keep up this manner of life? Every day
there were new debts; every day they required more money for perpetually
increasing expenses. Whatever funds he had disappeared like a river in
the sand. And yet Elena seemed to consider this manner of living
reasonable and proper, just as though it were that of all her
friends....
At this point the Marquis caught sight of a letter he had overlooked, a
letter bearing an Italian postmark.
“From Mother,” he said.
As he read it his expression lightened. He even smiled. Yet this letter
too had complaints to make. But they were gentle, resigned.
The echoes of his mother’s voice, awakened in his memory by her words,
called up before him the old white palace of the Torre Biancas, one of
the monuments of his distant Tuscany. Huge, in ruins now, surrounded by
gardens of the past, with vast halls whose floors were tiled, and whose
ceilings were gay with paintings of mythological scenes, it had long
contained a wealth of famous paintings that hung on its bare walls,
marking out their squares and rectangles in the dust gathering for
centuries on the slowly crumbling plaster.
But the pictures and the priceless bits of statuary had already vanished
from their places when the Marquis’ father took possession of his
ancestral halls. His only resource for an income lay in the archives of
the Torre Biancas. Autographs of Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and other
Florentines who had had correspondence with his ancestors, paid the
expenses of one generation....
Around the palace the gardens of three centuries stretched out their
marble steps, and balustrades crumbling under the weight of matted rose
vines, to the Tuscan sun. Mosses and vines crept into the cracks of the
stone, tracing out their patterns with supreme indifference to the decay
their presence caused. On the driveways the ancient box, cut back to
form wide walls and deep triumphal arches, looked as black as the ruins
of a burnt city. It was so long now since the gardens had received any
care that they were beginning to look like a flowering forest. The paths
at the step of infrequent visitors sent out melancholy echoes which
startled the birds like the shot of an arrow, disturbed swarms of
insects floating under the outspreading branches, startled the little
snakes crawling among the tree trunks.
Wearing the clothes of a simple peasant, and served only by a little
country girl, the Marquis’ mother lived alone in these vast halls and
gardens, accompanied by thoughts of her son, preoccupied with the
problem he presented. How was she to provide money for him?
The only visitors at the palace were dealers in antiques to whom she
sold one by one the remnants of a splendor already pillaged by those who
had preceded her at Torre Bianca. But she must send several thousand
lire to that last member of the noble line, who was playing a part
worthy of his title in London, Paris, and all the great cities of the
world. And convinced that fortune, so mindful of the first Torre
Biancas, would finally remember her son, she reduced her own needs to
the barest necessities, ate peasant’s food served to her on a rough
pine table, in one of those marble rooms in which nothing now remained
that could be sold.
Touched, as always, by her letter, the Marquis was murmuring softly to
himself, “Mother! Mother!” He read again--
“I didn’t know what to do, Federico, after sending you the money you
last received from me. If you could see the house in which you were
born, my son, I wonder what you would say? No one will offer me more
than a twentieth part of its value. But, until some foreigner who really
wants to buy it comes along, I am willing to sell the floors, and even
those wonderful old ceilings, the only things left now that have any
market value. Anything to get you out of your difficulties, to prevent
the slightest reproach from attaching to your name. I can live on very
little, perhaps even less than I allow myself now. But isn’t it at the
same time possible for you and Elena to reduce your expenses a little
without Elena’s giving up in any way the position that being your wife
entitles her to? Your wife is rich! Can’t she help you to keep up your
establishment?”
The Marquis paused. The simple way in which his mother expressed her
anxieties hurt him; and her illusions about Elena stabbed him like
remorse. She believed Elena to be rich! She believed that he could
induce his wife to live economically and simply ... hadn’t he tried to
at the beginning of their marriage ...?
Elena’s arrival cut short his reflections. It was already past eleven,
and she was going out to take her daily drive in the Bois. She liked to
begin the day with this open air review of her acquaintances.
The somewhat ostentatious elegance of her dress suited her kind of
beauty. Although between thirty and forty, frequent fasts and eternal
vigilance still preserved her slenderness, which was enhanced by her
height; and the care she took of her person kept her in what might be
called that “third youth” which the women of our great modern cities
enjoy.
It was only when she was absent that Torre Bianca was aware of her
faults. As soon as she stepped into the room, his admiration of her took
complete possession of him, making him accede blindly to whatever she
might ask.
She greeted him now with a smile, to which he responded. Putting her
arms about his shoulders she kissed him, and began talking to him with a
childish lisp, which, well he knew, presaged a request. And yet this
trick of hers had never lost its power to stir him, subduing his will.
“Good morning, Bunny! I got up so late this morning, and I have a
thousand things to do before going out, but I couldn’t go without seeing
my darling little Rabbit.... Give me another kiss, and I’m off!”
Smiling humbly, with an air of submissive gratitude like that of a
faithful dog, the Marquis allowed himself to be petted. Elena finally
tore herself away, but before she had quite reached the library door she
suddenly remembered something important and stopped short.
“Have you some money?”
The Marquis’ smile vanished. His eyes put the question:
“How much do you want?”
“Oh, not so much. About eight thousand francs.”
Elena’s tailor, one on the Rue de la Paix, needless to say, had suddenly
stopped being as respectful as Elena thought he should be--his bill was
only three years old!--and he had threatened court proceedings.
At her husband’s gesture when she mentioned this sum, Elena’s childlike
smile vanished; but she still used her little girl’s lisp to complain.
“You say that you love me, Federico, and you refuse to give me this
little bit of money....”
“There are some of the letters and claims of our creditors....” The
Marquis pointed to the heap on the table.
Elena smiled once more, but this time there was something cruel about
the curl of her lips.
“I can show you a great many documents as interesting as those. But you
are a man, and men are supposed to provide money in their homes so that
their wives needn’t suffer.... How am I to pay my debts if you don’t
help me?”
He looked at her with something like fear in his eyes.
“I have given you such a lot of money! But everything that falls into
your hands vanishes like smoke.”
Elena’s voice was hard as she replied:
“You aren’t going to pretend that a woman of my position, or of my
appearance--since people _will_ mention it--should live in a shabby sort
of way? When a man’s vanity gets so much satisfaction out of having a
wife like me, he ought to bring home money by the million.”
It was the Marquis’s turn to be offended, and Elena, aware of the effect
of her words, suddenly changed her manner, smiled, and came close enough
to be able to put her hands on Federico’s shoulders.
“Why don’t you write to the old lady, Federico? Perhaps she can send us
some money, she can sell an heirloom or something....”
The tone of these words only added to her husband’s irritation.
“The person you mention is my mother, and I wish you would speak of her
as such. As to money, she can’t send us any more.”
Elena looked at her husband with a certain contempt, saying at the same
time, as though to herself:
“This will teach me to fall in love with paupers.... Well, if _you_
can’t get me this money, _I’ll_ get it!”
As she spoke an expression so significant flickered over her face that
her husband sprang from his chair.
“You had better explain what you mean,” he began, frowning. But he could
not go on. The Marquise’s expression had completely changed. She broke
out into bursts of childish laughter, and clapped her hands.
“At last, my Bunny is really angry. And he thought his wife meant
something bad.... But don’t you know that I love no one but you? Really,
no one else....”
She caught him by the arm, and kissed him repeatedly, in spite of his
attempts to make her stop her caresses. And he ended by yielding to
them and assuming once more his humble suitor attitude.
Elena was warning him now with upraised finger.
“Come, smile a little, don’t be naughty.... But isn’t there really any
money? Do you mean it?”
The Marquis shook his head. Then he looked ashamed of his powerlessness.
“But I love you just as much,” she said. “Let the old debts wait! I’ll
find a way out--I have before.... Good-bye Federico!”
And she walked backwards towards the door, throwing him kisses; but once
on the other side of the hangings her expression of youthful
lightheartedness vanished. Her lips were twisted with scorn and a look
of frantic ferocity glittered in her eyes.
Her husband too, when he was alone, lost the momentary happiness Elena’s
caresses had afforded him. There lay those letters, and his mother’s
appeal.... He sat at the table, his face in his hands. All his anxieties
had swooped down upon him, he could scarcely breathe in the thick swarm.
Always, at such moments, Torre Bianca called up memories of his youth as
though they could offer him a remedy for present troubles. The happiest
time in his life had been that period when he had been a student in the
Engineering School at Lièges. Eager to restore the fallen splendor of
his house, he had thrown himself into his preparations for a modern
career, in order to set out on the conquest of money, just as his remote
ancestors had done. Before royalty had bestowed a title upon them, they
had been Florentine merchants, like the Medicis, travelling even to the
Orient in their pursuit of fortune. Federico de Torre Bianca wanted to
be an engineer for the same reason that all the other youths of his
generation did, in order to make Italy, once famous for her art, an
important modern nation because of her industries.
As he recalled his student life the first image that arose was that of
Manuel Robledo, his friend and classmate. Manuel was a Spanish youth
whose frank and happy disposition made it possible for him to meet daily
problems with quiet energy. For several years he had played the part of
older brother to the distinguished young Italian, and Torre Bianca never
failed to think of his friend in difficult moments.
He was such a good fellow! Not even his successive love affairs could
destroy his serenity. He had the poise of a mature man, perhaps because
the important interests of his life were good eating and the guitar....
Torre Bianca, who was endowed with a fatal facility for falling in love,
went about in those days with one of the pretty girls of Liège, and
Robledo, out of good fellowship, feigned an absorbing interest in one of
her friends. As a matter of fact he was always much more attentive to
the culinary activities of their parties than to the not very insistent
claims of sentiment.
Yet Bianca had come to discern through this somewhat noisy and
unquestionably materialistic joviality of his friend a certain leaning
towards the romantic which Robledo tried manfully to hide, as though it
were a shameful weakness. Perhaps, in his country, there had been some
experience.... So often, at night, the Italian boy, stretched on his
dormitory bed, heard the guitar softly moaning as Robledo hummed the
lovesongs of his far-away homeland.... Their course over, the friends
had parted, expecting to meet as usual the following year; but that
meeting had never occurred. While Torre Bianca remained in Europe,
Robledo roved about through South America, for the most part in his
capacity as engineer, but now and then he went through an extraordinary
transformation, as though his Spanish blood made it imperative that some
of the old Conquistadores should live in him once more.
At rare intervals he wrote to Torre, but his letters contained more
illusions to the past than to the present. Yet somehow, in spite of his
discreet reticence, Torre Bianca gathered that his chum had become a
general in one of the small republics of Central America.
It was two years now since he had heard from Robledo, whose last letter
announced that he was employed in Argentine, having had enough, for the
time being, of those countries still continually shaken by revolution.
He was contracting for the government as well as for private
undertakings, and constructing canals and railroads; and through all the
discomforts of the rough life he led, the belief that he was helping the
advance guard of civilization to cross one of the earth’s desert places,
gave him intimate satisfaction and happiness.
Torre had among his papers a photograph of his friend in which Robledo
appeared on horseback, wearing an African helmet and a poncho that fell
over his shoulders. Several half-breeds were planting linesman’s flags
on the mesa which, for the first time since creation, was to receive the
imprint of material civilization. Robledo, who was of the same age as
himself, must have been thirty-seven when the photograph was taken; yet
he looked many years younger than Torre Bianca did at forty.
His life of adventure had not let him grow old. Although he was heavier
than in his student days, the smooth face that smiled serenely out of
the photograph indicated perfect physical condition.
Torre Bianca, on the other hand, was of a much slighter build, and
thanks to his fondness for sports, and especially fencing, he preserved
a more than youthful agility. But his face was lined and drawn. There
were furrows between his eyebrows, and the hair above his temples was
already streaked with white, while the corners of his mouth, but
slightly hidden by a short mustache, drooped with what might be
lassitude, or what might be weakness of will. And Torre Bianca, struck
by Robledo’s physical robustness, was encouraged by his photograph to go
on thinking of him as competent to guide and help him, just as he had
done in the early days....
As he thought of his friend that morning in the midst of his anxieties,
he said to himself:
“I wish I had him here! His strong man’s strong will would strengthen
mine....”
The butler interrupted his meditation. A caller ... but he would not
give his name.... Torre Bianca made a determined effort to conceal his
nervous dread from the servant. Was it perhaps one of his wife’s
creditors trying by this means to reach him?
“He seems a foreigner, sir. He says he’s a relative....”
The Marquis had a presentiment, but he smiled at it. It was absurd....
Yet it would be like Robledo to turn up in this fashion, as if he were a
character in a play, coming in just when the action requires his
appearance. But how unlikely that Robledo, who when last heard from was
in another hemisphere, should be on hand to take up his cue like an
actor waiting in the wings! No, life doesn’t provide such neat
coincidences ... only books....
He would not see his caller, he told the servant in no uncertain terms.
At that moment some one lifted the door-hangings and to the butler’s
consternation stepped into the room. The caller had grown tired of
waiting.
The Marquis, who was easily roused, went threateningly towards the
intruder. His arms outstretched, the latter cried:
“You don’t know me--I’ll bet you don’t!”
Clean-shaven, his skin tanned and reddened by sun and cold, he didn’t
look like the Robledo of the photograph. And yet ... there was something
familiarly distinctive about him, something Torre Bianca recognized as
having once formed a part of his own life.... Something in the vigorous
curve of the shoulders, something about his energetic robustness.
“Robledo!”
The friends embraced; and the servant, convinced now that his presence
was superfluous, left the room.
As they smoked and talked, Robledo and Torre Bianca looked at one
another with eager interest, putting out a hand now and then to assure
themselves that the long absent friend was really there.
It was the Marquis who betrayed the greater curiosity.
“Will you be able to stay long in Paris?” he inquired.
“Oh, just a few months....”
He felt the need, he added, of a long draught of civilization, after
spending ten years in American deserts, absorbed in the strenuous task
of building roads, railroads and canals across their wide extent.
“I want to find out if the Paris restaurants still deserve their
reputation, and see if the French wines are as good as they used to be.
And I haven’t had any _fromage de Brie_ for years--no other country in
the world can make it--and I’m hungry for some!”
The Marquis laughed. The same old Robledo, ready to go three thousand
miles to have a meal in Paris! And then, with great interest, he
inquired:
“Are you rich?”
“Poor as ever,” was Robledo’s prompt reply. “But I’m alone in the world,
I’m not married--there’s nothing so expensive as a wife--so, for a few
months I’ll be able to spend money like a regular American millionaire.
I have the money I’ve been earning all this time, I couldn’t spend it in
the desert.”
He turned to look about him at the luxurious furnishings of his friend’s
home.
“You’re the fellow that’s rich, I see!”
The Marquis’s only reply was an enigmatical smile; but Robledo’s words
awakened his worries.
“Tell me about what you have been doing,” the engineer urged. “You
never sent me much news of yourself. Some of your letters must have been
lost, although wherever I went, up to recently, I always established a
good many connections. Yes, I know a little about you. I believe you got
married a few years ago.”
Torre Bianca nodded, and said gravely,
“I married a Russian lady, the wife of a high government official of the
Czar’s court. I met her in London. We met frequently at balls and
country houses ... and finally we married. We make a few pretensions to
elegance--but it’s damned expensive!”
He paused for a moment, as though he wanted to learn what impression
this summary of his life made upon Robledo. But the latter, eager to
learn more, wisely kept silence.
“You, my dear Robledo, leading the simple life of primitive man, are
lucky enough not to know what it costs to live in our civilization. I’ve
worked like a dog just to keep things going--and even at that! And my
poor old mother helps me with whatever she can get out of our family
ruins.”
Then Bianca seemed to repent of the note of complaint in what he was
saying; and with an optimism which, a half hour ago, he would have
considered absurd, he smiled, and went on,
“Really I ought not to complain. There is a friendship that means a
great deal in my life. Do you know the banker Fontenoy? You may have
heard of him; he has business all over the world.”
Robledo shook his head. No, he had never heard that name.
“He is an old friend of my wife’s family. Thanks to Fontenoy, I became a
while ago the director of some development projects in foreign
countries, for which I get a salary that would have seemed to me
magnificent a few years ago.”
Robledo expressed his professional curiosity. “Improvements in foreign
countries!” Of course the engineer wanted to know more about that, and
asked some very definite questions. But Torre betrayed a certain
uneasiness in his replies. He stammered, and his sallow cheeks reddened
slightly.
“Enterprises in Asia and in Africa--gold mines, and a railroad in
China--a shipping company formed to handle the rice products of Tonkin,
and--as a matter of fact, I’m not up on the scheme as a whole. I’ve
never had time for the trip, and then, too, I can’t leave my wife--But
Fontenoy, who has a great head of business, has been to all these
places, and I have the greatest confidence in him. As a matter of fact,
my job is just a matter of signing reports made by the experts Fontenoy
sends out there to satisfy share-holders.”
Robledo could not conceal a certain astonishment at these words. Torre,
aware of his friend’s wonderment, changed the subject. He began talking
of his wife in a tone which indicated that he thought it one of the
achievements of his life to have won her. He knew that Elena charmed
apparently everyone who came within the reach of her beauty. But as he
had never since his marriage felt the slightest doubt concerning her
affections, he was content to follow her meekly about, scarcely visible
in the foaming wake of her triumphant progress. As a matter of fact,
everything that came his way, invitations, generous pay for his
services, a cordial reception wherever he went, came to him, not because
he was the Marquis de Torre Bianca, but because he was Elena’s husband.
“You’ll see her in a little while. And of course you’ll have lunch with
us. You can’t refuse. I have some choice wines, and since you have come
all the way from the western hemisphere for some Brie cheese, I’ll see
that you get plenty of it.”
And then he added, in a tone that partly betrayed his emotion,
“I can’t tell you how glad I am that you are going to meet my
wife. Everyone calls her ‘la bella Elena’--but she has something
so much better than beauty! She has a disposition just like a
child’s--capricious, yes, sometimes, like a child--and she needs lots of
money. But what woman doesn’t! And I know Elena will be glad to see
you--she has heard me speak so often of my friend Robledo!”