When Elena finally got up the next morning, she was astonished to find
that Sebastiana paid no attention to her repeated calls.
At last one of the half-breed girls who worked under the house-keeper’s
directions presented herself and announced that Sebastiana hadn’t come
back to the house after her departure from it early that morning.
“They say there have been terrible goings-on at the Rojas ranch. The
_comisario_ and a lot of men are all riding out there now.”
Sebastiana, it seemed, had been seen on horseback riding out of the
town, accompanied by the _señor_ Robledo’s servant.
“She has gone to see what happened to her mistress ... everybody tells a
different story.... But one thing is sure and that is that someone was
killed out at the ranch....”
But the mistress of the house showed so little interest in what the
young half-breed was saying, that the girl stopped. A brief exclamation
of surprise had been the only comment made by the _señora_. Then she had
lapsed into silence as though the subject bored her.
All that morning Elena spent in her parlor, after the little maid had
brought her her breakfast. With impatience she contemplated the long
hours that must elapse before night. One thing she had determined upon.
She would send for Robledo, but he too, according to the report of the
servant girl, had gone with the comisario to the Rojas ranch, and would
probably not return before nightfall.
She could stay no longer in that place. For her husband it was
different; he had his work there. But she would ask Robledo to pay her
passage back to Paris, or at least to give her money enough to get to
Buenos Aires. Once in the capital, she would know how to get along. In
her early experiences she had had similar or worse situations to face
and she had long ago discovered that a woman of determined will can get
out of difficulties far more easily than a man.
As she went over in her mind the conversation she would have later that
day with the engineer, she felt consumed with impatience; but at the
same time she dreaded to see the hours glide swiftly by when she
remembered that at the end of a certain number of them someone was
likely to appear at her window and demand the fulfillment of a promise
she had made the night before.
It required a tremendous effort on her part to believe that she had not
dreamed that interview with Manos Duras. “What madness! How could I--the
person who is really I--have done such a thing?”
Yet, many times before in her life, she had felt the same wonder at her
own acts, as though there existed within her two antagonistic
personalities, each one of which aroused the loathing of the other.
“And perhaps that man will actually come back here,” she thought, with a
tremor of nervous irritation.
To quiet her nerves she assured herself that probably the _gaucho_ would
forget her promises. Then she remembered the vague news brought in by
the maid-servant about some frightful occurrence or other at the Rojas
ranch.
“He will not come,” she kept saying to herself as she contemplated the
possibility of Manos Duras’ coming to see her that night as had been
agreed. “How could he dare to make such absurd pretensions?...”
No, certainly not; and after the news which would by that time be the
common talk of the town, he would not dare come back to make any claims.
And even though that semi-savage was a fear-inspiring opponent at close
range, she had only to keep her doors and windows well locked in order
to protect herself from his presence.
She stopped thinking about the _gaucho_; but her memory was still
tormented by memories of the preceding night. What was it that had
happened near dawn just as the open space of her window began to grow
luminous? She had been in the confused state of half-consciousness, when
one’s eyes refuse to open, and one’s thoughts alternate between waking
and sleep.
But now that she was quite waked up, and could contemplate what had
occurred a few hours previous, she began to acquire the certainty that
there had been someone close to her window that morning. Now she could
distinctly remember the muffled sound of steps on the balcony, a slight
creaking of the boards in the outside wall, as though someone were
leaning heavily against them. She could even have averred that she had
heard sounds like the lamentations of someone lost; and instinctively
she believed that the being who had been near her in the night on the
other side of the bungalow wall was no other than her husband.
Twice she had gone to the window and had opened it in the hope of
finding some paper or other trace of her invisible visitor, who had come
with the dawn, and vanished at sunrise.
“It was Federico,” she thought. “It could have been no one else....
Robledo must know where he is! How I wish he would come back so I could
speak to him!”
A little after midday, as she was smoking her twentieth cigarette, there
came a knock at the door. Several moments elapsed, and again came a
knock. Elena concluded that, since Sebastiana was no longer there to
keep them in order, the young servant-girls had left the house after
lunch, to run about the town in search of news and gossip.
So she went to open the door herself, and was much astonished at sight
of her caller. It was Moreno. There was nothing so remarkable about his
coming to call, yet Elena could not conceal a gesture of astonishment.
She had forgotten him so completely! Of late other men than he had
completely absorbed her attention.
Blushing with embarrassment for the forgetfulness of him her surprise
had betrayed, she invited him to come in, in a tone of quite exaggerated
affability. Surely it was her good luck which was sending her this fool
to entertain her with his conversation during the interminable afternoon
that somehow or other she must live through! And this call was at least
a break in the monotony of her solitude.
As he came in Moreno looked at the furnishings with a gently protective
air, quite as though they belonged to him. Then, with an assurance he
had never before revealed, he sat down in the chair which the _marquesa_
indicated he was to occupy.
“I’m off to Buenos Aires by the afternoon train, _señora marquesa_,” he
announced with a gravity of a man who knows his own importance. “I must
see the government representatives and give them an account of what
happened here, and talk with the minister of public works about keeping
things going on.”
Elena received all this with nods of understanding and sympathy, her
eyes all the while smiling maliciously ... it was amusing to see this
worthy family man stressing his own importance.
“But before I went away, I wanted to see you again to discuss a matter
relating to my future responsibilities.”
As he went on talking the malicious sparkle in Elena’s eyes suddenly
went out, and in its place came a look of avid interest that at moments
increased to burning intensity.
“Poor fellow,” said Moreno, as he related how Pirovani had entrusted his
entire fortune to him, making him the guardian of his only daughter who
was at school in Italy, “poor fellow ... I find on looking through his
papers that he was even better off than I thought. This responsibility
he has left me is going to take most of my time, and I may have to
resign from my position. I don’t even know that I’ll be able to come
back here. Perhaps it will be a long time before we see one another
again.”
The government employee grew sad at thought of this prolonged
separation, although he managed to maintain the expression of intense
self-satisfaction which he had worn ever since the day of the funeral.
“As poor old Pirovani left the management of his fortune to me, and as
this house belongs to his heir, of whom I am the legal guardian, I am
empowered, _señora marquesa_, to tell you that you may remain here as
long as it suits your convenience, just as though it were your own
house, and without any question of your paying a single cent for it.
There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you, _marquesa_!”
Her inquiring eyes looked at him fixedly. It was difficult to conceal
from him the surprise this news had caused her. Moreno, of all people,
the trustee of the contractor’s fortune, and still dazed by the amount
of the fortune so suddenly thrust into his possession, and about to
return to a great city, there to begin a new kind of existence....
Little by little from the sea of her amazement new plans began to emerge
like islands still of uncertain shape and in process of formation.
Within her, a dividing process was going on; side by side with the woman
of frivolous tastes, hungry for comforts and luxuries, emerged that
other woman, the one of ferocious energy, capable of harsh resolution in
difficult moments, the one who did not hesitate to commit cruelties. And
this woman, as she became roused, was imperiously commanding her
companion,
“Don’t let this man go away ... fate has sent him to you!”
Moreno, who was looking at her with more audacious eyes than in the days
when he had no hope of ever being rich and powerful, saw a shadow on the
_señora marquesa’s_ face, as though an invisible cloud were passing over
her. Then the corners of her mouth quivered, perhaps with pain, and she
raised her hands to her eyes, as though to hide some tears.
Moreno got up from his chair to console her. He remembered, at sight of
her mourning, that she must at that very moment be grieving over the
death of her husband’s mother. And in addition to that bereavement there
was the death of Pirovani, and Canterac’s flight, and so many
distressing occurrences in so short a time ...!
“All these things are very sad, _señora marquesa_, but you must not
weep, my friend!”
And he dared go so far as to take hold of her hands, pressing them
gently as he removed them from her eyes, humid with tears.
“I am not weeping for what is past,” she sighed, “but for myself, for my
misfortune. For them there is no remedy. I am all alone in the world. My
husband has not come back here since day before yesterday ... and
perhaps he will never come back. Who knows what calumnies people may
have poured into his ears! I had friends once, good friends, and one has
died while the other is a fugitive.... You were the only one left me ...
and now you are going away for ever!”
Shaken by these words, the government employee began to stammer,
“But you must always count on me, _señora marquesa_.... I am going
away, but in reality I am not going at all, for you will have me in
Buenos Aires, and....”
He decided that it was wiser not to go on, for his emotions might make
him incoherent. Elena, who had dried her tears, was looking at him with
passionate interest.
“I never have been able to make people understand me,” she said. “Men
for instance are always like this. They all come running when a woman
strikes their fancy, and they pursue her with their attentions, each in
turn gaining possession of his rival’s place until the poor thing is so
confused she doesn’t know which of them all she really prefers. Now that
you are going away, and that I am losing you, perhaps forever, I
suddenly take account of the fact that it was always the two poor
friends who have already left us who deliberately crowded into the front
row, and in doing so hid from me the man who is really the one I am most
interested in!”
Moreno was so impressed by these words that he took Elena’s left hand in
his.
“What are you saying, _marquesa_!”
She let him caress her hand, and then wove her smooth fingers about one
of his adding, in a tone of utmost sincerity, as though revealing her
most intimate thoughts,
“You always interested me ... because you were so modest, and I
recognized that modesty as being the kind that accompanies great
ability, abilities that you yourself do not yet suspect the existence of
in yourself. I like men who are good, men who have no false pride. So
often, when I was alone, I amused myself imagining what a man like you
might have become, had you lived in Europe ... and had you met the right
woman to inspire you, and to advise you and encourage your awakening
ambition....”
Moreno remained silent, looking at Elena with a kind of astonishment, as
though the words she had just uttered had won from him the utmost he was
capable of in the way of admiration. This wonderful woman had the same
thoughts that came to him so often ... but he had never dared put his
faith in them....
Elena sadly threw back her shoulders.
“But it is too late to talk of such things,” she went on in a tone of
discouragement.
“You have a family to work for, and I ... I am a woman with neither
illusions nor hopes, I am alone, I am poor ... and I do not know what is
in store for me.”
The government clerk remained pensive, his eyebrows drawn together, as
though mentally contemplating a vision thoroughly distasteful to him.
What he saw was a little house in the suburbs of Buenos Aires; in its
modest clean little rooms were a woman and some children ... his
children, his wife ... and then rapidly the vision vanished like a puff
of smoke, and Moreno recovered the air of assured self-satisfaction he
had displayed on first arriving that afternoon.
“I, too,” he said, “was busy thinking about a great many things last
night. I couldn’t sleep, and got up very late. That’s why I didn’t have
time to find out about what had happened at the Rojas’ place.... One of
the things I was thinking was that it might be a good idea for me to go
to Europe to look up Pirovani’s daughter, and keep a closer watch over
his property than I could do in Buenos Aires. Who knows? I might be able
to increase his fortune considerably, if I attended strictly to
business.... I am not vain enough to think that I have all the ability
you attribute to me, _marquesa_; but it is true that I know a little
arithmetic, and that I am methodical. I might be able to do at least as
well as other men in business ... why not?”
A long pause followed, and finally Moreno plucked up the courage to
stammer timidly,
“You might come with me to Europe, _marquesa_ ... to advise me. For, in
spite of the flattering opinion you have of me, I would be so ignorant
there of the things I ought to know....”
Elena started, and then, with a proud gesture, repelled this suggestion.
“How could I accept such a thing! You are mad!... But, my dear Moreno,
you would find me a terrible burden!... and besides, I am a married
woman, and if we travelled together, people would inevitably make the
worst suppositions about us!”
In spite of her protest, she took Moreno’s hands in hers and brought her
face close to his, surrounding him with the fragrant effluvia of her
perfumed flesh; and at the same time, she exclaimed warmly,
“What a great big heart you have! How can I show you how much I
appreciate your offering to do this?”
Moreno assumed an imploring expression as he in turn protested; what
could it matter to them what people said?... Anyway, no one knew them
in Europe. They could live in Paris, that marvellous city that he had
so often admired and that he might never have had the chance to see, had
not Pirovani’s death made it possible ... and it was for him to thank
the _marquesa_ if she should deign to accompany him and give him her
invaluable counsel.
“But your family?” inquired Elena, with an austerity of intonation
belied by her eyes.
With the good-natured cynicism of a rich man who firmly believes that
every difficulty in life can be solved with money, he replied,
“My family can stay in Buenos Aires. I’ll see to it that they have much
better quarters than they have ever had before. All that can easily be
arranged with money, and everybody will be happy. As for myself, I shall
of course have quite an income, for naturally I must pay myself for my
work as guardian. And besides that, I shall make money in a business
way.”
But Elena persisted with her refusals, although with diminishing
intensity, and Moreno thought the moment propitious for trying to
overcome her resistance by describing the delights of that Paris which
he had never seen, and those pleasures she had grown unmindful of for
having known them so well.
“It is madness,” persisted Elena, interrupting him. “I haven’t the
courage to face the scandal that would surely come of it. Just imagine
what people would say if we went away together!”
And then, assuming the modest, timid expression a young girl might wear
if confronted with something offensive to her innocence, she murmured,
“I am not the sort of woman you think me. Men are so fearfully ready to
believe everything they hear about a woman ... and Heaven only knows
what people may have said to you about me!... I alone can know how
unhappy I have been in my marriage. My husband is good, yes ... but he
never understood me. Still, all that is a far cry from running away with
another man, and giving everybody the right to talk about me!”
And then all the phrases stored in his memory from his assiduous reading
of society novels came pouring out.... What did marriage amount to
anyway?... And how could what people said have any weight with her? It
was her right to have real love in her life, and to take it wherever she
might find it ... and it was just as surely her right to “live her own
life,” side by side with a man capable of making life beautiful for her,
of making it worthy of all her wonderful gifts!
And as these passages culled from hundreds of novels came out, one after
the other, Moreno had the satisfaction of seeing that Elena too was
familiar with all these arguments, and that she too was moved and
softened (just as he was himself) by his literary but none the less
impassioned eloquence.
What the _marquesa_ was actually thinking was that she had carried on
this pretense of resistance long enough, and that it was now time to
give in gracefully so as to clear the way for a discussion of more
immediate and urgent matters. As though unaware of what she was doing,
she placed her hands on his shoulders, and spoke close to him, in a
scarcely audible tone, and looking up at the farthest corner of the
room, as though lost for the moment in a host of memories.
“Paris!” she murmured. “You know it from books, but they can give you
only a feeble idea of what life there is really like. Oh, if you knew
what a delicious experience is awaiting us there!”
Moreno took these words to be an acceptance of his proposals, and
believed himself authorized by them to put his arms around her.
“You do accept then?... Oh, thank you! Thank you!”
But she gently pushed him away, checking his caresses, and with the
gravity of demeanor of a woman who knows how to make clear and definite
business arrangements, she said,
“If I should come to the point of saying ‘I accept’ it would be only on
condition that we should leave this very day. Otherwise I may repent of
my decision, and change my mind.... Besides, why should I stay in this
hateful hole, when even my husband has abandoned me ... and I don’t know
what has become of him ...?”
Moreno replied by nodding vigorously. They ought to take advantage of
the train leaving that very afternoon. If they waited for the next,
something to hinder them might develop before they could get away ...
and the poor fellow actually believed that the _marquesa_ was capable of
repenting of her decision ... that he must make the most of this
favorable moment.
She meanwhile was asking numerous questions, each of which constituted
an article in the verbal contract that was being so definitely drawn up
between them. Moreno made clear to her that his claim to the
guardianship of Pirovani’s fortune was well substantiated by the papers
the Italian had left. The fortune of which he would have charge was
ample. By great good luck--for them--it happened that the contractor
had, before the duel, entrusted all the cash he had on hand to his
second. This made it possible for Moreno to pay the expenses of the trip
to the capital, as well as provide funds for Elena’s establishment in a
luxurious hotel there.
“And once in Buenos Aires,” he went on, “I shall assemble all the
deposits Pirovani had in numerous banks there, and I’ll also try to
collect what the government owes him for the work here in La Presa. I
know a lot of influential people who’ll help me get that money. You’ll
see that even though some people around here may think I’m a fool, I’m
not so slow when it comes to making people pay me what they owe me....
And just as soon as that little matter is settled, we’ll start for
Europe.”
Once more, emboldened by his own words, and certain now of Elena’s
acceptance, he put his arms about her, but again she repulsed him.
“No,” she said severely, though at the same time there was a gleam of
malicious amusement in the eyes she rapidly turned away from him, “I
warn you that until we get to Paris I shall be no more to you than your
travelling companion. Men are always ungrateful if they attain their
desires too easily ... and they have been known to take advantage of a
woman’s generosity, and forget all their handsome promises!”
Then she smiled with a look that promised many things, and murmured very
low, dropping her eyes,
“But, as soon as we get to Paris....”
Moreno was profoundly moved by the gesture that accompanied her words.
“Paris!” At the word, the government clerk’s imagination excitedly
reviewed all he had read about the episodes of the gay life led by
foreigners in the French capital.
A luxurious all night restaurant, such as those he always thought of as
being plentifully scattered through Montmartre, and such as those he had
so often admired in movie films.... It seemed to him that he could
actually hear the harsh, restless music of a jazzband ... and his eyes
followed the circling of the couples dancing in a great rectangle,
bordered by glittering tables.
Then the _marquesa_ came in, gorgeously dressed ... she was leaning on
his arm ... he wore a dress coat and an enormous pearl on his
shirt-front. The major-domo of the establishment welcomed him with the
familiar respect due a well-known customer, the women from afar cast
enviously admiring glances at Elena’s jewels.... Then a groom,
diminutive as a gnome, carried off the marquesa’s magnificent fur wrap
that scattered a perfume through the air like that of a tropical
garden.... And now he was examining the wine list, and ordering a
high-priced champagne, whose very name called forth from the manager of
the establishment a reverently hushed tone of admiration....
The vision vanished; he was still in Pirovani’s former house, sitting
beside the woman whom he had desired with all the fervor that men
isolated and lonely feel for something that seems forever beyond their
reach; and now his eager and hungry eyes rested upon her.
“Paris!” he repeated. “How I want to be there with you ... Elena. For
you will allow me to call you Elena, won’t you?”