“Twelve years since I was in Paris! Ay!... How I have changed!”
As he spoke, Robledo looked pityingly at himself in the glass; he looked
pityingly at himself every morning while he dressed!
He was still in vigorous health; but unquestionably age had begun to
leave its marks on him. The crown of his head was now completely bald.
On the other hand he had shaved off his mustache, for the simple reason
that it had come to contain more white hairs than brown ones. This
change, according to Robledo, made him look like a priest or a comic
actor. But it was undeniable that it had restored to his appearance a
certain jovial youthfulness.
He was sitting in a wicker chair in the lobby of one of the hotels that
are to be found in Paris near the _Arc de Triomphe_. Opposite him sat a
young married couple, no other than Watson and Celinda.
The years that had passed had merely emphasized Richard’s features,
bringing into sharper relief his athletic and tranquil beauty. _Flor de
Rio Negro_ had now attained the ripe sweetness of a midsummer fruit. She
still preserved her youthful slimness, slightly modified; she was now
the mother of four children!
She no longer wore her hair cut in the style of a medieval page, nor, in
public, did she indulge in the childish exploits of the small amazon
who had once been the admiration of the immigrants on the wild
Patagonian plains. The time had come when she considered it her duty to
assume something at least of the grave dignity to be expected in the
mother of a nine year old boy. This important member of the family now
sat facing his parents. His restlessness, and his impatience of maternal
remonstrances soon revealed the fact that he was a self-willed and
somewhat disobedient small boy; and he had already learned to seek
“Uncle Manuel’s” protection whenever his less understanding parents
scolded him. Meanwhile, on an upper floor of the “palace,” as most such
hotels call themselves, two English nurses were occupied in watching
over the play of the prosperous couple’s three younger children.
The Watsons had the characteristic appearance of those South American
families who go to spend several months in Europe every year or so, and
who, rich and exuberant, travel tribe-fashion, transporting their whole
establishments, including all the servants, from one side of the
Atlantic to the other. The Watson family was as yet but barely started,
and occupied merely four staterooms on board ship, and five rooms with a
general sitting room at the various hotels at which they stopped. But
ten years more, with continued success in business, on its yearly trips
to Europe, the family caravan would be engaging all the staterooms on
one side of the steamer and occupying a whole floor in the “palaces” it
patronized.
“How many things have happened since I was here last!”
Robledo’s cheerful face became grave as he remembered the struggles of
those two hard years during which he had fought ill-luck and failure, in
order to make it possible for the works on the Rio Negro to be taken up
again.
He had known all the anxieties of rapidly accumulating debts and the
demands of creditors who cannot be paid. Nearly all the inhabitants of
La Presa had abandoned the town when the river destroyed the works. The
infrequent travellers who journeyed that way came principally to see the
ruins, like those of the dead historic cities of the old world, and
viewed with astonishment here in this land where ruins were scarcely
known.
But at last the government had taken up the work again. Little by little
the river allowed itself to be brought under control, and finally
accepted even the obstructing dam. Then it was that Robledo’s and
Watson’s canals drank their first waters, letting the vivifying
irrigating stream run over their oozy beds. After that had been
accomplished, all that was needed was a little time to allow the miracle
of water to work its own lesser miracles. Then men from all the lands of
the globe began streaming into the dead settlement, eager to break up
and cultivate this new soil which would ultimately belong to them.
A delicate luminous green was now creeping over the fields that had
before been stretches of pebbles and dust. The dry, prickly _matorrales_
gave place to young shade trees. Nourished by the accumulated fertility
of a soil that had slept for thousands of years, constantly refreshed by
the water gliding at their feet, in a marvellously short space of time
these young growths developed prodigiously.
The miserable adobe hovels, that had fallen into decay and ruin during
the period of poverty and abandonment, were now replaced by brick
buildings that were wide and low, with an inner _patio_ copied from the
Spanish architecture of the colonial period. The _Gallego’s_ former
_boliche_ became an enormous store, employing numerous clerks, where
everything that might be required by customers, whose chief occupation
was cultivating the miraculously redeemed soil, could be found; all
manner of business was carried on at the _almacén_, including a large
amount of banking.
The owner of the “store” had other sources of income as well, since his
barren fields too had become irrigated lands. He had even realized his
dream of returning to Spain, leaving one of his clerks in charge of the
business.
“I had a letter from don Antonio yesterday,” said Robledo with
good-natured irony. “He wants us to go to Madrid. He wants to show off
his house and his automobiles, and especially his friends. It seems that
his dinner parties have been getting into the newspapers. And he says
that he has received a decoration, and that one of these days he is to
be presented to the king.... Lucky man!”
But at this reminder of her distant homeland, a shadow passed over
Celinda’s face.
“She’s thinking of her father,” said Watson to his partner. “She can’t
bear to think of La Presa, and of his being there alone. But I don’t see
that we could help it if the old man wouldn’t come with us!”
Robledo nodded, and tried to cheer the down-cast Celinda. They had all
done their best to persuade don Carlos to accompany them but he had not
been able to make up his mind to leave the ranch. For him there was no
particular interest in seeing the Europe where he had committed so many
follies in his youth. No; he clung to his old illusions, he did not want
to risk losing them. And besides, he was afraid that he would not have
time to enjoy all the changes brought about on his estate.
“I have so few years left to live,” he explained; “I don’t want to waste
them wandering about through strange places, when there are so many
things to do here. Celinda is going to give me a lot of grandchildren to
provide for, and I don’t want them to be beggars.”
Robledo’s irrigation ditches had been carried as far as the Rojas ranch,
and had transformed the thin dry pasturage of other times into inviting
meadows of alfalfa, always humid and green. The herds were fattening and
multiplying prodigiously. In the early days don Carlos had had to ride
miles in order to find one of his hard-horned, bony steers, as it
strayed about the barren ranch in the hope of discovering some isolated
patch of coarse grass. But now the steers, sleek and fat, their forelegs
fairly doubling up under the weight of their accumulating flesh, stood
munching the succulent alfalfa that surrounded them without their having
to stir a hoof to reach it.
Besides the reasons he offered for not going with them, don Carlos, who
was by this time the leading citizen of the region, felt that he would
lose his importance in those _gringo_ countries where nobody knew his
name and where no one would make a fuss over him. He had even avoided
trips to Buenos Aires since the friends of his youth had died. Their
sons and grandsons showed only too plainly that they didn’t know who he
was! But at La Presa, where he was known as the wealthiest land-owner of
the district, every one treated him with a respect verging on reverence.
Moreover, he was a municipal judge there, and the immigrants, the
cultivators of _chacras_ or small farms, in recognition of his authority
and wisdom consulted him on all sorts of subjects and accepted his
decisions as gospel.
“What would I be doing in Paris?... Bragging about all I had left at
home?... No, no, leave me with my own people. Let every steer chew his
own cud!”
But it cost the old man something to part with his grandchildren,
although the separation was not to be a long one. And when Celinda, and
the _gringo_, her husband, came back, the oldest boy would be just old
enough for his grandfather to teach him how to ride, as every good
creole should.
This particular grandchild was now playing with Robledo, climbing onto
his knees and delightedly diving off backwards on to the carpet.
“Carlitos, darling!” implored his mother. “Do let your uncle Manuel have
a little peace!”
Then she went on, in reply to what Robledo had been saying about her
father,
“It’s true that he didn’t want to come. But I can’t help feeling
disappointed about his not being here to see all that we see.”
A young woman, elegantly dressed, approached the group. This was the
young French governess, to whom had been deputed the education of young
Carlos. It was time for him now to take a walk in the _Bois de
Boulogne_. But he didn’t want to go and all his mother’s petting did not
succeed in quelling the spoiled child’s protests.
“I want to stay with uncle Manuel!”
But it seemed that uncle Manuel had to go out alone, as he told the
small tyrant, quite with the air of offering him an apology.
“If you do what mama asks and go to the _Bois_ with Mademoiselle, I’ll
tell you a story tonight, a long one, when you go to bed.”
Carlitos gave this promise a favorable reception, and without further
objections, allowed himself to be carried off by his governess.
“There goes our young despot,” exclaimed Robledo, pretending immense
satisfaction at being rid of him.
Celinda smiled. She knew well enough that Robledo had concentrated on
this child of hers all the latent affection that childless and lonely
men have it in them to expend as they draw near the boundaries of old
age. He was already very rich and his fortune could not help but
increase as the irrigated lands came under cultivation. Sometimes, when
mention was made of his millions, he would look at Celinda’s son,
dignifying him with the name of “my chief heir.” A part of his fortune
would of course go to some nephews of his in Spain, whom he had seen
once or twice; but the major part of his fortune was destined to
Carlitos.
For Watson’s other children he had a great deal of affection also; but
this first born had come into the world during a period that for Robledo
was full of bitterness and uncertainty; when all of his work was in
danger of being irretrievably lost; and for this reason he had for the
child that special tenderness that one reserves for the companion of
evil days.
“What are you going to do this afternoon?” Robledo asked of Celinda.
“The same thing as usual, I suppose?... call on the most distinguished
dressmakers of the _Rue de la Paix_, and the adjacent streets?”
Celinda, with a nod, gave her approval of this program, while Watson
laughed good-humoredly.
“I’m afraid you’ll never be able to get on the boat,” warned the
Spaniard gravely.
“But think how hard it is to buy anything where we come from!” exclaimed
Celinda. “The place we live in is just as though it were the first week
after the Creation. The only difference between us and Adam and Eve is
that we have a few more neighbors, a few more clothes, and that we
happen to be millionaires!”
They all laughed. But again their eyes grew dreamy as they thought of
the scenes that they had helped to make. The camp at the dam had
developed into what was now known as “Colonia Celinda”; and it was
impossible to think of it without thinking also of the old man who was
directing the development of the property, and who, as homes multiplied
around him, seemed to grow smaller and smaller, while his profile took
on a new sharpness of outline, making him resemble, as he stood
listening to the men and women who came to him with their difficulties,
a kindly but authoritative old patriarch.
And while the tentacles of the canal system were slowly creeping through
the ancient basin of the Rio Negro, changing the once arid lands into
fertile prairies, a stream of immigrants was bringing new money, new
blood, new energy to the colony; and as they paid in year by year the
purchase price of their farms, millions poured into the company’s
offices.
And to Robledo there was a certain irony in the fact that wealth had
come to him when he was already too old to feel the desires that tempt
and divert other men. Watson’s children were already millionaires, many
times over; it would never fall to their lot to know the enslaving power
of toil, nor the anxieties of the need of money; and at their coming of
age they would undoubtedly come to Paris to pour out on its pleasures a
part of their princely inheritance, attracting attention even there by
their extravagances and the glitter of their idle and useless lives. But
the very force of the contrast between their lives and his amused
Robledo, and with the smiling fatalism of the man who in a long lifetime
has known want and bitterness, he accepted this termination of his
labors, finding it quite in keeping with the usual ironies of life.
There was another contrast too, one which he often pondered, in the
circumstances of his career. While he had been making himself a
millionaire, one half of humanity, all that part of it separated from
him by a wide ocean, had been suffering the horrors of a ghastly war.
The first effect of this cataclysm had been to endanger his own
enterprise, for the foreign colonists on his land had hastened to
abandon their farms in order to join the troops of their respective
nations. Then suddenly this general exodus stopped, to be followed by a
veritable flood of new colonists.
Meanwhile, violent transformations were taking place in Europe. Many of
those whom twelve years earlier he had known as rich men, were now
poverty-stricken, or else had disappeared. On the other hand, he, who in
those days had been a mere aspirant to fortune, a colonist whose future
was of the most doubtful, now felt wearied by the exaggerated dimensions
of his prosperity. He thought of himself as being like the steers of his
friend don Carlos, who, overwhelmed by the very plentifulness of their
fodder, stood knee-deep in alfalfa on legs too slender to support their
enormous weight, while they looked with eyes that showed no trace of
desire at the quantities of pasturage surrounding them.
Watson and Celinda were young, they still had illusions and desires,
they had innumerable uses for their wealth. Celinda knew all the
pleasures of luxury, and her husband could gratify that most universal
of all the desires of a lover, the desire to give Celinda everything
that she wanted. But as to himself, Manuel Robledo, multi-millionaire of
the Argentine, not even the most innocent pleasures reserved to old age
had for him any charm. Riches had come too late; he had no time now to
learn what to do with them.
The greater part of his life had been spent in an effort to simplify,
to do without comforts, and now he no longer needed, no longer desired,
the things other people considered indispensable. Celinda and her
husband kept an expensive automobile standing at the hotel entrance from
early morning till late at night. They could not live without having
this means of locomotion at their beck and call. One would suppose that
these two former crack riders had possessed a car from the moment they
were born. Ah, youth! What a marvellous adaptability it possesses for
every kind of pleasure and luxury! Only in cases of urgent haste did
Robledo remember that he could purchase the services of an automobile.
But on all other occasions he preferred to walk or to employ the same
means of locomotion as those used by people of moderate circumstances.
“It isn’t meanness, nor miserliness,” Celinda used to say, for with her
woman’s keenness of observation, she had learned to understand Robledo.
“He simply doesn’t think of these things, because they mean nothing to
him.”
The two engineers started from their day-dream as they heard Celinda
inquire,
“And what are you going to do this afternoon, don Manuel? Why not come
with me to the dressmaker’s, so that you’ll know just what you are
talking about when you make fun of women’s frivolous pastimes?”
But Robledo had other plans.
“I have a call to make, on a former classmate who wants me to help him
out in a business matter ... a poor devil who’s out of luck ... but he
has a scheme for manufacturing agricultural implements, and it may be
that all he needs to set him on his feet is a little capital. He has
invented a new kind of plow, he writes me.”
The three friends walked slowly out to the street, and Richard and his
young wife got into their car. Robledo however preferred to walk to the
_Place de L’Etoile_, where he took the _métro_ to Montmartre.
It was a late spring afternoon, the air was mild, the sky soft with a
golden haze. Robledo swung along with the quick step of youth. Suddenly
the image of his unfortunate companion Torre Bianca crossed his mind.
This was scarcely strange for when he had last been in Paris it was as
his friend’s guest, and it was together that they had all three set out
from the brilliant capital to seek their fortune in the deserts of
northern Argentine.... Natural enough too that the thought of this other
engineer friend of his whom he was at that moment going to see, who was
in desperate straits also, and burdened with a family, should make him
think of the ill-fated _marqués_.
Very often in the last twelve years, in the life of monotonous work that
he had led, with few new impressions coming in to blot out old ones, he
had thought of Torre Bianca’s tragic story and had wondered what had
been Elena’s fate after her flight....
Nor was it easy to forget the woman whose evil influence persisted so
long after she herself had disappeared. The old inhabitants of La Presa
who had remained faithful to the land and had not abandoned the ruined
town, had handed down the legend of how a woman had come to that desert
community from the old world, a woman who, beautiful and possessed of a
fateful charm, had brought ruin and death to all those who had fallen
under her spell. Those who knew her only from hearing the legend that
had grown up about her, imagined her a kind of witch, and attributed to
the vanished “_Cara Pintada_,” the “_Painted Face_,” all kinds of
nameless crimes! It was even whispered that at times those who strayed
in solitary spots along the river bank, caught glimpses of her, and
always she brought evil upon those to whom she appeared....
On his occasional trips to Buenos Aires, Robledo had tried to get some
news of that Moreno who had been the companion of Elena’s flight. But he
had never been able to learn anything definite. Evidently both fugitives
had vanished in the restless crowds of Europe, as completely and
tracelessly as do those who sink in the frothing sea.
“She must have died,” Robledo would say to himself. “Without doubt she
is dead. A woman of her kind would not be likely to live long.”
And for months at a time she would drop out of his mind; then some
allusion on the part of the old inhabitants would awaken his memories of
the vanished _marquesa_.
As he went down the steps of the station near the _Arc de Triomphe_, he
had quite forgotten the unlucky couple. The human tide sweeping into the
depths of the _métro_ carried him along with it, and in a few minutes he
climbed out to the street level, once more on the opposite side of the
city.
As evening closed in he left his friend’s house which was in a modest
side street, and walked along the _boulevard Rochechuart_, towards the
_Place Pigalle_.
On his evening excursions through Montmartre with South American
friends, eager to enjoy the puerile and specious delights of all-night
restaurants, he had never gone further than this square. Moreover the
aspect of this part of Paris is by night far more pleasing than by day.
The crowds passing along the boulevard he was following were of ordinary
or vulgar appearance. Evidently the Montmartre of which foreigners spoke
with such enthusiasm, whose name was uttered as though it were a magic
word by the members of certain youthful groups on the other side of the
Atlantic, began at the _Place Pigalle_. This _boulevard Rochechuart_ was
like a frontier region and lacked any distinctive character of its own.
Doubtless its inhabitants were poor devils expelled from Montmartre
proper by the necessity of finding cheaper lodgings than were available
in that famous quarter, or else they were novices in the life of
pleasure, who had not yet acquired the clothes nor the manners suitable
for a successful night-restaurant career.
As darkness thickened, the number of women on the street increased....
For them the kind uncertainties of twilight were a necessary assistance
in their pursuit of men and bread.
Robledo passed them as though blind to their glances and deaf to their
whisperings. “Young man,” he thought he heard, and “a handsome fellow.”
“Poor creatures! To get a meal they feel obliged to tell these
outrageous lies....”
Suddenly his attention was drawn to one of them. There was little to
distinguish her from the others. Like them she was looking at him with
bold and provoking glances. But those eyes ... where had he seen those
eyes?
She was dressed with a kind of poverty stricken elegance. Her clothes,
old and faded, had once, long years ago, been of handsome material, and
fashionable cut. From a distance they might still deceive; and she still
preserved a slenderness which, with her unusual height, made one forget
momentarily the ravages poverty and age had made upon her.
When she saw Robledo stopping to look at her, she smiled at him with
childish sincerity. This was a promising catch, the best of the
afternoon. Her prospective customer had all the appearance of being a
rich foreigner wandering without his bearings in a quarter he had never
strayed into before, and to which he was not likely to return. There was
no time to lose.
Meanwhile Robledo stood motionless, looking at her with frowning brows
as he searched his memory.
“Who is this woman?... Where the devil have I seen her?”
She too had stopped, turning back to smile and invite him with a gesture
to follow her.
Robledo’s expression showed that he was alternating between surprise and
doubt.
Could it be?... But he had thought her dead years ago! No, it was
impossible. He had been thinking of her that very afternoon, that was
why he had made this mistake.... It would be too extraordinary a
coincidence....
He was still eyeing her, believing that he recognized the past in
certain lines of that faded face, and confused by others which he did
not recognize. But those eyes! Those eyes!
The woman smiled once more, slightly moving her head, and repeating her
silent invitations. Impelled by curiosity, Robledo involuntarily made a
scarcely perceptible gesture of acceptance, and she walked on. But she
had taken only a few steps when she stopped before the screen door
leading into a bar of squalid appearance through the smeared windows of
which he saw vapid faces staring. Standing at the door of this place she
winked at him and then disappeared into the interior of the filthy
establishment.
Robledo stood hesitant. It disgusted him to think of having the
slightest of relations with this woman, but at the same time his
curiosity about her made him uncomfortable. He felt certain that if he
went away without speaking with her he would forever be tormented by a
persistent doubt, he would always regret not having made sure whether
this phantom of Elena had really been Elena herself.
And fear of being obsessed by this doubt turned the scale of his
indecision.... With a violent push he swung open the door.
Tables, a decrepit cane settee against the wall; dingy mirrors, and a
counter behind which were numerous shelves full of bottles, guarded by a
woman, old and monstrously fat, her face mottled with pimples and scabs.
Robledo recognized the place as one of those frequented by women, who
though dependent on the day’s chance meetings for their sustenance,
still wish to preserve a certain independence, though often enough they
are glad to accept the services of the proprietress of the saloon to
which they bring patrons, as adviser and procuress.
A waiter of effeminate appearance was serving the clients who at this
moment were two; one, a young woman so ghastly pale that it seemed the
hollows and joints of her skull would soon show through the tight-drawn
transparent skin. In the intervals between her convulsive coughs she
puffed hungrily at a cigarette. At another table sat a woman, now old
and abject, who perhaps had been handsome in her youth. She too, like
the woman Robledo had followed, still preserved a distinctive
slenderness, but her clothes and general appearance indicated a more
advanced stage of poverty. She was drinking, with slow gulps, the
contents of a large glass, closing her eyes and rolling her head on the
back of the divan as though she were drunk.
When Robledo came in he noticed that the woman he was seeking had gone
to sit down at a table at the back of the room, at as great a distance
as possible from the counter and the other patrons. His own arrival
created quite a stir. The proprietress welcomed him with an obsequious
smile, and the consumptive girl cast him a glance which was intended to
be passionate but which Robledo took as a pathetic begging for alms. The
drunken woman also gave him a smile which revealed the absence of
several front teeth. Then she winked an invitation at him, but on seeing
that all his attention was directed elsewhere, she cynically shrugged
her shoulders and dozed off again.
He sat down at a table opposite the woman who had aroused his curiosity,
so as to be able to watch her more closely than was possible in the
street; and he almost smiled as he discovered how deceptive the
vagabond’s appearance of shabby elegance was.
From a distance the air with which she wore her clothes might have taken
in the humble or the imaginative man who is disposed to believe in the
elegance of any woman who pays him some attention. But viewed close at
hand this elegance was discovered to be so fictitious as to be
grotesque. Her hat, of impressive proportions, revealed a frayed brim
and broken feathers. Her skirt, when she sat down, left her legs exposed
and it would have been difficult to count the holes and darns in her
stockings. One of her shoes was worn through to the ground, and on the
other the leather had split over one of the toes. Her face was covered
with rouge and a white paste which did not succeed in concealing its
wrinkles and other signs of a hard life. But those eyes!
There were moments when he felt convinced ... this _was_ Elena. They
both looked at one another fixedly. Then, with a gesture, she asked if
she could draw nearer and finally came to sit down at his table.
“I thought we had better come in here to talk. Men don’t usually like to
be seen with a woman in the street. Most of them are married. But
perhaps you are not like the others in that respect....”
Her voice was hoarse; it did not in any way recall the one he had heard
twelve years ago; yet, in spite of this fact, his conviction grew.
“It is she,” he thought. “There is no doubt of it....”
“I may be wrong,” the woman went on. “But I think you must be a
bachelor. I don’t see any wedding ring....”
And she looked smilingly at the masculine hands on the table opposite
her. But something else preoccupied her far more than the civil status
of the gentleman who had followed her. She kept looking anxiously toward
the counter near which the waiter had taken up a position, in
expectation of the new patron’s order.
“May I order something?” she asked. “The whiskey here is fine. There’s
no better in the city.”
When he saw the gentleman nod, the waiter came up, and without waiting
for directions, brought a whiskey bottle and two glasses. After pouring
out the drinks he withdrew to a discreet distance, not, however, without
casting at Robledo a glance and smile that closely resembled those
bestowed upon him by the mistress of the establishment.
The woman drained her glass with avidity, and then, as she noticed that
the contents of the other glass was still untouched, an imploring look
passed through her eyes.
“Before the war, whiskey didn’t cost much, but now ... only kings and
millionaires can afford it. May I ...?”
The hand stretched out toward Robledo’s glass trembled with eagerness.
He nodded, and the woman drained this glass too at a gulp.
The liquor seemed to dispel the torpor he had noticed in her words and
gestures. Her eyes brightened, and she began speaking more rapidly.
Suddenly she asked him in Spanish,
“Where are you from? I knew at once from your accent that you were
American ... South American.... From Buenos Aires perhaps?”
Robledo shook his head, and gravely produced a lie.
“I am a Mexican.”
“I don’t know Mexico very well. I spent a few days in Vera Cruz once,
between steamers. But I know the Argentine. I lived there once, years
ago.... Where haven’t I been! There isn’t a language on earth that I
don’t speak! That’s why the men like me, and my women friends are all
envious.”
Robledo was looking fixedly at her. This woman was Elena, he could no
longer doubt it. Yet there remained here nothing of the woman he had
known in the past. The last twelve years weighed on her more heavily
than all her previous existence, stamping her with all the repugnant and
distressing signs of moral and physical decrepitude.
He had been able to recognize her only because, leading a solitary,
monotonous life, his impressions of the past remained clear and
distinct, refreshed from time to time by long hours of brooding
remembering, and never blotted out under new impressions, superimposed.
She, on the other hand, had lived so rapidly, had seen so many men pass
through her life, that she could not remember Robledo. To do so she
would have to make a determined effort of attention. And besides Robledo
too had changed with the years. Yet, with the never quite dormant
instinct of the professional courtesan, who, living by the chase,
develops a kind of tactual memory, she too felt that somewhere this man
had sat near her before.
“I can’t remember where we have met,” she said, with a reminiscence of
the _marquesa’s_ manners. “I have passed through so many countries and I
have known so many men ...!”