Meantime the train continued on its way. The tears of the bride had
ceased to flow, leaving scarcely a trace behind them, even in reddened
eyelids. So it is with the tears we shed in youth--tears without
bitterness that, like a gentle dew, refresh instead of scorching. She
began to be interested by the stations which they passed along the route
and the people that looked in curiously at the door of the compartment.
She put a thousand questions to Miranda, who explained everything to
her, sparing no effort to amuse her, and varying his explanations with
an occasional tender speech which the young girl heard without emotion,
thinking it the most natural thing in the world that a husband should
manifest affection for his wife, and betraying by not the lightest
heaving of the chest the sweet confusion that love awakens. Miranda once
more found himself in his element, tears having ceased and serenity and
good-humor being restored. Pleased with the result, he even thanked in
his own mind one of the causes that had contributed to it--an old woman
carrying an enormous basket on her arm, who slipped into the compartment
a few stations before Palencia, and whose grotesque appearance helped to
call back a smile to Lucía’s lips.
On reaching Palencia, the old woman left the compartment, and a
well-dressed man with a serious expression of countenance silently
entered.
“He looks like papa,” said Lucía in a low voice to Miranda. “Poor papa!”
And this time a sigh only was the tribute paid to filial affection.
Night was approaching; the train moved slowly, as if fearing to trust
itself to the rails, and Miranda observed that they were greatly behind
time.
“We shall arrive at Venta de Baños,” he said, turning the leaf of the
Guide, “much later than the usual time.”
“And in Venta de Baños----” began Lucía.
“We can sup--if they allow us time to do so. Under ordinary
circumstances there is not only time to sup but also to rest a little,
while waiting for the other train, the express, which is to take us to
France.”
“To France!” Lucía clapped her hands as if she had just heard a
delightful and unexpected piece of intelligence. Then, with a thoughtful
air, she added gravely. “Well, for my part, I should like to have some
supper.”
“We shall sup there, of course; at least I hope the train will stop long
enough to allow us to do so. You have an appetite, eh? The fact is that
you have eaten scarcely anything to-day.”
“With the hurry and excitement, and attending to the serving of the
chocolate, and grief at leaving poor papa and seeing him so
downcast--and----”
“And what else?”
“And--well, one does not get married every day and it is only natural
that it should upset one a little--it is a very serious thing--. Father
Urtazu warned me of that, so that last night I did not close my eyes and
I counted the hours, and the half hours, and the quarters, by the
cuckoo-clock in the reception-room, and at every stroke I heard, tam,
tam, ‘Stop, you wretch,’ I cried, ‘and let me cover my face with the bed
clothes and go to sleep, and then wake me if you can.’ But it was all of
no use. Now that it is over, it is just like jumping a wide ditch--you
give the jump, and you think no more about it. It is over.”
Miranda laughed; sitting beside his bride, looking at her closely, she
seemed to him very lovely, transformed almost, by her traveling dress
and the animation that flushed her cheeks and brightened her fresh
complexion. Lucía, too, began to return to the unrestraint of her former
intercourse with Miranda, somewhat interrupted of late by the novelty of
their position toward each other.
“Don’t laugh at my nonsense, Señor de Miranda,” murmured the young girl.
“Do me the favor not to misunderstand me, child,” he answered. “And my
name is Aurelio, and you should address me as _thou_ not _you_.”
The whole of this dialogue had passed in an undertone, the interlocutors
bending slightly toward each other and speaking in low, almost
lover-like accents. The presence of a witness to their conversation, in
the person of their fellow-traveler, who leaned back silently in his
corner, by the restraint it imposed, imparted to their whispered words a
certain air of timidity and mystery which lent them a meaning they did
not in themselves possess. The same words spoken aloud would have seemed
simple and indifferent enough. And so it often is with words--they
derive their value not from what they express in themselves but from
the tone in which they are uttered and the relation they bear to other
words, like the pieces of stone employed in mosaic that, according to
the position in which they are set, represent now a tree, now a house,
now a human countenance.
The train at last stopped at Venta de Baños, and the lamps of the
station glared upon them like fiery eyes through the light mist of the
tranquil autumn night.
“Is it here--is it here we are to stop for supper?” asked Lucía, whose
appetite and curiosity were both alike sharpened by the event, new for
her, of supping at the restaurant of a railway station.
“Here”; answered Miranda, speaking much less cheerfully than before.
“Now we shall have to change trains. If I had the power, I would alter
all this. There can be nothing more annoying. You have to hunt up your
luggage so that it may not be carried off to Madrid--you have to move
all your traps----”
As he spoke, he took down from the rack the rug, valise, and bundle of
umbrellas, but Lucía, youthful and vigorous, daughter of the people as
she was, snatched from his hand the bag, which was the heaviest of the
articles, and leaping lightly as a bird to the ground, ran toward the
restaurant.
They seated themselves at the table set for travelers; a table tasteless
in its appointments, that bore the stamp of the vulgar promiscuousness
of the guests who succeeded one another at it without intermission. It
was long and was covered with oilcloth and surrounded, like a hen by her
chickens, by smaller tables, on which were services for tea, coffee, and
chocolate. The cups, resting mouth downward on the saucers, seemed
waiting patiently for the friendly hand which should restore them to
their natural position; the lumps of sugar heaped on metal salvers
looked like building materials--blocks of white marble hewn for some
Lilliputian palace. The tea-pots displayed their shining paunches and
the milk-jugs protruded their lips, like badly brought-up children. The
monotony that reigned in the long hall was oppressive. Price-lists,
maps, and advertisements hanging from the walls, lent the apartment a
certain official air. The end of the room, occupied by a tall counter
covered with rows of plates, groups of freshly washed glasses,
fruit-dishes in which the pyramids of apples and pears looked pale
beside the bright green of the moss around them. On the principal table,
in two blue porcelain vases, some drooping flowers--late roses and
odorless sunflowers--were slowly withering. The travelers came in one
after another and took their places, their features drawn with sleep and
fatigue, the men with their traveling caps pulled down over their brows,
the women with their heads covered with woolen hoods, their figures
concealed by long gray water-proof cloaks, their hair disordered, their
cuffs and collars crumpled. Lucía, with her smiling face, her
well-fitting jacket and her fresh and natural complexion, formed a
striking contrast to the women around her, and it seemed as if the crude
yellow light of the gas-jets had concentrated itself above her head,
leaving the faces of the other guests in a turbid half-light. They were
served the invariable restaurant dinner--vegetable-soup, broiled chops,
sapless wings of chickens, warmed-over fish, slices of cold ham, thin as
wafers, cheese, and fruits. Miranda ate little, rejecting in turn every
dish offered him, and, asking in a loud and authoritative voice for a
bottle of Sherry and another of Bordeaux, he poured out some of each of
the wines for Lucía, explaining to her their particular qualities. Lucía
ate voraciously, giving full rein to her appetite, like a child on a
holiday. With each new dish was renewed the enjoyment that a stomach
unspoiled and accustomed to simple food experiences in the slightest
culinary novelty. She sipped the Bordeaux, clicking her tongue against
the roof of her mouth, and declaring that it smelled and tasted like the
violets that Velez de Rada used sometimes to bring her. She held up the
liquid topaz of the sherry to the light and closed her eyes as she drank
it, declaring that it tickled her throat. But her great orgy, her
forbidden fruit, was the coffee. We, the faithful and exact chroniclers
of Señor Joaquin, the Leonese, have never been able to discover the
secret and potent reason which had always made him prohibit the use of
coffee to his daughter, as if it were some poisonous drug or pernicious
philter; a prohibition all the more inexplicable since we are already
aware of the inordinate passion for coffee cherished by our good
Colmenarist himself. Lucía, forbidden to taste the black infusion, of
which she knew her father swallowed copious draughts every day, had
taken it into her head that the prohibited beverage was nectar itself,
the very ambrosia of the gods, and she would sometimes say to Rosarito
or Carmen, “Wait until I am married, and I will drink as much coffee as
I please. You shall see if I don’t.”
The coffee of the restaurant of Venta de Baños was neither very pure nor
very aromatic, and yet when for the first time Lucía introduced the
little spoon filled with the liquid between her lips, when she tasted
its slight bitterness and inhaled the warm fumes rising from it, she
felt a profound thrill run through her frame, something like an
expansion of her being, as if all her senses had opened simultaneously
like the buds of a tree bursting into bloom at once. The glass of
Chartreuse, sipped slowly, left in her mouth a penetrating and
strengthening odor, a slight and pleasant thirst, extinguished by the
last sips of the coffee sweetened by the powdered sugar that lay in
little eddies at the bottom of the cup.
“If papa were to see me now,” she murmured, “what would he say?”
Miranda and Lucía were the last to rise from the table. The other
passengers were already scattered about in groups on the platform,
waiting to obtain seats in the express which had just arrived and which
stood, vibrating still with its recent motion, in front of the railway
station.
“Come,” said Miranda, “the train is going to start. I don’t know whether
we shall be able to find a vacant compartment or not.”
They began their peregrination, passing through all the coaches in turn
in search of a vacant compartment. They found one at last, not without
some difficulty, and took possession of it, throwing their parcels on
the cushions. The opaque light of the lantern, filtering through the
blue silk curtain, the dull, uniform, gray hue of the covers, the
silence, the air of repose succeeding the glare and confusion of the
restaurant, invited to rest and sleep, and Lucía unfastened the elastic
of her hat, which she took off and placed in the rack.
“I feel dizzy,” she said, passing her hand over her forehead. “My head
aches a little--I am warm.”
“The wines, the coffee,” responded Miranda, gaily. “Rest for a moment
while I go to inventory the luggage. It is an indispensable formality
here.” Saying this, he lifted one of the cushions of the coach, placed
the rolled-up rug under it for a pillow, and raised the arm dividing the
two seats, saying:
“There, you have as comfortable a bed as you could wish for.”
Lucía drew from her pocket a little silk handkerchief neatly folded,
spread it lightly over the cushion to prevent her head coming in contact
with the soiled cover, and lay down on her improvised couch.
“If I should fall asleep,” she said to Miranda, “waken me when we come
to anything worth seeing.”
“Depend upon me to do so,” answered Miranda. “I will be back directly.”
Lucía remained alone in the compartment, her eyes closed, all her
faculties steeped in a pleasant drowsiness. Whether it were owing to the
motion of the train, the sleeplessness of the previous night, or her
invariable habit in Leon of retiring to rest at this hour--half-past
ten--or all these things together, certain it is that sleep fell upon
her like a leaden mantle. The tension of her nerves relaxed, and that
indescribable sensation of rhythmic warmth, which announces that the
circulation is becoming normal and that sleep is approaching, ran
through her veins. Lucía crossed herself between two yawns, murmured a
_Paternoster_ and an _Ave Maria_, and then began to recite a prayer, in
execrable verse, which she had learned from her prayer-book, beginning
thus:
Of the little child,
Innocent and simple,
Lord, just and merciful,
Grant me the sleep.
All of which operations, if they were performed for the purpose of
driving away sleep, had the effect, rather, of inducing it. Lucía
exhaled a gentle sigh, her hand fell powerless by her side, and she sank
into a sleep as peaceful and profound as if she were reposing on the
most luxurious of couches.
Miranda, meanwhile, was engaged in the important task of making an
inventory of the luggage, which was by no means scant, consisting of two
large trunks, a hat-box, and a leather case designed to preserve smooth
and unwrinkled the bosoms of his dress-shirts. He had no other resource
than to wait patiently for the turn of the luggage marked “A. M.,”
standing in front of the long counter covered with trunks, boxes, and
valises of every description, to which the porters of the station,
bending under their burden, the veins on their necks standing out like
cords with the exertion, were constantly adding. When they reached the
counter, they hastened to throw down their load with brutal
recklessness, making the boards of the trunks creak and their iron bands
squeak. At last Miranda’s luggage was dispatched, and his check in his
pocket, he jumped from the platform to the track and went in search of
his compartment. It was no easy matter to find it, and he opened several
doors in turn before he reached his own. Sometimes a head would appear
at the opening and a harsh voice say, “It is full.” In others of the
compartments he caught sight, through the half-open door, of confused
forms, people huddled up in corners, or lying stretched on the cushions.
At last he found his own compartment.
The form of Lucía, extended on the improvised bed, completed the picture
of peace and quietude presented by this moving bed-room. Miranda gazed
at his bride for a while, without any of the sentimental or poetic
thoughts which the situation might seem to suggest, occurring to his
mind.
“She is undoubtedly a fine girl,” was the reflection of this man of
mature years and experience. “And, above all, her skin has the down of
the apricot while it still hangs upon the tree. It would almost seem as
if that devil of a Colmenar knew things by intuition. Another would have
given me the millions, but with some virgin and martyr of forty. But
this is syrup spread on pie, as the saying is.”
While Miranda was thus commenting on his good fortune, he took off his
hat and put his hand into the pocket of his overcoat to take from it his
red and black checked traveling-cap. There are movements which when we
execute them make us think instinctively of other movements. The arm of
Miranda, as it descended, was conscious of a void, the want of something
which had before disturbed him, and the owner of the arm becoming aware
of this gave a sudden start and began to examine his person from head to
foot. Hastily and with trembling hands he touched in turn his breast
and waist without finding what he was in search of, and angrily and
impatiently he gave utterance to stifled imprecations and round oaths;
then he struck his forgetful brow as if to compel remembrance by the
shock; memory, thus evoked, at last responded. At supper he had removed
the satchel, which had disturbed him while he was eating, from his
person and placed it on an empty chair at his side. It must be there
still, but the cars would start in a few minutes. The smoke-stacks were
already puffing and snorting like angry cats, and two or three shrill
whistles announced the near departure of the train. Miranda was for a
moment undecided what to do.
“Lucía,” he said aloud.
The only answer was the deep and regular breathing of the young girl,
indicating heavy and profound sleep.
Then he took a sudden resolution, and with an agility worthy of a youth
of twenty, leaped to the ground and ran in the direction of the
restaurant. A satchel like his, filled with money in its various and
most seductive forms--gold, silver, bills, letters of exchange--was not
to be lost in this way. Miranda flew.
Most of the lights in the restaurant were by this time extinguished; one
lamp only still burned in each of the four-armed chandeliers; the
waiters sat chatting together in corners or carried lazily to the
kitchen obelisks of greasy plates and mountains of soiled napkins. On
the large table, now almost empty, the two tall vases stood in solitary
state, and in the dim light the white expanse of the table cloth had the
lugubrious aspect of a winding sheet. On the counter a kerosene lamp
shed around a circumscribed circle of yellowish light, by which the
master of the establishment--the marble slab serving him for a desk--was
making entries in a large account book. Miranda, still under the
influence of his recent fright, went up to him quite close, touching him
almost.
“Have you noticed--” he began breathless--“has any of the waiters
found----”
“A satchel? Yes, Señor.”
The friend of Colmenar once more breathed freely.
“Is it yours?” asked the landlord, suspiciously.
“Yes, it is mine. Give it to me at once; the train is just going to
start.”
“Have the goodness to give me some details that may serve to identify
it.”
“It is of Russian leather--dark red--with plated clasps.”
“That is enough,” said the landlord, taking from a drawer in the counter
the precious article and delivering it without demur to its lawful
owner. The latter, without stopping to examine it, slung it hastily over
his shoulder, plunged his hand into his waiscoat pocket and drawing out
a handful of silver coins, scattered them over the marble counter,
saying, “For the waiters.” The action was so rapid that some of the
coins, rolling about, danced around for a moment over the smooth surface
and then fell flat on the marble with a ringing sound. Before the
silvery vibration had ceased, Miranda was hurrying to the train. In his
confusion he missed the door.
“The train is going to start, Señor,” cried the waiters. “This way--this
way!”
He rushed excitedly toward the platform; the train, with the treacherous
slowness of a snake, began to move slowly along the rails. Miranda shook
his clenched hand at it and a feeling of cold and impotent rage took
possession of his soul. In this way he lost a second, a precious second.
The progress of the train grew gradually quicker, as a swing set in
motion describes at every moment wider curves and flies more rapidly
through the air. Precipitately and without seeing where he went, Miranda
jumped to the track to make his way to the first-class carriages which,
as if in mockery, defiled at this moment past his eyes. He tried to
leap on the steps, but missed his footing and fell with violence to the
ground, experiencing, as he fell, a sharp and sudden pain in the right
foot. He remained on the ground in a half-sitting posture, uttering one
of those imprecations which, in Spain, the men who most pride themselves
on their culture and good-breeding are not ashamed to borrow from the
vocabulary of thieves and murderers. The train thundered past, majestic
and swift, the black engine sending forth sparks of fire that seemed
like fantastic sprites dancing about among the nocturnal shadows.
A few moments after Miranda had left the train to go in search of his
satchel, the door of the compartment in which Lucía was asleep was
opened and a man entered. He carried in his hand a portmanteau, which he
threw down on the nearest cushion. He then closed the door, seated
himself in a corner and pressed his forehead against the glass of the
window, cold as ice and moist with the night dew. In the darkness
outside nothing could be seen but the indistinct bulk of the platform,
the lantern of the guard as he walked up and down, and the melancholy
gas lights scattered here and there.
When the train started, a few sparks, rapid as exhalations, passed
before the glass against which the newcomer was leaning his forehead.