PEPE REY
Before proceeding further, it will be well to tell who Pepe Rey was, and
what were the affairs which had brought him to Orbajosa.
When Brigadier Rey died in 1841, his two children, Juan and Perfecta,
had just married: the latter the richest land-owner of Orbajosa, the
former a young girl of the same city. The husband of Perfecta was
called Don Manuel Maria José de Polentinos, and the wife of Juan, Maria
Polentinos; but although they had the same surname, their relationship
was somewhat distant and not very easy to make out. Juan Rey was a
distinguished jurisconsult who had been graduated in Seville and had
practised law in that city for thirty years with no less honor than
profit. In 1845 he was left a widower with a son who was old enough
to play mischievous pranks; he would sometimes amuse himself by
constructing viaducts, mounds, ponds, dikes, and trenches of earth, in
the yard of the house, and then flooding those fragile works with water.
His father let him do so, saying, “You will be an engineer.”
Perfecta and Juan had ceased to see each other from the time of their
marriage, because the sister had gone to Madrid with her husband, the
wealthy Polentinos, who was as rich as he was extravagant. Play and
women had so completely enslaved Manuel Maria José that he would have
dissipated all his fortune, if death had not been beforehand with him
and carried him off before he had had time to squander it. In a night of
orgy the life of the rich provincial, who had been sucked so voraciously
by the leeches of the capital and the insatiable vampire of play, came
to a sudden termination. His sole heir was a daughter a few months old.
With the death of Perfecta’s husband the terrors of the family were
at an end, but the great struggle began. The house of Polentinos was
ruined; the estates were in danger of being seized by the money-lenders;
all was in confusion: enormous debts, lamentable management in Orbajosa,
discredit and ruin in Madrid.
Perfecta sent for her brother, who, coming to the distressed widow’s
assistance, displayed so much diligence and skill that in a short time
the greater part of the dangers that threatened her had disappeared. He
began by obliging his sister to live in Orbajosa, managing herself her
vast estates, while he faced the formidable pressure of the creditors in
Madrid. Little by little the house freed itself from the enormous burden
of its debts, for the excellent Don Juan Rey, who had the best way
in the world for managing such matters, pleaded in the court, made
settlements with the principal creditors and arranged to pay them by
instalments, the result of this skilful management being that the rich
patrimony of Polentinos was saved from ruin and might continue, for many
years to come, to bestow splendor and glory on that illustrious family.
Perfecta’s gratitude was so profound that in writing to her brother from
Orbajosa, where she determined to reside until her daughter should be
grown up, she said to him, among other affectionate things: “You have
been more than a brother to me, more than a father to my daughter.
How can either of us ever repay you for services so great? Ah, my dear
brother? from the moment in which my daughter can reason and pronounce a
name I will teach her to bless yours. My gratitude will end only with my
life. Your unworthy sister regrets only that she can find no opportunity
of showing you how much she loves you and of recompensing you in a
manner suited to the greatness of your soul and the boundless goodness
of your heart.”
At the same time when these words were written Rosarito was two years
old. Pepe Rey, shut up in a school in Seville, was making lines on
paper, occupied in proving that “the sum of all the interior angles of
any polygon is equal to twice as many right angles, wanting four, as the
figure has sides.” These vexatious commonplaces of the school kept him
very busy. Year after year passed. The boy grew up, still continuing
to make lines. At last, he made one which is called “From Tarragona to
Montblanch.” His first serious toy was the bridge, 120 metres in length,
over the River Francoli.
During all this time Doña Perfecta continued to live in Orbajosa. As her
brother never left Seville, several years passed without their seeing
each other. A quarterly letter, as punctually written as it was
punctually answered, kept in communication these two hearts, whose
affection neither time nor distance could cool. In 1870, when Don Juan
Rey, satisfied with having fulfilled his mission in society, retired
from it and went to live in his fine house in Puerto Real, Pepe, who had
been employed for several years in the works of various rich building
companies, set out on a tour through Germany and England, for the
purpose of study. His father’s fortune, (as large as it is possible for
a fortune which has only an honorable law-office for its source to be in
Spain), permitted him to free himself in a short time from the yoke
of material labor. A man of exalted ideas and with an ardent love for
science, he found his purest enjoyment in the observation and study of
the marvels by means of which the genius of the age furthers at the same
time the culture and material comfort and the moral progress of man.
On returning from his tour his father informed him that he had an
important project to communicate to him. Pepe supposed that it concerned
some bridge, dockyard, or, at the least, the draining of some marsh,
but Don Juan soon dispelled his error, disclosing to him his plan in the
following words:
“This is March, and Perfecta’s quarterly letter has not failed to
come. Read it, my dear boy, and if you can agree to what that holy
and exemplary woman, my dear sister, says in it, you will give me the
greatest happiness I could desire in my old age. If the plan does not
please you, reject it without hesitation, for, although your refusal
would grieve me, there is not in it the shadow of constraint on my part.
It would be unworthy of us both that it should be realized through the
coercion of an obstinate father. You are free either to accept or to
reject it, and if there is in your mind the slightest repugnance to it,
arising either from your inclinations or from any other cause, I do not
wish you to do violence to your feelings on my account.”
Pepe laid the letter on the table after he had glanced through it, and
said quietly:
“My aunt wishes me to marry Rosario!”
“She writes accepting joyfully my idea,” said his father, with emotion.
“For the idea was mine. Yes, it is a long time, a very long time since
it occurred to me; but I did not wish to say anything to you until
I knew what your sister might think about it. As you see, Perfecta
receives my plan with joy; she says that she too had thought of it, but
that she did not venture to mention it to me, because you are--you have
seen what she says--because you are a young man of very exceptional
merit and her daughter is a country girl, without either a brilliant
education or worldly attractions. Those are her words. My poor sister!
How good she is! I see that you are not displeased; I see that this
project of mine, resembling a little the officious prevision of the
fathers of former times who married their children without consulting
their wishes in the matter, and making generally inconsiderate and
unwise matches, does not seem absurd to you. God grant that this may be,
as it seems to promise, one of the happiest. It is true that you have
never seen your cousin, but we are both aware of her virtue, of her
discretion, of her modest and noble simplicity. That nothing may be
wanting, she is even beautiful. My opinion is,” he added gayly, “that
you should at once start for that out-of-the-way episcopal city, that
Urbs Augusta, and there, in the presence of my sister and her charming
Rosarito, decide whether the latter is to be something more to me or
not, than my niece.”
Pepe took up the letter again and read it through carefully. His
countenance expressed neither joy nor sorrow. He might have been
examining some plan for the junction of two railroads.
“In truth,” said Don Juan, “in that remote Orbajosa, where, by the way,
you have some land that you might take a look at now, life passes with
the tranquillity and the sweetness of an idyl. What patriarchal customs!
What noble simplicity! What rural and Virgilian peace! If, instead of
being a mathematician, you were a Latinist, you would repeat, as you
enter it, the _ergo tua rura manebunt_. What an admirable place in which
to commune with one’s own soul and to prepare one’s self for good works.
There all is kindness and goodness; there the deceit and hypocrisy of
our great cities are unknown; there the holy inclinations which the
turmoil of modern life stifles spring into being again; there dormant
faith reawakens and one feels within the breast an impulse, vague but
keen, like the impatience of youth, that from the depths of the soul
cries out: ‘I wish to live!’”
A few days after this conference Pepe left Puerto Real. He had refused,
some months before, a commission from the government to survey, in its
mineralogical aspects, the basin of the River Nahara, in the valley
of Orbajosa; but the plans to which the conference above recorded gave
rise, caused him to say to himself: “It will be as well to make use of
the time. Heaven only knows how long this courtship may last, or what
hours of weariness it may bring with it.” He went, then, to Madrid,
solicited the commission to explore the basin of the Nahara, which he
obtained without difficulty, although he did not belong officially to
the mining corps, set out shortly afterward, and, after a second change
of trains, the mixed train No. 65 bore him, as we have seen, to the
loving arms of Uncle Licurgo.
The age of our hero was about thirty-four years. He was of a robust
constitution, of athletic build, and so admirably proportioned and of so
commanding an appearance that, if he had worn a uniform, he would
have presented the most martial air and figure that it is possible to
imagine. His hair and beard were blond in color, but in his countenance
there was none of the phlegmatic imperturbability of the Saxon, but, on
the contrary, so much animation that his eyes, although they were not
black, seemed to be so. His figure would have served as a perfect and
beautiful model for a statue, on the pedestal of which the sculptor
might engrave the words: “Intellect, strength.” If not in visible
characters, he bore them vaguely expressed in the brilliancy of his
glance, in the potent attraction with which his person was peculiarly
endowed, and in the sympathy which his cordial manners inspired.
He was not very talkative--only persons of inconstant ideas and unstable
judgment are prone to verbosity. His profound moral sense made him
sparing of words in the disputes in which the men of the day are prone
to engage on any and every subject, but in polite conversation he
displayed an eloquence full of wit and intelligence, emanating always
from good sense and a temperate and just appreciation of worldly
matters. He had no toleration for those sophistries, and mystifications,
and quibbles of the understanding with which persons of intelligence,
imbued with affected culture, sometimes amuse themselves; and in defence
of the truth Pepe Rey employed at times, and not always with moderation,
the weapon of ridicule. This was almost a defect in the eyes of many
people who esteemed him, for our hero thus appeared wanting in respect
for a multitude of things commonly accepted and believed. It must be
acknowledged, although it may lessen him in the opinion of many, that
Rey did not share the mild toleration of the compliant age which has
invented strange disguises of words and of acts to conceal what to the
general eye might be disagreeable.
Such was the man, whatever slanderous tongues may say to the contrary,
whom Uncle Licurgo introduced into Orbajosa just as the cathedral bells
were ringing for high mass. When, looking over the garden wall, they saw
the young girl and the Penitentiary, and then the flight of the former
toward the house, they put spurs to their beasts and entered the Calle
Real, where a great many idlers stood still to gaze at the traveller, as
if he were a stranger and an intruder in the patriarchal city. Turning
presently to the right and riding in the direction of the cathedral,
whose massive bulk dominated the town, they entered the Calle del
Condestable, in which, being narrow and paved, the hoofs of the animals
clattered noisily, alarming the people of the neighborhood, who came to
the windows and to the balconies to satisfy their curiosity. Shutters
opened with a grating sound and various faces, almost all feminine,
appeared above and below. By the time Pepe Rey had reached the threshold
of the house of Polentinos many and diverse comments had been already
made on his person.