DISCORD CONTINUES TO GROW UNTIL WAR IS DECLARED
Every one looked toward the door, at which appeared the imposing figure
of the Centaur, serious-looking and frowning; embarrassed by his anxiety
to salute the company politely; savagely handsome, but disfigured by the
violence which he did himself in smiling civilly and treading softly and
holding his herculean arms in a correct posture.
“Come in, Señor Ramos,” said Pepe Rey.
“No, no!” objected Doña Perfecta. “What he has to say to you is an
absurdity.”
“Let him say it.”
“I ought not to allow such ridiculous questions to be discussed in my
house.”
“What is Señor Ramos’ business with me?”
Caballuco uttered a few words.
“Enough, enough!” exclaimed Doña Perfecta. “Don’t trouble my nephew any
more. Pepe, don’t mind this simpleton. Do you wish me to tell you the
cause of the great Caballuco’s anger?” she said, turning to the others.
“Anger? I think I can imagine,” said the Penitentiary, leaning back in
his chair and laughing with boisterous hilarity.
“I wanted to say to Señor Don José--” growled the formidable horseman.
“Hold your tongue, man, for Heaven’s sake! And don’t tire us any more
with that nonsense.”
“Señor Caballuco,” said the canon, “it is not to be wondered at that
gentlemen from the capital should cut out the rough riders of this
savage country.”
“In two words, Pepe, the question is this: Caballuco is--”
She could not go on for laughing.
“Is--I don’t know just what,” said Don Inocencio, “of one of the Troya
girls, of Mariquita Juana, if I am not mistaken.”
“And he is jealous! After his horse, the first thing in creation for him
is Mariquilla Troya.”
“A pretty insinuation that!” exclaimed Doña Perfecta. “Poor Cristobal!
Did you suppose that a person like my nephew--let us hear, what were you
going to say to him? Speak.”
“Señor Don José and I will talk together presently,” responded the bravo
of the town brusquely.
And without another word he left the room.
Shortly afterward Pepe Rey left the dining-room to retire to his
own room. In the hall he found himself face to face with his Trojan
antagonist, and he could not repress a smile at the sight of the fierce
and gloomy countenance of the offended lover.
“A word with you,” said the latter, planting himself insolently in front
of the engineer. “Do you know who I am?”
As he spoke he laid his heavy hand on the young man’s shoulder with
such insolent familiarity that the latter, incensed, flung him off with
violence, saying:
“It is not necessary to crush one to say that.”
The bravo, somewhat disconcerted, recovered himself in a moment, and
looking at Rey with provoking boldness, repeated his refrain:
“Do you know who I am?”
“Yes; I know now that you are a brute.”
He pushed the bully roughly aside and went into his room. As traced on
the excited brain of our unfortunate friend at this moment, his plan of
action might be summed up briefly and definitely as follows: To break
Caballuco’s head without loss of time; then to take leave of his aunt in
severe but polite words which should reach her soul; to bid a cold adieu
to the canon and give an embrace to the inoffensive Don Cayetano;
to administer a thrashing to Uncle Licurgo, by way of winding up the
entertainment, and leave Orbajosa that very night, shaking the dust from
his shoes at the city gates.
But in the midst of all these mortifications and persecutions the
unfortunate young man had not ceased to think of another unhappy being,
whom he believed to be in a situation even more painful and distressing
than his own. One of the maid-servants followed the engineer into his
room.
“Did you give her my message?” he asked.
“Yes, señor, and she gave me this.”
Rey took from the girl’s hand a fragment of a newspaper, on the margin
of which he read these words:
“They say you are going away. I shall die if you do.”
When he returned to the dining-room Uncle Licurgo looked in at the door
and asked:
“At what hour do you want the horse?”
“At no hour,” answered Rey quickly.
“Then you are not going to-night?” said Doña Perfecta. “Well, it is
better to wait until to-morrow.”
“I am not going to-morrow, either.”
“When are you going, then?”
“We will see presently,” said the young man coldly, looking at his aunt
with imperturbable calmness. “For the present I do not intend to go
away.”
His eyes flashed forth a fierce challenge.
Doña Perfecta turned first red, then pale. She looked at the canon, who
had taken off his gold spectacles to wipe them, and then fixed her
eyes successively on each of the other persons in the room, including
Caballuco, who, entering shortly before, had seated himself on the
edge of a chair. Doña Perfecta looked at them as a general looks at
his trusty body-guard. Then she studied the thoughtful and serene
countenance of her nephew--of that enemy, who, by a strategic movement,
suddenly reappeared before her when she believed him to be in shameful
flight.
Alas! Bloodshed, ruin, and desolation! A great battle was about to be
fought.