DONA PERFECTA
See with what tranquillity Señora Doña Perfecta pursues her occupation
of writing. Enter her room, and, notwithstanding the lateness of the
hour, you will surprise her busily engaged, her mind divided between
meditation and the writing of several long and carefully worded epistles
traced with a firm hand, every hair-stroke of every letter in which is
correctly formed. The light of the lamp falls full upon her face and
bust and hands, its shade leaving the rest of her person and almost the
whole of the room in a soft shadow. She seems like a luminous figure
evoked by the imagination from amid the vague shadows of fear.
It is strange that we should not have made before this a very important
statement, which is that Doña Perfecta was handsome, or rather that she
was still handsome, her face preserving the remains of former beauty.
The life of the country, her total lack of vanity, her disregard for
dress and personal adornment, her hatred of fashion, her contempt for
the vanities of the capital, were all causes why her native beauty
did not shine or shone very little. The intense shallowness of her
complexion, indicating a very bilious constitution, still further
impaired her beauty.
Her eyes black and well-opened, her nose finely and delicately shaped,
her forehead broad and smooth, she was considered by all who saw her as
a finished type of the human figure; but there rested on those
features a certain hard and proud expression which excited a feeling
of antipathy. As some persons, although ugly, attract; Doña Perfecta
repelled. Her glance, even when accompanied by amiable words, placed
between herself and those who were strangers to her the impassable
distance of a mistrustful respect; but for those of her house--that
is to say, for her relations, admirers, and allies--she possessed a
singular attraction. She was a mistress in governing, and no one could
equal her in the art of adapting her language to the person whom she was
addressing.
Her bilious temperament and an excessive association with devout persons
and things, which excited her imagination without object or result, had
aged her prematurely, and although she was still young she did not seem
so. It might be said of her that with her habits and manner of life she
had wrought a sort of rind, a stony, insensible covering within which
she shut herself, like the snail within his portable house. Doña
Perfecta rarely came out of her shell.
Her irreproachable habits, and that outward amiability which we have
observed in her from the moment of her appearance in our story, were the
causes of the great prestige which she enjoyed in Orbajosa. She kept
up relations, besides, with some excellent ladies in Madrid, and it was
through their means that she obtained the dismissal of her nephew. At
the moment which we have now arrived in our story, we find her seated at
her desk, which is the sole confidant of her plans and the depository of
her numerical accounts with the peasants, and of her moral accounts
with God and with society. There she wrote the letters which her brother
received every three months; there she composed the notes that incited
the judge and the notary to embroil Pepe Rey in lawsuits; there she
prepared the plot through which the latter lost the confidence of the
Government; there she held long conferences with Don Inocencio. To
become acquainted with the scene of others of her actions whose effects
we have observed, it would be necessary to follow her to the episcopal
palace and to the houses of various of her friends.
We do not know what Doña Perfecta would have been, loving. Hating, she
had the fiery vehemence of an angel of hatred and discord among men.
Such is the effect produced on a character naturally hard, and without
inborn goodness, by religious exaltation, when this, instead of drawing
its nourishment from conscience and from truth revealed in principles as
simple as they are beautiful, seeks its sap in narrow formulas dictated
solely by ecclesiastical interests. In order that religious fanaticism
should be inoffensive, the heart in which it exists must be very pure.
It is true that even in that case it is unproductive of good. But the
hearts that have been born without the seraphic purity which establishes
a premature Limbo on the earth, are careful not to become greatly
inflamed with what they see in retables, in choirs, in locutories and
sacristies, unless they have first erected in their own consciences an
altar, a pulpit, and a confessional.
Doña Perfecta left her writing from time to time, to go into the
adjoining room where her daughter was. Rosarito had been ordered to
sleep, but, already precipitated down the precipice of disobedience, she
was awake.
“Why don’t you sleep?” her mother asked her. “I don’t intend to go to
bed to-night. You know already that Caballuco has taken away with him
the men we had here. Something might happen, and I will keep watch. If I
did not watch what would become of us both?”
“What time is it?” asked the girl.
“It will soon be midnight. Perhaps you are not afraid, but I am.”
Rosarito was trembling, and every thing about her denoted the keenest
anxiety. She lifted her eyes to heaven supplicatingly, and then turned
them on her mother with a look of the utmost terror.
“Why, what is the matter with you?”
“Did you not say it was midnight?”
“Yes.”
“Then----But is it already midnight?”
Rosario made an effort to speak, then shook her head, on which the
weight of a world was pressing.
“Something is the matter with you; you have something on your mind,”
said her mother, fixing on her daughter her penetrating eyes.
“Yes--I wanted to tell you,” stammered the girl, “I wanted to
say----Nothing, nothing, I will go to sleep.”
“Rosario, Rosario! your mother can read your heart like an open book,”
exclaimed Doña Perfecta with severity. “You are agitated. I have told
you already that I am willing to pardon you if you will repent; if you
are a good and sensible girl.”
“Why, am I not good? Ah, mamma, mamma! I am dying!”
Rosario burst into a flood of bitter and disconsolate tears.
“What are these tears about?” said her mother, embracing her. “If they
are tears of repentance, blessed be they.”
“I don’t repent, I can’t repent!” cried the girl, in a burst of sublime
despair.
She lifted her head and in her face was depicted a sudden inspired
strength. Her hair fell in disorder over her shoulders. Never was there
seen a more beautiful image of a rebellious angel.
“What is this? Have you lost your senses?” said Doña Perfecta, laying
both her hands on her daughter’s shoulders.
“I am going away, I am going away!” said the girl, with the exaltation
of delirium.
And she sprang out of bed.
“Rosario, Rosario----My daughter! For God’s sake, what is this?”
“Ah, mamma, señora!” exclaimed the girl, embracing her mother; “bind me
fast!”
“In truth you would deserve it. What madness is this?”
“Bind me fast! I am going away--I am going away with him!”
Doña Perfecta felt a flood of fire surging from her heart up to her
lips. She controlled herself, however, and answered her daughter only
with her eyes, blacker than the night.
“Mamma, mamma, I hate all that is not he!” exclaimed Rosario. “Hear my
confession, for I wish to confess it to every one, and to you first of
all.”
“You are going to kill me; you are killing me!”
“I want to confess it, so that you may pardon me. This weight, this
weight that is pressing me down, will not let me live.”
“The weight of a sin! Add to it the malediction of God, and see if you
can carry that burden about with you, wretched girl! Only I can take it
from you.”
“No, not you, not you!” cried Rosario, with desperation. “But hear me; I
want to confess it all, all! Afterward, turn me out of this house where
I was born.”
“I turn you out!”
“I will go away, then.”
“Still less. I will teach you a daughter’s duty, which you have
forgotten.”
“I will fly, then; he will take me with him!”
“Has he told you to do so? has he counselled you to do that? has he
commanded you to do that?” asked the mother, launching these words like
thunderbolts against her daughter.
“He has counselled me to do it. We have agreed to be married. We must be
married, mamma, dear mamma. I will love you--I know that I ought to love
you--I shall be forever lost if I do not love you.”
She wrung her hands, and falling on her knees kissed her mother’s feet.
“Rosario, Rosario!” cried Doña Perfecta, in a terrible voice, “rise!”
There was a short pause.
“This man--has he written to you?”
“Yes.”
“And have you seen him again since that night?”
“Yes.”
“And you have written to him!”
“I have written to him also. Oh, señora! why do you look at me in that
way? You are not my mother.
“Would to God that I were not! Rejoice in the harm you are doing me. You
are killing me; you have given me my death-blow!” cried Doña Perfecta,
with indescribable agitation. “You say that this man--”
“Is my husband--I will be his wife, protected by the law. You are not a
woman! Why do you look at me in that way? You make me tremble. Mother,
mother, do not condemn me!”
“You have already condemned yourself--that is enough. Obey me, and I
will forgive you. Answer me--when did you receive letters from that
man?”
“To-day.”
“What treachery! What infamy!” cried her mother, roaring rather than
speaking. “Had you appointed a meeting?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“To-night.”
“Where?”
“Here, here! I will confess every thing, every thing! I know it is a
crime. I am a wretch; but you who are my mother will take me out of this
hell. Give your consent. Say one word to me, only one word!”
“That man here in my house!” cried Doña Perfecta, springing back several
paces from her daughter.
Rosario followed her on her knees. At the same instant three blows were
heard, three crashes, three reports. It was the heart of Maria Remedios
knocking at the door through the knocker. The house trembled with awful
dread. Mother and daughter stood motionless as statues.
A servant went down stairs to open the door, and shortly afterward Maria
Remedios, who was not now a woman but a basilisk enveloped in a mantle,
entered Doña Perfecta’s room. Her face, flushed with anxiety, exhaled
fire.
“He is there, he is there!” she said, as she entered. “He got into the
garden through the condemned door.”
She paused for breath at every syllable.
“I know already,” returned Doña Perfecta, with a sort of bellow.
Rosario fell senseless on the floor.
“Let us go down stairs,” said Doña Perfecta, without paying any
attention to her daughter’s swoon.
The two women glided down stairs like two snakes. The maids and the
man-servant were in the hall, not knowing what to do. Doña Perfecta
passed through the dining-room into the garden, followed by Maria
Remedios.
“Fortunately we have Ca-Ca-Ca-balluco there,” said the canon’s niece.
“Where?”
“In the garden, also. He cli-cli-climbed over the wall.”
Doña Perfecta explored the darkness with her wrathful eyes. Rage gave
them the singular power of seeing in the dark peculiar to the feline
race.
“I see a figure there,” she said. “It is going toward the oleanders.”
“It is he!” cried Remedios. “But there comes Ramos--Ramos!”
The colossal figure of the Centaur was plainly distinguishable.
“Toward the oleanders, Ramos! Toward the oleanders!”
Doña Perfecta took a few steps forward. Her hoarse voice, vibrating with
a terrible accent, hissed forth these words:
“Cristobal, Cristobal--kill him!”
A shot was heard. Then another.