[Pepe Rey, a young engineer, arrives at Orbajosa to marry his
cousin Rosario, the match having been made up between his
father and Dona Perfecta, the girl's mother, who is warmly
attached to the father of Pepe, her brother, and furthermore
under heavy obligations to him for his excellent management
of her large property interests. The landscape is the arid
and poverty-stricken country of central Spain, though the
town itself--"seated on the slope of a hill from the midst of
whose closely clustered houses arose many dark towers, and on
the height above it the ruins of a dilapidated castle"--such
a town would probably be more appreciated by a traveler from
abroad and a lover of the picturesque, than by a Spaniard,
too familiar with its type. Orbajosa is a little place, full
of narrow prejudices and vanities. Pepe Rey, with his modern
ways, soon finds that he is wounding these prejudices at
every turn. We look on with pained surprise at the
difficulties that grow up around the young man, an excellent
and kind-hearted fellow. Lawsuits are multiplied against him;
he is turned out of the cathedral by order of the bishop for
strolling about during service-time to look at some
architectural features; and he is refused the hand of his
cousin. Dona Perfecta herself joins in this hostility, which
finally develops into a venomous bitterness that menaces his
life. Such a feeling was not the outgrowth of mere provincial
narrowness: we see in the end that it was the result of the
plot of Maria Remedios, a woman of a humble sort, who aspired
to secure the heiress Rosario for her own chubby-faced
home-bred son. She influenced the village priest, and he
influenced Dona Perfecta. Early in the day the young engineer
would have abandoned the sinister place but for Rosario, who
really loved him. She conveyed to him, on a scrap from the
margin of a newspaper, the message:
"They say you are going away. If you do, I shall die."
She is a charming picture of girlhood,--lovely, true-hearted,
affectionate, aspiring to be heroic, and yet crippled at last
by a filial conscience and the long habit of clinging
dependence. She has agreed to flee at night with her lover,
and he is already in the garden. Her mother, the stern Dona
Perfecta, ranging uneasily through the house, enters her room
about the appointed time for the escape.]
[Illustration: _THE WEDDING DRESS._
Photogravure from a Painting by Worms.]
"Why don't you sleep?" her mother asked her.
"What time is it?" asked the girl.
"It will soon be midnight."...
Rosario was trembling, and everything 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?"...
"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 Dona Perfecta with severity. "You are agitated. I have
already told you 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 Dona Perfecta, laying
both 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, senora!" 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!"...
"Has he told you to do so? has he counseled you to do that? has he
commanded you to do that?" asked the mother, launching these words
like thunderbolts against her daughter.
"He has counseled 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."
"Rosario, Rosario!" cried Dona Perfecta in a terrible voice, "rise!"
There was a short pause.
"This man--has he written to you?"
"Yes."
"Have you seen him again since that night?"
"Yes."
"And you have written to him?"
"I have written to him also. O senora! 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 Dona
Perfecta, with indescribable agitation. "You say that that 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 everything, everything! I know it is a
crime. I am a wretch; but you, 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 Dona 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
explosions. [Maria Remedios had spied upon Pepe Rey, the lover; shown
Caballuco, a brutal servant and ally, how to follow him stealthily
into the garden; and had then come to arouse the house.] It was the
heart of Maria Remedios knocking at the door through the knocker. The
house trembled with an awful dread. Mother and daughter stood as
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 Dona 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 Dona Perfecta, with a sort of bellow.
Rosario fell senseless to the floor.
"Let us go down-stairs," said Dona 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. Dona 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."
Dona Perfecta explored the darkness with her wrathful eyes. Rage gave
them the singular power of seeing in the dark that is peculiar to the
feline race.
"I see a figure there," she said. "It is going towards the oleanders."
"It is he," cried Remedios. "But there comes Ramos--Ramos!" [Cristobal
Ramos, or "Cabulluco."]
The colossal figure of the Centaur was plainly distinguishable.
"Towards the oleanders, Ramos! Towards the oleanders!"
Dona 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.
Translation of Mary J. Serrano.