LEON ROCH PAYS A VISIT.
Acting on a generous impulse, and being desirous of fulfilling the
promise he had made to his wife, Leon Roch set out for Madrid and went
to the church of St. Prudencio in search of Father Paoletti. Nothing
could be more unlikely than that he should set foot in such a place,
and when the serving-brother had asked him to wait in the bare parlour,
he had leisure to reflect on the matter and on himself, with a sort of
incredulous surprise, feeling as though either the place he was in or
he himself must be the creation of a dream. The man who vows that he
will never cross the threshold of some particular door must be either
very foolish or very proud, or incapable of discerning that the swift
turns of life bring us in front of those portals--open them--and push
us in; and we do not even think of escape.
Leon had not had much time for these reflections when a priest stood
before him; a singularly small man of middle age, with a tiny, pale,
boyish face, and such large inquisitive, piercing eyes, that, in fact,
he seemed all eyes. The deliberateness of his gait contrasted strangely
with the smallness of his person; his steps were measured, even
stately, with a firm, slow tread such as might result from constantly
wearing shoes soled with lead. Paoletti bowed to his visitor with
elegant politeness, and Leon, who was in no mood for ceremony, briefly
explained his object. Paoletti, seating himself in front of the weary
infidel with the calm tenacity of a humble believer, listened to him
with the benevolence of a father confessor, cast down his eyes, knit
his fingers, and twirled his thumbs--his hands it may be noted were as
slender and delicate as those of a fine lady.
“Let us go,” he said looking up and stopping the rotation of his
thumbs. “I have heard of her journey to Carabanchel and of her illness,
but I did not know that it was serious, nor that she had been carried
to Suertebella.--To the house itself?”
“To the house itself,” said Leon gloomily.
“I suppose then,” said Paoletti with a subtle intonation, “that the
marquis’ daughter has come to Madrid with her darling child.”
“She is to do so to-day.”
“And you?”
“I do not purpose leaving María so long as she is ill.”
“You impress me very favourably, Señor,” said the Italian, giving Leon
his hand with a hearty gesture. “At the same time your position with
reference to that blessed martyr is a strange one, and unpleasant for
both of you.”
“It is the singularity of our position,” said Leon, “that made
me decide on coming myself, that I might give you certain items
of information which concern no one but me, and request your
co-operation...”
“Mine?”
“Yes--to help me to carry out my arrangements, and get out of my
difficulties as well as possible.”
Paoletti knit his brows. He had risen to start at once; but he now sat
down again, and once more began to twirl his thumbs.
“In the first place,” he said in the tone of a man accustomed to drive
matters home, “explain to me the motives which brought you here. It is
strange enough that you should come to confess to me, surely?” And he
smiled with sarcastic triumph in a way that to Leon was more offensive
than open mockery would have been.
“To confess?--yes indeed!”
“No, no, Señor,” said Paoletti with an affectation of sweetness which
betrayed his Italian blood, “I do not expect you to confess--far from
it! you will neither lay bare your conscience, nor retract your errors.
You will only tell me what I know already--what every one knows. And
all in order that I may help you...” And the priest ended his sentence
by quoting the reports diffused by Pilar de San Salomó’s gossiping
circle.
“In all that there is a little truth and a great deal of falsehood,”
said Leon. “It is false to say that Monina is my child; it is false
to accuse me of such a connection with Pepa Fúcar. That I love her is
true--and that every kind of love for my unhappy wife is dead within
me. I have no feeling left for her but calm regard, and a dispassionate
respect for her virtues which I fully acknowledge.”
“Regard, respect!” said Paoletti. “Appreciation of her virtues!...
This, Sir, is something. The pure and noble soul of María Egyptiaca
deserves more, much more, it is true; but if we might hope that your
regard and respect would develop and expand....” Again he took Leon’s
hand in his own which was as white and cold as marble--“we might bring
about a reconciliation.”
“Impossible!” said Leon. “Utterly, totally impossible. A little while
since it would have been easy--but what effort did she make to effect
it?--You ought to know.”
The little man looked at the ground and nodded affirmatively.
“Of course! you know all about it!” said Leon bitterly. “My wife’s
conscience-keeper, the ruler of my household, the master of my married
life, who has held the sacred chain in his hand and could bind or
unloose--the man whom I see now for the first time since he came to see
my hapless brother-in-law, Luis Gonzaga, who died in my house--this
man who, though it is no earthly concern of his, has secretly disposed
of my happiness and of my life as a master does of his purchased
slaves.--You, I say, must of course, know everything.”
“This worldly tone of haughty philosophy is well known to me too,
Señor,” said Paoletti, in a tone of apostolic reproof. “If you wish me
to meet you on that ground and to confute you utterly I will do so.”
“No--I did not come here to argue. The horrible struggle is over--I am
beaten, after having risked honour and delicacy, after fighting with
skill, nay, and with fury. My opinions were settled long since, and
cannot now be altered. This is not the moment for discussion; we are in
presence of a terrible fact.”
“María then is dying?”
Leon told Paoletti of his wife’s visit to his lodgings, and of the
scene which culminated in the fainting fit and subsequent illness of
the saintly María.
There was a pause; then Paoletti said severely:
“It is clear to me that María loves you, and that you are the real
traitor to the contract--guilty to-day as you were yesterday and
from the beginning. Without further knowledge of the facts, I cannot
pronounce on the step taken by my beloved daughter; but such a step,
such a proceeding, taken as it stands, argues that she still loves you,
and that her tender soul is full of sweetness and kindness for a man
who is wholly undeserving of them.”
“You, who know everything, know very well that my wife no longer
loves me; and if those who are incapable of judging of a pure and
noble feeling choose to give the name of love to a sentiment that has
no title to it, I shall at once assert myself as the sole judge of
my unhappy wife’s feelings, and declare that they do not satisfy my
demands, that I repudiate them, and put them out of court in deciding
on the question of separation or reunion.”
Paoletti stood lost in thought.
“There is no fundamental and moral bond between us,” Leon went on.
“María and I are two separate souls: in my mind I see her and myself as
the very idea incarnate of divorce.”
“Yes--a group of statuary--a work of art!” said Paoletti, a lightning
shaft of malice flashing across the dark cloud of his austerity.
“Well, yes--a work of art--which did not originate spontaneously,
mark you, but was somebody’s doing, somebody’s work. My wife does not
love me. I believe she might have loved me as I hoped, if the grave
faults of her character, instead of diminishing and vanishing under
my authority and tenderness, had not become more marked under alien
influences. She does not love me; I do not love her. Consequently any
reconciliation is out of the question.”
“You cannot say,” added the priest, with some severity, tempered
however by tolerance, “that I have not listened to you with patience.”
“Patience! I have had much longer patience!”
“Even those who have it least retain with it a touch of the Christian
about them, caballero.--Then the long and short of it, Señor de Roch,
is that you do not love your wife and she does not love you--you
respect and regard her.--But what is the upshot of it all? Or to put
it plainly, what did you come here for?”
“María begged me to fetch her confessor. Far from opposing her I
consented with pleasure.”
“Then let us go at once!” said Paoletti rising.
“The most important thing is yet to come,” said Leon laying his hand on
the priest’s robe. “You, with your perspicacity will at once perceive
that I need not have come myself merely to fetch you. I came to tell
you what no one else could tell you. Consider in the first place that
her mind is the part really affected.”
“I see.”
“I ought to tell you that I honestly desire that she should recover,”
said Leon with firm composure. “I call God to witness that this is the
truth: I hope and wish, without any kind of mental reservation, that my
wife may live.”
“I perfectly understand; you wish that she should get well again--that
her nervous excitement should be soothed and removed, and to that end
nothing must be suggested to her that can remind her of the cause of
her illness. Comforting and pleasing ideas must be kept before her,
to help her to disentangle the confusion caused by her indignation
and unsatisfied passions; my spiritual guidance must be qualified by
a certain infusion of worldly tact, so as to foster her illusions and
conceal the sad truth,--the father-confessor must be to some extent
a physician, allaying jealousy and encouraging hope, so as to clutch
back, as it were, the life that is fluttering to escape--that will
escape, beyond recall, if the mental excitation that has imperilled it
is not promptly banished.”
Leon admired the confessor’s sagacity.
“Very good,” Paoletti went on; “I will do my best. I cannot pledge
myself without knowing more exactly in what spiritual frame of mind my
beloved daughter may be.”
“María is at Suertebella.”
“So I understand.”
“She must on no account be made aware of it.”
“Well--let that pass--” said Paoletti looking at the ground and
screwing up his mouth. “It is a subterfuge which I hold excusable.”
“She insists on displaying the affection which now--rather late in the
day--she feels for me.”
“Nor does that seem to me blamable. It may be allowed, considering that
you think very little of her affection.”
“While María is ill she must not be allowed to fancy that I care for
any other woman.”
“Stay, stay,” said Paoletti, putting up his white hand as if to screen
himself. “This is going too far. I have slipped some rather thick
threads through the eye of the needle but the camel, my dear Sir, the
camel is too much for me. That is a gross imposition.”
“It is common charity.”
“Truth forbids it.”
“Her health requires it.”
“A mere physical necessity to which we must not attach too much
importance. My saintly daughter will die as a Christian should,
contemning the baser and more worldly passions.”
“It is always our first duty to guard against death.”
“Always, if we can do so without baseness. Am I to allow that angelic
martyr to believe in her husband’s innocence when she is actually
under the same roof as her rival? I will grant you that there may be
nothing existing to insult or injure her while she, the unhappy wife,
is breathing her last. Still, the frightful fact remains.--I will tell
her nothing unless she asks, but if she questions me--and she will, she
will!”
“You are right!” exclaimed Leon struck by this solemn appeal. “It
is a farce, equally unworthy of her and of me. The truth terrifies
me--the lie disgusts me; but the truth is certain death, and the
lie possible recovery.--Do not come to Suertebella. I will find a
priest--anybody--the vicar of the parish, or the house chaplain.”
He was leaving the room when Paoletti called him back in a conciliatory
tone.
“You must be fully aware,” he said, “that the presence of no other
confessor will have the same effect as mine. If you will pledge
yourself not to interfere in any particular, I will go with you with
pleasure, to comfort and help the hapless sufferer. Nay, more,” he
added with a burst of feeling, “I may tell you frankly that I earnestly
wish to go. She is so saintly, so admirable! I not only admire and
respect her--I look up to her as a superior being.”
“And what will you tell her?”
“What it is my duty to tell her,” replied the Italian fixing a pair
of eyes on Leon’s face, which might have been a hundred pairs. “It
strikes me as strange that a man who declares that he had thrown off
every matrimonial tie, should trouble himself so much about his wife’s
conscience.”
“I am not anxious about her conscience, but about her health,” said
Leon who was getting very weary.
“You tell me you do not love her, nor she you?”
“Yes.”
“But it is her person--her mortal part, that a man may claim, not her
exquisite conscience.”
“Quite true,” said Leon, draining the cup. “I leave her conscience
to you, who have made it. I have no wish to put in a claim for the
monstrosity.”
“I forgive you the word,” said Paoletti looking down. “Now Señor--Yes
or No.”
“Do you intend to kill her?”
“I!” and then, with a sigh, he added: “We will ask her who it is that
has killed her?”
Leon’s heart sank within him; after a moment’s reflection he stamped
his foot. A stamp sometimes strikes out an idea as a spark may flash
from an iron shoe. Leon had an idea.
“Let us go, at any rate,” he said. “I will leave so delicate a matter
to your own conscience.”
“And to prove worthy of your confidence,” said the priest, unable
to conceal his satisfaction, “I may promise you to reconcile truth
and prudence as far as lies in my power, and to do my utmost not
to agitate the last hours--if the Lord so wills it--of my precious
daughter in the Church. I am perfectly certain that my presence will be
the greatest comfort to her.”
“Come then.”
“I am at your service in an instant,” said Paoletti, hastening as much
as he could with his heavy step to fetch his hat and cloak. But pausing
in the door-way he observed: “it is very early; you, perhaps have not
had breakfast. Will you have some chocolate?”
“No thank you,” said Leon bowing. “No indeed.”
And an hour later they got out of the carriage at the door of
Suertebella.