A PARTING.
The penitential mass had been celebrated, and Paoletti had gone into
the room where his saintly daughter lay dying in alternate torments
of fever and doubt, when Leon, hurrying from room to room, went in
search of Pepa. He found her at last in Ramona’s room. He had something
very important to say to her and it might be supposed that Pepa was
expecting this, for she was standing breathless, with her eyes fixed on
the door, listening for his footstep, and as he entered she went a few
paces towards a recess in the room, suggesting to him by the expression
of her steps--for steps, too, have a language of their own--that they
would talk more at their ease there than anywhere else. Monina ran to
meet him and threw her arms round his legs, looking up in his face.
He took her up, and the child, finding herself perched so high, began
teasing him to admire the artistic beauties of a small clay vase with a
handle and spout, a recent gift from the priest of Polvoranca, and then
amused herself by holding on to his ear.
“Monina, be quiet--do not be troublesome,” said her mother. “I
know--yes I know what you have come to say.--Child be quiet; come to
me.”
She took Monina from Leon’s arms and held her in her own. “You need
not tell me; I understand--I know--I must go away. I had made up my
mind to it, even if I were forced to leave without seeing you.”
“I appreciate your delicacy,” said Leon. “Yes, go to your house in
Madrid, and for the present forget my existence.”
“That I can hardly do.--Child, you are choking me,” said Pepa to Monina
who was now pulling her mother’s ear. “Get down and run away.--But I
will go, without even asking when I am to see you again. I dread to ask
and I feel for you in having to give me a reply.”
Leon looked down and said nothing. There was not a kind word, a
friendly formality, a common expression of hope even, which, on his
lips, would not require a criminal accent. Silence seemed to him more
decorous than any protestation of purity of purpose. They both were
speechless for some little time, not daring to look at each other, each
dreading to read the other’s face and knowing that it would reflect
his--or her--own feelings.
“Ask me nothing--tell me nothing--do not utter even a name that can
appeal to her,” Leon said at length. “Keep your heart full of generous
feeling, and dismiss all hope.”
Pepa wanted to say something, but her voice was so tremulous that she
could not: “Nothing will be left me,” she thought to herself, “nothing
but the old dreary miserable thought: she will pray and pray--and live;
I, hoping and still hoping, shall die.”
Leon who seemed to read her thoughts in her contracted brow, said,
looking into her face:
“It is in critical moments that the generosity or selfishness of a soul
is revealed.”
Pepa was trembling in every limb; she propped her head on one hand, and
looking down at her knees, on which Ramona’s tiny fingers were playing
a tune, she said:
“I do not know whether mine is generous or selfish. I only know that I
shed many tears just now in praying that God would let no one die for
my happiness. How bitter our prayers can sometimes be! How cruelly our
thoughts can torture us in the effort to prevent the flowers we must
pluck and cast out turning into snakes! I have prayed more to-day than
in any one day of my life before; but I cannot be sure of having prayed
rightly and from a pure heart. The battle raged within me; I believe
that the words I used had a different meaning every minute--that the
name of God meant the Devil--that love meant hate, and life stood for
death. The feeling and the thought were struggling for the mastery and
each tried to find expression in words.--I did not really pray, I was
not really good; and yet, indeed, indeed, I meant to be. I am so much
a woman, so little of a saint.--But I shall not feel so wicked when I
have found courage enough to pray clearly and boldly that we may both
die--then everything will come right....”
She rose.
“In short,” she said, “I am going. You know that my only joy in life is
to obey you.”
“Thanks--thanks...” murmured Leon, taking up Monina.
“Say good-bye,” said Pepa, fixing a tender gaze on the child and the
man who held her.
Leon held the little girl in a close embrace and kissed her again and
again; such demonstrations of affection, he reflected, could hardly
be deemed a scandal when bestowed on this angel-baby. He carried her
up and down the room two or three times to conceal the emotion which,
rebelling against every moral effort, was too legible in his face; and
though he did not glance at the mother, she, sitting in her corner,
might be sure that he was conscious of her presence. Passion has the
keenest sight, and wonderful skill in discovering the thoughts of the
object of its devotion, in assimilating them and extracting nutriment
from this exciting but ethereal food.
As to the unhappy man himself, never had he so deeply felt as at this
moment the irresistible charm of this sweet little creature--the child
of a woman who was not his wife, and of a man whom he detested. He felt
as if it would be impossible to part from this treasure and live--not
that it was his, though he had accustomed himself to regard it as very
much his own. His love for the child was as inseparable from the image
of its mother as two stars that give but one light. It was an adopted
affection which usurped in his solitary soul the vacant hearth and
warming fire that ought to have been for another. Was it his fault if
in his weary journeying across the waste these two faces smiled upon
him, one all dimples and the other all love, brightening the melancholy
horizon of life and encouraging him to walk on, even when his strength
was failing him, and he stumbled over the stones and thorns. In Pepa he
had found affection, gentleness and a confiding nature--a mysterious
promise of the peace he had dreamed of, the happiness he had so vainly
and so painfully sought. It was the ideal family, with every human
element in it except, alas! legitimacy; and the very fact of its being
only a vision and not a reality, gave it added enchantment and greater
attractions. Pepa’s passionate devotion, and the tenacity which made
her give it the pre-eminence over every other feeling, far from causing
him any anxiety, altogether bewitched him; he saw in it the offering
of her whole heart without reserve, the incalculating generosity which
prompts a soul to abandon itself wholly without any concealment,
without cloking its faults or veiling a single thought. Those who have
been beggars for love cannot repel that which flows in their way,
though the tide be too strong and boils and foams. At the same time he
felt a sort of pride and pious emotion as he saw that this noble heart,
without ceasing to be duteously religious, was nevertheless his, by a
supreme law of humanity; and feeling himself so beloved--so completely
the lord and master of her thoughts he could do no less than give his
heart wholly to her. That secondary and long-past affection that he had
known before the dawn of the glory in which they now saw each other
faded into nothingness, as the stars do at sunrise.
However, this was not the moment for such reflections. Leon set the
child on her mother’s knee and said:
“Not another instant! Good-bye. If I find it necessary to explain your
absence to your father I will venture to tell him all about it.”
“I will tell him myself.”
And they precipitately left the room by different doors.