BREAKFAST.
The historian does not feel it a serious lapse of duty not to have
mentioned already that the Tellerias flew to Suertebella as soon as
they heard of María’s serious illness. It is so much a matter of
course that the reader will have taken it for granted, though this
truthful narrative has not spoken of it in so many words. A thing which
it is necessary to state, in case posterity--always inquisitive and
impertinent--cares to know, is that on the morning of that eventful
Tuesday--the day of the penitential mass, of Paoletti’s visit, and of
Pepa’s departure--the marquesa with her husband and Polito, heard, with
blank astonishment, this emphatic decision pronounced by Leon Roch:
“You cannot see María!”
“Not to-day even? I can hardly believe my ears!” exclaimed Milagros,
unable to command her indignation. “To forbid a mother who has come to
see her sick child!”
“And me, her father!”
Polito said nothing, but whipped his trousers with the cane he held in
his hand.
“What reason can you have for such a proceeding?”
“I can find a reason when I want to give one,” said Leon.
“I demand to go in and see my daughter, to nurse her, sit with her....”
“I nurse her and sit with her.”
“And you give us no reason, no explanation of such atrocious cruelty,
Good God!” exclaimed the marquis looking solemn--which is as much as to
say that he looked very comical.
Leon enlarged on María’s extremely delicate mental condition, and of
his fears of the consequences of some indiscretion if he allowed her
family to see her.
“Is she alone now?”
“Her confessor is with her.”
The marquesa drew her son-in-law aside. “Really,” she said, “I could
not have believed that you would go to such an extreme. Tell me,
explain to me all the horrors that have taken place here.... Ah! my
poor unhappy daughter does not even know, I daresay, that she is under
the same roof as her husband’s mistress.... And you are afraid lest I
should open her eyes, lest she should learn the truth from my lips--for
from me she always hears the truth, spontaneously and naturally--for I
do not know how to act, how to affect anything.”
“No madam, I am not afraid,” said Leon, only anxious to end the
discussion. “But you will not see your daughter till she is quite well
again.”
“And what right have you over the wife you have betrayed and neglected?
Or have you repented? Do you wish?...”
Her tone and expression suddenly changed. The angry scowl vanished like
a cloud before the sun; her eyes sparkled with youthful eagerness, and
the bird in her hat almost seemed to flutter in its gauzy nest.
“You have some plan for a reconciliation?” she said in bitter-sweet
tones. “If so, I am the last person to wish to interfere with them. And
if it is the outcome of sincere repentance....”
“I have no plan for reconciliation; it is out of the question,” said
her son-in-law shortly as the Marquis de Fúcar came into the room.
The master of the house, putting aside his cares and anxieties to
fulfil the duties of hospitality and do the honours of his splendid
house, came to make his bow to the Tellerias and condole with them on
María’s illness, begging them to consider the house at their disposal
as long as it might suit them to stay. And as the melancholy cause of
their visit was not a matter of a few hours, the open-handed gentleman,
anxious to give his hospitality a character worthy of his European
notoriety, begged the trio to remain the day--to pass the night--to
stay the next day and the next night, for as long as they might wish;
pressed them to breakfast--lunch--dine--sup;--to sit down and rest, to
lie down and sleep--to make themselves completely at home, since here
were tables, a larder, a cellar and servants--rooms enough to hold half
the human race--horses to ride--flowers to pluck--etc., etc.
“Oh, thank you, thank you! How good you are!”
And María’s mother pressed Fúcar’s hand in speechless emotion. On such
occasions, silence, a glance to Heaven, a silent clasp of the hand
are more eloquent than a hundred phrases in praise of the generosity
of those “who allow us to forget that we live in an age tainted by
Materialism.” The lady endeavoured to give her face the expression
which, in her own opinion, was most becoming to her peculiar style
of beauty, or rather to those faded remains of it which were not yet
devoid of brilliancy when art, dress, sentiment, and judicious gesture
set them in the most becoming light. In talking on indifferent subjects
with her host she contrived to lead him into a sentimental vein with
so much grace and persuasiveness that the stock-broker listened to her
with enchantment.
Meanwhile Telleria had led Leon to a window, and was saying to him with
ponderous dignity:
“Matters have come to such a pass, and your behaviour is apparently
so preposterous, that I really must insist on your giving me a
satisfactory explanation; otherwise it will be necessary to take it up
on the ground....”
“On the ground of honour!” said Leon sarcastically. “But you see it
would be difficult for you and me to meet on that ground.”
“A father-in-law, of course.--It is not that I have any wish to augment
the scandal by adding another and a worse one. We have the greatest
confidence in your gentlemanly feeling, and that Castilian nobility
which we Spaniards can never wholly belie, even if we wish it. And
if God should touch your heart, and you were to effect a permanent
reconciliation with my beloved daughter....”
“That I shall never do.”
“Very well.--Then....” The marquis looked at his son-in-law with an eye
which--considering the serio-comic aspect of the man--might fairly be
called terrible.
“Then I know how to act.”
They were in a Chinese boudoir full of figures frightful enough to
give nightmares. On its painted walls, amid sporting butterflies, were
gilt dwarfs and monsters, meditative storks, platforms with impossible
stairs, trees that looked like hands, and faces that looked like
wafers. The human figures did not stand on their ill-shaped feet; the
trees had no roots; the houses were as much in the air as the birds.
There was no solid ground; everything was suspended ’twixt earth
and heaven on a background of shining black, like a sky of ink. The
vacuous Chinese faces, looking on with stolid impartiality, seemed
to be making their own reflections on the living scene, and the gold
and silver butterflies amused the fancy with a sort of reflection on
those dream-like walls, of the Marquis de Telleria’s ambiguous smile.
Chocolate-coloured bronzes stood in every corner and on every table;
and those solemn idols--melancholy, hideous, dropsied and gloomy--might
have been the embodiment of Don Agustin de Sudre’s grievances and woes.
It was like turning over a leaf in a picture book to go from this
Chinese apartment into the billiard-room, an Arab divan, where
Leopoldo with a tube for inhaling tar between his teeth, as if it were
a cigar, was amusing himself with practising the game.
A footman came into the room.
“Did you ring, Sir?”
“Yes,” said the young man without looking up, “bring me some beer.”
The servant was leaving the room when Polito called after him to ask if
breakfast would soon be ready.
“In a few minutes, Sir.”
And he went on playing with the balls.
The master of the house had left the Chinese boudoir to his visitors,
and a pompous, red-faced maître d’hotel, picked up in some Paris café,
who might have passed for an English lord but for his smooth servility
and obsequious nervousness, waited on the lady to take her orders.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “A mere trifle--anything will do for me.--Have you
any potted shrimps? No?--never mind. But I cannot eat anything smoked.
A beef steak, not overdone.”
“And do not forget,” said her husband to this benevolent official,
whose black frock-coat was emblematic of the Christian grace of
hospitality. “Do not forget that we drink nothing but Sauterne.”
Fúcar presently reappeared, still melancholy, but in a great hurry,
proving that sorrows are not incompatible with an appetite. It was late
and the whole party were in need of food.
The Tellerias and Don Onésimo, who made his appearance after they had
begun, did honour--in gastronomic cant--to the marquis’ cook. Milagros,
to be sure, whether from fastidious elegance or because grief had
spoilt her appetite, hardly tasted anything.
“Do not let your anxiety be too much for you,” said Don Pedro, “you
must try to eat something. I have much to worry me too--yet reason
tells me I must eat. Make an effort, and do likewise.”
The happy efforts of Don Pedro’s self-command were amply proved by a
slice of steak which he was carrying morsel by morsel to his mouth,
plentifully seasoned with its own gravy, and butter and lemon. Milagros
after her oysters, only tasted and minced at the food, but really ate
nothing; while her husband ate of every dish, savoury or sweet, first
gazing at them with a flattering smile and then paying them treacherous
attentions with his fork. Truffles, sausages, and smoked tongue,
with other trifles more filling than digestible, tempted him to make
acquaintance with their charms.
“And Pepa?” asked Don Onésimo suddenly.
“At Madrid,” replied Fúcar, not lifting his eyes from his plate, on
which the remains of the steak might have represented the treasury
of Spain so much was it shrunk in dimensions. A long silence ensued,
interrupted at last by Don Pedro himself, who again remarked to his
neighbour:
“My dear madame, my dear friend, it is our duty to control our
feelings.--Besides, it is not a desperate case, María is better
to-day.--What, tears? Come, come, just half a glass of Sauterne.”
The marquesa did not refuse. When she had swallowed the wine she said:
“We shall see if my tiger of a son-in-law will allow me to see my
daughter this evening.”
Fúcar, anxious to avoid such a critical subject, spoke of a report he
had heard that Polito was about to marry a rich Cuban heiress, whose
family had lately settled in the capital with all the ostentation and
_éclat_ of an enormous fortune. The marquesa acknowledged the report,
and Leopoldo indirectly confirmed it with a great deal of the false
modesty that cloaks vanity. The rumours were true as to the young
man’s pretensions and daily pursuit of the young lady on horseback or
on foot; but, in spite of these attentions, the engagement was purely
mythical, with nothing real about it but the marquesa’s vehement
ambition of seeing her son possessed of a handsome and unencumbered
fortune. The young lady’s family, named Villa-Bojío, though they were
good friends of his mother’s were averse to Leopoldo as a suitor;
still, their opposition was not very vehement, and Milagros laboured in
silence, with all the diplomacy and finesse of which she was mistress,
to turn this golden dream into at least a silver reality.
Presently, the subject being exhausted, she rose from table, and a
servant offered the gentlemen the finest cigars the world produces.
This article--to speak commercially--was the very choicest of all
the good things in the millionaire’s house. His correspondents at the
Havana sent, for his private use, the pick of their best, in return
for the magic arts he employed to coax the government into making the
rest of the nation consume the very worst. Matches were struck and the
smokers smacked their lips.
“Polito,” said Fúcar, “if you wish to ride tell Salvador to saddle
Selika for you.”
The smart rider of other people’s horses needed no second bidding,
but went down to the stables at once. Don Pedro sighed and signed to
the poorer marquises--one noble by birth and one by his wits--who,
following the millionaire marquis, seemed to offer him a sort of
idolatrous worship, watching his glance, and burning the incense of
his own tobacco in his honour. When they were alone Don Pedro confided
to them in a low voice and with a melancholy face an idea--a piece of
news--a fact. And thus, pouring the woes of his anxious soul into the
ears of his friends, the worthy magnate found himself relieved; he
breathed more easily, and could even throw off a little joke and laugh
with that fat chuckle which we first heard at Iturburua.
“What a world we live in! What vicissitudes, what unexpected
reverses!--Then there is that foolish tendency in human nature to
exaggerate misfortunes and regard them as irreparable....”
Onésimo, for his part, was completely stunned by the information his
noble friend had communicated. He began to think that Don Pedro,
utterly absorbed in his complicated speculations and the metaphysics
of loans, had failed to understand the bearing of this more vulgar
dilemma. Telleria, on the contrary had listened to Fúcar’s melancholy
tale with a sense of sudden joy, and had an idea of his own on the
subject--happy idea. This he fondly turned over in his mind as he
sat gazing at the painted walls of the dining-room, decorated with
a perfect deluge of dead game and fish--partridges, hares, deer and
lobsters, and a corresponding deluge of fruit, vegetables, gourds and
butterflies. The carved oak panelling also displayed hunting-trophies
and emblems--pouting masks blowing horns, dogs, birds hanging by the
heads or heels; in short so many representations of the animal and
vegetable kingdom that it might have been the palace of indigestion.