AN EXCESS OF ZEAL.
Very early on the Wednesday morning Leon went out to take a walk in
the garden. When he went in again, he sat down alone in the “Hall of
Hymen,” where he was presently joined by Gustavo. Telleria had put on
a face of stern severity and held his head high with an assumption of
forensic dignity, and a certain ostentation and inflation of demeanour
due apparently to the glow kept up inside him by the combustion of
“laws human and divine;” so that he seemed ready to burst, but for
the relief afforded by the crater of his mouth through which all this
inflammatory ferment found an issue, mingled with the lava of his
indignation. Leon saw at once that mischief was brewing.
“I have been anxiously awaiting daylight to have an opportunity of
talking to you,” said Gustavo in dry tones that argued considerable
annoyance.
“If you were so impatient,” replied Leon even more drily, “you might
have struck a light and we could have talked at night.”
“At night? No. I feared I might disturb you in more agreeable society,”
said the lawyer sarcastically.
“Then speak at once, and as briefly as you can. Forget, for once, that
you are an orator, and that you spend your life among women who are
never tired of talking.”
“I am sorry to disappoint you, but I must tell you that I cannot be
brief.”
“So much the worse,” said Leon with sullen bitterness. “Since you must
preach, begin by preaching patience.”
“You have plenty for your own evil deeds,” replied Gustavo hotly. “What
I ought to preach to you now, is submission, if you were capable of it.”
“Submission? Am I not listening to you?” said Roch, who had reached a
state of mind in which he found it impossible to conceal his antipathy
for the whole family.
“Still you will need it--for your sceptical coolness, which is simply
the corruption of your dead soul, will not stand you in stead when you
hear what I have to say to you. You know that I am opposed to duelling
as being contrary to all laws human and divine.”
“I defend the practice no more than you do; but I could think even
duelling a good thing if the laws human and divine of which you speak
are yours.”
“They are mine, and they are the only true ones. I hate duelling as
being absurd and sinful; still....”
“Still, under existing circumstances,” said the other interrupting
him, “you are willing to risk damnation for the pleasure of killing me.”
“It will be no pleasure, _I_ am a Christian.”
“Speak out,” said Leon growing angry. “What are you driving at?
Have you come to challenge me? A duel is an absurdity which is very
generally accepted; a murder depending on luck and skill which
occasionally is irresistibly forced on us. I accept this challenge to
murder--whenever you please; today, to-morrow, with the weapons you may
select.”
“No, you have quite misunderstood me,” said Gustavo turning the
question like a lawyer who only wishes to prolong a case. “I was saying
that even though I am no advocate of duelling this would be an occasion
when I might set aside my religious scruples and take up a pistol or a
sword....”
“Then do so.”
“No.--You have done evil enough to justify such a man as I am in
trampling on every moral prejudice, on all laws human and divine, and
trusting to a weapon to execute justice. But....”
“But....” said Leon mimicking his brother-in-law’s tone. “Speak, my
dear fellow; speak and think frankly, as I do when I say: ‘I hate you.’”
“Nay. My principles do not allow me to say, ‘I hate you;’ but, ‘I pity
you.’ Not, ‘I will kill you;’ but ‘God will kill you!’”
“Then do not speak in accordance with your principles; adopt some
others for the nonce--try mine.”
“If I did I should place myself in antagonism to all law, human and
divine. But to conclude: a duel is out of the question, because in this
case every advantage would be on my side. In the first place: I am
right and you are wrong; you are the criminal and I the judge; and by
all the laws of logic I am the conqueror and you are the vanquished.
In the second place: I am skilled in the use of every kind of weapon,
having for the sake of my health kept myself in constant practice by
shooting at a mark and fencing; while you, who have given your whole
time to the study of physics and geology, cannot handle either a pistol
or a sword. So that even on the ground of brute force I must be the
conqueror. In spite of all this, much as it may surprise you....”
“You forgive me!” exclaimed Leon controlling his rage to indulge his
sarcasm. “Thanks--a thousand thanks--with your elephant-load of ‘laws
human and divine.’”
“I do not forgive you,” said the other putting all the dramatic
emphasis he could command into his fine deep voice. “In renouncing the
advantages I have over you I simply renounce the task of punishing you
with my own hand, and deliver you over to the arm of God, which is
already raised to strike you.”
“Again many thanks,” repeated Leon but his irony was not unmixed with
anger. “You are no doubt God’s high sheriff. It is, I presume to
your familiarity with God, whose apostle you are, that you owe your
knowledge of his high purposes and your certainty of divine justice.”
“The purposes of Providence are seen in events, of which the ordering
is sometimes so clear that none but an idiot can fail to see in them
the threatening gesture of that awful arm. I do not fancy myself an
inspired prophet. To foretell your punishment I only needed to know a
fact of which you are ignorant. That is why I refuse to fight, that is
why I leave your chastisement in the Hands of One who will inflict it
more surely than I can. And that is why I say: ‘You will die!’”
“Die!” exclaimed Leon who, though he scorned his adversary, could not
hear these words without a shock.
“Yes, you. You will die of rage!”
“That I think likely enough,” said Leon, thinking over the odious list
of his wife’s family. “One may die too of a surfeit of relations; and
when a man whose only object in life is domestic happiness, with its
pure and honourable joys, finds nothing but a chamber of torture where
he is martyred on the rack, it is probable that he will writhe and
grow weary of it. There are poisonous herbs, and there are venomous
families.”
“You will die of sheer rage,” Gustavo went on with brutal insistence.
“I know it, I have seen it--I have it in my own keeping--in a sealed
packet in my desk, of which every letter is a drop of the mortal poison
which will be the death of you.”
“I do not understand,” said Leon, his curiosity roused at last. “What
is it? A lawsuit? Do you think you can kill me with a lawsuit? You
wretched law-mongers spend your lives in poisoning the human race, and
you think that I shall swallow the bait of your sophistry.--I do not
want to know what horrible intrigue you have been plotting against me.”
“I am plotting no intrigue--there is no intrigue in the matter.--There
is nothing but justice; and even of that justice I am not the
originator but the instrument. Under other circumstances I should have
done nothing to abet it, but since your behaviour to my poor sister,
aggravated too by the disgraceful facts that have lately come to my
knowledge....”
“When?” asked Leon and his voice was like distant thunder.
“You do not know?”
“No. What are these disgraceful facts?”
“And the hypocrite can ask!--Here.”
“Here!--what?”
“You try to ignore it, but your pale face betrays your guilt, and under
the pangs of awakened conscience even the hardened mask of the sceptic
must blush. Quite lately I have seen you in all the naked hideousness
of your nature, and the depravity of your moral sense. It is monstrous!”
“Explain yourself--or ...” and Leon’s hands were clenched as though he
longed to choke some one.
“By all means. Is your connection with the mistress of this house any
secret, as well as your treacherous betrayal of the most saintly, pure,
and angelic woman that God ever sent into this world? However, your
conduct up to this time, though a breach of every law, human or divine,
has not been grossly scandalous. Though morally criminal, you have not
yet fallen in the scale of wickedness to the level where it is hard to
distinguish a man from a devil.”
“Pray describe to me that depth of vileness in which I might be taken
for one of your friends,” said Leon, again lending his fury the guise
of an acrid humour which, like absinthe, embitters and intoxicates a
man while it makes him laugh.
“Why do you ask me to tell you things you full well know? But, to be
sure, there are reprobate natures which like to have the mirror held up
to them, and revel in the hideousness of their own image, like apes who
gaze at their reflection in a puddle.”
“No more of this coarse rigmarole and sham rhetoric! Speak plainly,
state facts, call things by their names; we want no special pleading
and parliamentary rhodomontade; I am sick of this endless parade of
words, and confusion of divine laws with human subterfuge.”
“Oh, very well,--then I will speak plainly. After reducing my
unfortunate sister to the state in which she now lies, any man,
however wicked, might respect her weakness, if not her innocence. In
every dying human creature there is something of the angel. You have
not respected even that; while your saintly victim is lying on her
death-bed, soothed perhaps by your lies, and believing you less base
than you really are, you can meet your paramour in the _Incroyable_
room. Cheating one, and making love to the other; killing one by
inches, and giving the other the affection due to your wife! Well,
I can understand this, Leon. I can understand falsehood and guilty
passion.--What I cannot understand, because it seems to me baseness too
utter for humanity; is that both crimes should be committed under the
same roof. Two such deeds of infamy are too much at the same time and
place.”
Leon, before his accuser had ended his diatribe, had broken out into
a frank fit of scornful laughter which seemed to have dissipated his
indignation.
“Laugh--laugh away--I am not surprised at that. I am well aware of the
audacious cynicism which lies hidden behind that mask of philosophical
virtue. Your whole moral nature is like an artificial plant, which
it is easy to strip of the flowers and leaves which have given it a
semblance of life. That is what your moral theories are: artificial
flowers; for natural flowers which have perfume and colour cannot
bloom in an empty vessel, or grow from a soil of mathematical formulas
and barren science. And to think that I could defend you against the
accusations of my family! that I could ever have believed in your
honour! Good Heavens! how could I be so deceived.”
“But are you perfectly certain that I did meet Pepa while my wife was
asleep?” asked Leon in a sarcastic tone which conveyed his sovereign
contempt. “Did you see it? There are eyes that see falsehoods.”
“I saw it. I was sitting with my mother, who, whatever her faults may
be as a woman, is a tender and loving parent, and who could not tear
herself away from this house where her only daughter is suffering.
Not being able to see her, in consequence of your cruel and selfish
prohibition, she resigned herself to weep and watch from a distance the
door of María’s room. I sat with her all night, to share her grief,
while my father--whose weakness in the most critical circumstances is
really inexcusable--took a lamp and went to inspect a collection of
curiosities to which only men are admitted by special permission from
Fúcar. Polito had drunk too much, with his friend Perico Nules, and was
rather noisy. He began by wandering about the passages and annoying
the maid servants, till I went after him, and succeeded in locking him
up,--by midnight he was sleeping like a drunken angel. My mother and I
were making up accounts in the Chinese boudoir and trying to arrange
our disordered affairs; afterwards she said her prayers, and I, after
searching the house in vain for a book to read, also gave myself up to
my devotions. Within these magnificent walls, where so many marvels are
collected, where copies from the antique alternate with monstrosities
of gaudy taste, representative of modern art, there is everything that
man can ask for, excepting a library. Since, on entering this house one
must leave one’s intelligence on the doorstep, it is as well perhaps
that one’s senses should be kept alive to make it easier!--My mother
was tired of praying but was not sleepy; she was thinking of our dear
María and of some way of cheating you and seeing her daughter. She
would not go to bed and treading on tiptoe, she took to wandering
through the rooms. As she approached the _Incroyable_ room she thought
she heard voices. She called me, and I hastened to join her; we went
forward together and listened. The first sounds we heard were sobs, as
we thought, but we at once understood that they were in fact passionate
kisses. It was you--and she.--We hid behind the group of Meleager and
Atalanta in the corridor and heard her open the door into the museum;
we afterwards heard you pass through the room, returning to hide your
disgraced head, crowned, as I may say, with laurels of infamy, on the
pillow of your martyred wife. The woman who was with you was Pepa; and
to remove every doubt my father can confirm it, for he met her as he
was returning with the lamp in his hand from the cabinet of curiosities
he had been inspecting.”
“And is that all?” said Leon calmly. “Has your espionage discovered no
more than that? There are creatures who cannot breathe without exhaling
slander!”
“Slander! What next? Of course I know that you can give the facts an
interpretation favourable to yourself. You are never at a loss for
sophistries to defend yourself.”
“I, defend myself! I, condescend to touch the dirt-heap of your foul
suspicions, to argue about a fact that you and your mother have seen
through the jaundiced spectrum of your impure imaginations!--Never!”
“The device is an ingenious one, but it fails of its effect. I am not
convinced.”
“I do not want to convince either you or her,” said Leon with vehement
fury. “Your opinion is to me so absolutely worthless that I positively
feel a certain satisfaction in leaving you in your mistake. Your
infernal nimbus of evil thoughts becomes you so amazingly. Do you
think that I flatter myself that I can change the baseness of your
souls, or by any waste of words create an idea of purity and honour
in a mind tainted with the leprosy of chronic sin? Your opinions, and
the opinions of all your execrable family, who repay solid benefits
with slander, are to me no more than the rain which wets us but cannot
blacken us. Do we quarrel with the coach-wheel which splashes us with
mud? And you--the political and religious moralist, always preaching
party-sermons; you--a machine for grinding out ready-made morality;
you--who pound up ‘laws human and divine’ into a patent lozenge, to
cram the world with an anodyne of sophistry and piety flavoured to each
man’s taste--you cannot dose me with morality packed into a sugar-plum!
My faults may perhaps serve your turn as virtues, and the base
sentiments that I disown and cast out, you may, if you please, pick out
of the dirt and make the pride and boast of your conscience. Before
preaching to me why do you not look at home? If you study yourself you
must surely see that your life, your fame, and your credit would vanish
like smoke if San Salomó were a man instead of a puppet.”
Gustavo’s lips were bloodless, his hands trembled and his eyes flashed
as Leon spoke; and then, not knowing what to say, he hesitated a few
minutes before he spoke.
“You are a skilful antagonist,” he said, “and have turned the point
against my own breast. Well--I do not deny it; you may learn from me at
any rate the virtue of candour, the merits of confession, of which an
atheist is incapable. I plead guilty; the giddy whirl of the world, the
weakness of Man’s nature, the blandishments of flattery and applause
have led me, I own, into antagonism to those laws, human and divine,
which I acknowledge and respect. I am the first to accuse myself, as
I was the first to cast a stone at the scandals of my family, and the
first to defend you so long as I believed in your integrity--you know
that. But there is no sort of comparison between your crime and mine,
between your treachery and mine. We have both sinned; you, out of sheer
cynicism and absolute ignoring of right, I out of weakness of will. In
you there is nothing but evil, there is no door by which good can enter
into your darkened soul; in me, though my deeds have been evil, faith
is still left--a way by which good may come in. Your sin stands alone
in its hideous blackness; mine has brought with it the precious grace
of repentance. You are not capable of any amendment; I am. You see
nothing beyond; I see salvation, because I see amendment. To me, the
very idea of sin suggests that of pardon. I do not know my own destiny,
but I do know that of the human race, and the fact that Heaven exists
is enough for me. You know nothing, and evil has no terrors for you
because you do not believe in the existence of Hell.”
“This is sophistry, and mere juggling with words. What can you know
of what I think or am? Do you believe that men and souls are at the
mercy of your apostolic dogmatism, of your insolent and official
interpretation of the gospel by which you issue death-warrants or
reprieves? You fancy yourself a sort of inspector of passports to
Heaven! But do you suppose that there really is an office where our
luggage is examined to see if we are smuggling tobacco--that is to
say anything prohibited in your manufactories of lies where ideas are
stamped and then sold, all cut and dried, to hypocrites?--Do me the
favour and honour of relieving me of your presence or I cannot answer
for observing the respect due to this house and to the tie which unites
us.”
“You are the murderer of an angel!” bellowed Gustavo, mad with fury.
“I shall really lose patience with your follies,” said Leon, taking
three steps forward with so threatening a gesture that Gustavo
involuntarily retreated, but he was no coward and at once made a stand.
“Be silent or you will find out that my endurance has an end and see
what a man can do when he can bear no more.” And pointing to the window
Leon extended an arm which, though by no means Herculean, was capable
of exerting no small strength.
“And if you continue to provoke me, although I am no advocate of
duelling, and have no practice with pistols or swords, and no skill in
preaching sermons, I will promise you a pleasant half-hour. I will show
you how an apostle flies out of window and no earthly power can prevent
it.”
“Indulge if you choose in such an abuse of brute strength!” retorted
Gustavo with a glare of defiance. “You have murdered my sister as it
is.”
“You cannot aggravate my rage by saying that,” cried Leon beside
himself. “Your sister and yourself, your father and your mother, are to
me no more than the birds that fly past. You have ceased to exist for
me.--Now choose--the door or the window.”
The dispute might have terminated in a fray and perhaps some act of
violence, but the marquesa came rushing in with loud cries, and behind
her Don Agustin in evident dismay and alarm.
“What is all this? Leon--Gustavo--my dear children!” cried the lady,
interposing with outstretched arms.
“This man,” roared Gustavo.
“Leon--what will you do next? After shutting up our darling so
cruelly....”
“I--shut her up! I?” said Leon talking rather wildly. “No, there she
is; I leave her to you, I make you a present of her.”
“You would not allow us to go in to see her. Thinking of that sweet
martyr, I have not slept a wink all night,” said the marquis.
“Go in, all of you,” said Leon pointing to the door leading to his
wife’s room. “Go in.”
And without waiting for another word, the Tellerias rushed in. A
vehement sound of kissing ensued, given with a warmth and eagerness
that were only natural after this enforced separation.