THE TRUTH.
After the first greetings were over María asked:
“Tell me, Mamma, did I dream it, or is it true that I heard Gustavo’s
voice and my husband’s as if they were quarrelling?”
“We had a little discussion,” said the young man, who had not yet
recovered from his pallor and nervousness, nor got rid of the lines
in his forehead--that sacred tablet on which fancy might read the
decalogue and the latest code.
“No, no, mere words and rubbish,” interrupted Milagros, whose one idea
was the reconciliation, a thought intimately allied with the wish.
“Your respected husband, made madly savage by my accusations, proposed
to settle my share in the business by flinging me over the balcony like
a cigar-end,” said Gustavo, and he tried to laugh at his own wit in
the belief that the effort would restore his nerves to their normal
balance.
“Where was this?”
“In the ‘hall of Hymen.’”
“What is that?”
“Don’t worry yourself about it, my darling child.”
“My dearest daughter,” said her father, caressing her, “you must
learn to accustom yourself to view your husband’s proceedings with
indifference, and to feel that what he does, or leaves undone cannot
matter to you. It is greatly to be regretted that you cannot get over
certain deeply-rooted feelings, and that you are bent on being a martyr
and struggling against wind and tide.”
“What are you talking about, Papa?” asked María bewildered.
“I,” continued Don Agustin, laying his hand on his burly person to
attest his honour, “I am determined to bring all the energy of my
character to bear on the one object of avoiding a scandal which must
bring discredit on us all, and place you in the most ridiculous
position.”
“Agustin,” said Milagros, unable to conceal her vexation, “you had
better go and study the museum. You are not wanted here.” And she gave
emphasis to the hint by nudging her husband’s elbow to convey to him
that the time had not come for any display of energy or avoidance of
scandal. As a woman and a mother she had understood the illusion in
which Leon had chosen to leave his wife, and approving it, endeavoured
to keep it up.
“What museum?” asked María more and more puzzled, and seizing at once
on any clue that might strengthen her awakened suspicions.
“A museum not far off,” stammered the marquis taking his wife’s hint
and acting upon it to the best of his intelligence, for with all his
faults he was devoted to his daughter. “One that has lately been opened
at Suertebella....”
María looked from one to another in blank astonishment, questioning
them with dull bewilderment in her eyes, while her lips could hardly
frame the enquiries that formed themselves in her brain.
“Suertebella--near this?” she murmured. “Tell me one thing.”
“What?”
“What is it, my child?”
“How is it that I seem to feel the stone and mortar of that house
here--in my very being; I feel its walls....”
“What are you talking about my love?”
“Its walls are crushing me.”
“Good Heavens! do not talk so wildly!”
“What delirious fancies are these! It is much to be regretted that your
sound judgment....”
“This house....”
“Is a house ... you know, a building....”
At this instant Polito flew into the room with outspread arms and flung
them round his sister exclaiming: “Mariquilla, so at last your blessed
husband will allow us to see you! He is a gaoler, a bandit, a wretch!
I was in the court-yard looking on at a fight between two dogs and
fourteen rats when they told me I might see you. I rushed up.--And your
husband is out there too, looking like a statue, and more stony than
the group of Hymen. Dear little woman, you are quite well now, are you
not?--you will get up and get away from this place?”
Milagros almost skinned her elbow driving it against her son’s ribs,
but without putting a check on this torrent of indiscretion.
“There is a strange and horrible look of fear on all your faces,” said
María, gazing at them all in turn. “You look as if you longed to tell
me, but at the same time wanted to hide some dreadful fact.”
“My darling child, you are still far from strong,” said the marquis
stroking her hair. “When you are quite well again and can come home
with us....”
“The poor child fancies things that have no existence,” said Milagros
anxiously. “It would be far better if you would all go and leave us to
ourselves.”
“You are deceiving me, you are in league to deceive me!” cried María
with sudden frenzy. And raising the Crucifix that lay upon her pillow,
she said:
“Dare to tell a falsehood in the face of this.”
They all were silent except Gustavo, and he, extending an oratorical
and legislative hand towards the sacred image, said, with grandiloquent
emphasis:
“I abhor falsehood, and I believe that it can never under any
circumstances be wrong or injurious to speak the truth.”
Milagros seized him as if to thrust him out of the room; but he went
closer to his sister and, patting her cheeks, bent over her to say:
“But you are worrying yourself about trifles. Your saintliness and
virtue have given you a position so exalted that you can afford to look
down with contempt on a man who deserves nothing else from you. You are
better already, and before long we will take you home, to our house,
where you will be better cared for than ever, where we shall appreciate
your worth and adore you as you deserve to be adored.... Rejoice
instead of sorrowing, and give thanks for your recovered freedom. Poor
martyr!”
Gustavo did not mean to be perverse, but he was possessed with a
perfectly fanatical form of what is called public virtue.
“Poor martyr.” María repeated sadly, fixing her eyes on vacancy, on a
remote spot where there was absolutely nothing to be seen, nothing but
the vague projection of her own thought. After a short silence she said
in a voice that became weaker as she spoke:
“I dreamed it. I dreamed the truth, and falsehood cheated me when I
awoke.”
Then, suddenly sitting up in bed, she cried out: “Where is my husband?”
“He will come this moment, my sweet,” said her mother kissing her
fondly. “Compose yourself, or you will make yourself ill again.”
“Who was it but you that filled my mind with jealousy?” the martyr went
on, turning indignantly on her mother. “Why should you try to soothe
me now? Fetch my husband and Padre Paoletti.--Every one else must go;
leave me with them.”
She put her hand to her forehead with a sharp cry.
“What is it? Merciful Heaven!”
“A pain in my head,” she murmured closing her eyes. “A pain that
pierces and burns my brain.--That woman! Mamma, do you see her? That
woman has driven a red hot nail into my head.”
They all stood dumb with horror.
“Help me, help me!” cried María fairly raving. “Do you not see her
coming towards me? Will no one have the charity to drive her away, to
throttle her? Jesus, Saviour of my soul--protect me!”
There was a solemn and terrified silence, broken only by the marquis,
who indulged in a smothered fit of coughing. Milagros was crying,
kissing her daughter, and appealing to her with tender words. But María
did not answer; her eyes were shut and her speechless stupor was like
the silence of death.
They were rushing for the doctor when he came in. He immediately
pronounced the patient to be in a very critical state; he was
excessively angry, saying that he would take no responsibility, as his
orders had not been obeyed, and ordered every one out of the room with
exasperated indignation.
Heroic remedies could alone avail. The battle which had seemed to be
won, would yet be lost but by the grace of God. His utmost powers
must be put forth to make up for this sudden desertion on the part
of Nature; she had gone over to the enemy’s camp, leaving science
single-handed and almost desperate.
* * * * *
After his dispute with his brother-in-law, Leon had remained quiet
for a little while; then he was seized with that craving for violent
exercise which comes over us in certain states of mind, as though a
skein of suffering were wound round us and we must walk far to release
ourself.
For above an hour he paced about the grounds. When he came in again, as
he was passing through the “Hall of Hymen,” he perceived, on a chair,
a broad brimmed black hat. Seated on the divan which surrounded the
pedestal of the marble group, he discovered the diminutive person of
Padre Paoletti, looking smaller than ever in his hunched-up attitude.
Out of the little black mass came his pleasant face and those eyes
which sparkled so vividly, as he slowly uncurled himself like a snail
creeping out of its shell. It was a strange fact, but in his present
state of mind the presence of the priest seemed to comfort Leon.
“They told me as I came in,” said Paoletti in evident distress, “that
Doña María was suddenly very much worse. You see how useless our deceit
has been. Is the time come for the truth?”
“Perhaps,” said Leon holding the door for Paoletti to go into the room
first.
They arrived just as Moreno was applying the last resources of his
skill. Paoletti at once retired to pray in the chapel, which was ablaze
with tapers; the husband and the physician remained to watch with
infinite anguish and pity the drama of a diseased brain where ideas--or
intangible fluids--and organic life--or a mysterious essence--were
going the circuit of the nervous centres in a bewildering round,
their obscure struggle hastening on the divorce which we call death.
Everything was done that lay in human power to avert immediate danger
and divert the mischief from the centre to the extremities. But no
remedy availed to rouse the reaction that might have expelled the
enemy. It progressed triumphantly, like a desperate invader who has
burnt his ships. They tried everything and each trial only confirmed
them in despair.
All day the sufferer lay in a state of alternate delirium and
prostration. The physician announced with solemn decision that the end
could not be far off.
“What remains to be done,” he said, “is in the hands of the physician
of the soul.”
Later in the day María seemed to wake up and her mind was clear; she
was quite herself again, and enjoying that brief interval of lucidity
which nature almost always grants in such cases, as though to allow
those who are about to pass into the other world to cast a parting
glance on this which they are quitting.
“Pray leave me alone with my spiritual director,” said María in feeble
accents, and the husband and doctor at once left the room. There was no
further need for science or earthly love.