IN THE _INCROYABLE_ DRAWING-ROOM.
He called together the servants and a few faithful friends, and having
made all the necessary arrangements he withdrew to the end of the house
nearest to his own room. He felt he must be alone. In the midst of his
regrets he felt a certain satisfaction in having fulfilled his duty to
his wife to the last hour of her life. He ordered his servant on no
account to allow any one to disturb him, and he locked himself in the
_Incroyable_ drawing-room.
At last he could enjoy the solitude he longed for; he could think over
the course of events, his own position and the state of his mind; he
cast a glance at the past, and another at the future.
The painful struggle which he had carried on for so long with an ideal
differing from his own was now over. He was free. But his freedom was
tainted with sorrow, for it had been granted him by death; and he had
been released from his fetters by a beautiful and melancholy being,
whom he could by no means hate but only pity and respect. The obstacle
that death had removed, and which dwelt not merely in his memory but
in his heart, had won his tender sympathy by the mere fact of her
pathetic end. It lent her the halo of innocence, and the radiance of an
angel.
Still dwell as he might on this image--an interesting and touching
one if not actually beloved--he could not help feeling an impulse of
happiness. The future was before him. A door stood open--the door to a
new life, where perhaps he might find the realisation of the dream he
had indulged in so vainly in the past life which was now buried in a
peaceful grave. The sense of recent loss made him afraid to contemplate
the future and kept his fancy so far chastened that he did not rush
into visions of rapturous days nor build castles in the air, either in
the sunny regions of the probable, or the darker chaos of the purely
imaginary. It was with real pain that he felt the homage of pious
respect to the past chequered by visions of the future. But hope, like
remorse, is so inevitably a part of the logic of events that it can
be considered part and parcel of our conscience. We cannot lock the
door on remorse when that intruder knocks and insists on admittance;
and in the same way, we cannot turn away hope when it comes, walks in,
calls us, invades us, takes possession, settles itself deliberately,
and unrolls the enchanting panorama of happiness to come. No wilful
blindness will avail to prevent our gazing on the horizon of life which
is lighted up by hope; nay, there is not a moment, however painful,
which is not linked with those hoped-for moments still remaining
in store in the unknown future. Life is a constant anticipation of
something remote and before us; indeed, nature herself has understood
this law, for none of the superior creatures have eyes behind them.
Thus he sat debating and suffering, not choosing to let his thoughts
wander whither they inevitably tended, and taking a morbid pleasure
in trying to relink his broken chain. He felt a certain pride in
setting aside every thought of his own advantage, however legitimate,
and tried to force his fancy to a dignified indifference to the more
pleasing aspect of the events of the night. But though the spirit has
wondrous sails that bear it onward, and without which it could make no
way, it no less needs that ballast which is called egoism. Egoism is
indispensable; without it the sails would flap idly, and man would be
the toy of the hurricane. With it, and bereft of sails, he would be no
better than a hulk. The perfect vessel is one in which the sails and
the ballast are rightly proportioned.
As he reflected thus, Leon Roch made up his mind that he could not be
a hulk. Nay--he had just flung all his ballast overboard to sail, as
swift as lightning, over the waters of a bright ideal when he heard a
noise--a sound that made him thrill as the rope of the topmast vibrates
before a rising storm--the rustle of a woman’s dress and the murmur of
a sigh. He looked up and Pepa Fúcar stood before him.
Her aspect startled him, he could not ask her any questions. Her face
was like that of a corpse that has risen from the grave in sheer terror
of death. Her teeth chattered as though she were cold. Tragedy itself
looked out of her eyes; in her hand she held a paper.
With a great effort Leon said:
“For God’s sake leave me in peace--my poor wife is dead.”
“And I ...” but she could not speak; she was trembling, as though the
chill of the grave had fallen on her. At last she finished her sentence:
“I came, some time since, to tell you that my husband is alive.”
Leon sat as if he had not heard; it was his conscience which cried out:
“Your husband!”
“Is alive.”
She put her hand to her head, feeling as if all the blood in her body
were surging there.
“Have you seen him?”
“Yes, and I should have died of fear if it had not been that you are
here to protect me against that ruffian!”
These words roused Leon from a sort of stupor.
“I--what have I to do with it?” he exclaimed as though trying to fight
his way out of this terrible nightmare by some hypocrisy of dignity.
“Leave me. Have I anything to do with your husband--or with you either?”
In his soul a storm was raging which he was trying to quell by decency,
honour--walls of sand which broke down at a touch. His brain was in
a whirl, and conscious of no desire but that he could hate instead
of loving her, he ordered Pepa to leave the room. Giving way to an
impulse--whether of disgust or of honour he hardly knew, he said:
“Leave me--I desire you to leave me. Do not disturb me. I do not want
you. I cast you from me--I turn you out....”
“You are not in your right mind,” said Pepa sadly, “you can turn me out
of the room--but not out of your heart.”
“Did you come here to mock me?” he went on wildly, “when I most deserve
your respect.... What you have told me is a lie.”
“Ah! would to God it were!” said the poor woman clasping her hands. “My
father told me the dreadful news this morning; but I did not think he
would dare to appear before me. But this evening, I was sitting in my
room, and I heard a noise in the garden--I went to the window--I saw a
man--it was he. The light from the hall lamp fell on his hated face--I
saw him and knew him. I thought the earth would open and swallow me--I
was shivering with cold and fear. I could not help running--running all
over the house, and fancying I heard him close behind me and felt his
hand on my shoulder. I rushed out of the back door--if there had been
no door I must have jumped out of the window. I went into the yard--I
could not stop--out into the street. There I took a hackney carriage
and flew here to tell you. I waited a long time in the museum; then I
was out of patience....”
“And the child?”
“She is not at home. I should have brought her with me if she had
been; but Papa had taken her this evening to see Countess Vera. I had
intended to go too--but I knew what was going on here and I could not
bear to go into company; I said I was not well enough.”
“And what a time for coming here!” exclaimed Leon bitterly. “You cannot
even comfort me.”
“Why, what do you object to in my presence?”
“It is a profanation, a scandal! I have no words for it; it fills me
with a horror that I cannot overcome.”
“I am not to blame for what has happened.--It is God’s will and
ordering.--But do not let us lose time in lamentations; let us
consider, let us decide what we are to do.”
“Who?”
“We--you and I.--Will you abandon me to my fate in this unequal
struggle? Do you know what that wretch means to do?--My father told me
all about it. He has been two days in Madrid staying in his uncle’s
house on purpose to spy me and watch me.--I do not know who can have
told him, his uncles I suppose. Gustavo is his lawyer, and he is
going to bring a charge against me.--And the base wretch could write
to my father this morning, declaring that he had repented of all his
wickedness, and imploring his forgiveness.--Inside that letter there
was a note for me. Read it.”
Leon’s first impulse was to refuse to look at the letter; but he
snatched it out of Pepa’s hand, he knew not how or why; and read as
follows:
“A man who is dead has no right to expect fidelity in the wife who
survives him. Happily for me, the Almighty saw fit to save my precious
life. As the moment draws near when I may hope to embrace my wife and
child, I have the honour of informing the first of those beloved beings
that I have made up my mind to forgive her, provided she hastens to
submit to my authority as a husband, seeing that my supposed departure
from this world is some excuse for her delinquency. At the same time
if the above-mentioned beloved being persists in believing that I
am still food for the fish in the Gulf of Mexico, I hereby take the
liberty of assuring her that I shall avail myself of the rights granted
to me by law. My dear daughter cannot be allowed to grow up in the lap
of such a mother. I am sure that the lady whose husband I have the
honour to be will not prefer the delights of a criminal attachment to
the sweet duties of motherhood--but, if she should, I shall bring an
action in due form, having an abundance of witnesses who can prove the
preliminary information required by law, and I shall claim my daughter,
since the law will place her in my paternal care as soon as she is
three years old.
“In order that my estimable wife may fully appreciate the strength of
my position as an injured husband, I would beg her to spend an hour in
her father’s library, and there, in the third book-case, on the second
shelf, she will find the last edition of the code, in which interesting
work I would advise her to study Act 20, cap. I, clause II.
“F. Cimarra.”
“That is the man, all over!” exclaimed Leon crumpling up the paper.
“His style, his insolence, his mean irony, his absolute lack of decency
and feeling. I know the hand that strikes me--God in Heaven! If such
an attack, from such a villain, is not enough to justify a man in
trampling on all law and custom, in forgetting his dignity nay, and his
conscience--if this is not an excuse for rebellion and fury, I do not
want to live!--life is not worth having!” He flung the paper on the
floor and Pepa set her foot on it.
“And I will do the same to you, vile wretch, and your latest Code!” she
exclaimed. Then she dropped on the sofa and bursting into tears she
went on:
“And to think of my baby, my little Monina in the hands of that
ruffian. Monina, who is my only joy, snatched away from you and me! The
mere thought of such a thing drives me mad.”
Leon looked at the floor with stern determination.
“A bold stroke on my part may save us yet,” said Pepa, looking up with
a resolute flash.
“Hush--wait--” said Leon anxiously putting up his hand. “Listen.”
They were silent, holding their breath even.
And they heard in the corridor the slow solemn steps of many men
carrying some heavy burden. The sound came nearer, passed, and died
away. Pepa and Leon each in the attitude of holding the other back,
listened in reverent silence to the procession that passed so near to
them. Their beating hearts seemed to throb in unison. When silence had
once more fallen on the house Leon looked at Pepa who had bent her
head and whose eyes were full of tears.
“Are you praying?” he said.
“Oh! God!” exclaimed Pepa clasping her hands over her heart. “She
is at peace,--I am tortured with grief and anxiety; she is enjoying
eternal bliss as the reward of her virtues, and I am pointed at as a
guilty creature, threatened with persecution, and my wretched heart is
to be made the sport of the tricks of the law.--No, merciful Lord! I
never prayed that she might die in order that I might triumph and be
happy--that I never asked. I was not so wicked, and I do not deserve
such punishment.--I hated her sometimes it is true, but not now, not
now. I do not know whether I am afraid of her now, or whether it is
only reverence that keeps her always in my thoughts--I see her before
me wherever I turn, dead, and yet living.”
“She is happy!” said Leon in dull tones.
“But we have no time to be melancholy. We must decide, and act at once.
Listen, I have a plan; the best, the only plan....”
“A plan.”
“Yes, I will tell you. First I must fetch my child. I feel as if they
wanted to take her from me, as if you and she and I were in danger....”
“Fetch her now, at once.”
“It is only ten o’clock. There is time to go and return quickly. I have
spoken to Lorenzo, our best coachman, and the carriage is waiting.
Will you promise to wait here till I return?”
“Yes, I promise,” said Leon looking at her but beyond her. “Fly and
fetch Monina; bring her quickly; I too am afraid....”
“Till then do not stir from hence....”
She went away through the museum.
Leon for a long time could not restore order in his mind. Before
deciding on any definite course of action it was necessary to form a
clear idea of the situation in its true aspect and proportions, without
regarding it as better or as worse than it really was. But in spite of
every effort he could not think with any kind of lucidity; all mental
discipline was lost to him. His utter physical exhaustion and the
moral chaos that had come upon him had resulted in a sort of lethargy,
in which his brain was lulled to sleep while his senses ran riot in
feverish disorder. We have once before seen him in a similar mood.
The room seemed to assume a circular shape, for his eyes were incapable
of taking exact note of what they saw, and the walls spun round him and
with them in a giddy whirl the objects that adorned them. These were
for the most part engravings, plates, jars, medals and plaster reliefs
of the time of the French _Directoire_, when a revolution in taste
took place as a trivial corollary to the revolution in politics. After
cutting off heads the mania for innovation set to work to reform hats.
Industry had no mind to retire in favour of liberty, and on the top of
the mound of skulls piled up during the reign of terror, it stuck a
dress-maker’s doll.
There were men tightly buttoned into impossible coats, choked in
yards of neck-cloth, and crowned with incredible hats. Some carried
knotted sticks, others twisted canes; they were curled like the Furies
and shod like dancing-masters. Some had huge chains with seals like
bell-clappers hanging from their pockets; in some it was difficult to
distinguish their legs from their skirts, or where the man ended and
his clothes began. They looked like objects in a nightmare, chimeras,
the distorted metamorphosis of human beings into long-legged wading
birds with glasses on their bills and buskins on their feet. The women
displayed more than their ankles in tightly-drawn stockings, and
on their heads wore towers of felt, fur and feathers, buckram, and
ribbands; mounds, weather-cocks, pagodas, spires or tubs. If a crowd of
witches had set up for being fashionable they might have appeared in
such a guise.
All these figures seemed to be flying in a mad race round the room.
They were a motley rabble, a whirling tornado of cudgels, legs, noses,
eyeglasses, petticoats, fans and hats, whence proceeded whistling,
shouts, scoffing and laughter. All humanity rammed into a cannon as
large as the world, and fired off into the air in a million fragments,
could not have covered the sky with a more hideous cloud.
Leon saw a figure step out of the circle and come towards him, and
he suddenly felt an impulse of rage, just like that which he had
felt in the morning against his brother-in-law--a rage which now no
consideration of respect interfered to quell. The hateful figure that
approached him was the most grotesquely monstrous of all that crazy
rout; his mean smile was an insult to human reason, to decency, to
virtue, to everything that distinguishes man from brutes.
“Horrible wretch!” Leon cried--or fancied he cried, rushing upon him,
and seizing him by the collar. “Do you think I am afraid of you? Why do
you take her from me? Yours! do you say she is yours? But I will give
you a lesson and rid society of your vile presence....”
He clutched his victim with all his strength, saying:
“You have rights? I trample them under foot. You have ties? I break
them. You shall soon see what I care for your rights and ties--no
more than for your life, which is full of evil and disgrace. I loathe
you as the embodiment of all the wickedness on earth.--Respect you?
Respect the law, the sacrament which you represent as I respected them
in her who is no longer of this world?--How dare you name her in the
same breath with yourself? In her I respected the austerity of virtue,
of exalted piety, honour, innocence, weakness and beauty. But what is
there in you but corruption, lies and foulest vice?--It is in vain for
you to crave my pity: pity was not made to bestow on venomous reptiles.
Do not ask me to let you have your child.--Shall an angel be thrown
to the dogs?--Your child loathes you, your wife hates you, I--I will
murder you!”
He felt as though he were rolling down a precipice in the dark, with
his victim in his grasp. Then he unconsciously sank into a troubled
slumber that lasted some time. He woke in a calmer frame of mind;
though still confused, he could make out surrounding objects, and by
degrees saw them more distinctly. The figures on the walls were in
their places, as insolently lifelike as ever, not more hideous or more
pleasing than of old. Leon heard not a sound; everything was still. He
looked at his watch; it was half-past eleven.
His first clear idea was that he must at once quit the house and go to
his own home.
He thought of María dead, and of Pepa living,--he saw them as though
they had been standing side by side in front of him; and at the same
moment, as if his thought had evoked her presence, Pepa came into the
room from the museum with Monina in her arms.