ON Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru
broke and precipitated five travellers into the gulf below. This bridge
was on the highroad between Lima and Cuzco and hundreds of persons
passed over it every day. It had been woven of osier by the Incas more
than a century before and visitors to the city were always led out to
see it. It was a mere ladder of thin slats swung out over the gorge,
with handrails of dried vine. Horses and coaches and chairs had to go
down hundreds of feet below and pass over the narrow torrent on rafts,
but no one, not even the Viceroy, not even the Archbishop of Lima, had
descended with the baggage rather than cross by the famous bridge of San
Luis Rey. St. Louis of France himself protected it, by his name and by
the little mud church on the further side. The bridge seemed to be among
the things that last forever; it was unthinkable that it should break.
The moment a Peruvian heard of the accident he signed himself and made a
mental calculation as to how recently he had crossed by it and how soon
he had intended crossing by it again. People wandered about in a
trance-like state, muttering; they had the hallucination of seeing
themselves falling into a gulf.
There was a great service in the Cathedral. The bodies of the victims
were approximately collected and approximately separated from one
another, and there was great searching of hearts in the beautiful city
of Lima. Servant girls returned bracelets which they had stolen from
their mistresses, and usurers harangued their wives angrily, in defense
of usury. Yet it was rather strange that this event should have so
impressed the Limeans, for in that country those catastrophes which
lawyers shockingly call the "acts of God" were more than usually
frequent. Tidal waves were continually washing away cities; earthquakes
arrived every week and towers fell upon good men and women all the time.
Diseases were forever flitting in and out of the provinces and old age
carried away some of the most admirable citizens. That is why it was so
surprising that the Peruvians should have been especially touched by the
rent in the bridge of San Luis Rey.
Everyone was very deeply impressed, but only one person did anything
about it, and that was Brother Juniper. By a series of coincidences so
extraordinary that one almost suspects the presence of some Intention,
this little red-haired Franciscan from Northern Italy happened to be in
Peru converting the Indians and happened to witness the accident.
It was a very hot noon, that fatal noon, and coming around the shoulder
of a hill Brother Juniper stopped to wipe his forehead and to gaze upon
the screen of snowy peaks in the distance, then into the gorge below him
filled with the dark plumage of green trees and green birds and
traversed by its ladder of osier. Joy was in him; things were not going
badly. He had opened several little abandoned churches and the Indians
were crawling in to early Mass and groaning at the moment of miracle as
though their hearts would break. Perhaps it was the pure air from the
snows before him; perhaps it was the memory that brushed him for a
moment of the poem that bade him raise his eyes to the helpful hills. At
all events he felt at peace. Then his glance fell upon the bridge, and
at that moment a twanging noise filled the air, as when the string of
some musical instrument snaps in a disused room, and he saw the bridge
divide and fling five gesticulating ants into the valley below.
Anyone else would have said to himself with secret joy: "Within ten
minutes myself...!" But it was another thought that visited Brother
Juniper: "Why did thin happen to _those_ five?" If there were any plan
in the universe at all, if there were any pattern in a human life,
surely it could be discovered mysteriously latent in those lives so
suddenly cut off. Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we
live by plan and die by plan, And on that instant Brother Juniper made
the resolve to inquire into the secret lives of those five persons, that
moment falling through the air, and to surprise the reason of their
taking off.
* * * * * * *
It seemed to Brother Juniper that it was high time for theology to take
its place among the exact sciences and he had long intended putting it
there. What he had lacked hitherto was a laboratory. Oh, there had never
been any lack of specimens; any number of his charges had met
calamity,--spiders had stung them; their lungs had been touched; their
houses had burned down and things had happened to their children from
which one averts the mind. But these occasions of human woe had never
been quite fit for scientific examination. They had lacked what our good
savants were later to call _proper control_. The accident had been
dependent upon human error, for example, or had contained elements of
probability. But this collapse of the bridge of San Luis Rey was a sheer
Act of God. It afforded a perfect laboratory. Here at last one could
surprise His intentions in a pure state.
You and I can see that coming from anyone but Brother Juniper this plan
would be the flower of a perfect skepticism. It resembled the effort of
those presumptuous souls who wanted to walk on the pavements of Heaven
and built the Tower of Babel to get there. But to our Franciscan there
was no element of doubt in the experiment. He knew the answer. He merely
wanted to prove it, historically, mathematically, to his converts,--poor
obstinate converts, so slow to believe that their pains were inserted
into their lives for their own good. People were always asking for good
sound proofs; doubt springs eternal in the human breast, even in
countries where the Inquisition can read your very thoughts in your
eyes.
This was not the first time that Brother Juniper had tried to resort to
such methods. Often on the long trips he had to make (scurrying from
parish to parish, his robe tucked up about his knees, for haste) he
would fall to dreaming of experiments that justify the ways of God to
man. For instance, a complete record of the Prayers for Rain and their
results. Often he had stood on the steps of one of his little churches,
his flock kneeling before him on the baked street. Often he had
stretched his arms to the sky and declaimed the splendid ritual. Not
often, but several times, he had felt the virtue enter him and seen the
little cloud forming on the horizon. But there were many times when
weeks went by ... but why think of them? It was not himself he was
trying to convince that rain and drought were wisely apportioned.
Thus it was that the determination rose within him at the moment of the
accident. It prompted him to busy himself for six years, knocking at all
the doors in Lima, asking thousands of questions, filling scores of
notebooks, in his effort at establishing the fact that each of the five
lost lives was a perfect whole. Everyone knew that he was working on
some sort of memorial of the accident and everyone was very helpful and
misleading. A few even knew the principal aim of his activity and there
were patrons in high places.
The result of all this diligence was an enormous book, which as we shall
see later, was publicly burned on a beautiful Spring morning in the
great square. But there was a secret copy and after a great many years
and without much notice it found its way to the library of the
University of San Marco. There it lies between two great wooden covers
collecting dust in a cupboard. It deals with one after another of the
victims of the accident, cataloguing thousands of little facts and
anecdotes and testimonies, and concluding with a dignified passage
describing why God had settled upon that person and upon that day for
His demonstration of wisdom. Yet for all his diligence Brother Juniper
never knew the central passion of Doña María's life; nor of Uncle
Pio's, not even of Esteban's. And I, who claim to know so much more,
isn't it possible that even I have missed the very spring within the
spring?
Some say that we shall never know and that to the gods we are like the
flies that the boys kill on a summer day, and some say, on the contrary,
that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed
away by the finger of God.
PART TWO: THE MARQUESA DE
MONTEMAYOR
ANY Spanish schoolboy is required to know today more about Doña María,
Marquesa de Montemayor, than Brother Juniper was to discover in years of
research. Within a century of her death her letters had become one of
the monuments of Spanish literature and her life and times have ever
since been the object of long studies. But her biographers have erred in
one direction as greatly as the Franciscan did in another; they have
tried to invest her with a host of graces, to read back into her life
and person some of the beauties that abound in her letters, whereas all
real knowledge of this wonderful woman must proceed from the act of
humiliating her and of divesting her of all beauties save one.
She was the daughter of a cloth-merchant who had acquired the money and
the hatred of the Limeans within a stone's-throw of the Plaza. Her
childhood was unhappy: she was ugly; she stuttered; her mother
persecuted her with sarcasms in an effort to arouse some social charms
and forced her to go about the town in a veritable harness of jewels.
She lived alone and she thought alone. Many suitors presented
themselves, but as long as she could she fought against the convention
of her time and was determined to remain single. There were hysterical
scenes with her mother, recriminations, screams and slamming of doors.
At last at twenty-six she found herself penned into marriage with a
supercilious and ruined nobleman and the Cathedral of Lima fairly buzzed
with the sneers of her guests. Still she lived alone and thought alone,
and when an exquisite daughter was born to her she fastened upon her an
idolatrous love. But little Clara took after her father; she was cold
and intellectual. At the age of eight she was calmly correcting her
mother's speech and presently regarding her with astonishment and
repulsion. The frightened mother became meek and obsequious but she
could not prevent herself from persecuting Doña Clara with nervous
attention and a fatiguing love. Again there were hysterical
recriminations, screams and slamming of doors. From the offers of
marriage that fell to her, Doña Clara deliberately chose the one that
required her removal to Spain. So to Spain she went, to that land from
which it takes six months to receive an answer to one's letter. The
leave-taking before so long a voyage became in Peru one of the formal
services of the Church. The ship was blessed and as the space widened
between the vessel and the beach both companies knelt and sang a hymn
that never failed to sound weak and timid in all that open air. Doña
Clara sailed with most admirable composure, leaving her mother to gaze
after the bright ship, her hand pressing now her heart and now her
mouth. Blurred and streaked became her view of the serene Pacific and
the enormous clouds of pearl that hang forever motionless above it.
Left alone in Lima the Marquesa's life grew more and more inward. She
became increasingly negligent in her dress and like all lonely people
she talked to herself audibly. All her existence lay in the burning
center of her mind. On that stage were performed endless dialogues with
her daughter, impossible reconciliations, scenes eternally recommenced
of remorse and forgiveness. On the street you beheld an old woman her
red wig fallen a little over one ear, her left cheek angry with a
leprous affection, her right with a complementary adjustment of rouge.
Her chin was never dry; her lips were never still. Lima was a city of
eccentrics, but even there she became its jest as she drove through the
streets or shuffled up the steps of its churches. She was thought to be
continuously drunk. Worse things were said of her and petitions were
afloat that she be locked up. She had been denounced three times before
the Inquisition. It is not impossible that she might have been burned
had her son-in-law been less influential in Spain and had she not
somehow collected a few friends about the viceregal court who suffered
her for her oddity and her wide reading.
The distressing character of the relations between mother and daughter
were further embittered by misunderstandings over money. The Condesa
received a handsome allowance from her mother and frequent gifts. Doña
Clara soon became the outstanding woman of intelligence at the Spanish
court. All the wealth of Peru would have been insufficient to maintain
her in the grandiose style she fancied for herself. Strangely enough her
extravagance proceeded from one of the best traits in her nature: she
regarded her friends, her servants and all the interesting people in the
capital, as her children. In fact there seemed only one person in the
world towards whom she did not expend herself in kind offices. Among her
_protégés_ was the cartographer De Blasiis (whose _Maps of the New
World_ was dedicated to the Marquesa de Montemayor amid the roars of the
courtiers at Lima who read that she was the "_admiration of her city and
a rising sun in the West_"); another was the scientist Azuarius whose
treatise on the laws of hydraulics was suppressed by the Inquisition as
being too exciting. For a decade the Condesa literally sustained all the
arts and sciences of Spain; it was not her fault that nothing memorable
was produced in that time.
About four years after Doña Clara's departure Doña María received her
permission to visit Europe. On both sides the visit was anticipated with
resolutions well nourished on self-reproach: the one to be patient, the
other to be undemonstrative. Both failed. Each tortured the other and
was on the point of losing her mind under the alternations of
self-rebuke and the outbursts of passion. At length one day Doña María
rose before dawn, daring no more than to kiss the door behind which her
daughter was sleeping, took ship and returned to America. Henceforth
letter-writing had to take the place of all the affection that could not
be lived.
Hers were the letters that in an astonishing world have become the
text-book of schoolboys and the ant-hill of the grammarians. Doña
María would have invented her genius had she not been born with it, so
necessary was it to her love that she attract the attention, perhaps the
admiration, of her distant child. She forced herself to go out into
society in order to cull its ridicules; she taught her eye to observe;
she read the masterpieces of her language to discover its effects; she
insinuated herself into the company of those who were celebrated for
their conversation. Night after night in her baroque palace she wrote
and rewrote the incredible pages, forcing from her despairing mind those
miracles of wit and grace, those distilled chronicles of the viceregal
court. We know now that her daughter barely glanced at the letters and
that it is to the son-in-law that we owe their preservation.
The Marquesa would have been astonished to learn that her letters were
immortal. Yet many critics have accused her of keeping one eye on
posterity and point to a number of letters that have all the air of
being bravura pieces. To them it seems impossible that Doña María
should have put herself to the same pains to dazzle her daughter that
most artists expend on dazzling the public. Like her son-in-law they
misunderstood her: the Conde delighted in her letters, but he thought
that when he had enjoyed the style he had extracted all their richness
and intention, missing (as most readers do) the whole purport of
literature, which is the notation of the heart. Style is but the faintly
contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the
world. The Marquesa would even have been astonished to learn that her
letters were very good, for such authors live always in the noble
weather of their own minds and those productions which seem remarkable
to us are little better than a day's routine to them.
This was the old woman who hour by hour would sit upon her balcony, her
odd straw hat casting a purple shadow across her lined and yellow face.
How often as she turned her pages with her gemmed hands, she would ask
herself, almost with amusement, whether the constant pain at her heart
had an organic seat. She wondered whether a subtle doctor cutting
through to that battered throne could at last discover a sign and
lifting his face to the amphitheatre cry out to his students: "This
woman has suffered, and her suffering has left its mark upon the
structure of her heart." This idea had so often visited her that one day
she wrote it into a letter and her daughter scolded her for an
introspective and for making a cult of sorrow.
[Illustration]
The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her
ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs. Her religious beliefs went first, for
all she could ask of a god, or of immortality, was the gift of a place
where daughters love their mothers; the other attributes of Heaven you
could have for a song. Next she lost her belief in the sincerity of
those about her. She secretly refused to believe that anyone (herself
excepted) loved anyone. All families lived in a wasteful atmosphere of
custom and kissed one another with secret indifference. She saw that the
people of this world moved about in an armour of egotism, drunk with
self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to
them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in
dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with
their own desires. These were the sons and daughters of Adam from Cathay
to Peru. And when on the balcony her thoughts reached this turn, her
mouth would contract with shame for she knew that she too sinned and
that though her love for her daughter was vast enough to include all the
colours of love, it was not without a shade of tyranny: she loved her
daughter not for her daughter's sake, but for her own. She longed to
free herself from this ignoble bond; but the passion was too fierce to
cope with. And then on that green balcony a strange warfare would shake
the hideous old lady, a singularly futile struggle against a temptation
to which she would never have the opportunity of succumbing. How could
she rule her daughter when her daughter saw to it that four thousand
miles lay between them? Nevertheless Doña María wrestled with the
ghost of her temptation and was worsted on every occasion. She wanted
her daughter for herself; she wanted to hear her say: "You are the best
of all possible mothers"; she longed to hear her whisper: "Forgive me."
About two years after her return from Spain there took place a series of
inconspicuous events that had a great deal to tell about the inner life
of the Marquesa. Only the faintest allusion to them occurs in the
Correspondence, but as that is found in Letter XXII which contains other
signs I shall do my best to give a translation and commentary of the
first part of the letter:
"_Are there no doctors in Spain? Where are those good men from Flanders
that used to help you so? Oh, my treasure, how can we punish you enough
for letting your cold endure so many weeks? Don Vicente, I implore you
to make my child see reason. Angels of Heaven, I implore you to make my
child see reason. Now that you are better, I beg of you, resolve that
when the first warning of a cold comes you will steam yourself well and
go to bed. Here in Peru I am helpless; I can do nothing. Do not be
self-willed, beloved. God bless you. I am enclosing in today's packet
the gum of some tree which the sisters of San Tomás peddle from door to
door. Whether it be of much use I know not. It can do no harm. I am told
that in the convent the silly sisters inhale it so diligently that one
cannot smell the incense at Mass. Whether it be worth anything I know
not; try it._
"_Rest easy, my love, I am sending His Mos. Catholic Majesty the perfect
gold chain_." (Her daughter had written her: "_The chain arrived in good
condition and I wore it at the christening of the Infante. His Most
Catholic Majesty was gracious enough to admire it and when I told Him
that you had given it me He sent you His compliments upon your taste. Do
not fail to send Him one as like it as possible; send it at once, by way
of the Chamberlain.") "He need never know that in order to obtain it I
had to walk into a picture. Do you remember that in the sacristy of San
Martín there is a portrait by Velasquez of the Viceroy who founded the
monastery and of his wife and brat? and that his wife is wearing a gold
chain? I resolved that only that chain would do. So one midnight I
slipped into the sacristy, climbed upon the robing-table like a girl of
twelve and walked in. The canvas resisted for a moment, but the painter
himself came forward to lift me through the pigment. I told him that the
most beautiful girl in Spain wished to present the finest gold chain
that could be found to the most gracious king in the world. It was as
simple as that, and there we stood talking, we four, in the gray and
silvery air that makes a Velasquez. Now I keep thinking about a more
golden light; I keep looking at the Palace: I must pass the evening in a
Titian. Would the Viceroy let me?_
"_But His Excellency has the gout again. I say 'again' because the
flattery of the court insists that there are times when he is free of
it. This being Saint Mark's day His Excellency started out to visit the
University where twenty-two new doctors were being brought into the
world. He had hardly been carried from his divan to his coach when he
screamed and refused to go any farther. He was carried back to his bed
where he broke a most delicious cigar and sent for the Perichole. And
while we listened to long doctrinal addresses, more or less in Latin, he
heard all about us, more or less in Spanish, from the reddest and
cruellest lips in town_." (Doña María permitted herself this passage,
although she had just read in her daughter's last letter: "_How many
times must I tell you to be more cautious in the things you say in your
letters? They often show signs of having been opened on the journey.
Nothing could be more ill-judged than your remarks on the
you-know-what-I-mean at Cuzco. Such remarks are not funny, even though
Vicente did compliment you upon them in his postscript, and they might
get us into a great deal of trouble with Certain Persons here in Spain.
I continue to be astonished that your indiscretions have not long since
led to your being ordered to retire to your farm_.")
"_There was a great press at the Exercises and two women fell from the
balcony, but God in His goodness saw that they fell on Doña Merced. All
three are badly hurt, but will be thinking of other things within a
year. The President was speaking at the moment of the accident and being
short-sighted could not imagine what the disturbance of cries and talk
and falling bodies could be about. It was very pleasant to see him
bowing, under the impression that he was being applauded._
"_Speaking of the Perichole, and of applause, you should know that
Pepita and I decided to go to the Comedia this evening. The public still
idolizes its Perichole; it even forgives her her years. We are told that
she saves what she can, every morning, by passing alternate pencils of
ice and fire across her cheeks_." (Translation falls especially short of
this conceit which carries the whole flamboyance of the Spanish
language. It was intended as an obsequious flattery of the Condesa, and
was untrue. The great actress was twenty-eight at this time; her cheeks
had the smoothness and polish of dark yellow marble and would certainly
have retained that quality for many years. Apart from the cosmetics
required by her performances the only treatment Camila Perichole
afforded her face was to throw cold water at it twice a day, like a
peasant woman at a horse trough.) "_That curious man they call Uncle Pio
is by her all the time. Don Rubío says that he cannot make out whether
Uncle Pio is her father, her lover, or her son. The Perichole gave a
wonderful performance. Scold me all you like for a provincial ninny, you
have no such actresses in Spain_." And so on.
It is on this visit to the theatre that further matter hangs. She
decided to go to the Comedia where the Perichole was playing Doña
Leonor in Moreto's _Trampa Adelante_; perhaps some material could be
derived from the visit for her daughter's next letter. She took with her
Pepita, a little girl about whom later we shall learn much. Doña María
had borrowed her from the orphanage connected with the Convent of Santa
María Rosa de las Rosas to be her companion. The Marquesa sat in her
box gazing with flagging attention at the brilliant stage. Between the
acts it was the Perichole's custom to lay aside the courtly rôle and
appear before the curtain to sing a few topical songs. The malicious
actress had seen the Marquesa arrive and presently began improvising
couplets alluding to her appearance, her avarice, her drunkenness, and
even to her daughter's flight from her. The attention of the house was
subtly directed to the old woman and a rising murmur of contempt
accompanied the laughter of the audience. But the Marquesa, deeply moved
by the first two acts of the comedy, scarcely saw the singer and sat
staring before her, thinking about Spain. Camila Perichole became bolder
and the air was electric with the hatred and glee of the crowd. At last
Pepita plucked the Marquesa's sleeve and whispered to her that they
should go. As they left the box the house arose and burst into a roar of
triumph; the Perichole flung herself into a frenzied dance, for she saw
the manager at the back of the hall and knew that her salary had been
increased. But the Marquesa remained unaware of what had taken place; in
fact she was quite pleased, for during the visit she had contrived a few
felicitous phrases, phrases (who knows) that might bring a smile to her
daughter's face and might make her murmur: "Really, my mother is
charming."
In due time the report reached the Viceroy's ears that one of his
aristocrats had been openly baited in the theatre. He summoned the
Perichole to the Palace and ordered her to call upon the Marquesa and to
apologize. The trip was to be made barefoot and in a black dress. Camila
argued and fought, but all she gained was a pair of shoes.
The Viceroy had three reasons for insisting. In the first place the
singer had taken liberties with his court. Don Andrés had contrived to
make exile endurable by building up a ceremonial so complicated that it
could be remembered only by a society that had nothing else to think
about. He nursed his little aristocracy and its minute distinctions and
any insult paid to a Marquesa was an insult to His Person. In the second
place, Doña María's son-in-law was an increasingly important personage
in Spain, laden with possibilities of injury to the Viceroy, nay with
the possibility of supplanting him. The Conde Vicente d'Abuirre must not
be vexed, even through his half-wit mother-in-law. Finally, the Viceroy
was delighted to humble the actress. He suspected that she was deceiving
him with a matador, perhaps with an actor,--between the flattery of the
court and the inertia of gout he could not quite make out who it was; at
all events, it was clear that the singer was beginning to forget that he
was one of the first men in the world.
The Marquesa, beside not having heard the scurrilous songs, was in other
ways unprepared for the actress's visit. You should know that after the
departure of her daughter, Doña María had lighted upon a certain
consolation: she had taken to drinking. Everyone drank _chicha_ in Peru
and there was no particular disgrace in being found unconscious on a
feast day. Doña María had begun to discover that her feverish
monologues had a way of keeping her awake all night. Once she took a
delicate fluted glassful of _chicha_ on retiring. Oblivion was so sweet
that presently she stole larger amounts and tried dissimulating their
effects from Pepita; she hinted that she was not well, and represented
herself as going into a decline. At last she resigned all pretense. The
boats that carried her letter to Spain did not leave oftener than once a
month. During the week that preceded the making of the packet she
observed a strict regimen and cultivated the city assiduously for
material. At last on the eve of the post she wrote the letter, making up
the bundle towards dawn and leaving it for Pepita to deliver to the
agent. Then as the sun rose she would shut herself up in her room with
some flagons and drift through the next few weeks without the burden of
consciousness. Finally she would emerge from her happiness and prepare
to go into a state of "training" in preparation for the writing of
another letter.
Thus on the night following the scandal in the theatre she wrote Letter
XXII and retired to bed with a carafe. All next day Pepita moved about
the room, glancing anxiously at the figure on the bed. The next
afternoon Pepita brought her needlework into the room. The Marquesa lay
staring at the ceiling with wide-open eyes, talking to herself. Towards
dusk Pepita was called to the door and informed that the Perichole had
come to see the mistress. Pepita remembered the theatre very well and
sent back word angrily that the mistress refused to see her. The man
carried the message to the street door, but returned awestruck with the
news that the Señora Perichole was armed with a letter from the Viceroy
presenting her to the lady. Pepita tiptoed to the bed and started
talking to the Marquesa. The glazed eyes moved to the girl's face.
Pepita shook her gently. With great effort Doña María tried to fix her
mind on what was being said to her. Twice she lay back, refusing to
seize the meaning, but at last, like a general calling together in a
rain and by night the dispersed division of his army she assembled
memory and attention and a few other faculties and painfully pressing
her hand to her forehead she asked for a bowl of snow. When it was
brought her, she long and drowsily pressed handfuls of it against her
temples and cheeks; then rising she stood for a long time leaning
against the bed and looking at her shoes. At last she raised her head
with decision, she called for her fur-trimmed cloak and a veil. She put
them on and tottered into her handsomest reception room where the
actress stood waiting for her.
Camila had intended to be perfunctory and if possible impudent, but now
she was struck for the first time with the dignity of the old woman. The
mercer's daughter could carry herself at times with all the distinction
of the Montemayors and when she was drunk she wore the grandeur of
Hecuba. For Camila the half-closed eyes had the air of weary authority
and she began almost timidly:
"I come, señora, to make sure that you could not have misunderstood
anything I said on the evening that Your Grace did me the honour to
visit my theatre."
"Misunderstood? Misunderstood?" said the Marquesa.
"Your Grace might have misunderstood and thought that my words were
intended to be disrespectful to Your Grace."
"To me?"
"Your Grace is not offended at her humble servant? Your Grace is aware
that a poor actress in my position may be carried beyond her
intentions ... that it is very difficult ... that everything...."
"How can I be offended, señora? All that I can remember is that you
gave a beautiful performance. You are a great artist. You should be
happy, happy. My handkerchief, Pepita...."
The Marquesa brought out these words very rapidly and vaguely, but the
Perichole was confounded. A piercing sense of shame filled her. She
turned crimson. At last she was able to murmur:
"It was in the songs between the acts of the comedy. I was afraid Your
Grace ..."
"Yes, yes. I remember now. I left early. Pepita, we left early, did we
not? But, señora, you are good enough to forgive my leaving early, yes,
even in the middle of your admirable performance. I forget why we left.
Pepita ... oh, some indisposition...."
It was impossible that anyone in the theatre could have missed the
intention of the songs. Camila could only assume that the Marquesa, out
of a sort of fantastic magnanimity, was playing the farce of not having
noticed it. She was almost in tears: "But you are so good to overlook my
childishness, señora,--I mean Your Grace. I did not know. I did not
know your goodness, señora, permit me to kiss your hand."
Doña María held out her hand astonished. She had not for a long time
been addressed with such consideration. Her neighbors, her tradespeople,
her servants--for even Pepita lived in awe of her,--her very daughter
had never approached her thus. It induced a new mood in her; one that
must very likely be called maudlin. She became loquacious:
"Offended, offended at you, my beautiful, ... my gifted child? Who am I,
a ... an unwise and unloved old woman, to be offended at you? I felt, my
daughter, as though I were--what says the poet?--_surprising through a
cloud the conversation of the angels_. Your voice kept finding new
wonders in our Moreto. When you said:
'_Don Juan, si mi amor estimas,
Y la fe segura es necia,
Enojarte mis temores
Es no querarme discreta.
¿Tan seguros_....'
and so on,--that was true! And what a gesture you made at the close of
the First Day. There, with your hand so. Such a gesture as the Virgin
made, saying to Gabriel: _How is it possible that I shall have a child_?
No, no, you will begin to have resentment at me, for I am going to tell
you about a gesture that you may remember to use some day. Yes, it would
fit well into that scene where you forgive your Don Juan de Lara.
Perhaps I should tell you that I saw it made one day by my daughter. My
daughter is a very beautiful woman ... everyone thinks. Did ... did you
know my Doña Clara, Señora?"
"Her Grace often did me the honour of visiting my theatre. I knew the
Condesa well by sight."
"Do not remain so, on one knee, my child.--Pepita, tell Jenarito to
bring this lady some sweet-cakes at once. Think, one day we fell out, I
forget over what. Oh, there is nothing strange in that; all we mothers
from time to time.... Look, can you come a little closer? You must not
believe the town that says she was unkind to me. You are a great woman
with a beautiful nature and you can see further than the crowd sees in
these matters.--It is a pleasure to talk to you. What beautiful hair you
have! What beautiful hair!--She had not a warm impulsive nature, I know
that. But, oh, my child, she has such a store of intelligence and
graciousness. Any misunderstandings between us are so plainly my fault;
is it not wonderful that she is so quick to forgive me? This day there
fell one of those little moments. We both said hasty things and went off
to our rooms. Then each turned back to be forgiven. Finally only a door
separated us and there we were pulling it in contrary ways. But at last
she ... took my ... face ... thus, in her two white hands. So! Look!"
The Marquesa almost fell out of her chair as she leaned forward, her
face streaming with happy tears, and made the beatific gesture. I should
say the mythical gesture, for the incident was but a recurring dream.
"I am glad you are here," she continued, "for now you have heard from my
own lips that she is not unkind to me, as some people say. Listen,
señora, the fault was mine. Look at me. Look at me. There was some
mistake that made me the mother of so beautiful a girl. I am difficult.
I am trying. You and she are great women. No, do not stop me: you are
rare women, and I am only a nervous ... a foolish ... a stupid woman.
Let me kiss your feet. I am impossible. I am impossible. I am
impossible."
Here indeed the old woman did fall out of her chair and was gathered up
by Pepita and led back to her bed. The Perichole walked home in
consternation and sat for a long time gazing into her eyes in the
mirror, her palms pressed against her cheeks.
But the person who saw most of the difficult hours of the Marquesa was
her little companion, Pepita. Pepita was an orphan and had been brought
up by that strange genius of Lima, the Abbess Madre María del Pilar.
The only occasion upon which the two great women of Peru (as the
perspective of history was to reveal them) met face to face was on the
day when Doña María called upon the directress of the Convent of Santa
María Rosa de las Rosas and asked if she might borrow some bright girl
from the orphanage to be her companion. The Abbess gazed hard at the
grotesque old woman. Even the wisest people in the world are not
perfectly wise and Madre María del Pilar who was able to divine the
poor human heart behind all the masks of folly and defiance, had always
refused to concede one to the Marquesa de Montemayor. She asked her a
great many questions and then paused to think. She wanted to give Pepita
the worldly experience of living in the palace. She also wanted to bend
the old woman to her own interests. And she was filled with a sombre
indignation, for she knew she was gazing at one of the richest women in
Peru, and the blindest.
She was one of those persons who have allowed their lives to be gnawed
away because they have fallen in love with an idea several centuries
before its appointed appearance in the history of civilization. She
hurled herself against the obstinacy of her time in her desire to attach
a little dignity to women. At midnight when she had finished adding up
the accounts of the House she would fall into insane vision of an age
when women could be organized to protect women, women travelling, women
as servants, women when they are old or ill, the women she had
discovered in the mines of Potosi, or in the workrooms of the
cloth-merchants, the girls she had collected out of doorways on rainy
nights. But always the next morning she had to face the fact that the
women in Peru, even her nuns, went through life with two notions: one,
that all the misfortunes that might befall them were merely due to the
fact that they were not sufficiently attractive to bind some man to
their maintenance and, two, that all the misery in the world was worth
his caress. She had never known any country but the environs of Lima and
she assumed that all its corruption was the normal state of mankind.
Looking back from our century we can see the whole folly of her hope.
Twenty such women would have failed to make any impression on that age.
Yet she continued diligently in her task. She resembled the swallow in
the fable who once every thousand years transferred a grain of wheat, in
the hope of rearing a mountain to reach the moon. Such persons are
raised up in every age; they obstinately insist on transporting their
grains of wheat and they derive a certain exhilaration from the sneers
of the bystanders. "How queerly they dress!" we cry. "How queerly they
dress!"
Her plain red face had great kindliness, and more idealism than
kindliness, and more generalship than idealism. All her work, her
hospitals, her orphanage, her convent, her sudden journeys of rescue,
depended upon money. No one harbored a fairer admiration for mere
goodness, but she had been obliged to watch herself sacrificing her
kindliness, almost her idealism, to generalship, so dreadful were the
struggles to obtain her subsidies from her superiors in the church. The
Archbishop of Lima, whom we shall know later in a more graceful
connection, hated her with what he called a Vatinian hate and counted
the cessation of her visits among the compensations for dying.
Lately she had felt not only the breath of old age against her cheek,
but a graver warning. A chill of terror went through her, not for
herself, but for her work. Who was there in Peru to value the things she
had valued? And rising one day at dawn she had made a rapid journey
through her hospital and convent and orphanage, looking for a soul she
might train to be her successor. She hurried from empty face to empty
face, occasionally pausing more from hope than conviction. In the
courtyard she came upon a company of girls at work over the linen and
her eyes fell at once upon a girl of twelve who was directing the others
at the trough and at the same time recounting to them with great
dramatic fire the less probable miracles in the life of Saint Rose of
Lima. So it was that the search ended with Pepita. The education for
greatness is difficult enough at any time, but amid the sensibilities
and jealousies of a convent it must be conducted with fantastic
indirection. Pepita was assigned to the most disliked tasks in the
House, but she came to understand all the aspects of its administration.
She accompanied the Abbess on her journeys, even though it was in the
capacity of custodian of the eggs and vegetables. And everywhere, by
surprise, hours would open up in which the Directress suddenly appeared
and talked to her at great length, not only on religious experience, but
on how to manage women and how to plan contagious wards and how to beg
for money. It was a step in this education for greatness that led to
Pepita's arriving one day and entering upon the crazy duties of being
Doña María's companion. For the first two years she merely came for
occasional afternoons, but finally she came to the palace to live. She
never had been taught to expect happiness, and the inconveniences, not
to say terrors, of her new position did not seem to her excessive for a
girl of fourteen. She did not suspect that the Abbess, even there, was
hovering above the house, herself estimating the stresses and watching
for the moment when a burden harms and not strengthens.
[Illustration]
A few of Pepita's trials were physical: for example, the servants in the
house took advantage of Doña María's indisposition; they opened up the
bedrooms of the palace to their relatives; they stole freely. Alone
Pepita stood out against them and suffered a persecution of small
discomforts and practical jokes. Her mind, similarly, had its
distresses: when she accompanied Doña María on her errands in the
city, the older woman would be seized with the desire to dash into a
church, for what she had lost of religion as faith she had replaced with
religion as magic. "Stay here in the sunlight, my dear child; I shall
not be long," she would say. Doña María would then forget herself in a
reverie before the altar and leave the church by another door. Pepita
had been brought up by Madre María del Pilar to an almost morbid
obedience and when after many hours she ventured into the church and
made sure that her mistress was no longer there, still she returned to
the street-corner and waited while the shadows fell gradually across the
square. Thus waiting in public she suffered all the torture of a little
girl's self-consciousness. She still wore the uniform of the orphanage
(which a minute's thoughtfulness on the part of Doña María could have
altered) and she suffered hallucinations wherein men seemed to be
staring at her and whispering--nor were these always hallucinations. No
less her heart suffered, for on some days Doña María would suddenly
become aware of her and would talk to her cordially and humorously,
would let appear for a few hours all the exquisite sensibility of the
Letters; then, on the morrow she would withdraw into herself again and,
while never harsh, would become impersonal and unseeing. The beginnings
of hope and affection that Pepita had such need to expend would be
wounded. She tiptoed about the palace, silent, bewildered, clinging only
to her sense of duty and her loyalty to her "mother in the Lord," Madre
María del Pilar, who had sent her there.
* * * * * * *
Finally a new fact appeared that was to have considerable effect on the
lives of both the Marquesa and her companion: "_My dear mother_," wrote
the Condesa, "_the weather has been most exhausting and the fact that
the orchards and gardens are in bloom only makes it the more trying. I
could endure flowers if only they had no perfume. I shall therefore ask
your permission to write you at less length than usual. If Vicente
returns before the post leaves he will be delighted to finish out the
leaf and supply you with those tiresome details about myself which you
seem to enjoy so. I shall not go to Grignan in Provence as I expected
this Fall, as child will be born in early October_."
What child? The Marquesa leaned against the wall. Doña Clara had
foreseen the exhausting importunities that this news would waken in her
mother and had sought to mitigate them by the casualness of her
announcement. The ruse did not succeed. The famous Letter XLII was the
answer.
Now at length the Marquesa had something to be anxious about: her
daughter was to become a mother. This event, which merely bored Doña
Clara, discovered a whole new scale of emotions in the Marquesa. She
became a mine of medical knowledge and suggestion. She combed the city
for wise old women and poured into her letters the whole folk-wisdom of
the New World. She fell into the most abominable superstition. She
practiced a degrading system of taboos for her child's protection. She
refused to allow a knot in the house. The maids were forbidden to tie up
their hair and she concealed upon her person ridiculous symbols of a
happy delivery. On the stairs the even steps were marked with red chalk
and a maid who accidentally stepped upon an even step was driven from
the house with tears and screams. Doña Clara was in the hands of
malignant Nature who reserves the right to inflict upon her children the
most terrifying jests. There was an etiquette of propitiation which
generations of peasant women had found comforting. So vast an army of
witnesses surely implied that there was some truth in it. At least it
could do no harm, and Perhaps it did good. But the Marquesa did not only
satisfy the rites of paganism; she studied the prescriptions of
Christianity as well. She arose in the dark and stumbled through the
streets to the earliest Masses. She hysterically hugged the altar-rails
trying to rend from the gaudy statuettes a sign, only a sign, the ghost
of a smile, the furtive nod of a waxen head. Would all be well? Sweet,
sweet Mother, would all be well?
At times, after a day's frantic resort to such invocations, a revulsion
would sweep over her. Nature is deaf. God is indifferent. Nothing in
man's power can alter the course of law. Then on some street-corner she
would stop, dizzy with despair, and leaning against a wall would long to
be taken from a world that had no plan in it. But soon a belief in the
great Perhaps would surge up from the depths of her nature and she would
fairly run home to renew the candles above her daughter's bed.
At last the time came to satisfy the supreme rite of Peruvian households
looking forward to this event: she made the pilgrimage to the shrine of
Santa María de Cluxambuqua. If there resided any efficacy in devotion
at all, surely it lay in a visit to this great shrine. The ground had
been holy through three religions; even before the Incan civilization
distraught human beings had hugged the rocks and lashed themselves with
whips to wring their will from the skies. Thither the Marquesa was
carried in her chair, crossing the bridge of San Luis Rey and ascending
up into the hills toward that city of large-girdled women, a tranquil
town, slow-moving and slow-smiling; a city of crystal air, cold as the
springs that fed its many fountains; a city of bells, soft and musical,
and tuned to carry on with one another the happiest quarrels. If
anything turned out for disappointment in the town of Cluxambuqua the
grief was somehow assimilated by the overwhelming immanence of the Andes
and by the weather of quiet joy that flowed in and about the
side-streets. No sooner did the Marquesa see from a distance the white
walls of this town perched on the knees of the highest peaks than her
fingers ceased turning the beads and the busy prayers of her fright were
cut short on her lips.
She did not even alight at the inn, but leaving Pepita to arrange for
their stay she went on to the church and knelt for a long time patting
her hands softly together. She was listening to the new tide of
resignation that was rising within her. Perhaps she would learn in time
to permit both her daughter and her gods to govern their own affairs.
She was not annoyed by the whispering of the old women in padded
garments who sold candles and medals and talked about money from dawn to
dark. She was not even distracted by an officious sacristan who tried to
collect a fee for something or other and who, from spite, made her
change her place under the pretext of repairing a tile on the floor.
Presently she went out into the sunshine and sat on the steps of the
fountain. She watched the little processions of invalids slowly
revolving about the gardens. She watched three hawks plunging about the
sky. The children who had been playing by the fountain stared at her for
a moment, and went away alarmed, but a llama (a lady with a long neck
and sweet shallow eyes, burdened down by a fur cape too heavy for her
and picking her way delicately down an interminable staircase) came over
and offered her a velvet cleft nose to stroke. The llama is deeply
interested in the men about her, is even fond of pretending that she too
is one of them and of inserting her head into their conversations as
though in a moment she would lift her voice and contribute a wan and
helpful comment. Soon Doña María was surrounded by a number of these
sisters who seemed on the point of asking her why she clapped her hands
so and how much her veiling cost a yard.
Doña María had arranged that any letters arriving from Spain should be
brought to her at once by a special messenger. She had travelled slowly
from Lima and even now as she sat in the square a boy from her farm ran
up and put into her hand a large packet wrapped in parchment and
dangling some nuggets of sealing-wax. Slowly she undid the wrappings.
With measured stoic gestures she read first an affectionate and jocose
note from her son-in-law; then her daughter's letter. It was full of
wounding remarks rather brilliantly said, perhaps said for the sheer
virtuosity of giving pain neatly. Each of its phrases found its way
through the eyes of the Marquesa, then, carefully wrapped in
understanding and forgiveness it sank into her heart. At last she arose,
gently dispersed the sympathetic llamas, and with a grave face returned
to the shrine.
While Doña María was passing the late afternoon in the Church and in
the Square, Pepita was left to prepare their lodging. She showed the
porters where to lay down the great wicker hampers and set about
unpacking the altar, the brazier, the tapestries and the portraits of
Doña Clara. She descended into the kitchen and gave the cook exact
instructions as to the preparations of a certain porridge upon which the
Marquesa principally subsisted. Then she returned to the rooms and
waited. She resolved to write a letter to the Abbess. She hung for a
long time over the quill, staring into the distance with trembling lip.
She saw the face of Madre María del Pilar, so red and scrubbed, and the
wonderful black eyes. She heard her voice as at the close of supper (the
orphans sitting with lowered eyes and folded hands) she commented on the
events of the day, or as, by candlelight, she stood among the beds of the
hospital and announced the theme for meditation during the night. But
most clearly of all Pepita remembered the sudden interviews when the
Abbess (not daring to wait until the girl was older) had discussed with
her the duties of her office. She had talked to Pepita as to an equal.
Such speech is troubling and wonderful to an intelligent child and Madre
María del Pilar had abused it. She had expanded Pepita's vision of how
she should feel and act beyond the measure of her years. And she had
unthinkingly turned upon Pepita the full blaze of her personality, as
Jupiter had turned his upon Semele. Pepita was frightened by her sense
of insufficiency; she hid it and wept. And then the Abbess had cast the
child into the discipline of this long solitude, where Pepita struggled,
refusing to let herself believe that she had been abandoned. And now
from this strange inn in these strange mountains, where the altitude was
making her lightheaded, Pepita longed for the dear presence, the only
real thing in her life.
[Illustration]
She wrote a letter, all inkstains and incoherence. Then she went
downstairs to see about fresh charcoal and to taste the porridge.
The Marquesa came in and sat down at the table. "I can do no more. What
will be, will be," she whispered. She unbound from her neck the amulets
of her superstition and dropped them into the glowing brazier. She had a
strange sense of having antagonized God by too much prayer and so
addressed Him now obliquely. "After all it is in the hands of another. I
no longer claim the least influence. What will be, will be." She sat for
a long time, her palms against her cheeks, making a blank of her mind.
Her eyes fell on Pepita's letter. She opened it mechanically and started
to read. She had read a full half of it before her attention was aware
of the meaning of the words: "... _but all this is nothing if you like
me and wish me to stay with her. I oughtn't to tell you but every now
and then the bad chambermaids lock me up in rooms and steal things and
perhaps My Lady will think that I steal them. I hope not. I hope you are
well and not having any trouble in the hospital or anywhere. Though I
never see you I think of you all the time and I remember what you told
me, my dear mother in God. I want to do only what you want, but if you
could let me come back for a few days to the convent, but not if you do
not wish it. But I am so much alone and not talking to anyone, and
everything. Sometimes I do not know whether you have forgotten me and if
you could find a minute to write me a little letter or something, I
could keep it, but I know how busy you are_...."
Doña María read no further. She folded the letter and put it aside.
For a moment she was filled with envy: she longed to command another's
soul as completely as this nun was able to do. Most of all she longed to
be back in this simplicity of love, to throw off the burden of pride and
vanity that hers had always carried. To quiet the tumult in her mind she
picked up a book of devotion and tried to fix her attention upon the
words. But after a moment she suddenly felt the need to reread the whole
letter, to surprise, if possible, the secret of so much felicity.
Pepita returned bringing the supper in her hands, followed by a maid.
Doña María watched her over the top of her book as she would have
watched a visitor from Heaven. Pepita tiptoed about the room laying the
table and whispering directions to her assistant.
"Your supper is ready, My Lady," she said at last.
"But, my child, you are going to eat with me?" In Lima Pepita generally
sat down at the table with her mistress.
"I thought you would be tired, My Lady. I had my supper downstairs."
"She does not wish to eat with me," thought the Marquesa. "She knows me
and has rejected me."
"Would you like me to read aloud to you while you are eating, My Lady?"
asked Pepita, who felt that she had made a mistake.
"No. You may go to bed, if you choose."
"Thank you, My Lady."
Doña María had risen and approached the table. With one hand on the
back of the chair she said haltingly: "My dear child, I am sending off a
letter to Lima in the morning. If you have one you can enclose it with
mine."
"No, I have none," said Pepita. She added hastily: "I must go downstairs
and get you the new charcoal."
"But, my dear, you have one for ... Madre María del Pilar. Wouldn't
you ...?"
Pepita pretended to be busy over the brazier. "No, I'm not going to send
it," she said. She was aware during the long pause that followed that
the Marquesa was staring at her in stupefaction. "I've changed my mind."
"I know she would like a letter from you, Pepita. It would make her very
happy. I know."
Pepita was reddening. She said loudly: "The innkeeper said that there
would be some new charcoal ready for you at dark. I'll tell them to
bring it up now." She glanced hastily at the old woman and saw that she
had not ceased from staring at her with great sad inquiring eyes. Pepita
felt that these were not things one talked about, but the strange woman
seemed to be feeling the matter so strongly that Pepita was willing to
concede one more answer: "No, it was a bad letter. It wasn't a good
letter."
Doña María fairly gasped. "Why, my dear Pepita, I think it was very
beautiful. Believe me, I know. No, no; what could have made it a bad
letter?"
Pepita frowned, hunting for a word that would close the matter.
"It wasn't ... it wasn't ... brave," she said. And then she would say no
more. She carried the letter off into her own room and could be heard
tearing it up. Then she got into bed and lay staring into the darkness,
still uncomfortable at having talked in such a fashion. And Doña María
sat down to her dish amazed.
She had never brought courage to either life or love. Her eyes
ransacked her heart. She thought of the amulets and of her beads, her
drunkenness ... she thought of her daughter. She remembered the long
relationship, crowded with the wreckage of exhumed conversations, of
fancied slights, of inopportune confidences, of charges of neglect and
exclusion (but she must have been mad that day; she remembered beating upon
the table). "But it's not my fault," she cried. "It's not my fault that I
was so. It was circumstance. It was the way I was brought up. Tomorrow I
begin a new life. Wait and see, oh my child." At I last she cleared away
the table and sitting down wrote what she called her first letter, her
first stumbling misspelled letter in courage. She remembered with shame
that in the previous one she had piteously asked her daughter how much she
loved her, and had greedily quoted the few and hesitant endearments that
Doña Clara had lately ventured to her. Doña María could not recall
those pages, but she could write some new ones, free and generous. No
one else has regarded them as stumbling. It is the famous letter LVI,
known to the Encyclopedists as her Second Corinthians because of its
immortal paragraph about love: "Of the thousands of persons we meet in a
lifetime, my child ..." and so on. It was almost dawn when she finished
the letter. She opened the door upon her balcony and looked at the great
tiers of stars that glittered above the Andes. Throughout the hours of
the night, though there had been few to hear it, the whole sky had been
loud with the singing of these constellations. Then she took a candle
into the next room and looked at Pepita as she slept, and pushed back
the damp hair from the girl's face. "Let me live now," she whispered.
"Let me begin again."
Two days later they started back to Lima, and while crossing the bridge
of San Luis Rey the accident which we know befell them.
[Illustration]