“Mamma, here is some one with a love-letter for you.”
“Who? This girl?”
“Yes, Señora--from the Señoritas Romera,” said the young Galician.
“Come here, let me see. Perhaps it is something that requires immediate
attention.”
But no sooner had she torn open the envelope than she burst into a
laugh.
“How crazy I am! Without my glasses--Here, child, read it you.”
Rogelio unfolded the missive and began in a pompous voice:
“High and mighty and most tormented lady: if your beauty----”
“See, child; have sense and read what is set down there; there is a
terrible draught and the rheumatism in my joints won’t allow me to
stand here listening to nonsense.”
In his natural tone of voice Rogelio read as follows:
“Most respected friend: Esclavita Lamas, the bearer, will inform you of
the favor she desires; all we can say is that during the time she was
with us, she was most exemplary in her conduct and fulfilled her duties
faithfully; so much so that we are very sorry to lose her, as we have no
fault to find with her; quite the contrary.
“Your old and affectionate friends,
“Pascuala and Mercedes Romera.”
“Is there nothing more, child?”
“There is a foolish postscript that it is not necessary to read.”
“A foolish postscript?”
“Yes; asking why no one ever sees me now and saying that I must be grown
a fine-looking young fellow. The stereotyped, silly compliments----”
“I am always telling you so, child!” exclaimed his mother, with
vexation. “You never go to spend ten minutes at the house of these poor
ladies, who are so fond of you. They have seen you so petted that they
will think it is all my fault. Well, I speak to you often enough about
them. Pascuala and Mercedes! If you don’t go, I shall.”
“But, _mater terribilis_, when I put my foot in that reception room, I
get so sleepy that I can do nothing but yawn!”
“Well, they are a pair of saints.”
“Amen; I don’t dispute their sanctity; I am only saying that they are
very tiresome and that they never stop talking. They keep up a duet like
the Germans in _La Diva_. ‘Rogelio, how is mamma?’ ‘And how are you
getting on with your studies?’” And he imitated the husky voice and
Malagan accent of the old maids.
“What nonsense you talk,” said Señora de Pardiñas, repressing a smile,
“I don’t know why Pascuala and Mercedes should make you sleepy.”
“Unfathomable mysteries of the human heart. Profound arcana. In that
_dimora casta e pura_ a fatal narcotic pervades the atmosphere.”
“Humbug!”
During this skirmish between mother and son the girl stood waiting,
motionless, with her eyes fixed upon the ground. Doña Aurora, at last
remembering her presence, turned toward her:
“Excuse me, child; this letter says that you will tell me what you have
come to see me about. Will you come upstairs?”
“No, Señora. Don’t put yourself to any trouble on my account. Here will
do just as well.”
“Well, let me hear. Is it some favor you wish to ask of me?”
“Favor? No, Señora. I would like to enter into service in your
house--or in the house of some other Galician family,” she added, after
a pause.
Doña Aurora looked fixedly at the petitioner and fancied she reddened
slightly under her gaze.
“You--were not contented at the Señoritas de Romera’s, then?”
“Yes, Señora, I was contented enough--and I think they were pleased with
me, too. You can see that from the letter they gave me. As far as the
Señoritas are concerned I would be in glory, for they are as good as
they can be, not belittling others. God grant them every prosperity!
Only that sometimes--there are good people that one doesn’t find one’s
self at home with. Those ladies are from Malaga, in the Andalusian
country, and they have customs and dishes that I don’t understand. Even
their way of talking is strange to me. When they tell me to do a thing
and I don’t understand, I feel as if I had heard my death sentence.
And, then, Señora, the truth before all--not to be among people of one’s
own country, never to hear it mentioned, even, makes one’s heart very
sad. For the half of the wages and with double the work I would rather
serve a person from my own place.”
All this she said with an air of so much sincerity that Doña Aurora’s
good-will toward her increased, prepossessed in her favor as she already
was by the respectable and decorous bearing of the girl, so different
from the bold manners of the Madrid Menegildas. Only there was something
in the girl’s story that was not altogether clear to her. There must be
some mystery in all this. Before the door the driver was smoking his
cigarette, while the hack, with drooping head and projecting lower lip,
was dreaming of abundant fodder and delightful meadows.
“Child,” said Señora Pardiñas. “I am going to sit down in the carriage.
As I am not as young as you are I feel tired standing, and my legs are
bending under me. If you don’t want to go upstairs, come over to the
carriage with me.”
The little Galician helped Doña Aurora to settle herself in the vehicle,
and the latter when she was seated said:
“Tell me, if you were so greatly attached to your country how was it
that you came here?”
Ah, this time there was not the slightest doubt of it; it was a blush,
and a vivid blush, that dyed the girl’s cheeks. And when she answered
one must be deaf, and very deaf, not to perceive that she stammered,
especially at the first words.
“Sometimes--one has--to do what one’s heart least prompts one to do,
Señora. We are children of fate. I was brought up by my uncle, the
parish priest of Vimieiro. It was the will of God to take him to himself
and I was left without a protector. To get one’s bread one must work. I
was a queen in my own house; now I am a servant. God be praised, and may
we never lose the power of our hands or our health.”
“Why did you not go out to service there?” persisted Señora Pardiñas,
who had a keener scent than a bloodhound where a secret was concerned.
And that the secret was there she could not doubt on seeing that it was
not now a blush but a hot flame that passed over Esclavita’s face.
“I--I couldn’t find a place,” she answered, in choking accents. “And
then, as everybody there knows me, I was ashamed.”
Doña Aurora Pardiñas reflected for some two minutes, and speaking gently
to soften the harshness of the words:
“Let us see,” she said. “You can refer only to the Señoritas de Romera
who--knew nothing about you before you went to their house. Isn’t it so?
It would be well, then,--you will see that yourself,--if you could find
some one here who knew you at home who would recommend you.”
The girl hesitated for an instant, and then said:
“The Señorito Gabriel Pardo de la Lage and his sister know who I am.”
“Rita Pardo? The wife of the engineer? I am very well acquainted with
her. And you say that she knows you?”
The girl answered by raising her hand and shrugging her shoulders as
much as to say, “Why, ever since I was born!”
“Well, child,” rejoined Señora Pardiñas, frankly, “I am sorry that you
should leave the Romeras. You could not find a better house or better
ladies.”
“I do not deny that,” replied Esclavita with greater emphasis than
before, if possible; “only that I have told you the truth, Señora, as if
I were talking to my dead mother or to the confessor. I was seized with
homesickness, and if I hadn’t left them I think I should have lost my
reason or have gone straight to my grave. I couldn’t eat. I would go off
by myself to a corner to think. I grew paler and paler every day, and so
thin that my clothes hung loose on me. At night I had fits of choking,
as if some one was tightening a rope about my neck. But in spite of all
that I was loth to say anything to the Señoritas. They saw it
themselves, though, and they were the first to advise me, if I did not
go back home, to look for a place with some family from there! ‘Child,
you are so altered that you don’t look like the same person,’ were the
very words they used.”
As she said this, Esclavita’s chin trembled like a child’s when it is
making an effort to keep from bursting into sobs. Her eyes could not be
seen, as she had cast them down, according to her wont.
“Calm yourself,” Señora Pardiñas said kindly. She was beginning to
conceive an irresistible sympathy for this girl, whose bearing was so
modest and whose heart was apparently so tender. How different she was
from the impudent servants of Madrid, the gadabouts of the suburbs,
shameless termagants who could not stay in any decent house. It was not
two hours ago that Pepa, the house-maid, for a mere nothing had thrown
aside all decency and scolded like a fishwoman. This little Galician
might have had--well, some slip--for the reasons she gave for leaving
her native place did not seem all clear; but her whole appearance was
so--well, so like that of an honest woman--God alone knew how the poor
thing had been tempted.
[Illustration: “‘See,’ she said, putting her head out of the carriage
door.”]
“See,” she said, putting her head out of the carriage door, “for the
present I cannot give you a decided answer as to whether I will take you
or not. Come to the house to see me to-morrow morning about this time.
I should be glad to--but I must think the matter over. If I should not
be able to take you myself, I will look for a place for you with some
other Galician family. Tell me your conditions, in case any one else
should want to know.”
Esclavita, meantime, stood rolling an end of her black silk handerchief
between her thumb and forefinger.
“May God reward you!” she answered. “As for the wages, a dollar more or
a dollar less makes no difference to me. Work does not frighten me. I
would not engage as a cook, for I don’t know how to make those fine
dishes that are the fashion now. I understand simple dishes like those
of my native place. In everything else I think I could give
satisfaction--in the cleaning, the mending, and the ironing. All I ask
is that in the family you look for there should not be--well, men,
who----”
“I understand, I understand,” interrupted Doña Aurora. And she added
jestingly, “But in that case, tell me why you want to come to my house.
Haven’t you seen that there is a man in it?”
And she pointed to Rogelio who, relieved from his embarrassment by his
mother’s presence, stood leaning against the carriage door, looking at
the girl. Esclavita followed the direction of Señora Pardiñas’ hand; for
the first time her eyes, green, changeful, sincere, rested on the
student. After a pause she said with a smile:
“Is that young gentleman your son? May God spare him to you for many
years. That isn’t the kind of man I mean, he is only a boy.”
Rogelio changed countenance as if he had received the most outrageous
insult. He tried to disguise his annoyance by a laugh, but the laugh
died away in his throat. It must be confessed that he even felt his eyes
fill with tears of vexation. It was one of those moments of insensate
and profound rage which must come at one time or another to the man
whose childhood has been unduly prolonged; moments in which he desires,
as if it were the highest good, to possess the bitter treasure of
experience--sorrows, disappointments, trials, struggles, sickness, gray
hairs, wrinkles, calamities, betrayal of friendship and of love--all,
all, so that he may hear the supreme word, so that he may taste the
fruit of good and evil, the immortal apple, golden on the one side,
blood-red on the other. All, so that he may fulfill the destiny of
humanity, all, so that he may pass through the cycle of life.