Although tired out by the emotions of the day and comparatively tranquil
in his mind in regard to his mother’s condition, Rogelio tossed and
turned about for a long time before he fell into a light doze. He did
not succeed, however, in obtaining a sound and restorative sleep; his
slumbers were interrupted and restless and visited by distressing
dreams, in which he seemed to be always falling down, down, rapidly,
interminably, with the added distress of never being able to reach the
ground and of seeing below him the place on which he was about to be
dashed. In one of those painful and involuntary efforts which we make in
our sleep to shake off a bad dream or to change its character, he woke
with a start and looked about him wonderingly, unable to remember at
first how it was that he came to be sleeping here, in his mother’s room.
Absolute silence reigned around. The room, dimly lighted by the little
lamp, was in a semi-obscurity; his mother, he thought, must be asleep,
for he could hear her breathing deeply, almost snoring; at the head of
the bed he saw Esclavita sitting motionless, with large, wide-open eyes
fixed on himself. An irresistible impulse made him call to her with the
accent of a child who, because of some nocturnal fright, begs not be
left alone.
“Esclavita! Hist! Esclavita!” he called softly. “Come here!”
The girl glided toward him, silently as a shadow, and bent over him.
“Is mamma asleep?” he asked.
“Sound asleep.”
“Well, I am wide awake now. Talk to me--softly, so that we may not
waken her.”
“Ah, Señorito, and how if we should disturb her?”
“There is no fear of that. Come closer, and speak softly.”
“Wouldn’t it be better for you to go to sleep?”
“Sleep! If you knew the horrible dreams I have had! No, I would rather
stay awake now. Sit down here.”
“Where?”
“Here on the floor beside me. Otherwise we cannot speak in a
whisper--and we might waken mamma.”
Esclavita acceded to the proposal without demur, and stretched herself
on the floor, almost cheek to cheek with Rogelio, but without losing her
modest and reserved air, showing in this that she was born in the land,
where bucolic naturalness of action is united to modesty of demeanor.
The girl’s pure virginal breath mingled for the second time with that
of the student, but the feelings it awakened in him now were of a very
different nature from those he had experienced on the former occasion.
Whether it was that the shock caused by his mother’s fall had
transformed his youthful sensations into sentiment, or that the place in
which he was did not admit of evil thoughts, certain it is that near to
him as Esclavita was, and easy as it would have been to take liberties
with her, it did not even enter into his mind to attempt doing so; all
he was conscious of was a sort of affectionate effusiveness, unusual
with him, a feeling of inexplicable tenderness, which caused his eyes to
fill with tears. Reaching out his hand, he grasped Esclavita’s and,
pressing it with force, said:
“Esclavita, mamma came near being killed to-day.”
“Thank God it was nothing serious, Señorito!” answered the girl,
returning the pressure.
“And if she had been killed, what should I have done, tell me that?”
Esclavita did not answer, thereby showing her wisdom, for the question
put to her was one of those which do not admit of being answered in
words. She pressed more forcibly than before the student’s hot,
trembling hand in hers, and her eyes responded in the half shadow with a
long and eloquent glance.
“If she had died,” continued Rogelio, yielding to his involuntary
emotion, “you see that I should have no one in the world but you, no
one.”
“I?” stammered the girl, whose hand trembled in the student’s clasp.
“Yes, you; and no one but you. Relations I have none--that is to say, I
have several aunts at home in Galicia, with whom we are on cat-and-dog
terms. You see what a protection they would be, child. As for
friends--well, two or three in the University over there--college
friends, that are of little account. Then the old men who come to see
mamma. Of much use they would be; they are all in their dotage. It is as
I say, Suriña. I should have only you.”
[Illustration: “Rogelio had raised himself on his elbow.”]
Rogelio had raised himself on his elbow as he spoke, in order to make
himself heard by the girl without disturbing his mother, and this
lowering of his voice made his words more persuasive, bestowing on them
the passionate and mysterious air of a confession. Persuaded himself, he
persuaded his hearer. He was not in a frame of mind to measure the
importance of his words or to calculate the effect they might produce,
still less did he suspect that sensibility and goodness may, on certain
occasions, be more fatal than anger and hate. There was a large share of
nervousness in his emotion, and the words fell from his lips in the
reaction after the morning’s fright as a groan follows a painful hurt,
involuntarily and almost unconsciously. All there was in him of the
child--and there was much--overflowed in this affectionate unburthening
of his heart, and he neither desired nor could he foresee any further
consequence, granting even that in moments like these it is possible to
calculate effects.
“You, Suriña,” he repeated, yielding his hand to the hands that with
almost convulsive force pressed his. “You care for me, and a great deal,
too, do you not?”
Unable to respond in words, she nodded her head energetically.
“I knew it. I had guessed it; and that is the reason why I told you that
no one would be left me but you and that I should cling to you; do you
know that? Even if you had told me that it was not so, I should not have
believed it. You care for me--and for mamma, too.”
“That I do,” said the girl at last, recovering her speech and
withdrawing a little from the student. “I don’t know what it was that
came over me in this house that made me take a--a kind of affection for
it--a very, very great affection from the first moment I crossed its
threshold. Why, it seemed to me as if I was at home again. As you are
from there--But I think the more one tries to explain these things, the
less one is able to do it. What I know is that if I had remained with
those other ladies, it would have soon been all over with me.”
“And why, then, were you so sad at first here, Esclavita?”
“You shall hear. I thought you had taken a dislike to me.”
“I a dislike to you!”
“Yes, and thinking of that I became very melancholy. The _worm_ got into
my head.”
“The _worm_?”
“That is what we say at home, when one gets a notion one can’t get rid
of into one’s head. I would spend the whole blessed night trying to
untangle the skein--What shall I do to make the Señorito lose his
dislike for me? What means shall I take to please him? And the worst of
it was--you may believe what I say, for it is as true as that God is in
heaven--that heavy as my heart was, I did not feel as I did in the
other house. No; from this house I would not have gone, not if I was to
be cut in quarters--unless I was turned out of it.”
“Because you knew I liked you, Sura?”
“No, indeed I didn’t know it. I give you my word I thought you hated me.
It made me so wretched that I wanted to die.”
“And I am ready to die with joy at hearing you, Suriña. You are not
comfortable there, child. Put your head on this pillow. Here, let me
pull it out to make room for you.”
Esclavita laid her head on the pillow without embarrassment or mistrust,
and both remained silent for a while, absorbed in the happiness of the
moment. The dim light of the lamp threw the girl’s features into relief,
bestowing on the lights a pure pale tint, on the shadows a uniform
grayish rose. Her head had the effect of a fine engraving, and Rogelio
expressed his admiration by saying:
“Suriña, you are lovely.”
At this moment Doña Aurora sighed profoundly and both started, although
their conversation could in no sense be called guilty. The nurse rose to
go see what was the matter. She returned in a moment, saying:
“She sleeps like a saint.”
“Settle yourself comfortably again. I want to ask you something. Give me
your hand. What put it into your head to care so much whether I liked
you or not?”
“Ah, I don’t know. From the first day I said to myself, If they don’t
want you here, Esclavita, it is because there is no room for you in the
world. You came into it against the will of Our Lord. God has always
looked on you with disfavor. Didn’t you know it, Señorito?”
“Yes, I knew it, Suriña. But it is dreadful to say that. Why should God
look on you with disfavor?”
The girl half raised herself in her place, her eyes wide open, terrified
at seeing that the fact which she was trying to bring herself to
disclose was already known.
“Don’t be foolish,” murmured Rogelio, kindly. “What fault is it of
yours, child? The same thing might have happened to me or to any one. We
don’t choose our parents. Foolish girl!”
“If you knew how _that_ weighs on me here,” exclaimed the girl
vehemently, opening her heart as one seeks to open one’s lungs to the
air when one feels that one is going to faint. “I am always saying to
myself, Esclavita, it is impossible that God should love you. You can
never have any good fortune, never. Since the hour in which you were
born you have been in the power of the Evil One, and he is not likely
to let go what he has once got hold of. No matter how hard you may try
to be an angel, you will be forever in mortal sin. You must be so; there
is no remedy for it. For you there is neither father nor mother, nor
anything but shame when you are asked about them. And in the same way
all you undertake must go against you, and if you take a liking to any
person, worse still; for God will take away that person’s affection from
you.”
“Well, with me that is not going to happen, my white dove. I am as fond
of you as if you were a king’s daughter. And mamma is very fond of you,
too; don’t you know that she took a liking to you from the very first
day?”
Esclavita, when she heard this assertion, raised her head and turned her
eyes toward Señora de Pardiñas’s bed. Her glance and her smile were full
of meaning, but Rogelio was in no mood to interpret them. He was not in
a condition of mind for reasoning; he wanted to be gently soothed by the
affection which he needed as a sedative and a medicine. Seeing that in
Esclavita’s presence he no longer felt the same temptations as before,
he thought that his affection for her had been purified, and that this
anomalous courtship was the most innocent thing in the world. Or to say
the whole truth; he was passing through an emotional crisis, and he
neither weighed nor measured his words nor his affirmations. This was
for him one of those moments in which we obey our natural impulses, our
secret egotism, and abandon ourselves to the pleasure of feeling
ourselves loved and of making ourselves still more dearly loved. It is
as natural for one who is sad to seek consolation as it is for one who
is hungry to seek food.
“Mamma is very fond of you,” he repeated. “You don’t seem to believe
me. Silly girl! why, she herself scolded me because I treated
you--well--a little coldly at first. She told me you were unhappy on
that account.”
Esclavita lowered her eyes, doubtless lest they should betray her
thoughts and forebodings regarding the future.
“See,” said Rogelio, softly, “if you knew how well I feel with you here
beside me! I even think I am beginning to grow sleepy, and that I shall
have no more bad dreams or such nonsense. I think I shall sleep as sound
as a patriarch; but for that you must have the good nature to stay there
at my feet. If you go away I shall waken up again.”
“I won’t go away!” the girl answered with decision. “Not with pincers
would they be able to pull me away from here.”
“Well, then, I shall go to sleep. Ah, how pleasant!”
Tasting already the first sweet sip of that cup of oblivion which
sleep, when it follows some great moral or physical shock, presents to
our lips, Rogelio spoke once more:
“Suriña?”
“Well?”
“Do you care for me?”
He only half-heard her answer, and for this reason he was never quite
certain that it was this--so romantic and unsuited to a country girl:
“Until the hour of my death.”