When Señora de Pardiñas observed that her son looked pale and
preoccupied that evening at dinner, and even answered her shortly when
she spoke to him, she thought to herself at once, “We are in for it now.
That jewel has given him her news.” She intercepted, too, furtive
glances, frightened and eloquent, between them, but she bore it all in
silence, saying to herself, “According to Don Nicanor one must pretend
to be a fool for a quarter of an hour every day in this world. But more
than that falls to my share, for I must pretend to be a fool for months
to come.” She pretended to be a fool then, acting as if she did not
notice anything unusual in her son’s manner, asking him with a great
show of interest about the pony, the stable, his companions in his
rides. When the table-cloth was removed she introduced another subject
of conversation, very timely, and of immediate and vital importance,
namely, the examinations. “I think your turn will come about Wednesday
or Thursday, child,” she began, “so that this week I shall have my hands
full. For the fact is, that with those gentlemen one never knows what
course to take. If they were all like Contreras! He knows how to be
reasonable. Only Contreras won’t be your professor this year. With the
others one doesn’t know what course to pursue; if one were to listen to
this one and that one, it would be enough to make one crazy. Lastra
wants people to bow down before him, to pay him the compliment of
begging him, to be indebted to him. Ruiz del Monte seems to be just the
opposite; if he is spoken to in behalf of a boy, he takes a dislike to
him and torments the life out of him. You know whether that is so or
not; it was your friend Diaz, the one who writes verses, who told me so.
Of Albirán they tell a different story--that he does not disregard
intercession, but in rule and measure; according to whom it comes from.
The safest thing would be for you to study, child.”
“I do study, mamma,” answered the student laconically.
During the whole of the evening it was impossible to draw another word
from him. He turned over the illustrated papers, he took them up and
laid them down, he changed his seat, passing from the chair to the sofa
and from the sofa to the chair; he sighed profoundly, and, in short,
gave every possible sign of distress, making no effort to conceal this
distress, but, on the contrary, seeming to desire that his mamma should
notice it. At last, when the latter said to him, “Are you not going for
a while to the theater to-night?” he answered, in a hard and resolute
tone:
[Illustration: “He sighed profoundly and, in short, gave every possible
sign of distress.”]
“No, I am going to bed. My head aches a little.”
And he left the room and walked noisily through the hall to his study,
which he entered, slamming the door behind him.
“It is as I said; we are in for it now,” she said to herself. “I have
made a great mistake. I should have waited to settle this affair until
the examinations were over, a few days before our departure. It was a
piece of stupidity on my part. Well, you see, I wanted to get out of the
mess quickly; but I was wrong. There are things that it is better to go
slowly about. I must only see if I can remedy matters now by putting off
the girl’s departure; otherwise the boy will be all upset when he most
needs to keep a cool head. We must wait a while. I must see if I can
persuade Don Gaspar to wait. I shouldn’t wonder if it would be harder to
make the old man listen to reason than the boy. What complications! That
perfidious Rita Pardo was right. One ought to consider well whom one
receives into one’s house.”
There then took place in the little domestic drama that was now drawing
near to its _dénouement_ one of those byplays, like momentary truces,
during which the actors, while appearing to be occupied with other
interests, or while thus occupied in reality, do not yet lose sight of
the main subject of the drama, continuing still to play a part, so to
speak, and maintaining silence regarding the matter which chiefly
occupies their minds, without deceiving anybody by this silence. Señora
de Pardiñas put off the girl’s departure from day to day, calming the
puerile impatience of Don Gaspar Febrero at the delay, with the excuse
of the nearness of the examinations and the impossibility of remaining
at such a time without a servant. Esclavita waited, hiding in the depths
of her heart a tenacious hope, based on the words and the promises of
Rogelio; and Rogelio, preoccupied and agitated, waited in vain for an
opportunity to say something--something very serious and decided--to his
mother. To speak the truth, however, if his mother had given him this
opportunity he would not have known how to avail himself of it. As time
passed, the courage which he had felt at first evaporated by degrees,
like the essence in a vial which is left uncorked. It requires more
resolution than appears at first sight for a good son to place himself
in direct opposition to a good mother, and take a step, which to a
certain extent emancipates him from maternal authority, but which at the
same time wrings the inmost fibers of his heart. So blended together are
natural duty, habit, and even that excusable selfishness which counsels
us to place ourselves without reserve in the hands of one who loves us
better than ourselves, that the breaking of this bond is an act of
supreme courage, one of those efforts from which the will shrinks,
unless it be of finely-tempered metal. Against a severe father there is
always energy; his very severity serves as a tonic to the will; but a
mother like Rogelio’s, whose first thought had always been her son, who
had made him the object of so much solicitude, sparing him even the
trouble of considering and the effort of desiring; a widowed mother,
delicate in health, who had made it a practice to anticipate the wishes
of her son, in this way preventing the will of her son from ever
acquiring the robustness which struggles and privations give, was an
adversary against whom Rogelio had not the strength to measure himself.
“If she herself would introduce the subject,” he thought. But the truth
is that if she had introduced it, the result would have been the same.
All he ventured to do was to enter a mute protest, to show himself
melancholy at times, and at times ill-tempered and sullen. “Mamma, in
order not to see me looking unhappy, is capable of anything,” he
reasoned, with the logic of a spoiled child. Only that his mamma knew
how to discriminate between toys.
The examinations, too, had their effect in weakening his resolution
still more. What with his studies, his fears of failure, and the coming
and going of the friends who brought him an account of the rise and
fall, so to say, of the marks, Rogelio found himself outside the magic
circle by which an absorbing passion surrounds us, and if it were not
that occasionally a pair of greenish eyes looked steadily into his, he
would even have forgotten the danger which, by a curious illusion,
seemed to him every day less imminent, being in reality more so, for the
departure for Galicia was inevitably to take place immediately after the
examinations.
And the examinations came, and Rogelio found that he had passed in two
branches, but in one--the most difficult and uncongenial to him--there
came upon him, like a dash of cold waiter, a _conditioned_. “I know who
is to blame for this!” thought his mother, looking through the
half-closed door at Esclava, who was dusting the pictures in the parlor.
“This is what comes of flirtation; but what is to be done? every age has
its tastes. He will gain in September what he loses now; he is young
enough, provided he keeps well. And let us be just; the pony, too, made
him lose his head in this last term. It is true that that was all the
better. About the time lost in that way I don’t complain. The pony has
behaved well. It deserves a lump of sugar.”