ILLUSTRATING ANOTHER TRAIT OF SPANISH CHARACTER.
It was getting late and the dancing was beginning to flag. The
last whirling couples were gradually disappearing, as do the last
circles of a pool into which a stone has been dropped die away on
the margin; the conventional embrace which does not offend even the
most coy was finally relaxed, and at length the murderous pianist,
whose ear-splitting music inspired the dancers, consented to retire.
A fair visitor however took his place and endeavoured to prolong the
entertainment by wringing a doleful _Notturno_ from the chords of
the instrument--the most dreary and dismal form of second-rate music
ever devised. This parade of lamentation however was happily short,
for the mothers were out of patience and the gay groups of girls
began to move away across the polished floor. The legs of the chairs
creaked and clattered on the boards; with the babble of young voices
mingled a hollow chorus of coughing, and the fair bevy threaded their
way through the door where their exit was impeded by a knot of the
elderly men--the orators, lawyers and politicians who were the glory
and lustre of the company at the hotel.
In the next room the clink of the counters as they changed hands
at the card-tables made a noise like that of false teeth gnashing
and chattering. The coughing and throat clearing increased as the
older people followed the young ones out of the dancing room, and
the little tumult of youthful chatter mingled with the sad sighing
undertone of premature decrepitude which seems to afflict the flower
of the younger generation spread along the wide corridor, mounted
the stairs, and died away by degrees in the different rooms of the
many-celled phalanstery. An ingenious fancy might have likened it to
a vast organ in which, after every sound had been roused to symphony,
each note, deep or shrill, sank back into its own pipe again.
In the card-room sat the Marqués de Fúcar, reading the newspapers.
His invariable attitude when engaged in this patriotic exercise was
one of perfect rigidity; he held the paper almost at arm’s-length,
while a pair of glasses assisted his sight, riding on the tip of his
nose and pinching his nostrils. If he wanted to look at anything but
his paper, he did it over the top of the glasses or with a furtive
glance on each side. He was very apt to laugh aloud whilst reading,
for he was keenly alive to a joke--more particularly when the point
of it--as is not uncommon in a newspaper--was not only palpable but
envenomed. Two other gentlemen were also reading, and four or five
were engaged in conversation, lolling at their ease on the lounges.
Federico Cimarra, after walking up and down two or three times
outside, with his hands in his pockets, came into the card-room at
the moment when the marquis laid down his last newspaper, and taking
his _pince-nez_ off his nose, closed them up and stowed them away
carefully in his waistcoat pocket.
“What a country this is!” exclaimed the great merchant, his face
still beaming with a smile at the last epigram he had read. “Do
you know, Cimarra, what strikes me? Every one here speaks ill of
political men, of the ministers, of the employés, of Madrid--but I
begin to think that Madrid and the ministers and all the ruck of
politicians--as they call them, are the pick of the nation. The
representatives are bad enough, but the electors are worse.”
“Then everything is bad together,” said Federico, with the cold
philosophy which is the sarcasm of a worn-out heart and an atrophied
intellect, united to dwell in a sickly frame. “Equally bad--and
nothing to choose from.”
“And at the bottom of all the mischief is laziness.”
“Laziness! That is as much as to say the national idiosyncracy--the
very Spirit of Spain. Yes I say: Laziness, thy name is Spain. We have
a great deal of smartness--so I hear; I do not perceive it anywhere.
We are all alike; we hide I believe....”
“Oh! if only we had a government that would give a spur to industry
and labour....”
Cimarra put on a very grave face; it was his way of making fun of his
neighbours.
“Labour!--Why we scarcely know how to weave homespun cloth;
hemp-shoes are fast disappearing; our home-made water-jars
are growing quite scarce and even our brooms are brought from
England.--Still, we can fall back upon Agriculture; that is the
favourite theory with all these fools. There is not an idiot in the
country who will not talk to you of agriculture. I should like them
to tell me what agriculture you can have without irrigation, how you
can have irrigation without rivers, or rivers without forests, or
forests without men to plant them and look after them--and how are
you going to get men when there are no crops? It is a vicious circle
from which there is no issue--no escape! My dear Marquis, it is a
matter of race I tell you.--It is one of the few things which are of
the nature of primary truth: the fatality of inheritance. We have
nothing to rely upon but communism supported by the Lottery--that
is our future. The State must take the national wealth into its own
hands and distribute it by means of raffles.
“What--you are astonished? But you will live to see it, take my
word for it. Why it is a splendid idea--and as good a theory as any
other. Ask your friend Don Joaquín Onésimo, who is a beacon-light of
knowledge in such matters, and who, in my opinion, has one of the
best heads that ever thought in Spain.”
“Is he here?” said Fúcar laughing and looking round. “He should come
and hear your theory.”
“He is discussing social science with Don Francisco Cucúrbitas, an
equally great man according to the Spanish standard. He is one of
these men who are always talking a great deal about administration
and management which simply means expedients. What would this world
become but for expedients! The Almighty created these gentlemen for
the express purpose of preaching social Quietism; and they might
do worse. My scheme of communism and lotteries will float, my dear
Sir. The taxes will bring the money, the lotteries will redistribute
it.--By Jupiter! Do you know my friend we might have a very snug
little game here.” And before Fúcar could answer Federico went to the
door to call the men who were still in the next room; then returning
to the marquis, he took a pack of cards out of his pocket and spread
them on the table; they lay in a curve, overlapping each other, like
an angular serpent.
“Here too!” exclaimed Fúcar with some annoyance.
Cimarra went back to the drawing-room where the lights were now
being put out and presently four other men came in at his request.
Only Leon Roch remained walking up and down the darkened room. After
speaking a few words to the waiter, Cimarra took the young man’s arm
and walked with him for a few minutes. The words that passed between
them were somewhat sharp; however, Leon at length went up to his room
from which, in a few minutes he returned.
“Here--vampire!” he said contemptuously to his friend, filling his
hand with gold coin;--and then he was alone again.
Looking into the card-room he could see the group in the
centre,--six men, some of whom bore names not unknown to fame among
their countrymen. One or two, to be sure enjoyed not a very enviable
reputation; but there were others too who had gained credit by their
splendid speeches, amply spiced with high-sounding words on social
anarchy and the national vice of indolence. Of them all the Marqués
de Fúcar was the only one who played for the sake of the game and
shuffled the cards with a frank smile and a jest at each turn of
fortune. Cimarra dealt--he had his hat on, his brows were knit, his
eyes sparkled keenly with an expression at once alert and absorbed,
a solemn look of divination--or idiocy? His thin lips murmured
inarticulate syllables, which an uninitiated bystander might have
taken for some formula of invocation to call a spirit up. It was the
jargon of the professional gambler who keeps up a running dialogue
with the cards as they slip through his hands, sometimes growling,
sometimes only breathing hard, as they alternately smile upon him or
mock him with impish grimaces.
The contest with Chance is one of the maddest and fiercest battles
in which the human mind ever engages. Chance, which is neither
more nor less than an incessant and incalculable contradiction of
facts, is never tired out; we can never meet her face to face, and
to defy her is folly. She is as nimble and supple as a tiger, she
fells and clutches her prey, while her favours--if by a whim she
bestows them--light a flame in her victim’s soul that consumes him
from within. His brain reels and he raves in dreams like those
of the drunkard--for a vague picture of the Gorgon with whom he
is contending takes possession of him and reduces him to bestial
madness. Fighting in the dark, desperately and wildly, the gambler is
the victim of a hideous incubus; he finds himself started in an orbit
of torturing unrest, like a stone flung off into measureless space.
And at each deal the marquis would say:
“Gentlemen, it is getting late--it is time to go to bed. It is good
to have a little amusement--but we must not have too much of a good
thing. We must not exaggerate.”