PEPA.
Leon Roch having seen enough, left the house. A calm mild night
invited him to walk along the terrace where there was not a living
soul to be seen, and not a sound to be heard but the croaking of
the toads. After pacing the avenue to the end and back for the
second time, he thought he discovered a figure at one of the nearest
ground-floor windows. It was in white, a woman beyond a doubt, whose
arm rested on the sill, above which she was visible as a half-length.
Leon went towards her and perceiving that she did not move, he went
quite near. She might have been carved in marble but for her black
hair and a slight motion of her hand among the leaves of a plant that
grew near.
“Pepa?” he said.
“Yes, Pepa--I have turned romantic and am gazing at the stars. To be
sure, there is not a star to be seen--but it is all the same.”
“It is a very dark night; I did not recognise you,” said Leon,
putting his hand on the top of the window railing. “The damp air is
not good for you. Why do you not shut the window? It is of no use to
wait for your father. That rascally Cimarra has got him to gamble and
they are all quite happy--Go indoors.”
“It is so hot inside!”
The night was in fact pitch dark and Leon could not see the girl’s
face; but he could study the tone of her voice, for the voice is
singularly treacherous. Pepa’s voice quavered. Her head, leaning
on one side, rested against the window-frame. In her hand she held
a flower with a long stem--Leon thought it was a rose. She kept
raising it to her lips and biting off a petal which she blew off
again. Leon noted the situation and understood that it was the moment
to say something appropriate, but he racked his brain in vain; he
could think of nothing, and so he said nothing. Both were silent;
Leon quiet and motionless, both his hands resting on the cold iron
railing, Pepa pulling out the rose petals and blowing them away.
“I hear strange stories of your whims and fancies, Pepa,” he said at
last, thinking that he might presently say something to the point,
if he began by saying something foolish. “You break your china, you
tear your lace....”
“And what a specimen she is!” cried Pepa interrupting him with a
bitter laugh that made Leon shudder. “The poor lady is never to be
seen except in church! You do not understand!--You seem to have lost
your wits. I am speaking of your future mother-in-law, the marquesa
de Tellería. When I was stopping at Ugoibea I had a fancy to see
her. They told me all the nonsense she talked about me. The usual
thing--that I am badly brought up, that I am wildly extravagant,
that my manners are too free, and my style of dress disgusting--yes,
disgusting. But the poor woman herself has been so very different
ever since she began to lose her beauty--Besides, you see, she cannot
live such a worldly life now that she has such a saintly son--for of
course you know that Luis Gonzaga, your María’s twin brother who is
at the college of the Sacred Heart at Puyóo, is said to be a perfect
angel in a cassock? Why, my dear fellow, you are going to live in the
very courts of Heaven! Your mother-in-law even wears a hair shirt.
You do not believe me? But I know it--her lovers say so....” And Pepa
blew away a rose petal which fell on Leon’s forehead.
“Pepa,” he said with some annoyance, “I do not like to hear any
friend of mine speak in that way of a respectable family....”
“But _they_ may talk of me! _They_ may call me violent and crazy and
I must not say a word. Of course! Everything I do is ill-manners,
wild behaviour, ignorance, insolence....! Change the subject then. I
am very sorry never to have seen your future Saint Mary face to face.
They say she is very elegant-looking--she always was. But she goes
out very little at Ugoibea; she and her fool of a mother only walk
out together to get fresh air. They say they give themselves no end
of airs;--however, you are rich and the marquis--they say he is the
only idiot known who has failed to get a place in the government.”
“Pepa, Pepa, for pity’s sake do not talk so wildly; you really hurt
me deeply with your heedless speeches.” Pepa pulled at the rose which
was now much reduced.
“But you see I am badly brought up,” she retorted bitterly. “And now
people are discovering that I have no heart, that I am spiteful,
rebellious, and capricious....”
“That is not the truth; but you should not behave so that people
cannot believe it.”
“Much I care what people believe. Do I want any thing they can give
me?”
“You are too proud.”
“And they say I shall never find a man of any sense to marry me!” she
went on with the same angry laugh, which seemed almost convulsive.
“As if there were such a thing as a man of sense. Well, I am not one
of those girls who pretend to be very meek and goody-goody just to
catch a husband; and I can tell you one thing: I will never marry
a learned man--I loathe a _savant_. Perfect happiness for a woman
consists in having heaps of money and marrying a fool.”
“I see you are in the mood to talk at random to-night,” said Leon
pleasantly. “But you do not mean what you say, and your sentiments
are better than your words.”
His eyes had by this time become accustomed to the darkness, or the
night was perhaps a little clearer; Leon could, at any rate, make out
Pepita Fúcar’s face against the black interior behind her like the
dim blurred outline of an old picture. The whiteness of her skin,
her chestnut hair, the brilliancy of her small eyes, where in each
pupil burned a tiny spark, the pout of her parted lips and the savage
whiteness of her teeth as she still blew away the rose-petals, above
all her petulant air made her seem almost pretty, though in fact she
was very far from it.
“You might make other people fancy that you were as wild as you
pretend to be,” Leon went on, “but I know you better. I have known
you since we were children together, and I know you have a good
heart. A good mother would have taught you some things you sadly lack
and have corrected some faults of manner which make you appear worse
than you are; but you have been neglected as a child and now when you
are growing up your father has suddenly flung you into the world in
a perfect vortex of luxury, folly and riches. You know, better than
I, what a state of confusion your household is in--even strangers
cannot help reminding you that you are spending at the rate of three
months’ income in a week, while your father is too entirely absorbed
in making money to think of anything but business. Poor Pepita--so
rich and so lonely! I can quite understand all the vagaries which
the outside public comment on so severely; I can excuse you--yes,
quite excuse you. First you built a hot-house in the garden; then
you had it moved to the other side--then you gave up your plants and
began to collect china--then bronzes, carvings, old stuffs, what not,
and sold them again for a quarter of what they had cost you. They
say you established a photographer in your house that he might take
views of the garden and portraits of the horses, and all the time you
never looked into a single book unless it were some silly almanac or
rubbishy novel.
“You are charitable I know, for you are tender-hearted; but Pepa, in
what a foolish way! A woman comes to you for help to get masses said;
you put two thousand reales into her hand. The same day comes the
widow of a bricklayer who has died of an accident while at work on
your house, and you give her only a dollar. You have no idea of the
magnitude and proportion of the needs and miseries of the poor.
“Poor Pepita--do not wonder at my speaking to you so harshly; it
is out of a sincere desire for your good. I speak as your brother
might--a brother who wishes to see you wiser and happier.--I tremble
for you Pepita; I dread lest hard and bitter experience should
teach you, by some awful shock, these realities of life of which
you are still ignorant. It really troubles me to see you go so far
astray--so lonely too in the midst of your wealth, and to be unable
to help you; for our roads lie apart. But I feel for you deeply,
and if I may speak to you truly I pity you, yes--I pity you. I
admire and esteem you greatly; I can never forget that we have been
play-fellows--nay--why should we deny it?--that as boy and girl we
had a warmer liking, though a transient one, and that the outside
world imagined we were lovers.--All this I can never forget. I have
always been, and always shall be your best friend.”
Pepa bit furiously at the stem of the flower, and snatching off the
few remaining leaves she almost spit them away again. One or two fell
on the young man’s beard. Pepa put her handkerchief to her mouth.
“Bleeding!” exclaimed Leon, seizing the hand that held it.
“A thorn has pricked my lips,” said Pepa, in such a choked voice that
Leon Roch was startled and grieved. After a short pause the girl
spoke again:
“Do you know,” said she, “that your household will be a funny one?”
“Why?”
Pepa had clasped her hands to stop the beating of her heart.
“Because when your brother-in-law, Luis Gonzaga, who is preparing to
be a missionary, begins to preach on one side, and you begin to utter
heresies on the other, you will be a match for each other. Leon, I
tell you plainly, you are an insufferable prig and your learning
makes me sick.”
“But I happen to know that your real opinion of me is a more
flattering one.”
Pepa leaned out over the balcony and Leon felt her breath on his
face; it seemed to scorch him like a passing flame.
“A man who has studied nothing but stones is an idiot,” said Pepa
with a bitter accent.
“There I agree with you--Come, dear Pepa, be friends with a man who
has a true and frank regard for you. Give me your hand.”
Pepa started to her feet.
“Give me your hand and say good-bye. Do you not feel in your heart
that some day you will want me--perhaps to give you some honest
advice, perhaps even some help, such as mortals must ask of each
other in the shipwrecks of life.”
Pepa angrily flung away the spray she still held, and it struck Leon
on the forehead. He started as if he had been lashed with a whip.
“I--want you!” she exclaimed. “What conceit! Upon my word you must
have lost your senses. It is more likely that I shall one day meet
a pompous prig with a simpleton on his arm and ask: ‘Pray who is
this?’--say good-bye?--Good-bye; and whether it is till to-morrow or
for all eternity, it is all the same to me.”
“As you please,” said Leon putting out his hand. “Good-bye. You are
off to-morrow with your father. I shall not be going to Madrid at
present. We may not meet for some time.”
Pepa turned away and disappeared in the darkness of the room; Leon
gazed after her but could see nothing. A faint perfume--as subtle as
a dream was all the trace the Marquesita de Fúcar had left as she
quitted the window.
“Pepa, Pepilla!” he called in a coaxing tone. But there was no reply,
no sound, no sign from the darkness within. Presently, however, he
heard a low sob. He remained some time calling her name at intervals,
but receiving no answer. Still he heard the sighing, betraying that
in the depths of that blackness lurked a sorrow.
At last he went away slowly and softly--as stealthily as a criminal
and as gloomily as an assassin.