BARTERING THE ANCESTRAL NAME
Having reached the outskirts of Palma and the open vernal fields, Jaime
Febrer repented of his present way of existence. He had not been beyond
the confines of Palma for a year, and he had been spending his
afternoons in the cafes on the Paseo del Borne and his nights in the
gambling hall of the Casino.
It had never occurred to him to go forth where he might see the fields
clad in tender green, the waters murmuring in the acequias; the soft
blue sky dotted with white, fleecy islets, the dark green hills where
stood the windmills swinging their arms upon the summits, the abrupt
sierras forming a rose-colored background to a landscape which
everywhere smiled and whispered sweetly, as in the days when, it
astounded the ancient navigators, causing them to name Majorca "the
Fortunate Isle"! When, thanks to his marriage, he should acquire a
fortune, and could redeem the fine estate of Son Febrer, he would spend
a part of the year there, as his forefathers had done, leading the
healthy, rural life of a gran senor, munificent and honored.
The horses were going at topmost speed and the carriage whirled past a
string of peasants trudging along the road returning from the city.
There were slender brown women wearing over their braids and white
rebocillos broad straw hats with streamers and sprays of wild flowers;
men dressed in striped drill, the so-called Majorcan cloth, their hats
stuck on the backs of their heads like black or gray nimbuses around
their shaven faces.
Febrer recalled the characteristics of the road although he had not
passed over it for many years. He was like a stranger returning to the
island after a dimly remembered visit. Farther on the road forked; one
branch leading to Valldemosa and the other to Soller... Ah! Soller...
Scenes of his boyhood rushed through his memory! Every year, in a
carriage like this, the Febrer family used to journey to Soller where
they owned an old structure with a spacious zaguan, the House of the
Moon, so named on account of a hemisphere of stone having eyes and nose,
representing the luminary of night which adorned the upper part of the
portalon.
They habitually went early in May. When the carriage rolled along a
narrow pass high up in the sierra, the little Jaime would shout with joy
as he beheld, lying at his feet, the valley of Soller, the Garden of
Hesperrides of the island. The mountains, dark with their pine trees,
and dotted with little white houses, lifted their crests bound about in
turbans of vapor. Below, surrounding the village and stretching down the
valley as far as the sea, were orange orchards. Spring burst over the
happy land with an explosion of color and perfume. Wild flowers grew
among the rocks; branches of the trees were decked in waving green; poor
habitations of the peasants concealed ruinous poverty beneath canopies
of climbing roses. Rustic families from towns far and near gathered at
the fiesta of Soller: the women in white rebocillos, heavy mantillas,
and with gold buttons on their sleeves; the men in gay waistcoats,
homespun woolen cloaks, and hats with colored bands. Concertinas
whined, calling to the dance; glasses of native sweet wine and of wine
from Banalbufar passed from hand to hand. It was joy and peace after a
thousand years of piracy and of war against the infidel peoples of the
Mediterranean; the joyful commemoration of the victory won by the
peasants of Soller over a fleet of Turkish corsairs in the sixteenth
century.
In the port, the fishermen, masquerading as Mussulmans, or as Christian
warriors, held a sham naval battle on their little boats, firing off
blunderbusses and flourishing swords, or pursuing one another up and
down the roads along the shore. In the church a festival was celebrated
to comemmorate the miraculous victory, and Jaime, seated in a place of
honor beside his mother, thrilled with emotion listening to the priest
just as he did on reading an interesting tale in his uncle's library in
the second story of the great house in Palma.
The inhabitants of Soller had risen in arms against Alaro and Bunola on
learning from a boat which had come over from Iviza that a fleet of
twenty-two Turkish galiots with many galleys was heading for their
coast, threatening this the richest town of the island. Seventeen
hundred Turks and Africans, formidable pirates, attracted by the riches
of the town, and drawn on by the desire to attack a convent of nuns,
where beautiful young women of noble families lived retired from the
world, had landed upon the beach. Divided into two columns, one marched
against the Christians who had gone out to resist them, while the other,
making a detour, entered the town, capturing youths and maidens,
pillaging churches and killing the priests. The Christians realized the
extremity of the situation. Before them were a thousand advancing Turks;
behind them the village in the hands of looters, their families
subjected to violence and outrage calling to them in despair. They
hesitated only a moment. A sergeant from Soller, a valorous veteran of
the army of Charles V in the wars of Germany and against the Grand Turk,
urged them on to attack the enemy. They fell upon their knees and
invoked the Apostle St. James, and then attacked with their fire-locks,
arquebuses, lances and axes, devoutly expecting a miracle. The Turks
faltered; then turned their backs. Their terrible chieftain, Suffarais,
Captain General of the sea, an ancient Turk of great obesity, famous for
his courage and daring, exhorted them in vain. At the head of his
body-guard, a squadron of negroes, he attacked, scimitar in hand,
felling a circle of corpses around him, but at last a native of Soller
pierced his breast with a lance, and as he fell the invaders fled, even
forsaking their standard. Then a new enemy barred their way. While
trying to reach the coast and take refuge aboard their ships, a band of
robbers that had witnessed the battle from their caves in the crags,
seeing the Turks in retreat, came out to meet them, firing their
flintlocks and brandishing their daggers. They had with them a troop of
mastiffs, ferocious companions of their infamous career, and these
animals, according to the chroniclers of the epoch, "gave evidence of
the excellence of the Majorcan breed." The troops under the command of
the veteran sergeant turned back to the desolated village from which the
looters fled as best they could in the direction of the sea, or fell
decapitated in the streets.
The priest became exalted as he related the victorious defense,
attributing the greater part of the success to the Queen of Heaven and
to the Apostle warrior St. James. Then he eulogized Captain Angelats,
the hero of the day, the Cid of Soller, and also the valiant donas of
Can Tamany, two women on an estate near the village who had been
surprised by three Turks greedy to satiate their carnal appetites after
long abstinence on the solitudes of the sea. The valiant donas, arrogant
and strong, as are all good peasants, neither cried out nor fled at
sight of these three pirates, enemies both of God and of the saints.
With the bar used for fastening the door they killed one of them and
then locked themselves up in the house. Hurling the corpse out of a
window upon the assailants, they broke the head of another, and they
drove the third off with stones, like true descendants of the Majorcan
slingers. Ah, the brave donas, the forceful women of Can Tamany! The
good people worshipped them as sainted heroines of the interminable war
against the infidel, and they laughed tenderly over the deeds of these
Joans of Arc, thinking with pride how perilous was the Mussulmans' task
of supplying their harems with new flesh.
Then the preacher, following traditional custom, brought his harangue to
a close by naming the families who had taken part in the battle; a list
of a hundred, to which the rural audience listened attentively, each
nodding his head with satisfaction when the name of one of his
forefathers was pronounced. This lengthy enumeration seemed short to
many, who made a gesture of protest when the preacher ceased. "There
were others whom he did not mention," murmured the peasants whose names
had not been read. All desired to be descendants of the warriors of
Captain Angelats.
When the fiestas ended and Soller recovered its tranquillity, young
Jaime used to spend his days racing through the orange orchards with
Antonia, old Mammy Antonia of the present, who was then a fresh young
woman with white teeth, full bust, and vigorous tread, widowed a few
months after her marriage and followed by the ardent glances of all the
peasantry. Together they went to the port, a peaceful, solitary basin,
its entrance half concealed by a curving rocky arm of the sea. Only now
and then the masts of some sailing vessel coming to take on a load of
oranges for Marseilles, appeared before this blue town with its
surrounding waters. Flocks of old gulls, enormous as hens, fluttered
with evolutions like a contredanse upon its glossy surface. The
fishermen's boats came in at sunset, and beneath the sheds along the
shore enormous fishes were left hanging, their tails sweeping the
ground, bleeding like oxen; together with rays and octopuses from which
dripped a white gelatinous slime like drops of palpitating crystal.
Jaime loved this quiet port and its brooding solitude with religious
veneration. Then he recalled the miraculous stories with which his
mother used to lull him to sleep--the great miracle wrought upon these
waters by a servant of God to flout the hardened sinners. Saint Raymond
of Penafort, a virtuous and austere monk, became indignant with King
Jaime of Majorca who was basely enamored of a certain lady, Dona
Berenguela, and who remained deaf to holy counsels. The friar determined
to abandon this recalcitrant, but the king sought to prevent his
departure by laying an embargo upon all ships and vessels. Then the
saint descended to the lonely port of Soller, spread his mantle upon the
waves, stepped upon it, and sailed away to the coasts of Catalonia.
Mammy Antonia had also told him of this miracle, but in Majorcan verse,
in a primitive romance that breathed the simple confidence of centuries
which clung trustfully to the marvelous. The saint, having embarked on
his mantle, set up his staff for a mast and his hood for a sail; then a
wind from heaven blew upon the strange vessel; in a few hours the
servant of the Lord sailed from Majorca to Barcelona; the lookout at
Montjuich announced with a flag the apparition of the prodigious craft,
the bells of Seo rang, and the merchants rushed down to the sea-wall to
welcome the sainted voyager.
Little Febrer, his curiosity aroused by these marvels, was eager to hear
more, and his companion called the old fishermen who showed him the rock
where the saint had stood while invoking the aid of Almighty God before
setting sail. An inland mountain which could be seen from the port had
the form of a hooded friar. Along the coast, at an inaccessible point, a
cliff seen only by fishermen resembled a monk kneeling at prayer. These
prodigies had been formed by God, according to the simple souls, to
perpetuate the memory of the famous miracle.
Jaime still recalled the thrills of emotion with which he had listened
to these tales. Ah, Soller! The epoch of holy innocence in which he had
first opened his eyes upon life to the accompaniment of miraculous
stories and commemorations of heroic struggles! The House of the Moon he
had lost forever, and also the credulity and the innocence of youth.
Only memories lingered. More than twenty years had rolled away since he
had pressed foot on the paths of forgotten Soller; it now came back to
his mind with all the smiling fancies of childhood.
The carriage reached the fork of the road taking the route to
Valldemosa, and all his memories seemed left behind, motionless by the
roadside, growing hazy in the distance.
The way to Valldemosa held no memory of the past. He had been over it
only twice, after coming to manhood, having gone with friends to see
the cells of the Cartuja--a once renowned Carthusian convent. He
recalled the farmers' olive trees along the roadside, aged trees of
strange, fantastic shapes which had served as inspiration for many
artists, and he thrust his head through a window to look at them again.
The ground was rising; here began the stony, unirrigated ground, the
lowest of the foothills. The road wound steeply among the ancient
groves. The first olive trees now passed before the carriage windows.
Febrer had seen them, had often spoken of them, and yet he felt the
sensation of something extraordinary, as if looking at them for the
first time. They were black, with enormous, knotted, open trunks,
swelling with great excrescences, and the foliage was sparse. These were
olive trees which had stood for centuries, which had never been pruned,
in which age robbed the sap from the branches to distend the trunk with
the protuberances of a slow and painful circulation. The region looked
like the deserted studio of a sculptor littered with thousands of
shapeless bulks, with monsters scattered over the ground, upon a green
carpet dotted with bluebells and marguerites.
One of the trees resembled an enormous toad crouching ready to spring,
holding a spray of leaves in its mouth; another was a great coiled boa
with an olive crest upon his head. There were trunks open like ogives,
through the orifices of which shone the blue sky; monstrous serpents
coiled in groups like the spirals of a solomonic column; gigantic
negroes, heads down and hands on the ground, the roots like fingers
thrust deep into the soil, their feet in the air, grotesque stems with
bunches of leaves springing from them. Some, vanquished by the
centuries, were lying on the ground, sustained by forked branches, like
old men trying to lift themselves with the aid of crutches.
It seemed as if a tempest had swept these fields, overthrowing and
twisting everything out of shape, and afterward turning them to stone to
hold this work of desolation under a spell forever. Some trees standing
erect, and having softer outlines, seemed to have feminine faces and
figures. They were Byzantine maidens, with tiaras of dainty leaves and
trailing vestments of wood. Others were ferocious idols with protruding
eyes and long flowing beards; fetiches of gloomy, barbaric cults capable
of checking primitive humanity in its progress, forcing it to its knees
with emotion as if at a meeting with divinity. In the calm of this
frenzied, but motionless distortion, in the solitude of these fields
peopled by startling and eternal specters, birds were singing, wild
flowers crept to the foot of the worm-eaten trunks, and ants came and
went, an infinite rosary, burrowing in the ancient roots like
indefatigable miners.
Gustave Dore, according to report, had sketched his most fantastic
conceptions in these olive orchards, steeped in the mysteries of
centuries. Recollection of this artist recalled to Jaime's mind others
more celebrated who had also passed along this road, and had lived and
suffered in Valldemosa.
Twice he had visited the Cartuja merely to see the places immortalized
by the sad and unhealthy love of a pair of famous persons. His
grandfather had often told him of "the Frenchwoman" of Valldemosa and
her companion "the musician."
One day the inhabitants of Majorca and the people of the Peninsula who
had taken refuge on the island, fleeing from the horrors of civil war,
saw a strange couple disembark, accompanied by a boy and girl. It was
in 1838. When their luggage was landed the islanders were astounded by
an enormous piano, an Erard instrument of which but few were to be seen
in those days. The piano was held in the custom house while the tangle
of certain administrative scruples was unraveled, and the travelers
sought lodging at an inn, and later rented the estate of Son Vent, in
the environs of Palma. The man seemed to be ill; he was younger than the
woman, but wasted by suffering, pale, with the transparent pallor of the
consecrated wafer, his limpid eyes glowing with fever, his narrow chest
shaken by harsh and continuous coughing. A fine, silky beard shaded his
cheeks; a black, shaggy head of hair like a lion's mane crowned his
forehead and hung down behind in a cascade of curls. She was strong and
vigorous and did all the work of the house like a good bourgeoise more
willing than skilled in such labors. She played with her children like a
girl, and her kindly, smiling face clouded only when she heard the cough
of the "beloved invalid." An atmosphere of exotism, of irregular
existence, of protest against conventional custom, seemed to surround
this vagabond family. She dressed in fantastic gowns, and wore a silver
dagger thrust in her hair, a romantic ornament which scandalized the
pious Majorcan dames. Besides, she did not go to mass in the city, nor
make calls; she did not go out of her house except to play with her
children or to entice the poor consumptive out into the sunshine,
leaning on her arm. The children were as extraordinary as the mother.
The girl went dressed like a boy that she might run with greater
freedom.
Soon island curiosity ferreted out the names of these strangers of
alarming peculiarities. She was a French woman, a writer of books;
Aurore Dupin, the illustrious Baroness Dudevant separated from her
husband, who made a world-wide reputation through her novels, which she
signed with a masculine given name, and the surname of a political
assassin, George Sand. The man was a Polish musician, of delicate
constitution, who seemed to leave a portion of his existence in each one
of his works, and who felt himself dying at twenty-nine years of age. He
was called Frederic Francois Chopin. The children belonged to the
novelist, who was about thirty-five.
Majorcan society, bound up in its traditional preoccupations, like a
mollusk in its shell, and hostile by instinct to impious novelties from
Paris, waxed indignant over this scandal. They were not married! And she
wrote novels which startled respectable people by their audacity!
Feminine curiosity wished to read them, but only Don Horacio Febrer,
Jaime's grandfather, received books in Majorca, and the small volumes of
"Indiana" and "Lelia," belonging to him, passed from hand to hand
without being understood by their readers. A married woman who wrote
books and lived with a man who was not her husband! Dona Elvira, Jaime's
grandmother, a senora from Mexico, whose portrait he had so often seen,
and whom he imagined always dressed in white with her eyes turned
heavenward and her gilded harp between her knees, called upon the
retiring woman at Son Vent. She enjoyed overwhelming the ladies of the
island who did not know French with the superiority of the foreigner;
she listened to the novelist's lyric eulogies of the originality of this
African landscape, with its little white houses, spiny cacti, slender
palms, and aged olive trees, in such striking contrast to the harmonious
order of the broad fields of France. Then Dona Elvira, in the social
gatherings at Palma, defended the authoress with fervor--a poor
emotional woman, whose everyday life was more like that of a Sister of
Charity, more full of care and sorrow than of passion and pleasure. The
grandfather took it upon himself to intervene and prohibit his wife's
calls in order to quiet neighborhood gossip.
The scandalous pair was completely ostracized. While the children were
frolicking like young savages in the fields with their mother, the sick
man sat at his dormitory window, or peeped out of his doorway, seeking a
ray of sunshine. In the small hours of the night came the visit of the
muse, and the man, sick and melancholy, seated himself at the piano,
where, coughing and moaning, out of the bitterness of his spirit he
improvised his voluptuous music.
The owner of the estate of Son Vent, a bourgeois of the city, ordered
the foreigners to move, as if they were a band of gypsies. The pianist
was a consumptive and the landlord did not wish to have his property
infected. Where should they go? To return to their own country would be
difficult since it was in the middle of winter, and Chopin trembled like
a forsaken bird, thinking of the chill of Paris. He loved the island,
despite the inhospitable people, because of the suavity of its climate.
The Cartuja of Valldemosa offered itself as their sole refuge, a
building devoid of architectural beauty, with no other charm than that
of its medieval antiquity, situated in the mountains with pine-covered
slopes, having, like delicate curtains tempering the sun's ardor,
plantations of almond and palm, through the branches of which the eye
could make out the green plain and the distant sea. It was a monument
almost in ruins, a monastery suggesting melodrama, gloomy and
mysterious, in the cloisters of which camped vagabonds and beggars. To
enter it one must cross the old cemetery of the friars with its graves
disturbed by the roots of forest trees thrusting bones up to the very
surface. On moonlight nights a white phantom stalked through the
cloisters, the shade of a wicked friar who haunted the place of his
misdeeds, while awaiting the hour of redemption.
Thither went the fugitives one stormy winter day, buffeted by wind and
rain, traveling along the same route which Febrer now followed, but by
an old road which barely deserved the name. The wagons of the caravan
climbed, as George Sand said, "with one wheel on the mountain and the
other in the bed of a gully." The musician, wrapped in his cape, sat
trembling and coughing under the canvas cover, throbbing with pain as
the vehicle jolted over the rough ground. The novelist herself followed
on foot over the worst places, leading her children by the hand on this
vagabond journey.
They spent the entire winter in the isolation of the Cartuja. She,
wearing Turkish slippers, the little dagger always thrust into her
ill-combed hair, courageously did the cooking with the assistance of a
young peasant girl who took advantage of every opportunity to gorge
herself with the dainties intended for the "beloved invalid." The
urchins of Valldemosa stoned the little French children, calling them
Moors and disbelievers in God; the women cheated the mother when they
sold her provisions, and moreover they dubbed her "the witch." They all
made the sign of the cross when they met these "gypsies" who dared to
live in a cell at the monastery, neighbors to the dead, in constant
communication with the spectral friar who stalked through the cloister.
By day, while the invalid was resting, George Sand prepared the broth,
and with her slender, white, artistic hands, helped the maidservant to
peel the vegetables; then, with, her two children she would race down
to the abrupt, tree-covered beach of Miramar where Ramon Lull had
established his school of oriental study. Only at the approach of night
did her real existence begin.
Then the great gloomy cloister vibrated with mysterious music which
seemed to float in from afar through the heavy walls. It was Chopin,
bending over the piano composing his Nocturnes. The novelist, by the
light of the candle was writing "Spiridion," the story of the monk who
finally forsook his faith; but frequently she laid aside her work to
rush to the musician's side and give him medicine, alarmed at the
frequency of his cough. On moonlight nights, tempted by the thrill of
the mysterious, in a voluptuosity of fear, she stole out into the
cloister where the darkness was pierced by the milky spots of the window
panes. Nobody!... Then she would sit down in the monks' cemetery vainly
awaiting the apparition of the ghostly friar to enliven her monotonous
existence with a novel adventure.
One night during Carnival season Cartuja was invaded by "Moors." They
were young men from Palma, who, after having overrun the town disguised
as Berbers, thought of the "French woman," ashamed, no doubt, at the
isolation in which she was held by the townspeople. They arrived at
midnight, with their songs and guitars breaking the mysterious calm of
the monastery, frightening away the birds perched in the ruins. In one
corner of the cell they danced Spanish dances which Chopin watched
attentively with his fever-lighted eyes, while the novelist flitted from
group to group, experiencing the simple joy of the bourgeoise at finding
herself not forgotten.
This was her single happy night in Majorca. Afterward, with the return
of spring, the "beloved invalid" felt relief and they began a leisurely
return to Paris. They were birds of passage, who, after wintering on
this "Fortunate Isle," left no other trace than an undying tradition.
Jaime could not even find out with certainty which room she had
occupied. The changes which had taken place in the monastery had
obliterated every vestige. Many families from Palma now spent the summer
at Cartuja, transforming the cells into handsome apartments, and each
one wished it to be understood that his was the one which had been
occupied by George Sand, she who had been defamed and ostracized by
their grandmothers. Febrer had visited the monastery with a
nonagenarian, who had been one of the youths that had gone dressed as
Moors to serenade the Frenchwoman. He could not remember any details nor
could he even recognize her room.
Don Horacio's grandson experienced a kind of retrospective affection for
that extraordinary woman. He imagined her as she appeared in her
youthful pictures, with expressionless face and deep enigmatic eyes
beneath fluffy hair, with no other decoration than a rose over one
temple. Poor George Sand! Love had been for her like the ancient Sphinx:
each time that she ventured to interrogate it she had felt its merciless
blow upon her heart. She had tasted all love's abnegations and
perversities. The capricious woman of the Venetian nights, the
unfaithful companion of de Musset, was the same nurse who cooked the
meals and prepared the cough syrups for the dying Chopin in the
solitudes of Valldemosa. If only Jaime had known a woman like that, a
woman who combined within herself the natures of a thousand women, with
all their infinite feminine variety of sweetness and cruelty!... To be
loved by a superior woman upon whom he could impose his masculine will,
and who at the same time would inspire him with respect for her was his
dream.
Febrer sat as if stupefied by this thought, staring at the landscape
without seeing it. Then he smiled ironically, as if realizing his own
insignificance. The object of his journey flashed across his mind, and
he pitied himself. He, who had been dreaming of a grand, unselfish,
extraordinary love, was on his way to sell himself, offering his hand
and his name to a woman whom he had barely seen, to contract an alliance
which would scandalize the whole island... worthy end to a useless,
unbridled life!
The emptiness of his existence was revealed to him clearly now, stripped
of the deceptions of personal vanity, as he had never seen it before.
The nearness of his sacrifice stirred him to re-live the past in his
memory, as if seeking justification for his present acts. What purpose
had been served by his passing through the world?
He returned again to the childhood recollections which had been evoked
on the road to Soller. He imagined himself in the venerable Febrer
mansion with his parents and his grandfather. He was an only son. His
mother, a pale lady of melancholy beauty, had been left an invalid as
the result of his birth. Don Horacio lived in the second story, in the
company of an old servant, as if he were a guest in the house, mingling
with the family or isolating himself according to caprice. Jaime, in the
midst of his childhood recollections, beheld his grandfather's figure in
prominent relief. Never had he surprised a smile on that white-bearded
face, which contrasted with his dark and imperious eyes. The members of
the household were prohibited from ascending to his apartments. No one
had ever seen him except when in street dress, which was always
scrupulously neat. His grandson, who was the only one allowed in his
dormitory at all hours, found him early in the morning in his blue coat
with high, pointed collar and a black stock folded around his neck,
ornamented with an enormous pearl. He maintained this correct old-time
elegance until overtaken by illness. Whenever sickness compelled him to
keep his bed he would give orders to his servant not to admit even his
son.
Jaime used to pass many hours seated at his grandfather's feet,
listening to his tales, and at the same time awed by the enormous number
of books which overflowed the bookcases and littered the tables and
chairs. He found him ever the same, wearing his coat lined with red
silk, which seemed changeless, but which was renewed, nevertheless, once
every six months. The seasons brought no other variation than that of
converting the velvet winter waistcoat into another of embroidered silk.
His pride was centered chiefly upon his linen and his books. He ordered
from abroad dozens of shirts which frequently lay in the bottom of the
clothes press forgotten and yellowing and never worn. The booksellers of
Paris sent him enormous packages of recent volumes, and in view of his
unceasing orders added "Bookseller" to the address, a title which Don
Horacio displayed with playful satisfaction.
He talked to the last of the Febrers with grandfatherly kindness, trying
to make him understand his tales, despite the fact that he was sparing
of words and showed little patience in his relations with the rest of
the family. He told of his journeys to Paris, and to London, sometimes
in a sailing vessel as far as Marseilles and then by post-chaise; again
by steam-engines along iron roadways, great inventions the infancy of
which he had seen. He told of society at the court of Louis Philippe;
of the great beginnings of the romanticist movement in which he had
taken part; and he told of the barricades thrown up in the streets which
he had watched from his room, not mentioning that, at the same time, his
arm was encircling the waist of a grisette peeping out of the window
beside him. His grandson, he would say, had been born in a glorious
epoch, the best of all. Don Horacio recollected the disagreements with
his terrible father that had compelled him to travel through Europe;
that caballero who had gone out to meet King Ferdinand, to ask him for
the reestablishment of ancient usages, and who blessed his sons, saying:
"May God make you a good inquisitor!"
Then he would display before Jaime great books containing views of
splendid capitals in which he had lived, and which to the boy seemed
like cities beheld in a dream. Sometimes he would remain lost in
contemplation of the picture of "the grandmother with the harp," his
wife, the interesting Dona Elvira, the same canvas which now hung in the
reception hall among the other ladies of the family. He did not seem
moved; he maintained the same grave demeanor which accompanied the jests
to which he was addicted and the coarse words with which he sprinkled
his conversations, but he said in a somewhat tremulous voice:
"Your grandmother was a great lady, with the soul of an angel, an
artist. I seemed like a barbarian beside her. She was one of our family,
but she came from Mexico to marry me. Her father was a sea-faring man,
and he stayed over there with the insurgents. There is no one in all our
race who resembles her."
At half past eleven in the morning he would dismiss his grandson, and
putting on his tall hat, black silk in winter and beaver in summer, he
would sally forth to take a stroll along the streets of Palma, always
through the same locality and along identical pavements, rain or shine,
insensible to cold and to heat, wearing his frock coat in every weather,
continuing on his way with the regularity of a clock automaton which
steps out, travels his little course, and then conceals himself at the
stroke of certain hours.
Only once in thirty years had he varied his route through the white and
deserted sunny streets. One morning he had heard a woman's voice issuing
from the interior of a house:
"Atlota--twelve o'clock; Don Horacio is passing. Put on the rice."
He turned toward the door, saying with lordly gravity:
"I'm no wench's clock!" He jerked out the abusive words without
sacrificing any of his dignity. From that day he changed his route to
disappoint those whom he perceived had come to depend on his
punctuality.
Sometimes he talked to his grandson about the ancient greatness of the
house. Geographical discoveries had ruined the Febrers. The
Mediterranean was no longer the highway to the Orient. The Portuguese
and Spanish of the other sea had discovered new routes and the Majorcan
ships lay rotting in idleness. There were no longer battles with
pirates. The Holy Order of Malta was now only an honorable distinction.
A brother of his father, knight commander at Valetta when Bonaparte
conquered the island, had come to spend his last days in Palma with only
the meagre pension of a half-pay officer. It had been two centuries
since the Febrers, forgotten on the sea where there was no longer any
commerce, and where only poor padrones and fishermen's sons now made
war, had given themselves up to investing their name with a splendrous
luxury, which gradually ruined them. The grandfather had witnessed the
times of genuine seigniory, when to be a butifarra in Majorca was
something which the people rated between God and caballeros. The arrival
of a Febrer in the world was an event which was discussed throughout the
entire city. The great parturient dame remained secluded in the palace
forty days, and during all this time the doors were open, the zaguan
filled with vehicles, the whole retinue of servants lined up in the
ante-chamber, the salons filled with callers, the tables covered with
sweets, cakes, and refreshments. Days of the week were set apart for the
reception of each social class. Some were only for the butifarras, the
aristocracy of the aristocrats, privileged houses, renowned families,
all united by the relationship of continual inter-marriage; other days
for caballeros, traditional nobility who were looked down upon by the
former without knowing why; next the mossons were received, an inferior
class, but in familiar contact with the grandees, the intellectual
people of the epoch, doctors, lawyers, and scriveners, who loaned their
services to illustrious families.
Don Horacio recalled the splendor of these receptions. The people of the
olden time knew how to do things in the grand way.
"It was when your father was born," he said to his grandson, "that the
last fiesta was held in this house. I paid a confectioner on the Paseo
del Borne eight hundred Majorcan pounds for sweets, cakes, and
refreshments."
Jaime actually remembered less about his father than about his
grandfather. In his memory he was a sweet and sympathetic figure, but
somewhat dim. When he thought of him he recalled only a soft, light
beard like his own, a bald forehead, a happy smile, and eyeglasses which
glittered as he bent over. It was said that when a boy he had a love
affair with his cousin Juana, that austere senora whom everybody called
the "Pope-ess," who lived like a nun, and who enjoyed enormous riches,
making prodigal donations in former times to the pretender Don Carlos,
and now to the ecclesiastics who surrounded her.
The rupture between his father and Juana the Popess was, no doubt, the
reason why she held herself aloof from this branch of the family and
treated Jaime with hostile frigidity.
His father had been an officer in the Navy, in accordance with family
tradition. He was in the war on the Pacific coast of South America; he
was a lieutenant on one of the frigates that bombarded Callao, and, as
if he only desired to give a proof of his valor, he immediately retired
from the service. Then he married a senorita of Palma, of meager
fortune, whose father was military governor of the island of Iviza. The
Popess Juana, talking with Jaime one day, had tried to wound him by
saying in her cold voice and with her haughty mien: "Your mother was
noble; of a family of caballeros--but she was not a butifarra like
ourselves!"
The early years of his life, when Jaime first began to take notice of
the things about him, were passed without seeing his father save during
hasty trips to Majorca. He was a progressive, and the reform party had
made him a deputy. Later, when Amadis of Savoy was proclaimed king, this
revolutionary monarch, execrated and deserted by the traditional
nobility, had been compelled to turn to new historic names to form his
court. The butifarra, Febrer, through a party demand, became a high
palace functionary. When he insisted that his wife should remove to
Madrid she refused to abandon the island. She go to the Court! How about
his son? Don Horacio, steadily growing more slender and weak, but ever
erect in his eternal new frock coat, continued taking his daily stroll,
adjusting his life to the ticking of the clock of the ayuntamiento. An
old time liberal, a great admirer of Martinez de la Rosa for his verses
and the diplomatic elegance of his cravats, made a wry face when he read
the newspapers and the letters from his son. What was all this leading
to?
During the short period of the Republic the father returned to the
island, considering his career ended. The Popess Juana, despite the fact
of their relationship, refused to recognize him. She was much occupied
during that epoch. She made journeys to the Peninsula; it was said that
she turned over enormous sums to the partisans of Don Carlos who were
carrying on the war in Catalonia and the northern provinces. Let no one
mention Jaime Febrer, the old time naval officer in her presence! She
was a genuine butifarra, a defender of their traditions, and she was
making sacrifices in order that Spain might be governed by gentlemen.
Her cousin was worse than a Chueta; he was a shirtless beggar. According
to the gossips bitterness for certain deceptions in the past which she
could not forget was mingled with this hatred of his political
professions.
On the restoration of the Bourbons, this progressive, he who had been a
palatine under Amadis, became a republican and a conspirator. He made
frequent journeys; he received cipher letters from Paris; he went to
Minorca to visit the squadron anchored in Port Mahon, and taking
advantage of his former official friendships, he catechized his
companions, planning an uprising of the navy. He threw into these
revolutionary enterprises the adventurous ardor of the Febrers of old,
the same cool daring, until he died suddenly in Barcelona, far from his
kindred.
The grandfather received the news with impassive gravity, but the
neighbor women of Palma who awaited his passing along the streets to set
their rice over the fire, saw him no more. Eighty-six! He had strolled
enough. He had seen enough of this world. He retired to the second
story, where he admitted no one but his grandson. When his relatives
came to see him he preferred to go down to the reception hall, in spite
of his debility, correctly attired, wearing his new frock coat, the two
white triangles of his collar peeping above the folds of his stock,
always freshly shaven, his side whiskers carefully combed and his toupee
brilliant with pomatum. At last came a day when he could not leave his
bed, and the grandson found him between the sheets, looking as usual,
still wearing his fine batiste shirt, the stock which his servant
changed for him every day, and the flowered silk waistcoat. When a call
from his daughter-in-law was announced Don Horacio made a gesture of
annoyance.
"Jaimito,--the frock coat. It is a lady, and she must be received with
decency."
This operation was repeated when the doctor came, or when the few
callers he deigned to receive were admitted. He must maintain himself
"under arms" until his last moment, as he had been seen all his life.
One afternoon he called with a weak voice to his grandson who sat by a
window reading a book of travel. The boy might retire. He wished to be
alone. Jaime left the room, and so the grandfather was able to die in
solitude, free from the torment of having to pay attention to the
neatness of his appearance, with no witnesses to the grimaces and
contortions of the last agony.
Febrer and his mother being left alone, the boy grew eager for
independence. His imagination was filled with the adventures and voyages
of which he had read in his grandfather's library and he was inspired
with the deeds of his forefathers immortalized in family history. He
yearned to become a mariner or a warrior, like his father and like the
majority of his ancestors. His mother opposed him with an agony of dread
which turned her cheeks pale and her lips blue. The last Febrer leading
a life of danger far from her side! No! There had been heroes enough in
the family. He must be a senor on the island, a gentleman of tranquil
life who would raise a family to perpetuate the name he bore.
Jaime yielded to the prayers of his mother, that eternal invalid, in
whom the slightest opposition seemed to precipitate the danger of death.
Since she did not wish him to be a sea-faring man he must study for
another career. He must live as did the other youths of his age with
whom he mingled in the lecture halls of the Institute. At sixteen he set
sail for the Peninsula. His mother wished that he should be a lawyer in
order that he might disentangle the family fortune, burdened and
oppressed with mortgages and other indebtedness.
The luggage with which he started was enormous--enough to furnish a
house--and likewise his pocket was well lined. A Febrer must not live
like any poor student! First he went to Valencia, his mother believing
that city less dangerous for the young. For the next course of lectures
he passed on to Barcelona, and thus several years were spent flitting
from one University to another, according to the notions of the
professors and their ready connivance with the students. He made no
great progress in his career. He sneaked through certain courses by the
cool audacity with which he talked of things of which he knew nothing,
and passed examinations by some lucky chance. In others he flunked
completely. His mother accepted his explanations in good faith on his
return to Majorca. She consoled him, advising him not to exert himself
too much over his studies, and she railed against the injustice of the
times. Her implacable enemy, the Popess Juana, was right. These were no
times for gentlemen; war had been declared against them; all manner of
injustices were committed to keep them in the background.
Jaime enjoyed a certain popularity in the clubs and cafes of Barcelona
and Valencia where he gambled. They called him "the Majorcan of the
ounces," because his mother remitted his gold in gold ounces, which
rolled with scandalous glitter across the green tables. Adding to the
prestige given by this extravagance was his strange title of butifarra,
which caused a smile in the Peninsula, yet at the same time it evoked in
the imagination a picture of feudal authority, accompanied with the
rights of a sovereign lord in those distant islands.
Five years passed. Jaime was now a man, but he had not yet compassed the
half of his studies. His fellow-students from the island, when they came
home in summer, entertained their cronies in the cafes on the Paseo del
Borne with stories of Febrer's adventures in Barcelona; how he was
frequently seen on the streets with luxurious women clinging to his arm;
how the rude people who frequented the gambling houses showed respect
for the "Majorcan of the ounces" on account of his strength and courage;
they told how, one night, he had laid hands on a certain bully, lifting
him off his feet in his athletic arms, and hurling him out of the
window. The peaceful Majorcans, on hearing this, smiled with local
pride. He was a Febrer, a genuine Febrer! The island still produced
valiant youths as of old!
Good Dona Purificacion, Jaime's mother, experienced grave displeasure
and at the same time maternal joy on hearing that a certain scandalous
woman had followed her son to the island. She understood it, and she
forgave her. A youth as attractive as her Jaime! But with her dresses
and her habits the young woman disturbed the tranquil customs of the
city; the staid families became indignant, and, Dona Purificacion,
making use of intermediaries, came to an understanding with her, giving
her money on the condition that she should leave the island. At other
vacation times the scandal was even greater. Jaime, who had gone to Son
Febrer on a hunting trip, had an affair with a pretty peasant girl and
was on the point of shooting a rustic swain who pretended to her hand.
His rural love adventures helped him to pass his summer exile. He was a
true Febrer, like his grandfather. The poor lady had known how to deal
with that ever grave and dignified father-in-law who nevertheless
chucked young peasant girls under the chin without losing his sedate and
lordly frigidity. In the vicinity of the estate of Son Febrer were many
youths who bore the features of Don Horacio, but his wife, the Mexican
lady, poetic soul, lived above such vulgarities, while, with her, harp
between her knees and her eyes dilated she recited Ossian's poems. The
rustic beauties with their snowy rebocillos, their hanging braids, and
white hempen sandals, attracted the immaculate and lordly Febrers with
an irresistible force.
When Dona Purificacion complained of the long hunting excursions which
her son took throughout the island, he would stay in the city and spend
the day in the garden, practising shooting with a pistol. He called his
mother's attention to a sack lying in the shade of an orange tree.
"Do you see that? It is a quintal of powder. I shall not stop until I
have used it all up."
Mammy Antonia was afraid to peep out of her kitchen windows, and the
nuns who occupied a portion of the ancient palace showed their white
hoods for an instant, and then hid themselves immediately like doves
frightened by the continual popping.
The garden with its battlemented enclosure, contiguous to the sea wall,
rang from morning till night with the sound of the detonations. The
astonished birds flew away; green lizards crept over the cracked walls
hiding in the shelter of the ivy; cats leaped along the paths in terror.
The trees were very old, venerable as the palace itself; centenarian
oranges with twisted trunks, leaning on the support of a circle of
forked sticks to hold up their ancient limbs; gigantic magnolias with
more wood than leaves; unfruitful palms lifting themselves into blue
space, seeking the sea which they greeted above the merlons with the
fluttering plumes of their crested heads.
The sun made the bark of the trees creak, and forgotten seeds on the
ground burst forth; insects buzzing across the bars of light which shot
through the foliage danced like golden sparks; ripe figs loosened from
the branches fell with soft patter; in the distance rose the murmur of
the sea lashing the rocks at the foot of the wall. This calm was broken
only by Febrer who continued firing his pistol. He had become a master
shot. When he aimed at the figure sketched on the wall he lamented that
it was not a man, some hated enemy whom he must needs exterminate. Bang!
That ball pierced his heart! He smiled with satisfaction at seeing the
bullet hole outlined on the very spot at which he had aimed. The noise
of the shooting, the smoke of the powder, aroused in his imagination
warlike fancies, stories of struggle and death in which he was always
the victorious hero. Twenty years old and yet he had never fought a
duel! He must have a fight with someone to prove his courage. It was a
disgrace that he had no enemies, but he would try to make some when he
returned to the Peninsula. Continuing these vagaries of his imagination,
excited by the cracking detonations, he pretended an affair of honor.
His adversary wounded him with the first shot and he fell. He still had
his pistol in his hand; he must defend himself while stretched on the
ground; and to the great scandal of his mother and of Mammy Antonia who
thought him crazy as they peeped out of the window, he continued lying
face downward shooting in this position, preparing for the time when he
should be wounded.
When he returned to the Peninsula to continue his interminable studies,
he went refreshed by the country life, sure of himself after his
practice in the garden and eager to have the longed for duel with the
first man who should give him the slightest pretext. But as he was a
courteous person, incapable of unjust provocation, with manners that
inspired respect from the insolent, time passed and the duel did not
take place. His exuberant vitality, his impulsive strength, were
consumed in dark adventures, of which his fellow students afterward told
on the island with admiration.
While in Barcelona he received a telegram announcing that his mother was
seriously ill. He was delayed two days before sailing; there was no boat
ready. When he reached the island his mother was dead. Of the ancient
family which he had seen in his childhood none remained. Only Mammy
Antonia could recall the past.
Jaime was twenty-three when he found himself master of the Febrer
fortune, and in absolute liberty. The fortune had been diminished by the
ostentation of his ancestors and burdened with encumbrances. The Febrer
house was big. It was like vessels which when wrecked and lost forever
enrich the coast where they are dashed to pieces. The remains and
spoils, upon which his ancestors would have looked with scorn, still
represented a fortune. Jaime did not wish to think. He did not wish to
know. He must live; he must see the world! So he gave up his studies.
What need had he for law, and for Roman customs, and for ecclesiastical
canons, in order to lead a gay existence? He knew enough. In reality,
the most delightful of his accomplishments he owed to his mother. When
he was a child still living in the palace, before he had ever seen a
schoolmaster, she had taught him something of French and had given him a
little instruction on an ancient piano with yellow keys and a great red
silk reredos almost touching the ceiling. Others knew less than he, and
yet they were just as gentlemanly and they were much happier. Now for
life! He stayed two years in Madrid; where he affected mistresses who
gave him a certain notoriety, and drove famous horses. He became the
intimate friend of a celebrated bull-fighter, and he gambled heavily in
the clubs on Alcala Street. He fought a duel, but with swords, instead
of lying on the ground, pistol in hand, as he had formerly pictured to
himself, and he came out of the affair with a scratch on his arm,
something in the nature of a pin prick in the epidermis of an elephant.
He was no longer "the Majorcan with the ounces." The hoard of round gold
pieces treasured by his mother had vanished. He now flung bank bills
prodigally upon the gaming tables, and when bad luck assailed him he
wrote to his administrator, a lawyer, the scion of a family of old time
mossons, retainers of the Febrers during many centuries.
Jaime wearied of Madrid, where he felt himself essentially a stranger.
The soul of the ancient Febrers lingered within him--those travelers
through all countries except Spain, for they had ever lived with their
backs turned upon their sovereigns. Many of his ancestors were familiar
with every one of the important Mediterranean cities, they had visited
the princes of the small Italian states, they had been received in
audience by the Pope and by the Grand Turk, but never had it occurred to
them to visit Madrid. Moreover, Febrer was often irritated with his
relatives in the court city--youths proud of their noble titles who
smiled at his odd appellation of butifarra. With what indifference his
family had allowed various marquisates to descend to relatives on the
Peninsula while they clung to their supreme title of island nobility and
the high knightly rank of Malta!
He began to run over Europe, fixing his residence in the autumn and
during part of the winter in Paris; spending the cold months on the Blue
Coast; spring in London; summer in Ostend; with various trips to Italy,
Egypt, and Norway to see the midnight sun. In this new existence he was
barely known. He was one traveler more, an insignificant circulating
globule in the great arterial network which desire for travel extends
over the Continent; but this life of continual movement, of tedious
monotony, and unexpected adventures, satisfied his hereditary instinct,
the inclinations transmitted from his remote ancestors, constant
visitors among new peoples. This wandering existence, also, satiated
his longing for the extraordinary. In the hotels at Nice, phalansteries
of the most polite and hypocritical worldly corruption, he had been
flattered in the seclusion of his room by unexpected visits. In Egypt he
had been compelled to flee from the caresses of a decadent Hungarian
countess, a withered flower of elegance, with moist eyes and violent
perfume.
He passed his twenty-eighth birthday in Munich. A short time before he
had gone to Bayreuth to hear the Wagnerian operas, and now in the
capital of Bavaria he attended the theater of the Residence, where the
Mozart festival was celebrated. Jaime was not a melomaniac, but his
vagrant existence forced him with the crowd, and his accomplishment as
an amateur pianist had led him to make his musical pilgrimage for two
consecutive years.
In the hotel in Munich he met Miss Mary Gordon, whom he had seen before
at the Wagner theater. She was an English girl, tall, slender, with firm
flesh and the body of a gymnast which exercise had developed into
agreeable feminine curves, giving her a youthful figure, and the
wholesome, asexual appearance of a handsome boy. Her beautiful head was
that of a court page, with skin as transparent as porcelain, pink
nostrils like those of a toy dog, deep blue eyes and blonde hair, pale
gold on the surface and dark gold beneath. Her beauty was adorable but
fragile; that British beauty which is lost at thirty beneath purplish
flushes and blotches on the skin.
In the restaurant Jaime had several times surprised the gaze of her blue
eyes, frankly, tranquilly bold, fixed upon him. She was attended by a
fat, spongy woman with rouged cheeks, a traveling companion dressed in
black with a red straw hat and a broad belt of the same color, which
divided the bulky hemispheres of her breast and abdomen. Young and
graceful, Mary Gordon resembled a flower of gold and nacre in her white
flannel suits of masculine cut with a mannish cravat, and a Panama with
drooping brim around which she wound a blue veil.
Febrer met the pair at every turn; in the picture gallery, standing
before Durer's Evangelists; in the hall of sculpture examining Egina's
marbles; in the rococo theater of the Residence, where Mozart was sung,
an audience hall of a former century, with decorations of porcelain and
garlands which seemed to require that the spectators wear the purple
heel and the white wig. Accustomed to meeting each other, Jaime greeted
her with a smile and she seemed to answer timidly with the flash of her
eyes.
One morning, on coming out of his room, he met the English girl on a
landing of the stairway. She was bending her boyish breast over the
balustrade.
"Lift! Lift!" she called with her birdlike voice, summoning the elevator
man to bring it up.
Febrer bowed as he entered the movable cage with her, and said a few
words in French to start a conversation. The English girl stared at him
in silence with her light blue eyes in which a star of gold seemed to be
floating. She remained silent as if she did not understand, yet Jaime
had seen her in the reading room turning the leaves of the Parisian
dailies.
Stepping out of the elevator she turned with hasty step toward the
office where sat the hotel clerk, pen in hand. He listened with
obsequious mien, like a polyglot quick to understand each of his guests,
and coming out from his enclosure he made straight toward Jaime, who,
still embarrassed by his unsuccessful venture, was pretending to read
the advertisements in the vestibule. Febrer at first did not realize
that it was he who was being addressed.
"Senor, this lady asks me to introduce you to her," said the clerk.
Turning toward the English girl he added with Teutonic composure, like
one fulfilling a duty, "Monsieur the hidalgo Febrer, Marquis of Spain."
He understood the part he was playing. Everyone who travels with good
valises is an hidalgo and a marquis until the contrary be proven.
Then, with his eyes, he indicated the English girl who stood stiff and
grave during the ceremony without which no well-bred woman may exchange
a word with a man: "Miss Gordon, doctor of the University of Melbourne."
The young lady extended her white gloved hand and shook Febrer's with
gymnastic vigor. Not till then did she venture to speak:
"Oh, Spain! Oh, 'Don Quixote'!"
Unconsciously they strolled out of the hotel together discussing the
afternoon performances which they had attended. There was to be no
function at the theaters that day and she was thinking of going to the
park called Theresienwiese, at the foot of the statue of Bavaria, to see
the Tyrolese fair and to listen to the folk-songs. After breakfasting at
the hotel they went to the fair grounds; they climbed upon an enormous
statue and viewed the Bavarian plain, its lakes and its distant
mountains; they explored the Memorial Hall, filled with busts of
celebrated Bavarians, most of whose names they read for the first time,
and they finished by going from booth to booth, admiring the costumes of
the Tyrolese, their gymnastic dances, their birdlike warbling and
trilling.
They went about as if they had known each other all their lives, Jaime
admiring the masculine liberty of Saxon girls who are not afraid of
associating with men and who feel strong in their ability to take care
of themselves. From that day they visited together museums, academies,
old churches, sometimes alone, and again with the companion, who made
strenuous exertions to keep pace with them. They were comrades who
communicated their impressions without thinking of difference of sex.
Jaime was disposed to take advantage of this intimacy by making gallant
speeches, by risking little advances, but he restrained himself. With
women like this action might be dangerous, they remain impassive, proof
against all manner of impressions. He must wait until she should take
the initiative. These were women who could go alone around the world,
likely to interrupt passionate advances with the blows of a trained
boxer. He had seen some in his travels who carried diminutive
nickel-plated revolvers in their muffs or in their handbags along with
powder box and handkerchief.
Mary Gordon told of the distant Oceanic archipelago in which her father
exercised authority like a viceroy. She had no mother, and she had come
to Europe to complete studies begun in Australia. She held the degree of
Doctor from the University of Melbourne; a doctor of music. Jaime,
suppressing his astonishment at this news from a distant world, told of
himself, of his family, of his native land, of the curiosities of the
island, of the cavern of Arta, tragically grand, chaotic as an
ante-chamber of the inferno; of the Dragon's caves with their forests of
stalactites, glistening like an ice palace, of its thousand placid
lakes, from the deep crystal depths of which it seemed as if nude sirens
would arise like those Rhine maidens who guarded the treasure of the
Niebelungs. Mary listened to him, entranced. Jaime seemed to grow
greater before her eyes, as she learned that he was a son of that isle
of dreams, where the sea is always blue, where the sun is ever shining,
and where blooms the orange flower.
Febrer began to spend his afternoons in the room of the English girl.
The performances of the Mozart festival were ended. Miss Gordon needed
daily the spiritual uplift of music. She had a piano in her reception
room, and a roll of opera scores which accompanied her on her travels.
Jaime sat near, before the keyboard, trying to accompany the pieces she
was interpreting, ever those of the same author, the god, the only! The
hotel was near the station, and the noise of drays, carriages and street
cars annoyed the English woman and she closed the windows. Her stout
companion had gone to her own apartment, rejoiced at being free from
that musical tempest, the delights of which could not compare with those
of making a good bit of Irish point lace. Miss Gordon, alone with the
Spaniard, treated him as if she were a master.
"Come, do that again; let us repeat the theme of the sword. Pay
attention!"
But Jaime was distracted, peeping out of the corner of his eye at the
girl's long, white neck bristling with little golden locks, at the
network of blue veins delicately outlined beneath the transparency of
her pearly skin.
One afternoon it rained; the leaden sky seemed to graze the roofs of the
houses; in the reception room there was the diffused light of a cellar.
They were playing almost in the dark, bending their heads forward to
read the score. Forth rolled the music of the forest of enchantments,
moving its green and whispering tree tops before the rude Siegfried, the
innocent child of Nature, eager to know the language of the soul and of
inanimate things. The master-bird sang, his voice rising above the
murmur of the foliage. Mary was trembling with excitement.
"Ah, poet! Poet!"
She continued playing. Then, in the growing darkness of the room,
sounded the strong chords which accompanied the hero to the tomb; the
funeral march of the warriors bearing upon the shield the muscular body
of Siegfried, with his golden hair, interrupting the melancholy phrase
of the God of gods. Mary continued trembling, until suddenly her hands
fell from the keyboard and her head rested on Jaime's shoulder, like a
bird folding its wings.
"Oh, Richard!... Richard, _mon bien aimee!_"
The Spaniard saw her wandering eyes and her tremulous lips offering
themselves to him; in his grasp he felt her cold hands; her breath
floated about him. Against his bosom were pressed hidden curves of firm
elastic plumpness, the existence of which he had not suspected.
There was no more music that afternoon.
At midnight when Febrer retired, he had not yet recovered from his
astonishment. After so many fears, this was the way things had happened,
with the greatest simplicity, as one is offered a hand, without exertion
on his part.
Another surprise had been to hear himself called by a name which was not
his. Who could that Richard be? But in the hour of sweet and dreamy
explanations which follow those of madness and forgetfulness, she had
told him of the impression she had received in Bayreuth when she saw him
for the first time among the thousand heads which filled the theater. It
was he, the great musician, as he was portrayed in his youthful
pictures! When she met him again in Munich beneath the same roof, she
had felt that the die was cast and that it was useless to resist this
attraction.
Febrer examined himself with ironical curiosity in the mirror in his
room. What ideas a woman is capable of conceiving! Yes, he was something
like that other one--the heavy forehead, the drooping hair, the beaked
nose, and the prominent chin, which, in years to come would turn inward,
seeking each other, and give him a certain witchlike profile....
Excellent and glorious Richard! By what miracle had Wagner brought to
him one of the greatest joys of his existence! What an original woman
was this!
Astonishment, mingled with a shade of annoyance, grew upon Febrer as the
days passed. She seemed to forget what had taken place, and to grow
constantly more unapproachable. She received him with grave rigidity, as
if nothing had occurred, as if the past had left no trace upon her mind,
as if the day before had never been. Only when music evoked the memory
of the other man came tenderness and submission.
Jaime was irritated, and he determined to dominate her; he would prove
himself a man! At last he triumphed to such an extent that the piano was
heard less and she began to see in him something more than a living
picture of her idol.
In their happy intoxication Munich and the hotel in which they had seen
each other as strangers seemed to them offensive. They felt the need of
flying far away, where they could make love freely, and one day they
found themselves in a port which had a stone lion at its entrance, while
beyond spread the liquid surface of an immense lake which mingled with
the sky on the horizon. They were in Lindau. One steamer could convey
them to Switzerland, another to Constance, but they preferred the
tranquil German city of the famous Ecumenical Council, establishing
themselves in the Island Hotel, an ancient Dominican Monastery.
Febrer was stirred as he contemplated this epoch, the happiest of his
existence! Mary continued for him ever an original woman, in whom there
was always something left to conquer; tolerant at certain hours,
repellant and austere throughout the rest of the day. He was her lover,
and yet she would not permit the slightest familiarity, nor any liberty
which might reveal the confidence of their common life. The least
allusion to their intimacy caused her to flush in protest. "Shocking!"
Yet, every morning at daybreak Febrer sneaked into his room along the
corridors of the old convent, unmade his bed so that the servants would
not suspect, and he would show himself on the balcony. The birds were
singing in the tall rose bushes in the garden below his feet. Beyond,
the immense sheet of Lake Constance was flushing with purple tints
caught from the rising sun. The first fishing barks were cleaving the
orange tinted waters; in the distance sounded the cathedral bells,
softened by the damp, morning breeze; the cranes began to creak on the
quay where the waters cease to be a lake, and narrowing into a channel
become the river Rhine; the footsteps of the servants and the swish of
cleaning startled the monastic cloister with the noises of the hotel.
Near the balcony, adjoining the wall, and so close that Jaime could
touch it with his hand, was a small tower with a slate roof and with
ancient coats of arms on the circular wall. It was the tower in which
John Huss had been imprisoned before going to the stake.
The Spaniard thought of Mary. At this time she must be in the perfumed
shadows of her room, her blonde head clasped in her arms, sleeping her
first real sleep of the night, her tired body still vibrant from
fatigue. Poor John Huss! Febrer sympathized with him as if he had been
his friend. To burn him in the presence of such a beautiful landscape,
perhaps on a morning like this! To cast one's self into the wolf's
mouth, and to give up one's life over the question whether the Pope were
good or bad, or whether laymen should receive the sacrament with wine
the same as priests! To die for such absurdities when life is so
beautiful and the heretic might have enjoyed it so richly with any of
the plump-breasted, big-hipped blonde women, friends of the cardinals,
who witnessed his torture! Unhappy apostle! Jaime ironically pitied the
simplicity of the martyr. He looked at life through different eyes.
_Viva el amor!_ Love was the only thing worth while in life.
They remained nearly a month in the ancient episcopal city, strolling
out in the gloaming through the lonely, grass-grown streets with their
crumbling palaces of the time of the Council; floating with the current
down the river Rhine along its forest-clad banks; stopping to look at
the tiny houses with red roofs and spacious arbors beneath which sang
the bourgeoisie, stein in hand, with the Germanic joy of a subchanter,
grave and reposeful.
From Constance they passed on to Switzerland and afterward to Italy.
They traveled together for a year viewing landscapes, seeing museums,
visiting ruins, the windings and sheltered nooks in which Jaime made use
of for kissing Mary's pearly skin, reveling in the rush of color and the
gesture of annoyance with which she protested "Shocking!"
The old traveling companion, unconscious as a suitcase of the points of
interest in their journey, continued making the cloak of Irish point,
beginning in Germany, and working at it while crossing the Alps, along
the whole length of the Apennines, and in sight of Vesuvius and AEtna.
Unable to talk with Febrer, who spoke no English, she greeted him with
the yellowish glitter of her teeth and returned to her task, forming a
conspicuous figure in the hotel lobbies.
The two lovers spoke of marriage. Mary summed up the situation with
energetic decision. She need only write a few lines to her father. He
was very far away, and besides she never consulted him in regard to her
affairs. He would approve whatever she did, sure of her wisdom and
prudence.
They were in Sicily, a land which reminded Febrer of his own island. The
ancient members of his family had been here also, but with cuirasses on
their breasts, and in worse company. Mary spoke of the future, arranging
the financial side of the anticipated partnership with the practical
sense of her race. It did not matter to her that Febrer had little
fortune; she was rich enough for both; and she enumerated her worldly
goods, lands, houses, and stocks like an administrator with accurate
memory. On their return to Rome they would be married in the evangelical
chapel and also in a Catholic church. She knew a cardinal who had
arranged for her an audience with the Pope. His Eminence would manage
everything.
Jaime passed a sleepless night in a hotel in Syracuse. Marriage? Mary
was agreeable; she made life pleasant, and she would bring with her a
fortune. But should he really marry her? Then the other man began to
annoy him, the illustrious shade which had appeared in Zurich, in
Venice, in every place visited by them which held memories of the
maestro's past. Jaime would grow old, and music, his formidable rival,
would be ever fresh. In a little while, when marriage should have robbed
his relations of the charm of illegality, of the delight of the
prohibited, Mary would discover some orchestra leader who bore a still
greater resemblance to the other man, or some ugly violinist with long
hair and possessed of youth who would remind her of Beethoven in his
boyhood. Besides, he was of different race, different customs and
passions; he was tired of her shamefaced reserve in love, of her
resistance to final submission which had pleased him at first, but which
had come at last to bore him. No; there was yet time to save himself.
"I regret it on account of what she will think of Spain. I regret it on
account of Don Quixote," he said to himself while packing his suitcase
one morning at sunrise.
He fled, losing himself in Paris, where the English woman would never
seek him. She hated that ungrateful city for its hissing of Tannhaeuser
many years before she was born.
Of these relations, which had lasted a year, Jaime cherished only the
memory of a felicity, increased and sweetened by the passing of time and
by a lock of golden hair. Then, too, he must have somewhere among his
papers, guide books, and post cards, lying forgotten in an old secretary
in the great house, a photograph of the feminine doctor of music,
strangely adorable in her long-sleeved toga with a square plate-like cap
from which hung a tassel.
Of the rest of his life he remembered little; a void of tedium broken
only by monetary worries. The administrator was slow and grudging in
sending his remittances. Jaime would ask him for money and he would
reply with grumbling letters, telling of interest which must be met, of
second mortgages on which he could barely realize a loan, of the
precariousness of a fortune in which nothing was left free of
incumbrance.
Febrer, believing that his presence might disentangle this wretched
situation, made short trips to Majorca, which always resulted in the
sale of property, yielding him scarcely enough money to take flight
again, heedless of his administrator's advice. Money aroused in him a
smiling optimism. Everything would turn out all right. As a last resort
he counted on recourse to matrimony. Meanwhile,--he would live!
He managed to exist a few years longer, sometimes in Madrid, or again in
the great foreign cities, until at last his administrator brought this
period of merry prodigality to an end by sending his resignation, with
his accounts and his refusal to continue forwarding money.
He had spent one year on the island, buried, as he said, with no other
diversion than nights of gambling in the Casino and afternoons on the
Paseo del Borne, sitting around a table with a company of friends,
sedentary islanders who reveled in the stories of his travels. Misery
and want--this was the reality of his present life. His creditors
threatened him with immediate legal process. He still outwardly retained
possession of Son Febrer and of other estates derived from his
forefathers, but property yielded little on the island; the rents,
according to traditional custom, were no higher than in the time of his
ancestors, for the families of the original renters inherited the right
to farm the lands. They made payments directly to his creditors, but
even this did not satisfy half of the interest due. The palace was but a
storehouse for its rich decorations. The noble mansion of the Febrers
was submerged, and no one could float it. Sometimes Jaime calmly
considered the convenience of slipping out of his wretched predicament
with neither humiliation nor dishonor by letting himself be found some
afternoon in the garden asleep forever under an orange tree with a
revolver in his hand.
One day in this frame of mind, a crony gave him an idea as he was
leaving the Casino in the small hours of the night, one of those moments
in which nervous insomnia causes a person to see things in an
extraordinary light in which they stand out clearly. Don Benito Valls,
the rich Jew, was very fond of him. Several times he had intervened,
unsought, in his affairs, saving him from immediate ruin. It was due to
personal liking for Febrer and to respect for his name. Valls had a
single heiress, and, moreover, he was an invalid; the prolific
exuberance characteristic of his race had not been fulfilled in him. His
daughter Catalina, when she was younger, had wished to be a nun, but,
now that she was past twenty, she felt a strong desire for the pomps and
vanities of this world, and she expressed tender sympathy for Febrer
whenever his misfortunes were discussed in her hearing.
Jaime recoiled from the proposition with almost as much astonishment as
Mammy Antonia. A Chueta! The idea, however, began to fasten itself upon
his mind, lubricated in its incessant hammering by the ever increasing
poverty and necessity which grew with the passing days. Why not? Valls'
daughter was the richest heiress on the island, and money possessed
neither blood nor race.
At last he had yielded to the urging of his friends, officious mediators
between himself and the family of the girl, and that morning he was on
his way to breakfast at the house in Valldemosa where Valls resided the
greater part of the year for relief from the asthma which was choking
him.
Jaime made an effort to remember Catalina. He had seen her several times
on the streets of Palma--a good figure, a pleasant face! When she should
live far from her kindred and should dress better, she would be quite
presentable. But--could he love her?
Febrer smiled skeptically. Was love indispensable to marriage? Matrimony
was a trip in double harness for the rest of life, and one only needed
to seek in the woman those qualities demanded of a traveling companion;
good disposition, identical tastes, the same likes and dislikes in
eating and drinking. Love! Every one believed he had a right to it,
while love was like talent, like beauty, like fortune, a special gift
which only rare and privileged persons might enjoy. By good luck,
deception came to conceal this cruel inequality, and all human beings
ended their days, thinking of their youth with melancholy longing,
believing they had really known love, when they had in reality
experienced nothing but a youthful delirium.
Love was a beautiful thing, but not indispensable to matrimony nor to
existence. The important thing was to choose a good companion for the
rest of the journey; to set the pace of the two to the same tune, so
that there should be no kicking over the traces nor collisions; to
dominate the nerves so that there should be no jar during the continual
contact of the common existence; to be able to lie down together like
good comrades, with mutual respect, without wounding each other with the
knees nor jabbing each other in the ribs with the elbows. He expected to
find all these things and to consider himself well content.
Suddenly Valldemosa appeared before his eyes above the crest of a hill,
surrounded by mountains. The tower of La Cartuja, with its decorations
of green tiles, rose above the foliage of the gardens and the cells.
Febrer saw a carriage standing in a turn of the road. A man alighted
from it, waving his arms so that Jaime's driver would stop his horses.
Then he opened the carriage door and climbed in, smiling, taking a seat
beside Febrer.
"Hello Captain!" exclaimed Jaime in astonishment.
"You didn't expect me, eh? I'm going to the breakfast, too; I have
invited myself. What a surprise it will be for my brother!"
Jaime pressed his hand. It was one of his most loyal friends, Captain
Pablo Valls.