Dona Perecta

B >> B. Perez Galdos >> Dona Perecta


"In two words, Pepe, the question is this: Caballuco is--"

She could not go on for laughing.

"Is--I don't know just what," said Don Inocencio, "of one of the Troya
girls, of Mariquita Juana, if I am not mistaken."

"And he is jealous! After his horse, the first thing in creation for him
is Mariquilla Troya."

"A pretty insinuation that!" exclaimed Dona Perfecta. "Poor Cristobal!
Did you suppose that a person like my nephew--let us hear, what were you
going to say to him? Speak."

"Senor Don Jose and I will talk together presently," responded the bravo
of the town brusquely.

And without another word he left the room.

Shortly afterward Pepe Rey left the dining-room to retire to his
own room. In the hall he found himself face to face with his Trojan
antagonist, and he could not repress a smile at the sight of the fierce
and gloomy countenance of the offended lover.

"A word with you," said the latter, planting himself insolently in front
of the engineer. "Do you know who I am?"

As he spoke he laid his heavy hand on the young man's shoulder with
such insolent familiarity that the latter, incensed, flung him off with
violence, saying:

"It is not necessary to crush one to say that."

The bravo, somewhat disconcerted, recovered himself in a moment, and
looking at Rey with provoking boldness, repeated his refrain:

"Do you know who I am?"

"Yes; I know now that you are a brute."

He pushed the bully roughly aside and went into his room. As traced on
the excited brain of our unfortunate friend at this moment, his plan of
action might be summed up briefly and definitely as follows: To break
Caballuco's head without loss of time; then to take leave of his aunt in
severe but polite words which should reach her soul; to bid a cold adieu
to the canon and give an embrace to the inoffensive Don Cayetano;
to administer a thrashing to Uncle Licurgo, by way of winding up the
entertainment, and leave Orbajosa that very night, shaking the dust from
his shoes at the city gates.

But in the midst of all these mortifications and persecutions the
unfortunate young man had not ceased to think of another unhappy being,
whom he believed to be in a situation even more painful and distressing
than his own. One of the maid-servants followed the engineer into his
room.

"Did you give her my message?" he asked.

"Yes, senor, and she gave me this."

Rey took from the girl's hand a fragment of a newspaper, on the margin
of which he read these words:

"They say you are going away. I shall die if you do."

When he returned to the dining-room Uncle Licurgo looked in at the door
and asked:

"At what hour do you want the horse?"

"At no hour," answered Rey quickly.

"Then you are not going to-night?" said Dona Perfecta. "Well, it is
better to wait until to-morrow."

"I am not going to-morrow, either."

"When are you going, then?"

"We will see presently," said the young man coldly, looking at his aunt
with imperturbable calmness. "For the present I do not intend to go
away."

His eyes flashed forth a fierce challenge.

Dona Perfecta turned first red, then pale. She looked at the canon, who
had taken off his gold spectacles to wipe them, and then fixed her
eyes successively on each of the other persons in the room, including
Caballuco, who, entering shortly before, had seated himself on the
edge of a chair. Dona Perfecta looked at them as a general looks at
his trusty body-guard. Then she studied the thoughtful and serene
countenance of her nephew--of that enemy, who, by a strategic movement,
suddenly reappeared before her when she believed him to be in shameful
flight.

Alas! Bloodshed, ruin, and desolation! A great battle was about to be
fought.



CHAPTER XVI

NIGHT

Orbajosa slept. The melancholy street-lamps were shedding their last
gleams at street-corners and in by-ways, like tired eyes struggling in
vain against sleep. By their dim light, wrapped in their cloaks, glided
past like shadows, vagabonds, watchmen, and gamblers. Only the hoarse
shout of the drunkard or the song of the serenader broke the peaceful
silence of the historic city. Suddenly the "Ave Maria Purisima" of some
drunken watchman would be heard, like a moan uttered in its sleep by the
town.

In Dona Perfecta's house also silence reigned, unbroken but for a
conversation which was taking place between Don Cayetano and Pepe Rey,
in the library of the former. The savant was seated comfortably in
the arm-chair beside his study table, which was covered with papers
of various kinds containing notes, annotations, and references, all
arranged in the most perfect order. Rey's eyes were fixed on the heap of
papers, but his thoughts were doubtless far away from this accumulated
learning.

"Perfecta," said the antiquary, "although she is an excellent woman, has
the defect of allowing herself to be shocked by any little act of folly.
In these provincial towns, my dear friend, the slightest slip is dearly
paid for. I see nothing particular in your having gone to the Troyas'
house. I fancy that Don Inocencio, under his cloak of piety, is
something of a mischief-maker. What has he to do with the matter?"

"We have reached a point, Senor Don Cayetano, in which it is necessary
to take a decisive resolution. I must see Rosario and speak with her."

"See her, then!"

"But they will not let me," answered the engineer, striking the table
with his clenched hand. "Rosario is kept a prisoner."

"A prisoner!" repeated the savant incredulously. "The truth is that I do
not like her looks or her hair, and still less the vacant expression
in her beautiful eyes. She is melancholy, she talks little, she
weeps--friend Don Jose, I greatly fear that the girl may be attacked by
the terrible malady to which so many of the members of my family have
fallen victims."

"A terrible malady! What is it?"

"Madness--or rather mania. Not a single member of my family has been
free from it. I alone have escaped it."

"You! But leaving aside the question of madness," said Rey, with
impatience, "I wish to see Rosario."

"Nothing more natural. But the isolation in which her mother keeps
her is a hygienic measure, dear Pepe, and the only one that has been
successfully employed with the various members of my family. Consider
that the person whose presence and voice would make the strongest
impression on Rosarillo's delicate nervous system is the chosen of her
heart."

"In spite of all that," insisted Pepe, "I wish to see her."

"Perhaps Perfecta will not oppose your doing so," said the savant,
giving his attention to his notes and papers. "I don't want to take any
responsibility in the matter."

The engineer, seeing that he could obtain nothing from the good
Polentinos, rose to retire.

"You are going to work," he said, "and I will not trouble you any
longer."

"No, there is time enough. See the amount of precious information that
I collected to-day. Listen: 'In 1537 a native of Orbajosa, called
Bartolome del Hoyo, went to Civita-Vecchia in one of the galleys of
the Marquis of Castel Rodrigo.' Another: 'In the same year two brothers
named Juan and Rodrigo Gonzalez del Arco embarked in one of the six
ships which sailed from Maestricht on the 20th of February, and which
encountered in the latitude of Calais an English vessel and the Flemish
fleet commanded by Van Owen.' That was truly an important exploit of
our navy. I have discovered that it was an Orbajosan, one Mateo Diaz
Coronel, an ensign in the guards, who, in 1709, wrote and published
in Valencia the 'Metrical Encomium, Funeral Chant, Lyrical Eulogy,
Numerical Description, Glorious Sufferings, and Sorrowful Glories of the
Queen of the Angels.' I possess a most precious copy of this work, which
is worth the mines of Peru. Another Orbajosan was the author of that
famous 'Treatise on the Various Styles of Horsemanship' which I
showed you yesterday; and, in short, there is not a step I take in the
labyrinth of unpublished history that I do not stumble against some
illustrious compatriot. It is my purpose to draw all these names out of
the unjust obscurity and oblivion in which they have so long lain. How
pure a joy, dear Pepe, to restore all their lustre to the glories, epic
and literary, of one's native place! And how could a man better employ
the scant intellect with which Heaven has endowed him, the fortune which
he has inherited, and the brief period of time on earth allowed to even
the longest life. Thanks to me it will be seen that Orbajosa is the
illustrious cradle of Spanish genius. But what do I say? Is not its
illustrious ancestry evident in the nobleness and high-mindedness of
the present Urbs Augustan generation? We know few places where all the
virtues, unchoked by the malefic weeds of vice, grow more luxuriantly.
Here all is peace, mutual respect, Christian humility. Charity is
practised here as it was in Biblical times; here envy is unknown; here
the criminal passions are unknown, and if you hear thieves and murderers
spoken of, you may be sure that they are not the children of this
noble soil; or, that if they are, they belong to the number of unhappy
creatures perverted by the teachings of demagogues. Here you will see
the national character in all its purity--upright, noble, incorruptible,
pure, simple, patriarchal, hospitable, generous. Therefore it is that
I live so happy in this solitude far from the turmoil of cities where,
alas! falsehood and vice reign. Therefore it is that the many friends
whom I have in Madrid have not been able to tempt me from this place;
therefore it is that I spend my life in the sweet companionship of my
faithful townspeople and my books, breathing the wholesome atmosphere of
integrity, which is gradually becoming circumscribed in our Spain to the
humble and Christian towns that have preserved it with the emanations of
their virtues. And believe me, my dear Pepe, this peaceful isolation has
greatly contributed to preserve me from the terrible malady connatural
in my family. In my youth I suffered, like my brothers and my father,
from a lamentable propensity to the most absurd manias; but here you
have me so miraculously cured that all I know of the malady is what I
see of it in others. And it is for that reason that I am so uneasy about
my little niece."

"I am rejoiced that the air of Orbajosa has proved so beneficial to
you," said Rey, unable to resist the jesting mood that, by a strange
contradiction, came over him in the midst of his sadness. "With me it
has agreed so badly that I think I shall soon become mad if I remain in
it. Well, good-night, and success to your labors."

"Good-night."

Pepe went to his room, but feeling neither a desire for sleep or the
need of physical repose,--on the contrary, a violent excitation of mind
which impelled him to move, to act,--he walked up and down the room,
torturing himself with useless cavilling. After a time he opened the
window which overlooked the garden and, leaning his elbows on the
parapet, he gazed out on the limitless darkness of the night. Nothing
could be seen, but he who is absorbed in his own thoughts sees with the
mental vision, and Pepe Rey, his eyes fixed on the darkness, saw the
varied panorama of his misfortunes unroll itself upon it before him. The
obscurity did not permit him to see the flowers of the earth, nor those
of the heavens, which are the stars. The very absence of light produced
the effect of an illusory movement in the masses of foliage, which
seemed to stretch away, to recede slowly, and come curling back like the
waves of a shadowy sea. A vast flux and reflux, a strife between forces
vaguely comprehended, agitated the silent sky. The mathematician,
contemplating this strange projection of his soul upon the night, said
to himself:

"The battle will be terrible. Let us see who will come out of it
victorious."

The nocturnal insects whispered in his ear mysterious words. Here
a shrill chirp; there a click, like the click made with the tongue;
further on, plaintive murmurs; in the distance a tinkle like that of
the bell on the neck of the wandering ox. Suddenly Rey heard a strange
sound, a rapid note, that could be produced only by the human tongue and
lips. This sibilant breathing passed through the young man's brain like
a flash of lightning. He felt that swift "s-s-s" dart snake-like through
him, repeated again and then again, with augmented intensity. He looked
all around, then he looked toward the upper part of the house, and he
fancied that in one of the windows he could distinguish an object like
a white bird flapping its wings. Through Pepe Rey's excited mind flashed
instantly the idea of the phoenix, of the dove, of the regal heron, and
yet the bird he saw was noting more than a handkerchief.

The engineer sprang from the balcony into the garden. Observing
attentively, he saw the hand and the face of his cousin. He thought
he could perceive the gesture commonly employed of imposing silence by
laying the finger on the lips. Then the dear shade pointed downward and
disappeared. Pepe Rey returned quickly to this room, entered the hall
noiselessly, and walked slowly forward. He felt his heart beat with
violence. He waited for a few moments, and at last he heard distinctly
light taps on the steps of the stairs. One, two, three--the sounds were
produced by a pair of little shoes.

He walked in the direction whence they proceeded, and stretched out
his hands in the obscurity to assist the person who was descending the
stairs. In his soul there reigned an exalted and profound tenderness,
but--why seek to deny it--mingling with this tender feeling, there
suddenly arose within him, like an infernal inspiration, another
sentiment, a fierce desire for revenge. The steps continued to descend,
coming nearer and nearer. Pepe Rey went forward, and a pair of hands,
groping in the darkness, came in contact with his own. The two pairs of
hands were united in a close clasp.



CHAPTER XVII

LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

The hall was long and broad. At one end of it was the door of the room
occupied by the engineer, in the centre that of the dining-room, and at
the other end were the staircase and a large closed door reached by a
step. This door opened into a chapel in which the Polentinos performed
their domestic devotions. Occasionally the holy sacrifice of the mass
was celebrated in it.

Rosario led her cousin to the door of the chapel and then sank down on
the doorstep.

"Here?" murmured Pepe Rey.

From the movements of Rosarito's right hand he comprehended that she was
blessing herself.

"Rosario, dear cousin, thanks for allowing me to see you!" he exclaimed,
embracing her ardently.

He felt the girl's cold fingers on his lips, imposing silence. He kissed
them rapturously.

"You are frozen. Rosario, why do you tremble so?"

Her teeth were chattering, and her whole frame trembled convulsively.
Rey felt the burning heat of his cousin's face against his own, and he
cried in alarm:

"Your forehead is burning! You are feverish."

"Very."

"Are you really ill?"

"Yes."

"And you have left your room----"

"To see you."

The engineer wrapped his arms around her to protect her from the cold,
but it was not enough.

"Wait," he said quickly, rising. "I am going to my room to bring my
travelling rug."

"Put out the light, Pepe."

Rey had left the lamp burning in his room, through the door of which
issued a faint streak of light, illuminating the hall. He returned in an
instant. The darkness was now profound. Groping his way along the wall
he reached the spot where his cousin was sitting, and wrapped the rug
carefully around her.

"You are comfortable now, my child."

"Yes, so comfortable! With you!"

"With me--and forever!" exclaimed the young man, with exaltation.

But he observed that she was releasing herself from his arms and was
rising.

"What are you doing?"

A metallic sound was heard. Rosario had put the key into the invisible
lock and was cautiously opening the door on the threshold of which they
had been sitting. The faint odor of dampness, peculiar to rooms that
have been long shut up, issued from the place, which was as dark as a
tomb. Pepe Rey felt himself being guided by the hand, and his cousin's
voice said faintly:

"Enter!"

They took a few steps forward. He imagined himself being led to an
unknown Elysium by the angel of night. Rosario groped her way. At last
her sweet voice sounded again, murmuring:

"Sit down."

They were beside a wooden bench. Both sat down. Pepe Rey embraced
Rosario again. As he did so, his head struck against a hard body.

"What is this?" he asked.

"The feet."

"Rosario--what are you saying?"

"The feet of the Divine Jesus, of the image of Christ crucified, that we
adore in my house."

Pepe Rey felt a cold chill strike through him.

"Kiss them," said the young girl imperiously.

The mathematician kissed the cold feet of the holy image.

"Pepe," then cried the young girl, pressing her cousin's hand ardently
between her own, "do you believe in God?"

"Rosario! What are you saying? What absurdities are you imagining?"
responded her cousin, perplexed.

"Answer me."

Pepe Rey felt drops of moisture on his hands.

"Why are you crying?" he said, greatly disturbed. "Rosario, you are
killing me with your absurd doubts. Do I believe in God? Do you doubt
it?"

"I do not doubt it; but they all say that you are an atheist."

"You would suffer in my estimation, you would lose your aureole of
purity--your charm--if you gave credit to such nonsense."

"When I heard them accuse you of being an atheist, although I could
bring no proof to the contrary, I protested from the depths of my soul
against such a calumny. You cannot be an atheist. I have within me as
strong and deep a conviction of your faith as of my own."

"How wisely you speak! Why, then, do you ask me if I believe in God?"

"Because I wanted to hear it from your own lips, and rejoice in hearing
you say it. It is so long since I have heard the sound of your voice!
What greater happiness than to hear it again, saying: 'I believe in
God?'"

"Rosario, even the wicked believe in him. If there be atheists, which I
doubt, they are the calumniators, the intriguers with whom the world is
infested. For my part, intrigues and calumnies matter little to me; and
if you rise superior to them and close your heart against the discord
which a perfidious hand would sow in it, nothing shall interfere with
our happiness."

"But what is going on around us? Pepe, dear Pepe, do you believe in the
devil?"

The engineer was silent. The darkness of the chapel prevented Rosario
from seeing the smile with which her cousin received this strange
question.

"We must believe in him," he said at last.

"What is going on? Mamma forbids me to see you; but, except in regard
to the atheism, she does not say any thing against you. She tells me to
wait, that you will decide; that you are going away, that you are coming
back----Speak to me with frankness--have you formed a bad opinion of my
mother?"

"Not at all," replied Rey, urged by a feeling of delicacy.

"Do you not believe, as I do, that she loves us both, that she desires
only our good, and that we shall in the end obtain her consent to our
wishes?"

"If you believe it, I do too. Your mama adores us both. But, dear
Rosario, it must be confessed that the devil has entered this house."

"Don't jest!" she said affectionately. "Ah! Mamma is very good. She has
not once said to me that you were unworthy to be my husband. All she
insists upon is the atheism. They say, besides, that I have manias, and
that I have the mania now of loving you with all my soul. In our family
it is a rule not to oppose directly the manias that are hereditary in
it, because to oppose them aggravates them."

"Well, I believe that there are skilful physicians at your side who
have determined to cure you, and who will, in the end, my adored girl,
succeed in doing so."

"No, no; a thousand times no!" exclaimed Rosario, leaning her forehead
on her lover's breast. "I am willing to be mad if I am with you. For
you I am suffering, for you I am ill; for you I despise life and I risk
death. I know it now--to-morrow I shall be worse, I shall be dangerously
ill, I shall die. What does it matter to me?"

"You are not ill," he responded, with energy; "there is nothing the
matter with you but an agitation of mind which naturally brings with it
some slight nervous disturbances; there is nothing the matter with you
but the suffering occasioned by the horrible coercion which they are
using with you. Your simple and generous soul does not comprehend it.
You yield; you forgive those who injure you; you torment yourself,
attributing your suffering to baleful, supernatural influences; you
suffer in silence; you give your innocent neck to the executioner, you
allow yourself to be slain, and the very knife which is plunged into
your breast seems to you the thorn of a flower that has pierced you in
passing. Rosario, cast those ideas from your mind; consider our real
situation, which is serious; seek its cause where it really is, and
do not give way to your fears; do not yield to the tortures which are
inflicted upon you, making yourself mentally and physically ill. The
courage which you lack would restore you to health, because you are not
really ill, my dear girl, you are--do you wish me to say it?--you are
frightened, terrified. You are under what the ancients, not knowing how
to express it, called an evil spell. Courage, Rosario, trust in me! Rise
and follow me. That is all I will say."

"Ah, Pepe--cousin! I believe that you are right," exclaimed Rosario,
drowned in tears. "Your words resound within my heart, arousing in it
new energy, new life. Here in this darkness, where we cannot see each
other's faces, an ineffable light emanates from you and inundates my
soul. What power have you to transform me in this way? The moment I
saw you I became another being. In the days when I did not see you I
returned to my former insignificance, my natural cowardice. Without you,
my Pepe, I live in Limbo. I will do as you tell me, I will arise and
follow you. We will go together wherever you wish. Do you know that I
feel well? Do you know that I have no fever: that I have recovered my
strength; that I want to run about and cry out; that my whole being is
renewed and enlarged, and multiplied a hundred-fold in order to adore
you? Pepe, you are right. I am not sick, I am only afraid; or rather,
bewitched."

"That is it, bewitched."

"Bewitched! Terrible eyes look at me, and I remain mute and trembling.
I am afraid, but of what? You alone have the strange power of calling me
back to life. Hearing you, I live again. I believe if I were to die and
you were to pass by my grave, that deep under the ground I should feel
your footsteps. Oh, if I could see you now! But you are here beside me,
and I cannot doubt that it is you. So many days without seeing you! I
was mad. Each day of solitude appeared to me a century. They said to
me, to-morrow and to-morrow, and always to-morrow. I looked out of
the window at night, and the light of the lamp in your room served
to console me. At times your shadow on the window was for me a divine
apparition. I stretched out my arms to you, I shed tears and cried out
inwardly, without daring to do so with my voice. When I received the
message you sent me with the maid, when I received your letter telling
me that you were going away, I grew very sad, I thought my soul was
leaving my body and that I was dying slowly. I fell, like the bird
wounded as it flies, that falls and, falling, dies. To-night, when I
saw that you were awake so late, I could not resist the longing I had to
speak to you; and I came down stairs. I believe that all the courage of
my life has been used up in this single act, and that now I can never
be any thing again but a coward. But you will give me courage; you will
give me strength; you will help me, will you not? Pepe, my dear cousin,
tell me that you will; tell me that I am strong, and I will be strong;
tell me that I am not ill, and I will not be ill. I am not ill now. I
feel so well that I could laugh at my ridiculous maladies."

As she said this she felt herself clasped rapturously in her cousin's
arms. An "Oh!" was heard, but it came, not from her lips, but from his,
for in bending his head, he had struck it violently against the feet of
the crucifix. In the darkness it is that the stars are seen.

In the exalted state of his mind, by a species of hallucination natural
in the darkness, it seemed to Pepe Rey not that his head had struck
against the sacred foot, but that this had moved, warning him in the
briefest and most eloquent manner. Raising his head he said, half
seriously, half gayly:

"Lord, do not strike me; I will do nothing wrong."

At the same moment Rosario took the young man's hand and pressed it
against her heart. A voice was heard, a pure, grave, angelic voice, full
of feeling, saying:

"Lord whom I adore, Lord God of the world, and guardian of my house and
of my family; Lord whom Pepe also adores; holy and blessed Christ who
died on the cross for our sins; before thee, before thy wounded body,
before thy forehead crowned with thorns, I say that this man is my
husband, and that, after thee, he is the being whom my heart loves most;
I say that I declare him to be my husband, and that I will die before
I belong to another. My heart and my soul are his. Let not the world
oppose our happiness, and grant me the favor of this union, which I
swear to be true and good before the world, as it is in my conscience."