To an Angel · V

And was he shot?—we asked anxiously.”

—Why, of course! As the General desired, at the same time the grave was dug for the husband and for the lover. I, after that dreadful day, left M——, where tedium was consuming me. Upon returning, five years later, I had the curiosity to learn what had become of Captain Ortiz’s wife... and here is what we were saying: I learned that she was living peacefully, married a second time to a wealthy gentleman. Nevertheless, in M—— the cause of Ramiro’s sad end was notorious...

Thus Carmona finished his tale, and we saw him bow his head, overwhelmed by cruel memories.

Laura’s Tresses

Mother and daughter lived, if living it could be called, in a damp garret, down to which one descended by the worn steps of a staircase hollowed out in the very earth: light entered with difficulty, wan and timorous, through a small grated window; and the single room served them as kitchen, bedroom, and parlour.

Shut up there Laura spent her days, working diligently at her lace borders and points, never going out or seeing the light of the sun, tending her ailing mother, and comforting her whenever she railed against adverse fortune. To find two ladies of ancient lineage reduced to such an extremity, formerly owners of estates, pastures, and jewels in abundance! To go to bed by the light of an oil lamp, they whom pages had lighted with wax candles in silver candelabra! The now destitute lady could not endure it, and when her daughter, in the calm tone of resignation, advised her to submit to the divine will, her lips exhaled murmurs of impatience and angry curses.

As misfortunes can always increase, there came a winter of the severest kind, and Laura lacked the work by which she earned their sustenance. Decent poverty was replaced by grim misery; scarcity, by hunger with sunken cheeks and long, yellow teeth.

Then, with bitter irony, the mother mocked Laura, who thought, silly prude and fool that she was, to secure bread by means of needlework and constant vigils. A fine bread she would eat as soon as she went blind! She would go out with a little dog to beg alms... Ah, if she were not such an idiot and so bad a daughter—possessing that waist, that face, and that mane of hair like refined gold, which reached down to her feet—she would not let her mother faint for lack of nourishment! On hearing these insinuations, Laura shuddered with shame and wished to answer in anger; but remembering that her mother had been fasting for many hours, she covered her face with her hands and burst into sobs. Suddenly, like one who takes a sudden and firm resolution, she rose to her feet, wrapped herself in a wide cloak of dark wool, and went out into the street, which she seldom trod, convinced that retirement is the safeguard of modesty. Without hesitating she went in the direction of a little shop she had glimpsed and where she believed she could sell the only treasure of which she was secretly vain and proud. The owner of the secondhand shop was the crafty crone Brasilda—a great arranger of wills with touches of the sorceress—and, her face closely muffled, Laura entered the dubious abode.

As Brasilda maliciously asked what the veiled and graceful girl brought to sell, Laura, without ceasing to hide her countenance in the folds of her hood, turned her back and displayed outspread her splendid golden hair, glossy and softer than silk, which, in magnificent display, overflowing the hem of her skirt, swept the floor. “This I sell for ten escudos,” she exclaimed, “and let it be cut this very moment.” The proposal suited the old crone, because the mass of hair was enough for many wigs and hairpieces, and seizing a pair of shears she reaped and tonsured the abundant locks. Observing that the girl continued to hide her face, and fancying she noticed that she was weeping softly, she hissed in her ear: “If you are a maid and as beautiful as your hair promises, here there await you not ten escudos, but a hundred or two hundred, whenever you take the fancy.”

Laura gathered up the money and walked away without answering a word; at the door she passed a gentleman of good figure and carriage, who took no notice of her: Laura did look at him stealthily, and involuntarily found him handsome. The gentleman entering the witch’s house was Don Luis de Meneses, the wealthiest, freest, and most reckless youth in the whole city, who did not visit Mother Brasilda without good reason, but resorted thither as the hunter does to be shown where the game lies, and to have it tracked down and cornered so that he may secure and dispatch it at pleasure.

After a while of conversation, Don Luis caught sight of the sovereign golden tresses, which the old woman had spread out upon a white cloth, and in which the gleams of the lamp, always alight in the gloom of the shop, shimmered as upon a lake of gold. “Of what woman is that hair?” asked the gallant in surprise.—“Upon my faith I know not, my boy,” answered the old crone.—“A girl has just been here, very graceful of body, but so closely veiled that I did not manage to see her face; she sold me that mane, took the money, and with strange secrecy went off a minute before you entered...”

“‘Why did you not follow her, you precious rascal?’—‘Because no doubt she is poorer than church mice, and will return to earn the hundred escudos I offered her...’—‘Accursed witch! That hair is mine, and the woman too, if she appears.’ And Don Luis loosed his purse-strings, delicately took up the cloth and the treasure it contained, and concealing it beneath his short cloak, returned to his house.”

From that day a surprising change took place in Don Luis. Renouncing his gallantry and adventures, forgetting gambling, brawls, and duels, he seemed another man. He was to be seen, to be sure, in the street, on the promenade, in church; his eager eyes incessantly searched and scrutinised, seeking something of great importance to him; but at nightfall he retired home, and in an honest and orderly life the pious old folk, of grave demeanour and large rosaries, found nothing in him to reprove. Nor were there wanting those who said that the young man, touched by grace, was thinking of becoming a Capuchin; for they neither knew nor could suspect that Don Luis was in love, blindly in love, with the golden tresses.

Having placed it respectfully upon a cushion of silver tissue, he spent idle hours before it, now kissing it in an ideal ecstasy of devotion as if it were a venerated relic, now crushing it with the frenzy of a lover who would tear and bite the very thing he adores. Don Luis’s imagination being excited by the sight of that cascade of gold, that mane wherein Phoebus seemed to have left his playful rays imprisoned, and from which exhaled a fresh fragrance, a scent of youth and purity, he pictured the trunk to which such foliage belonged and divined the long, copious, perfumed locks falling in tresses and strands over snowy shoulders, over virginal forms of rose and mother-of-pearl, or encircling, like the nimbus of a holy image, a countenance of angelic expression wherein opened the blue flowers of luminous eyes. There were thoughts and misgivings that drove the dreaming lover frantic. Who knows whether the unhappy beauty, after selling her hair to preserve her virtue, had had to lose her virtue to preserve her life?

Under the strain of such a thought, Don Luis abhorred food, consumed himself with rage, and burned with strange jealousy. Constantly roaming the streets, he never ceased to inquire, attempting to peer through all the shutters and penetrate all the gratings and lattices. Wasted labour! No youthful head covered with short golden ringlets of that unique, incomparable hue presented itself to his eyes. Don Luis grew thin, fell away in looks, and was on the brink of raving each time the old sorceress Brasilda, bewildered and disconsolate, repeated, raising her withered hands:

“A witch she must be too, that golden-haired girl, having greased herself and flown up the chimney... She appears not, my boy, however much I wear myself out seeking her...”

Don Luis, already lost with love, like a man who has been given a strange love-potion, reached the point of fearing he would die of passion and jealous fury, and pressing to his heart the tresses, whose curls caressed his feverish hands, he made a vow.—“Let me find your mistress, and be she rich or poor, good or bad, noble or of plebeian stock, with her I will marry. I take as witness this Crucifix listening to me.”—After the vow, full of hope and illusion Don Luis went out into the street, and as dusk fell, being closely muffled, he was stopped near his door by a poor woman, wrapped and covered in a very old woolen hood.

—Noble sir—she said in a plaintive and humble voice—, do they need in your worship’s house a good and diligent seamstress? There is nowhere to work, and my mother has nothing to eat.

—That is my house—answered Don Luis absently, thinking of his fantastic love—; come tomorrow, for you shall have plenty of work... Take this on account—and he left an escudo in her outstretched hand.

The next day Laura, seated in the embrasure of an iron-grated window in Don Luis’s house, with a basket of white linen before her, was sewing in silence, taking no part in the chatter of the duennas; she suffered on leaving her home, her sick mother, her retirement; fatigue flushed her formerly pale cheeks. Through the grating the sunbeams entered and caught in the curls, short and silky as the down of a fledgling bird, of her uncovered head, which the hood no longer veiled. And, as it happened, Don Luis passed by so absorbed that he did not even look at the young seamstress. But she, recognising in Don Luis the handsome gentleman whom she had never ceased to remember—the one she had seen as she came out from selling her tresses at the witch’s house—let out an involuntary cry... Hearing it, Don Luis turned, and clasping his hands, believed that some celestial apparition was visiting him, for he recognized the unique tint of the blond locks in the curly head bathed in the sun... And turning to the duennas and the serving-maids with authority and pride, he said solemnly:

“Work no more; today is a holiday; greet your mistress...”

An Honest Delinquent

Of all the condemned men I have attended in their final moments—Father Téllez told us, being on that day animated and talkative—the one who inspired in me the greatest pity was an old cobbler, the murderer of his only daughter. The crime was horrible. The cobbler, after having kept the poor girl strictly locked between four walls; after having scolded her for looking out of the window; after having mistreated her, beating her for slight oversights, ended by coming to her bed one night and plunging into her throat the knife used for cutting sole-leather. The poor creature seems not to have had time even to utter a cry, because the blow severed the carotid. Those knives are a terrible weapon, and the father’s hand did not tremble; so that the girl passed, without transition, from sleep into eternity.

The indignation of the neighbourhood gossips and of all who saw the corpse of a lovely girl of seventeen, so treacherously sacrificed, weighed upon the jury; and as the murderer made no defense and seemed half-witted, they condemned him to the extreme penalty. When I had to exercise my sacred ministry with him, to tell the truth, I feared to find, behind a wild beast’s face, a heart of cork or monstrous and savage feelings. What I saw was an old man with snow-white hair, an emaciated face, and reddened eyes, by reason of the continuous flow of tears that slowly glided down his sunken cheeks, and at times stopped upon his trembling lips, where the criminal involuntarily drank them and tasted their bitterness.

Far from finding him rebellious to the divine word, scarcely had I entered his cell than he clasped my knees and begged me to hear him in confession, entreating me also that, after the sentence of justice was carried out, I should make his revelations public in the newspapers, so that his memory might be rehabilitated and his honour remain as was fitting. I did not deem it proper to accede in this particular to his desires; but today I invoke them, and they authorise me to tell you the story. I will endeavour to recall the very language he used, and will not omit the repetitions, which prove the derangement of his wretched brain:

—Father confessor—he began by saying—, first of all know that I am a decent man, every inch a gentleman. That child... whom I killed... was born... a year after I married. She was pretty, and her mother too... indeed she was! beautiful, a joy to look upon! I was getting on in years... and she, a dashing young woman, fresher than the roses themselves. I mean the mother, sir; I mean her mother, because with the mother we must begin. Children, just as they inherit the money of those who have it... inherit other things... You, who must know a great deal, will understand me. I know nothing, but... in point of being a gentleman no one has ever beaten me!

The mother... I saw myself in her eyes, because I loved her with all my soul, as befits a good husband. I gave her presents; I worked day and night so that she might have her fine clothes and her shawl and her earrings, and above all... because that comes first! her wholesome daily stew, and when she gave birth, her pint of wine and her chicken... My conscience does not reproach me with having stinted her of a single real. She was merry and sang like a lark, and hearing her took my troubles away. The bad part was that as they praised her voice and her songs, and folk began to crowd around to listen to her, with one arriving and another hanging about, this one slipping in a gibe, and that one paying a compliment... in short, I saw things were taking an ugly turn, and I spoke to her to the point. Do you know what she answered me? That she could not help it, that she liked the crowd and hearing them cheer her, that everyone is according to their nature, and that I should not split her head with sermons... A month later—I don’t forget the date, Candlemas Day—she disappeared from home, without even giving a kiss to the child... who was five years old and was like a ray of sunshine.

“Here—interposed Father Téllez—he had a fit of sobbing, and I was very nearly moved to tears myself, although the custom of attending condemned prisoners hardens and seasons one. I comforted him as much as possible, gave him a sip of anisette to drink, and the wretched man continued.”

“I learned afterwards that she was going about in theatre choruses, and God knows how... and what most racked my brains—for honour works hard!—was that my friends said to me, on passing before my workshop: ‘You have no shame... If I were you, I’d kill her.’ From hearing it so much, the refrain stuck to me, and while I hammered leather, tap, tap, tap! I repeated aloud: ‘I have no shame... She ought to be killed!’ Only that I never found her, nor had I the heart to go in search of her. And as three years went by, no one came to me telling me to kill her, because she was roaming about Andalusia, until they took her away to America... goodness knows where! If she is alive and reads the papers and sees how her daughter died...!” The condemned man had a convulsive fit of laughter, and I quieted him once more by dint of exhortations and advice.

“As soon as the mother was out of my mind, I began to look after the child. I had nothing else to live for in the world. I resolved that she should not be ruined, nor bring another blot upon me, and I did not let her go even to the front door. Even if she said to me, for instance: ‘Father, I want to run about,’ or ‘Father, I feel like going to the little square’—nothing, I kept her in, letting her amuse herself with her canary, or with the picture-sheets, or with the pot of sweet basil, but without poking a finger outside! And as she grew up, and I realised that she was very pretty, as pretty as her mother, and like her as one drop to another... and with an angel’s voice too, my eyes opened wide, and I said: ‘No, as for you... you shall not bring disgrace upon me.’ And I turned myself into a spy, and watched over her even in her sleep, and not content with keeping her indoors, I paced the alley beneath her window to see if any idler was hanging about there; so much so that the chestnut woman at the corner said to me: ‘Grandfather, you are cracked. Who ever heard of keeping watch on his own daughter? What suspicious old men!’ But I could not help it. All the simplicity and good faith I had had with the mother now turned into distrust; it had stuck here between my eyebrows that my daughter would go astray, that it was certain she would go astray, especially if she took to singing; and I fell on my knees before her, and made her swear to me that she would never sing, even if the world should crumble. And she swore it: only that, as I was no longer the man I had been, a few mornings later, watching from the corner, I see her open the window, set about watering the flower-pots, and at the same time, vying with the canary, burst into song... My blood ran cold and my hands turned icy. I went back home, entered the girl’s room, seized her by the hair, and must have beaten her hard, for she screamed and wore a bandage for over a week. Do you suppose, Father, that she mended her ways? A fortnight later I am keeping watch again and again she looks out, and once more the singing, and opposite a group of young rascals who stop and shout compliments to her... I said nothing; I did not go in to punish her; and in the afternoon, while I hammered my leather, it seemed to me that a strange voice, like that of some rowdy laughing at me, said to me the same thing as twelve years before: ‘You have no shame... She ought to be killed.’ I ate my supper in deep sorrow, and after I went to bed, the same voice, over and over: ‘Kill her, kill her...’ Then I got up softly, took my tool, went on tiptoe, approached the bed, and with a single blow... Now let them do with me what they please, for I have redeemed my honour.”