To an Angel · 16

Well, there is nothing... and as far as I am concerned, let it be soon... I love you!”

As Mendoza finished the sentence, Martina turned toward her father, who was walking behind, exclaiming:

“I am not well... Take me to sit down... Your arm!”

She soon recovered, for joy may unhinge, but rarely does harm: and within two weeks the marriage of Martina and Mendoza was an official piece of news, and the ordering of the trousseau and finery was known, and the furniture and lodging of the couple were discussed.

The ceremony was fixed for the end of September. What need was there to wait? Love that is in season must be plucked, like ripe fruit. Cases were arriving with linens, silk gowns, bonnets, jewel boxes: in the drawing-room of Martina’s parents a broad table served as a showcase; friends came, inspected, approved, censured, and left pleased, disgruntled, or taciturn, according to their more or less generous disposition. Martina, every morning, triumphantly tore off a leaf of the calendar, already cut down to the date of the wedding. How few leaves remain! Ten... eight... only one little week! This Sunday is the last as an unmarried maid... Four days... Tomorrow... Yes, tomorrow at eight; there are the white gown, the white gloves, the fan, the orange blossom that arrived from Valencia and embalms the air. Lorenzo came in the evenings to keep his betrothed company and showed himself gallant, though ever grave.

On the eve of the wedding, Martina was waiting for him as usual in the small boudoir. Her mother, who kept watch over their conversations, did not believe it necessary that evening to stand guard: occupied with multiple household duties, she left her daughter alone. And Martina, instead of being glad, suddenly felt an oppressive, immense sorrow, a boundless desolation, a horrible fear of something inexplicable, founded upon nothing rational. Mendoza was already late. The bell rang, and by instinct Martina darted to the stairs. The servant presented her with a letter which «the young gentleman’s orderly» had just brought. A letter! Martina’s legs felt like cotton: she believed she could never walk the distance separating the anteroom from the boudoir. She drew near the lamp, broke the seal, read... Before her eyes, her heart, a faithful diviner, had read it.

Those excuses, those forced phrases of affection, those falsehoods with which he sought to palliate the infamous desertion, Martina had foreseen an hour before. And the reasons for the sudden departure, Martina knew full well that they were not those feigned in the letter, but others, which could not be told, yet which explained at once both the journey and the perpetual, invincible, mysterious melancholy of her betrothed... The abyss was summoning him once more; that which doubtless had never died was rising from the grave. Martina sank collapsed upon the sofa: she wept not: she moaned very low, like one who represses the cry of mortal pain. Nevertheless, the very violence of the blow, the indignation—a thousand confused sentiments—impelled her to rise, strike a match, set fire to the letter, open the window, and cast the ashes to the wind, as though fearing they might betray her. Seeking her parents thereupon, she declared to them in a firm, serene voice that she had chosen, of her own free will and deliberately, to renounce marrying Lorenzo Mendoza, whom they would see no more, for he was departing that very night upon the mail-train for Madrid.

Martina’s parents possessed a country house not far from the city, and thither they withdrew with their daughter, to let the first dust of the broken wedding settle. There they spent the winter; Martina seemed content. They spoke to her of journeys to the capital, abroad: she rejected the idea with distaste. Spring arrived, and they no longer thought of leaving their rural residence. As the following winter approached, they questioned Martina, and she begged, earnestly, for one more year of solitude. The same scene was repeated the next year; her parents were beginning to grow impatient: it seemed to them high time that their daughter returned to society and that another respectable, genuine suitor were found for her, who should erase the past from her memory. But at this juncture the old people fell ill, and within a few days of each other the grave carried them off, the father by a rheumatic fever and the mother by an inveterate affection of the heart. Martina, now alone, in deep mourning, refused to receive condolences or accept the consolation of friends, and shut herself up more than ever within the shelter of her walls and among the trees of her lonely estate. Some time went by. In Marineda people scarcely spoke of Martina any longer. Most regarded her as eccentric. No one visited her.

One afternoon the knocker of the courtyard gate was struck by a horseman mounted upon a small chestnut nag. The gardener went out to open, and gave the sacramental reply: the mistress was not at home, and moreover was not accustomed to receive visitors.

“Tell her—the rider objected, dismounting—that it is Don Lorenzo Mendoza!... It may be that then...”

Ten minutes later the gardener returned with a decisive, negative answer. Mendoza bowed his head and made a motion to remount. Suddenly, as though changing his mind and obeying an impulse, thrusting aside the gardener, he passed through the gate, entered the courtyard, mounted an exterior flight of steps draped with honeysuckle that gave access to the house, and stepped into a dark, silent parlour with half-closed casements. He heard a woman’s cry; he went straight toward the sound and clasped Martina in his arms. There were no words: all was expressed in endearments, inarticulate murmurs, senseless caresses on his part, first faintly repelled and then returned. Afterwards came the excuses, the entreaties, the explanations that Mendoza offered almost upon his knees, and she heard them trembling, faint, her head resting upon the petitioner’s shoulder. And there followed promises, oaths, protests of amendment and loyalty, seasons of bliss which Mendoza unfolded smiling, clasping his fingers in Martina’s, which offered no resistance. Night fell; the full moon rose white and peaceful; the honeysuckle exhaled its fragrant scent. The former betrothed were now lovers; spring was turning to summer; and the enraptured Mendoza did not perceive that Martina, in the midst of her delirium, at times moaned very low, like one who represses the cry of mortal pain—just as she had moaned years before on receiving the letter of farewell.

On the following morning, when Mendoza awoke, he did not see Martina: he called her loudly, and no one answered. At length the servants came; they knew their mistress had departed early, but they knew not whither...

In Marineda it was learned without astonishment the following week that Martina was living as a paying recluse in a convent at Compostela. What was never made known was that she had taken such a resolve to spare herself the shame of feeling herself dying of happiness beside him who had once deceived and betrayed her.

Apologue

Vicente had fallen in love with Laura on hearing her sing in an operetta wherein she performed, with delightful grace, a part between comic and pathetic. The natural beauty of the singer seemed greater, set off by a whimsical and original costume, in the glare of the footlights, which played upon the tawny sheen of her waving, loose tresses, floating below her knees. Laura was in those first happy years of the profession when a name, after becoming known, becomes famous; those years when the tiny spark of light turns into a star, and tributes, contracts, bouquets, jewels, portraits in illustrated journals, and laudatory articles warmed by enthusiasm rain upon the lyric artist, flattering her vanity, exalting her self-esteem, and causing her to dream of glory. Why, among the swarm of adorers buzzing about her, did Laura distinguish Vicente, why did she choose Vicente, an officer who possessed nothing but his sword and a surname, illustrious indeed: the sonorous Hispano-Arab name of Alcántara Zegrí?

The truth is that Laura’s choice was most prejudicial to her peace and happiness. Vicente Zegrí, as his friends called him, carried in his blood by atavism and racial tradition the corrosive virus of jealousy; and if this moral disease works havoc wherever it appears, its consequences cannot be calculated in a man who loves a woman of artistic profession, whose charms the public has, in a certain measure, a right to enjoy. Vicente was furious sooner than joyful; he drank the gall before tasting the honey, and never received the divine reward of his beloved’s endearments without their being embittered with the bitterness of death by dark suspicions, vile imaginations, and desperate misgivings. So much did this jealous torment and distress weigh upon him that one day—or, to tell the truth, one night when he had escorted Laura home from the theatre—he could no longer contain himself, and opened his heart, revealing the depth of the wound.

“My suffering is such—he declared, pressing his friend’s hands, which were frozen with terror—that I must take a decisive step, accomplish something definitive: if I go on thus, I shall go mad, and whatever I do, I wish to do it while sane, conscious of my actions. When they applaud you, I feel impulses to set fire to the theatre; when your dressing-room is filled with fools and forward men, it occurs to me to draw my sword and enter cutting right and left. The temptation is so strong that to avoid yielding to it I usually go home; but since I know myself and know that sooner or later I should yield, I prefer to consult you, to confess myself to you, to see if between us we can devise a means of saving ourselves.”

Laura looked fixedly at the officer, noting with a deep shudder the sinister gleam in his pupils, the involuntary tremor of his livid lips, the knitting of his brows, the clenching of his fingers, the alteration in his voice; and with a sweet smile and an accent brimming with tenderness, she asked him, attempting a caress which the jealous lover avoided:

“And what have you thought of doing, my Vicente? Since we are discussing amicably, tell me without hesitation and I will answer you frankly.”

“I have thought that we should marry, that you should be my wife!—declared Zegrí.”

“And that I should... renounce my art?”

“Why, if you did not renounce it, a fine bargain it would be!—exclaimed the lover with passionate vehemence.—Did you imagine anything else? From the moment Vicente Zegrí is called your husband, to your husband you shall belong, and he and he alone will be able to contemplate your charms, hear your singing, and see this hair let down.—Speaking thus, he seized the profuse mass of hair, shaking it with passionate fury.”

Laura turned whiter than the lace of her silk morning-gown; the tug had hurt; but neither did the smile leave her lips, nor for an instant did the languid, caressing expression of her eyes alter. Addressing Vicente with composure and sweetness, she asked him:

“Will you permit me to tell you an Eastern tale? It was related to me in Russia, where I sang two winters ago, and where they are very eager for me to return for a season.”

Passing his hand across his brow as though to banish a nightmare, Vicente nodded that he was ready to listen.

“It appears—Laura began—that there was in Russia, I know not in what century, a very wicked and ferocious King, to whom was given on account of his excesses and tyrannies the surname of Ivan the Terrible. Although he could not have been on very good terms with God, the fact is that it occurred to him to build a magnificent cathedral, dedicated to a saint whom they call there Vassili Blagennoi, which signifies the Blessed Basil...”

“And what has that to do...?—Vicente murmured, not without impatience.”

“Wait, wait...! The King sought for a long time an architect capable of understanding all the magnificence and grandeur he desired for the cathedral, until at last one presented himself with an astonishing plan, which left the King enchanted. The temple was erected, to the amazement and admiration of all; and the King, delighted, showered gifts, honours, and distinctions upon the architect.—One day, the works being completed, he summoned him to the palace and asked him if he thought himself capable of erecting another temple as magnificent and surprising as that one. The architect, flattered, answered yes, and that he even hoped to design a new edifice that should surpass the first in beauty and splendour. Thereupon the barbarous King, making use of the sharp iron spike he always wore at his girdle, put out both the poor architect’s eyes, one after the other, so that he might never build a temple for anyone else...”

Laura fell silent, and Vicente Zegrí, who had just understood the moral of the apologue, looked at her with a wild stare. A light foam appeared at the corner of his mouth, and through his veins snaked the subtle chill of the epileptic aura that incites to crime. Controlling himself with a supreme effort, he rose, prepared to depart, and articulated slowly as he gathered up his graceful Spanish cloak:

“That King did wrong. Putting out eyes is the action of an executioner. If he wished to disable the architect, he ought to have killed him.”

Saying this, with a sudden impulse Vicente approached Laura, encircled her with his arms, and so violently compressed her, in so frantic a manner, embedding his fingers so hard into her ribs, that the artist uttered a cry of fear, a shriek rising from the depths of her being, of those which the instinct of self-preservation alone dictates, the horror of nothingness and the grave. On hearing the cry, Vicente released her, muffled himself in his cloak, and left stumbling against the walls.

He spent what remained until dawn wandering through the streets in so dreadful a state that two or three times he leaned against a doorway to weep. The day that followed that night was no less cruel. He wrote Laura a hundred letters, which he tore up afterwards in fury; he adopted and discarded a thousand contradictory plans; he thought of falling on his knees, of killing himself, of burning the quarter down, of carrying off his beloved by main force, and lastly, the thought of death was what engraved itself upon his mind with powerful relief. His soul clamoured for blood, iron, and fire, violence, havoc, and annihilation; the anarchic instinct that so often accompanies love rose roaring and unchained like a blast of hurricane. No longer did Vicente even attempt to recover reason, wisdom, and composure: the images conjured up by jealousy—Laura drawing to herself the eyes of so many men who delighted in her charms and wiles, who drank in her voice, who admired her with hair let down—were arrows of flame that maddened him, as the stinging dart maddens the bull. Nor did he even believe he loved Laura: he considered her a mortal enemy. He imagined at moments that he hated her with all his wrathful will, and this hatred clamoured to sate itself and take joy in destruction.

When the hour arrived to go to the theatre, where Laura was singing one of the operettas in which she looked prettiest and gathered most applause, Vicente, resolute, somewhat relieved by the fierce, concrete, irrevocable decision, put the revolver into his pocket. If he suffered too much... there he had the remedy. The curtain had already risen, but Laura did not appear; and Vicente, absorbed in his frenzy, had at length to observe that the audience were uttering exclamations of discontent and that the performance was not the one announced, the one Laura was to act in. Alarmed, before the act ended he left his seat, ran to inquire behind the scenes... That very morning the singer had cancelled her contract, forfeiting whatever the manager demanded, and set out in the direction of Saint Petersburg.

To Secret Insult...

That grocer’s shop in the Calle Mayor gladdened the eyes and was the pride of the inhabitants of the city, who, after showing strangers their two or three Romanesque monuments and their docks, never failed to add: «Take note of Riopardo’s establishment, which competes with the finest abroad.»

And it did compete. The ample panes of plate glass; the counters of white marble; the gleaming scales; the taps of gilded brass; the coffered ceiling; the benches upholstered in rich green Utrecht velvet; the brilliant tins of preserves forming pyramids; the ripe pineapples and bananas in trophies; the batteries of liqueur bottles of rare shapes and varnished labels, all illuminated by clusters of electric bulbs, made of the establishment a sumptuous palace of delicacies. Just as in Madrid ladies go out to rummage among draperies, in that peaceful provincial capital they went out «to see what Riopardo has new.» Riopardo took the place of the theatre and other pleasures of civilization; and the nougats, cheeses, and Smyrna figs were the sweet peccadillo of peaceful housewives and their sedentary husbands, wherefore there was no lack of ill-humoured and flatulent censors who accused Riopardo of having corrupted morals and converted patriarchal simplicity of meals into Babylonian luxury...