-Viii- · II

You are Rita, if I mistake not?” he asked smiling. “I have a very poor memory for names and I might mix you up.”

“Rita, at your service...” replied the cousin with equal amiability. “And this is Manolita, and this is Carmen, and that one is Nucha....”

“Hist.... Gently, gently.... You must repeat it to me as I embrace each of you.”

Two cousins came forward to pay the tribute, saying playfully:

“I am Manolita, at your service.”

“I am Carmen, to do whatever you may please to command.”

Yonder among the folds of a damask curtain the third was hiding, as if she wished to avoid the affectionate ceremony; but the trick availed her nothing, rather her hanging back incited the cousin to exclaim:

“Doña Money-box, or whatever your name may be?... Look out for me..., an embrace is owing to me....”

“My name is Marcelina, man.... But these girls always call me Marcelinucha or Nucha....”

It cost her an effort to make up her mind, and she remained sheltered in the red canopy of the curtain, folding her hands over her white calico morning wrapper, which her loose plaits streaked with a long, double stroke, like ink. Her father pushed her forward roughly, and the girl fell against her cousin, all blushing, receiving a hearty squeeze, in addition to a rubbing from his beard that forced her to hide her face in the Marquis’s shirt-front.

Friendship being thus established, the Señor de la Lage and his nephew began the indispensable conversation concerning the journey, its causes, incidents, and adventures. The nephew did not explain his unexpected arrival very satisfactorily: well... a desire to stir his stumps.... It tires one to be always alone.... One likes a change.... The uncle did not press the point, thinking to himself: ‘Julián will tell me everything.’

And he rubbed his colossal hands, smiling at an idea which, though he had cherished it within him for some time past, had never presented itself so clearly and attractively as then. What better husband could his daughters desire than their cousin Ulloa! Among the numerous specimens of the type of father who desires to settle his girls, none was more vehement than Don Manuel Pardo as regards the will, but none more reserved as to the method and manner. For that gentleman of ancient stock felt at once an ardent desire to marry off his girls and a pride of race so exalted beneath deceitful appearances of frankness, that it not only forbade him to descend to any of the arts usual with matchmaking parents, but imposed upon him extreme rigidity and scrupulousness in the choice of his acquaintances and in the manner of educating his daughters, whom he kept as it were entrenched and isolated, taking them only once in a blue moon to public diversions. The young ladies of the house of Lage, argued Don Manuel, must marry, and it would be contrary to the providential order of things if a trunk did not appear upon which to graft worthily the shoots of so noble a stock; but sooner let them remain to dress church images than unite themselves with just anyone—with the lieutenant of the garrison, with the shopkeeper who prospers by measuring cloth, with the physician who feels pulses; that would be, by heaven, an unworthy profanation; the young ladies of the house of Lage could give their hand only to one who was their equal in rank. Thus Don Manuel, who would have disdained to spread nets for a wealthy plebeian, resolved immediately to do everything in his power that his nephew might become his son-in-law, like Sandoval in the comic opera.

Did the little cousins agree with their father’s opinions? What is certain is that as soon as the cousin sat down to converse with Don Manuel, each girl slipped away quietly, now to arrange her hair, now to prepare lodging for the guest and choice dishes for the table. It was agreed that the cousin should lodge there, and a messenger was sent to the inn for the valise.

The dinner was merry in the extreme. Rapidly there had established itself between Don Pedro and the young ladies of the house of Lage that kind of familiarity inherent to kinship within the prohibited but dispensable degrees: a familiarity that differs from the fraternal in that it is seasoned and flavored with a pungent pinch of hostility, the germ of charming and gallant skirmishes. A brisk cross-fire of jokes and compliments was maintained across the table, such as between the two sexes is wont to prelude more serious combats.

“Cousin, I am very much surprised that sitting by my side you do not pour me water.”

“We country folk do not understand etiquette: begin teaching me a little, for having such teachers....”

“Glutton, who gives you permission to have a second helping?”

“The dish is so delicious that I suppose it is your own handiwork.”

“Fine illusions indeed! It was the cook. I do not cook for you. You have lost your trouble.”

“Cousin, this sweet yolk. For my sake.”

“Do not rob from my plate, greedy-guts. I will not give it to you, so there. Have you not the dish yonder?”

“I’ll wager I snatch it from you! When you least expect it....”

“I’ll wager you do not!”

And the cousin would rise and run with her plate in her hands to prevent the theft of a meringue or half an apple, and the game was greeted with uproarious bursts of laughter, as if it were the wittiest thing in the world. The maintainers of this tournament were Rita and Manolita, the two eldest; as for Nucha and Carmen, they confined themselves within the bounds of a measured cordiality, watching and laughing at the jokes, but taking no active part in them—with the difference that on the face of Carmen, the youngest, a perennial melancholy was observable, a dominant preoccupation, while on Nucha’s face was noticed only natural gravity, not exempt from placidity.

Don Pedro was in his glory. When resolving to undertake the journey, he had feared that his cousins might be ceremonious and stiff young ladies—a thing that would have put him in an awkward predicament, unfamiliar as he was with the formulas of ceremonious intercourse with ladies of rank, a class of white partridges he had never hunted; but that frank reception restored his self-possession at once. Animated, and with his warm blood stirred, he considered the cousins one by one, calculating upon which he should cast the handkerchief. The youngest was undoubtedly very pretty—fair with black hair, tall and slender; but her ill-concealed distress of mind and her dark-ringed eyes diminished her charm for Don Pedro, who had no taste for romanticism. As for the third, Nucha, she resembled the youngest closely, only on the plain side: her eyes, of magnificent size, black also as blackberries, suffered from a slight convergent squint, which gave her gaze a special vagueness and modesty; she was not tall, nor were her features remarkably regular, with the exception of her mouth, which was a miniature. In short, few physical charms, at least for those who prize quantity and fullness in this clay garment of ours. Manolita offered another, distinct type, showing buxom flesh and great grace, united with a defect which for many is a singular addition of perfection in woman, and to others, for instance Don Pedro, inspires repulsion: a masculine cast mingled with feminine charms, down that was passing into a mustache, an extension of the hair-growth above the ear which, descending along the jawbone, promised to become a bold beard rather than a soft whisker. She to whom no fault could be found was Rita, the eldest sister. What most captivated her cousin in Rita was not so much the beauty of her face as the full proportion of her body and limbs, the breadth and roundness of her hips, the development of her bosom, everything in the bold and harmonious curves of her spirited person that promised a fruitful mother and an inexhaustible nurse. A superb vessel indeed to contain a legitimate Moscoso, a magnificent stock whereon to graft the heir, the continuer of the name! The Marquis foresaw in that splendid woman, not the pleasure of the senses, but the numerous and masculine progeny she was destined to yield; just like the farmer who, before a fertile field, takes no heed of the little flowers that enamel it, but calculates approximately the harvest it will yield when summer ends.

They passed into the drawing-room after dinner, for which the girls had decked themselves out. They showed Don Pedro an infinity of knick-knacks: stereoscopes, photograph albums, which were then very elegant and by no means common objects. Rita and Manolita obliged their cousin to look at the portraits representing them leaning against a chair or a pillar—a classical attitude imposed by photographers at that time; and Nucha, opening a small album, placed it before Don Pedro, asking him eagerly:

“Do you know him?”

It was a youth of about seventeen years, crop-haired, in the uniform of a cadet of the Artillery Academy, extraordinarily like Nucha and Carmen, as like as a shorn youth can be to two young ladies with fine plaits of hair.

“It is my boy,” affirmed Nucha very gravely.

“Your boy?”

The other sisters burst into loud laughter, and Don Pedro exclaimed, catching the meaning:

“Ah, I know! It is your brother, my cousin, the heir of the house of Lage, Gabrieliño.”

“Of course: who else should it be? But that Nucha loves him so much that she always calls him her boy.”

Nucha, corroborating the assertion, bent down and kissed the portrait with such passionate tenderness that yonder in Segovia the poor cadet, victim perhaps of the rigors of cruel hazing, must have felt something sweet and warm upon his cheek and at his heart.

When Carmen, the sorrowful one, saw her sisters engaged, she slipped out of the drawing-room, where she appeared no more. Everything in the drawing-room that could be shown to the cousin being exhausted, they showed him the house from garret to wood-house: an ancient mansion, spacious and rambling, such as many still remain in monumental Santiago, a worthy urban brother to the rural House of Ulloa. On its severe façade a glass gallery of modern design was discordant, devised by Don Manuel Pardo de la Lage, who had the expensive vice of making alterations. Such an architectural solecism was the solace of the Señoritas de Pardo; there they were always to be found, perched like birds upon a favorite branch; there they did needlework, there they had a little garden contained in flowerpots and boxes, there they hung cages of canaries and goldfinches; perhaps the good offices of that happy gallery did not stop there. The truth was that in it they found Carmen, leaning out and gazing into the street, so absorbed that she did not hear her sisters arrive. Nucha pulled her dress; the girl turned round, and it could be noticed that she had a faint flush of rose in her cheeks, usually pale. Nucha spoke to her eagerly in a whisper, and Carmen withdrew from the glazed parapet, silent and preoccupied as ever. Rita never ceased explaining a thousand details to her cousin.

“From here the best streets can be seen... That is the Preguntoiro; many people pass through there.... That tower is the tower of the Cathedral.... And have you not been to the Cathedral yet? But have you really not said a Creed to the Holy Apostle, you heathen?” exclaimed the girl, her radiant eyes flashing provocative light. “Come, come.... I must take you there myself, so that you may know the Saint and embrace him right heartily.... Have you not seen the Casino yet either, or the Alameda, or the University? Heavens! You have seen nothing at all!”

“No, my girl.... You know I am a poor countryman... and I arrived yesterday at dusk. I did nothing but go to bed.”

“Why did you not come straight here, you unnatural kinsman?”

“To turn your house upside down at night? Though I come from among the furze-bushes, I am not so ill-mannered as all that.”

“Well, today you must see some of the sights.... And you must not miss the promenade.... There are very pretty girls.”

“Of that I have already informed myself, without taking the trouble to go to the Alameda,” answered the cousin, casting at Rita a bold look which she resisted with notorious intrepidity, and returned without the least shyness.

-X-

And in fact the Marquis of Ulloa was shown a multitude of things that did not matter to him in the least. Nothing pleased him, and he experienced a thousand disappointments, as is wont to happen to people accustomed to living in the country, who form an exaggerated idea of the town. The streets seemed to him, and with reason, narrow, crooked, and badly paved, the ground muddy, the walls damp, the buildings old and blackened, the circuit of the city small, its trade languishing, and its public places almost always deserted; and as for what in an ancient town can captivate a cultivated mind—great memories, the eternal life of art preserved in monuments and ruins—of that Don Pedro understood as much as of Greek or Latin. Moldy stones! He had enough of those at the Pazos. Let it be noted how a rustic gentleman of very archaic notions found himself on a level with the most vandalic and iconoclastic democrats. Despite knowing Orense and having been in Santiago as a child, he reasoned and fancied in his own way what a modern city ought to be: wide streets, great regularity in buildings, everything brand-new, great policing—what less can civilization offer to its slaves? True, Santiago possessed two or three spacious edifices: the Cathedral, the Town Hall, San Martín.... But in them were things praised quite without reason, in the Marquis’s opinion: for example, the Glory of the Cathedral. What ill-made male saints and what skinny female saints without human form! What roughly carved pillars! It would be a sight to see one of those scholars who search into the meaning of a religious monument, devoting himself to the task of demonstrating to Don Pedro that the Portico of Glory contains lofty poetry and profound symbolism. Symbolism! Gibberish! The portico was very badly carved, and the figures looked as if they had been passed through a sieve. Of necessity the arts were very backward in those old-fashioned days. In fine, of all the monuments of Santiago the Marquis adhered to one of very recent construction: his cousin Rita.

The approach of the Feast of Corpus Christi somewhat enlivened the sleepy university town, and every afternoon there was a brilliant promenade under the trees of the Alameda. Carmen and Nucha were wont to walk in front, followed by Rita and Manolita, accompanied by their cousin; the father brought up the rear conversing with some elderly gentleman, among the many to be found in the town of Santiago, where by a law of affinity elderly folk seem to abound more than elsewhere. Often there walked beside Manolita a very stiff and well-ironed young gentleman, with a certain ridiculous pomposity and exaggerated pretensions to elegance: his name was Don Víctor de la Formoseda and he studied law at the University; Don Manuel Pardo was glad to see him approach his daughters, for the young master of Formoseda came of a very ancient mountain stock and possessed a fortune by no means contemptible. Nor was he the only mosquito buzzing around the young ladies of the house of Lage. From the very first Don Pedro noticed that both along the winding and gloomy arcades of the Rúa del Villar and through the leafy avenues of the Alameda and the Herradura, they were followed and escorted by a young, long-haired man, wrapped in a gray overcoat of strange and old-fashioned cut. That man seemed like the shadow of the girls: it was impossible to turn one’s head without meeting him; and Don Pedro noticed also that whenever the perpetual pursuer appeared from behind a pillar or from among the trees, the sad and shadowed face of Carmen grew animated, and her dejected eyes sparkled. Don Manuel and Nucha, on the other hand, gave signs of disquietude and displeasure.

Once upon the scent, Don Pedro continued to watch, like an experienced hunter. Nucha seemed to have no admirer among the crowd of students and idlers who frequented the promenade, or if she had, she paid no heed to him, for she walked with a serious and indifferent air. In public Nucha seemed to assume a gravity foreign to her years. As for Manolita, she missed no opportunity of flirting with the young gentleman of Formoseda. Rita, ever lively and provocative, was so to a high degree with her cousin, and not a little with the others, for Don Pedro noticed that to the looks and compliments of her admirers she responded with quick and darting glances. This did not fail to give the Marquis of Ulloa food for reflection; for, perhaps because he was among the number of men easily attracted by lively women, he held a detestable opinion of them and in his own mind expressed it in very crude terms.