-Viii- · III

Julián and the Marquis slept in adjoining rooms, for Julián, since his ordination, had risen in status in the house; and while his mother continued to perform the duties of housekeeper and duenna, the son took his meals with the family, occupied a room of importance, and was treated in short, if not on terms of strict equality—for there always lingered shades of patronage—at least with great kindness and deference. At night, before retiring, the Marquis would step into his bedroom to smoke a cigar and chat. The conversation offered few turns, for it always turned upon the same project. Don Pedro said that two things astonished him: that he had resolved to leave the Pazos, and that he found himself so determined to enter the state of matrimony, an idea which formerly had seemed to him impracticable. Don Pedro was one of those who judge their own actions and changes of mind very important and worthy of commentary—a failing peculiar to selfish persons—and who need to have ever near them some inferior or subordinate to whom to relate them, that he too may attribute extraordinary value to them.

The talk pleased Julián. That projected marriage between cousin and cousin seemed to him as natural as the joining of the vine to the elm. The families could not be better matched nor more suited to unite; their ranks were equal, their ages not widely disproportionate, and the result most blessed, for thus the Marquis would redeem his soul from the clutches of the devil, personified in shameless concubines. Only, it did not satisfy him that Don Pedro should have fixed upon Señorita Rita; yet he did not venture even to hint as much, lest the Marquis’s Christian resolution should be frustrated.

“Rita is a grand lass...” the latter would say, expanding. “She looks sound as an apple, and whatever children she has will inherit her good constitution. They will be even stronger than Perucho, Sabel’s boy.”

An inopportune reminiscence! Julián hastened to reply, without plunging into physiological depths:

“The stock of the Señores de Pardo is very healthy, thank God....”

One night the confidences took a different turn, entering upon ground exceedingly embarrassing for Julián, who was always fearful that any slip of his tongue might disconcert the young master’s projects and lay upon his own conscience a very heavy responsibility.

“Do you know,” insinuated Don Pedro—that my cousin Rita strikes me as somewhat light-headed? On the promenade she is always occupied in seeing whether they look at her or do not look at her, whether they pay her compliments or do not pay them... I would swear she takes the bait.

“That she takes the bait?” repeated the chaplain, quite in the dark as to the meaning of the coarse phrase.

“Yes, man... that she allows herself to be courted, to be sure.... And for marriage, it is no joking matter that a woman should bandy words with the first comer.”

“Who can doubt it, sir? The most essential quality in a woman is modesty and reserve. But one must not rely on appearances. Señorita Rita is of that temper—frank and cheerful....”

Julián believed himself saved by these evasions, when, a few nights later, Don Pedro pressed him to sing:

“Don Julián, mysteries are of no use here.... If I am to marry, I wish at least to know with whom and how.... People would laugh indeed if, because I come from the Pazos, they were to palm off a cat for a hare upon me at the first go-off. With good reason it would be said that I came out of one grove to plunge into another. It will not do to answer that you know nothing. You were brought up in this house, and have known my cousins from your birth. Rita.... Rita is older than you, is she not?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Julián, not considering it a matter of conscience to reveal her age. “Señorita Rita will be twenty-seven or twenty-eight now.... Then come Señorita Manolita and Señorita Marcelina, who follow close upon one another..., twenty-three and twenty-two... because between them two boys died..., and then Señorita Carmen, twenty.... When Master Gabriel was born, who must be seventeen or thereabouts, it was no longer thought the mistress would have issue again, for she was in delicate health, and the confinement went so ill with her that she died a few months later.”

“Then you must know Rita perfectly. Sing out, come now.”

“Sir, in truth.... I was brought up in this house, it is true; but without being on familiar terms with the family, because my station was very different.... And my mother, who was very pious, never permitted me to join with the young ladies in play or anything of the sort... for reasons of decorum.... You understand me! With Master Gabriel I had indeed some intercourse; as for the young ladies... ‘good morning’ and ‘good evening’ when I met them in the corridors. Afterward I went to the Seminary....”

“Bah, bah! Are you looking for fairy tales...? You must know plenty of things about the girls. Your mother is quite enough to inform you. Am I right? You have turned red.... Aha! We are getting on well now! Let us see with what face you will deny that your mother has told you a few little matters...!”

Julián turned purple. Had they told him! How should they not have told him! Since his arrival the venerable duenna who held the keys in the house of Lage had not caught her son alone for a minute without yielding to the itching desire to touch upon certain matters which can be discussed only with grave and religious men.... Misía Rosario was not going to chatter about them with other envious gossips, not she; she ate Don Manuel Pardo’s bread for something; but with grave people of good counsel—for instance her confessor Don Vicente the canon, and Julián, that piece of her own heart raised to the highest dignity on earth—who could forbid her the immense satisfaction of judging in her own fashion the conduct of the master and the young ladies, of flaunting her discretion, censuring mildly and compassionately some of their actions which she ‘had she been a lady’ would never perform, and hearing that ‘persons of respect’ greatly praised her prudence and agreed with her judgment entirely? Had they told Julián, blessed God! But it was one thing that they had told him, and another that he could repeat it. How reveal Señorita Carmen’s infatuation, bent on marrying against wind and tide of her father’s will with a wretched little medical student, a nobody, the son of a village blacksmith (oh, disgrace to the illustrious stock of the Pardos!), a raving lunatic who compromised her by following her everywhere like a lapdog, and of whom it was affirmed besides that he was a materialist, involved in secret societies? How disclose that Señorita Manolita was making novenas to Saint Anthony that Don Víctor de la Formoseda might make up his mind to ask for her hand, going to the length of writing Don Víctor anonymous letters setting him at odds with other young ladies whose houses he frequented? And above all, how hint at even the slightest and most trivial detail of that matter concerning Señorita Rita, which, maliciously interpreted, might do so much harm to her honor? Sooner let his tongue be torn out.

“Sir...” he stammered. “I believe the young ladies are very good and incapable of failing in anything; but if I knew the contrary, I should take good care not to spread it abroad, inasmuch as I... that my gratitude to this family would put..., well... as one might say... a gag upon me....”

He paused, understanding that he was entangling himself further.

“Do not interpret my words, sir.... For heaven’s sake, do not draw conclusions from my poor skill in expressing myself.”

“According to that,” asked the Marquis, looking fixedly at the chaplain, “you judge that there is absolutely nothing censurable? Plainly now. Do you consider all of them unblemished young ladies... most perfect... suitable for me to marry? Eh?”

Julián meditated before answering.

“If you insist that one should uncover all that is in one’s heart... frankly, although the young ladies are each in her own way very charming, I, if it came to a choice, do not deny it... should choose Señorita Marcelina.”

“Man alive! She squints a little... and is thin.... She has only good hair and a good disposition.”

“Sir, she is a treasure.”

“She will be like the rest.”

“She is like no one else. When Master Gabriel was left motherless as a baby, she looked after him with a seriousness that was the prettiest thing in the world, for she was not much older than he. A mother could have done no more. By day, by night, she was always with the child in her arms. She called him her boy: they say it was a regular comedy to see it. It seems the weight of the child broke her down, and for that reason she was left more delicate in health than the others. When her brother went away to boarding school, she was poorly. That is why you see her so pale. She is an angel, sir. All her care is given to advising her sisters well....”

“A sign that they stand in need of it,” argued Don Pedro maliciously.

“Good heavens! One cannot let a word slip.... You know full well that above what is good stands what is better, and Señorita Marcelina verges on the perfect. Perfection is given to few. Sir, Señorita Marcelina, just as you see her, confesses and communicates so often, and is so religious, that she edifies everyone.”

Don Pedro remained reflecting for a while, and then assured him that he was very, very fond of piety in women; that he considered it indispensable if they were to be ‘good.’

“So she is a bit of a prude, eh?” he added. “Now I have a way to tease her.”

And such was in fact the immediate result of that conference wherein, with better intention than diplomacy, Julián had attempted to put forward Nucha’s candidacy. Thenceforth the cousin played plenty of pranks upon her, some of them more troublesome than amusing. With the pleasure of a headstrong child whose fingers pry open a flower-bud, he took delight in making Nucha blush, in scratching the surface of her soul by means of broad jokes and indiscreet familiarities which she resisted with energy. Such sport mortified the chaplain as much as it did the girl; the time after dinner was for him a long torture, for to Don Manuel’s anecdotes and tales, which always turned upon matters by no means clean or savory (an inveterate habit with the Lord of Lage), were joined the cousin’s continual improprieties toward his cousin. Poor Julián, with his eyes fixed upon his plate and his fair brow somewhat knit, had a hard time of it. He fancied that to wither, even in jest, the flower of virginal modesty was an abominable sacrilege. From what his mother had told him and what he saw in Nucha, the young lady inspired him with religious respect, similar to that which the shrine containing a venerable image infuses. Never did he venture to call her by the diminutive, Nucha seeming to him a dog’s name rather than a person’s; and when Don Pedro slipped into risky banter, the chaplain, judging that he was comforting Señorita Marcelina, would take a seat beside her and speak to her of holy and peaceful things, of some novena or church festival which Nucha attended with assiduity.

The Marquis could not overcome the irritating attraction that drew him toward Rita; and yet, as the empire the eldest cousin exercised over his senses grew, there was strengthened also that species of instinctive distrust which city women inspire in the countryman, whose refinement and coquetry he is wont to confuse with depravity. Well, the Marquis could not help it; in his own phrase, Rita made him thoroughly suspicious. The fact was that at times she displayed such boldness! She showed herself so provocative with him; she spread her net with so little disguise; she plumed herself so visibly before masculine homage!

The villager who arrives in town has heard a thousand adventures told, a thousand tricks played upon simpletons who enter there unwary as incautious fish. Full of suspicion, he looks on every side, fears he will be robbed in the shops, trusts no one, cannot compose himself to sleep in the inn lest while he sleeps they filch his purse. Allowing for the distance separating the Lord of Ulloa from a peasant, such was his moral state in Santiago. It did not wound his pride to be ruled by Primitivo and grossly betrayed by Sabel in his lair at the Pazos, but that his artful little cousin should lead him by the nose in Santiago did wound him. Furthermore, it is not the same thing to amuse oneself with any girl as to take a wife. The woman destined to bear the illustrious name of Moscoso and to perpetuate it legitimately must needs be clear as a mirror.... And Don Pedro was among those who do not judge a woman clean who has had amorous dealings, even in the most honorable and lawful form, with any other than her husband. Even glances in streets and promenades were heavy sins. Don Pedro understood conjugal honor in the Calderonian manner—pure Spanish, most indulgent to the husband and relentless to the wife. And let no one tell him otherwise: Rita was not without some intrigue.... Concerning Carmen and Manolita he had no need to speculate, for he saw well enough what was going on. But Rita....

Don Pedro had no intimate friend in Santiago, though he had several acquaintances made on the promenade, at his uncle’s house, or at the Casino, whither he was accustomed to go morning and night, like a true idle Spaniard. There he was much teased about his cousin, while comments were also passed upon Carmen’s foolish passion for the student and her continual watch from the gallery, with her admirer posted opposite. Ever on the alert, the young master studied the tone and accent with which they named Rita. On two or three occasions he fancied he detected a touch of irony, and perhaps he was not mistaken; for in small towns, where no event is forgotten or effaced, where conversation perpetually revolves about the same topics, where the trivial is magnified and the serious acquires epic proportions, a girl has often lost her reputation before her honor, and insignificant indiscretions, glossed and censured for years and years, carry their author with the palm of virginity to the grave. Furthermore, the young ladies of the house of Lage, by their birth, by their father’s aristocratic airs and the kind of halo wherewith he sought to surround them, and by their beauty, were the mark for plenty of petty jealousies and gossip: when they were not dubbed proud, recourse was had to branding them as flirts.

The Casino displayed among its battered furniture an antiquated gutta-percha sofa, the pride of the reading-room: a sofa that might be called the tribunal of slanderers, for there assembled three of the sharpest pairs of shears that ever cut coats in the world—a triumvirate worthy of more detailed description, wherein stood out a most eminent personage, a master in the science of evil knowledge. Just as scholars pride themselves on not being ignorant of the slightest detail concerning remote historical epochs, this individual boasted that he could tell, without missing a dot or a comma, what income was enjoyed, what was eaten, what was spoken, and even what was thought by the twenty or thirty families of distinction enclosed within the precincts of Santiago. He was the man to pronounce with the utmost seriousness and great composure:

“Yesterday at the house of Lage two courses were served at dinner: croquettes and stewed beef. The salad was cauliflower, and for dessert quince cheese from the nuns was served.”

On verifying the accuracy of such details, they turned out to be strictly true.

This well-informed individual succeeded in kindling more suspicions in the mind of the distrustful Lord of Ulloa, a few little words being sufficient for the purpose—words of the sort which, taken literally, contain no malice whatever, but held up to the light may mean anything.... Praising Rita’s charm, and Rita’s beauty, and the fine anatomical conformation of Rita’s body, he added as if casually:

“She is a girl of the first order.... And here it would be difficult for her to find a suitor. Girls of Rita’s stamp always find their better half in a stranger.”