-Xiii-

After a period of family life with his father-in-law and sisters-in-law, Don Pedro began to miss his badger’s den. He could not grow accustomed to the archiepiscopal metropolis. He felt suffocated by the high greenish walls, the narrow arcades, the buildings with gloomy vestibules and sombre stairways that seemed to him like dungeons and oubliettes. It annoyed him to live in a place where three drops of rain sent everybody scurrying indoors and instantly sprouted a melancholy crop of silk toadstools, of enormous umbrellas. He was irritated by the perennial symphony of rain trickling down the gutters or pattering in the puddles formed by the hollows of the flagstones. Only two resources remained to him to combat boredom: arguing with his father-in-law or gambling for a while at the Casino. Both activities soon produced in him, not weariness—for genuine weariness is a moral ailment peculiar to the highly refined and sybaritic of intellect—but irritation and a sullen anger, born of the secret conviction of his own inferiority. Don Manuel was superior to his nephew by virtue of the varnish of education acquired during long years of city life and the consequent intercourse with people, as well as by that well-understood pride in his birth and lineage which saved him from becoming commonplace (his favourite expression). Aside from his habit of recounting at table and among intimate friends a thousand anecdotes not contrary to modesty, but certainly perilous to the serenity of his listeners’ stomachs, Don Manuel was a polite gentleman of courteous manners, well suited, for instance, to preside over a funeral, attend a meeting of the Economic Society of Friends of the Country, bear the banner in a procession, or be summoned to the governor’s office for consultation. If he wished to retire to the country, he was attracted not merely by the prospect of giving free rein to rustic instincts, going without a necktie, and paying no tribute to society, but was drawn by more delicate inclinations of modern origin: the desire to have a garden, cultivate fruit trees, and indulge in masonry work—a pastime that delighted him and was cheaper in the countryside than in town. Moreover, the refined manners of his wife and the perpetual company of his daughters had softened whatever rough traditions Don Manuel retained on the De la Lage side: five respected and beloved women civilize even the most boorish of men. This was why the father-in-law, despite being chronologically a generation behind his son-in-law, was morally many years ahead.

Don Manuel attempted to polish Don Pedro; and not only was this labour lost, but counterproductive, since it inflamed the young man’s pride and inspired in him an even greater longing to break free of every yoke. The master of De la Lage aspired to have his nephew settle in Santiago, closing up the house at the Pazos and visiting it only in the summer months to take his recreation and inspect his estates; and in proffering such advice to his son-in-law, he interspersed it with innuendos and allusions to show that he was by no means ignorant of what went on in the old lair of the Ulloas. This kind of imposition and surveillance, however excusable, infuriated Don Pedro, who, as he was wont to say, would brook no spurs nor allow himself to be managed by anyone in the world.

“For that very reason,” he declared one day before his wife, “we shall take French leave before long. No one has pushed me around since I ceased to be a boy. If I hold my tongue at times, it is because I am under another man’s roof.”

Being under another man’s roof exasperated him. Everything he saw appeared to him objectionable and odious. Don Manuel’s decorous splendour; his silver salvers and candelabra; his rich and antique furnishings; the respectability of his acquaintances, drawn from the city’s highest society; his decent evening gatherings of canons and grave persons who came to make up a table of ombre; his respectful servants, sometimes negligent, but never insolent or meddlesome—all seemed to Don Pedro a living satire upon the disorder of the Pazos, that coarse existence, the meals without a tablecloth, the unglazed windows, and the familiarity with maids and farmhands. And what awoke in him was not wholesome emulation, but base envy and its sister, sullen rancour. His only consolation lay in Carmen’s madcap flirtations; he gloated over the scandal, rubbing his hands together whenever the student’s forwardness and the girl’s brazenness were discussed at the Casino. Let his father-in-law fume! Having damask chairs and carpets was not enough to prevent a scandal.

Don Pedro’s disputes with his uncle grew increasingly bitter, and political discussion came to poison them still further, envenoming matters more than anything else, especially for those who argue from emotional impression without fixed, reasoned convictions. It must be confessed that the Marquis was in this position. Don Manuel was no great luminary, but having been platonically affiliated for many years with the pure Moderate party and accustomed to reading the newspapers, he knew the routine; and he had taken so amiss the discomfiture of González Bravo and the departure of Isabel II that he would fly off the handle, on the verge of apoplexy, whenever his nephew, to vex him, contradicted him, excused the revolutionaries, repeated the enormities which the press and common gossip then spread against the fallen sovereign, and pretended to believe them as articles of faith. The uncle refuted him with warmth and acrimony, raising his gigantic hands to heaven.

“Out there in the villages,” he would say, “people swallow anything, even the wildest nonsense... You have formed no judgment, my boy, you have formed no judgment, that is your misfortune... You look at everything through a point of view you invent for yourselves... (this tremendous blunder Don Manuel must have picked up in some editorial article). One must judge by experience, by good sense.”

“And do you imagine that we who come from out there are fools...? It may be that we have even sharper wits and see what you do not see... (he alluded to his cousin Carmen, leaning over the balcony at that very moment). Believe me, uncle, everywhere there are simpletons who suck their thumbs... Indeed there are!”

The argument would take a personal and aggressive turn; this usually happened at the postprandial hour; the coffee cups clashed furiously against the saucers; Don Manuel, trembling with rage, spilled his aniseed liqueur as he carried it to his lips; uncle and nephew raised their voices far above normal, and after some uncontrolled shout or harsh phrase there would be moments of armed silence, of mute hostility, in which the girls exchanged glances and Nucha, with head lowered, rolled little pellets of breadcrumbs or very slowly folded everyone’s napkins, slipping them into their rings. Don Pedro would leap up suddenly, shoving back his chair with violence, and, making the floor shake beneath his heavy tread, stalk off to the Casino, where the card tables were busy day and night.

Nor was he comfortable there either. A certain intellectual atmosphere, very typical of a university city, stifled him. Compostela is a town where no one wishes to pass for ignorant, and the young master understood how they would mock him and what laughingstock he would become if it were known for certain that he was not strong in spelling or in the various other ologies so often mentioned there. His self-esteem, that of an absolute monarch at the Pazos de Ulloa, rebelled at finding himself held in lower esteem than a few sniffling, parchment-faced professors, or even some scatterbrained students with red boots whose brains were still hot and humming from reading some modern author in the University Library or the reading room of the Casino. That life was far too active for the young master’s head, and far too sluggish and sedentary for his body; his blood grew overheated for want of exercise and diversion, his skin clamoured urgently for air and sun, showers of rain, the scratching of briars and gorse, a full immersion in the mountain wilderness!

He could not endure the social levelling imposed by urban life; he could not accustom himself to being counted merely as one of the crowd in a town, after having always been the sole lord and master in his feudal dwelling. Who was he in Santiago? Plain Don Pedro Moscoso; even less: the son-in-law of Señor de la Lage, the husband of Nucha Pardo. His title of marquis had dissolved there like salt in water, thanks to the malice of an old man, a member of the scandalmongering triumvirate, whose province—by virtue of his razor-sharp and prodigious memory and innumerable years—was the investigation and elucidation of bygone occurrences, just as the younger man, whom we already know, handled contemporary enquiries, the one acting as chronicler and the other as annalist of the metropolis. The chronicler, then, performed his office by unravelling the entire true genealogy of the houses of Cabreira and Moscoso, proving beyond doubt that the title of Ulloa did not and could not belong to anyone but the Duke of so-and-so, a grandee of Spain, etc.; and demonstrating it through a timely display of the Court Guide. Indeed, during these proceedings a good deal of mockery was made of Don Pedro and of Señor de la Lage, who was accused of having had a marchioness’s coronet embroidered on a set of sheets given to his daughter—an innocent lapse which the annalist confirmed, specifying where and how the said sheets had been marked, and how much the crest and the fal-lals of the coronet had cost.

Growing impatient, Don Pedro decided upon departure before the inclemency of winter was past, at the end of a bleak and disagreeable March. The coach for Cebre left so early in the morning that one could scarcely see; it was bitterly cold, and Nucha, huddled in the corner of the uncomfortable vehicle, repeatedly carried her handkerchief to her eyes, for which her husband questioned her with little gentleness:

“You seem to come along with me against your will?”

“What notions you have!” replied the young woman, uncovering her face and smiling. “It is only natural that I should be sorry to leave poor Papa and... and the girls.”

“Well, as for them,” muttered the young master, “I do not believe they will send any petitions begging you to return.”

Nucha fell silent. The carriage jolted in the ruts of the town outskirts, and the driver, in a hoarse voice, urged on his team. They reached the highway and the lumbering vehicle rolled over a smoother surface. Nucha resumed the conversation by asking her husband for particulars concerning the Pazos, a topic to which he readily lent himself, extolling hyperbolically the beauty and healthfulness of the region, emphasizing the antiquity of the manor house, and praising the comfortable, independent life led there.

“Do not suppose,” he told his wife, raising his voice so that it would not be drowned by the jingle of bells and the rattling of glass, “do not suppose that there are no genteel folk there... The house is surrounded by distinguished gentry: the young ladies of Molende, who are very charming; Ramón Limioso, a consummate gentleman... The Abbot of Naya will keep us company too... And what of our own priest, the priest of Ulloa, who was presented by me! He is as much mine as the hounds I take hunting... I do not order him to bark and fetch only because the whim does not take me. You shall see, you shall see! Out there a man is someone and counts for something.”

As they drew near to Cebre and entered his domains, Don Pedro’s cheerful talkativeness redoubled. He pointed to the groves of chestnut trees, to the bare hillsides of gorse, and exclaimed in high glee:

“Tenancy of our house...! Tenancy of our house...! Not a hare runs out yonder that does not graze upon my land.”

Their arrival in Cebre heightened his joy. Outside the inn, Primitivo and Julián were waiting: the former with his hard, metallic, enigmatic face; the latter with his countenance beaming with an affectionate smile. Nucha greeted him with equal cordiality. The luggage was unloaded, and Primitivo stepped forward leading Don Pedro’s sleek and lively chestnut mare. The master was about to mount when he noticed the mount that had been provided for Nucha: a tall, vicious, stubborn mule, harnessed with a round pack-saddle of the sort that, forming a kind of curve in the middle, seemed designed rather to unseat the rider than to support her.

“Why did you not bring the donkey for the mistress?” demanded Don Pedro, halting before mounting, with one foot in the stirrup and a hand clutching the mare’s mane, looking at the huntsman with suspicion.

Primitivo mumbled something about a lame leg, a cold abscess...

“And are there no other donkeys in the district, eh? Do not come to me with that. You had more than enough time to find ten donkeys.”

He turned toward his wife, and as if to ease his conscience, asked her:

“Are you afraid, my girl? You cannot be used to riding. Have you ever ridden on this kind of pack-saddle? Can you keep your seat upon it?”

Nucha remained undecided, gathering up her skirt with her right hand while holding her travelling bag in the other. At length she murmured:

“As for keeping my seat, I can... Last year, when I was taking the baths, I rode on a thousand strange saddles... Only now...”

She suddenly dropped her dress, approached her husband, and threw an arm around his neck, burying her face in his bosom as on the first occasion when she had had to embrace him; and there, in a sort of whisper or sweet secret murmur, she finished the interrupted sentence. On the Marquis’s face surprise was depicted, and almost simultaneously an immense, radiant joy, a proud exultation, the triumph of a victory. And pressing his wife to him in loving protection, he shouted aloud:

“Either there is not a gentle donkey within three leagues around, or even if the Lord God in heaven owns it and is unwilling to lend it, here it shall be brought for you, on the word of Pedro Moscoso! Wait, my child, wait just one minute... Or better still, step inside the inn and sit down... Come, a bench, a chair for the lady... Wait, Nuchiña, I shall fly. Primitivo, come with me. Keep warm, Nucha.”

Not flying, but certainly within half an hour, he returned out of breath. He was leading by the halter a plump little donkey, well harnessed, docile, and safe: the very palfrey of the wife of the judge of Cebre. Don Pedro took his wife in his arms and seated her upon the pack-saddle, carefully smoothing her clothes.