-Xvi- · I

The successor of the Moscosos must have been drawing near to this world, for Nucha sewed unceasingly tiny garments resembling doll’s clothes. In spite of her assiduity at needlework, her appearance did not deteriorate; on the contrary, it seemed that every little step of the child toward the light of day was to the benefit of the mother. It could not be said that Nucha had grown stout, but her contours filled out, turning into soft curves what had previously been angles and planes. Her cheeks bloomed with a rosy flush, although her brow and temples were veiled by that light dark cloud known as the mask of pregnancy. Her black hair appeared glossier and more abundant; her eyes, less dreamy and more moist; her mouth, fresher and redder. Her voice had taken on grave, resonant notes. As for the natural increase in her person, it was neither excessive nor disfiguring, imparting only to her body that gentle heaviness observable in that of the Virgin in paintings representing the Visitation. The placement of her hands, spread across her belly as if to protect it, completed the analogy with paintings of so tender a subject.

It must be acknowledged that Don Pedro behaved well toward his wife during that season of expectation. Forgetting his customary rambles across hills and crags, he took her out every afternoon without fail for brief hygienic strolls, which grew gradually longer; and Nucha, leaning on his arm, wandered through the valley where the Pazos de Ulloa lies hidden, sitting down on the stone walls and slopes whenever she felt exhausted. Don Pedro was attentive to satisfying her slightest desires: at times he proved positively gallant, bringing her the wild flowers that caught her eye, or branches of strawberry-tree and blackberry laden with fruit. As gunshot caused Nucha severe nervous shocks, the young master never carried his fowling-piece, and had expressly forbidden Primitivo to shoot anywhere near there. It seemed as though the woody bark was falling away from the Marquis bit by bit, and that his wild and selfish heart was softening, letting sprout, as from the cracks in a stone wall, tiny parasitic blossoms, gentle affections of husband and father. If this was not the Christian marriage dreamed of by the excellent chaplain, heaven knows it must have resembled it very closely.

Julián blessed God every day. His devotion had, if not been reborn—for it had never died—certainly revived and rekindled. As the critical hour drew near for Nucha, the chaplain lingered longer on his knees giving thanks after Mass; he lengthened the litanies and the rosary; he put more soul and fervor into his daily prayers. Not to mention two devout novenas, one to Our Lady of the Assumption in August, another to the Nativity of the Virgin in September. This Marian devotion seemed to him admirably suited to the circumstances, owing to his ever firmer conviction that Nucha was the living image of Our Lady, insofar as a woman conceived in sin could be so.

At dusk on an October evening, Julián was seated on the stone sill of his window, absorbed in the perusal of Father Nieremberg. He heard hurried footsteps on the staircase. He recognized Don Pedro’s tread. The master of Ulloa’s countenance beamed with satisfaction.

“Is there any news?” asked Julián, laying down the book.

“I should think so! We had to hurry back from our walk at top speed.”

“And have they sent to Cebre for the doctor?”

“Primitivo is on his way there.”

Julián’s face fell.

“There is no need for alarm... Two other messengers are about to set out right behind him. I wanted to go myself in person, but Nucha says she will not be left without me now.”

“It would be best if I went too, just in case,” exclaimed Julián. “Even on foot and in the dark...”

Don Pedro burst into one of his terrible, mocking guffaws.

“You!” he cried, shaking with laughter. “What a notion, Don Julián!”

The chaplain lowered his eyes and knitted his fair brow. He felt a certain shame at his cassock, which rendered him useless for rendering the slightest service in so critical a pass. And being a priest as well as a man, he could not enter the chamber where the mystery was taking place either. Only two men possessed the right to do so: the husband, and that other whom Primitivo was riding to fetch, the representative of human science. Julián’s spirit was grieved at the thought that Nucha’s modesty was about to be profaned, and her pure body treated perhaps as corpses are treated upon the dissecting table: as inert matter where a soul no longer dwells. He felt himself growing faint-hearted and sorrowful.

“Summon me if you need me for anything, Marquis,” he murmured in a faint voice.

“A thousand thanks, my friend... I only came up to give you the good news.”

Don Pedro hurried down the staircase whistling a riveirana, and the chaplain, for a moment, remained motionless. He passed his hand across his forehead, where a light sweat was gathering. He glanced at the wall. Among several little prints hanging from the wall in tinsel and sequin frames, he chose two: one of Saint Raymond Nonnatus and another of Our Lady of Sorrows, holding her dead Son upon her lap. He would have preferred Our Lady of Safe Delivery, but he had none, nor had he thought much about that invocation until that moment. He cleared the chest of drawers of the odds and ends that cluttered it, and set the prints upright on top. Then he opened the drawer where he kept some wax candles destined for the chapel; he took two, placed them in brass candlesticks, and erected his little altar. As soon as the yellowish light of the tapers was reflected in the glass and decorations of the frames, Julián’s soul felt ineffable comfort. Full of hope, the chaplain reproached himself for having deemed himself useless in such moments. He, useless! To him, precisely, fell the most important and necessary task of all, which is to implore the aid of heaven. And kneeling down brimming with faith, he began his prayers.

Time slipped by without interrupting them. From below, no news arrived. Toward ten o’clock, Julián realized that his knees were tingling with an unbearable pins-and-needles sensation, that a painful lassitude was taking possession of his limbs, that his head was swimming. With an effort he staggered to his feet. Someone entered. It was Sabel, at whom the chaplain looked in surprise, for she had not appeared there for a long time.

“The master says you are to come down to supper.”

“Has your father returned? Has the doctor arrived?” asked Julián anxiously, not daring to enquire about anything else.

“No, sir... It is a good step from here to Cebre.”

In the dining room Julián found the Marquis supping with a prodigious appetite, like a man whose meal has been delayed two hours longer than usual. Julián attempted to imitate that composure, seating himself and unfolding his napkin.

“And the mistress?” he asked eagerly.

“Bah!... You may easily imagine that she is not very comfortable.”

“Will she need anything while you are down here?”

“No. She has her maid Filomena with her. Sabel helps too with whatever is required.”

Julián made no reply. His thoughts were better kept to himself than spoken. It was an outrage that Sabel should attend upon the lawful wife; but if the husband did not think of it, who had the courage to suggest it to him? On the other hand, Sabel, in truth, did not lack domestic experience, nor would she fail to be useful. Julián observed that the Marquis, unlike a few hours earlier, appeared sullen and impatient. The chaplain hesitated to question him. At last he made up his mind.

“And... will there be time for the doctor to arrive?”

“Whether there will be time?” replied the young master, stuffing his mouth and chewing with angry greed. “If only there is not too much time! These fine ladies are very delicate and difficult about everything... And when there is no robust physique... If she were built like her sister Rita...”

He brought his glass down upon the table with a crash, and added sententiously:

“Town-bred women are a calamity... Made of sugar candy... I assure you she has such weakness, such a tendency to convulsions and swoons, that... Affectation, confound it! Affectations they are taught from childhood!”

He struck the table again with his fist and rose, leaving Julián alone in the dining room. The chaplain hardly knew what to do with himself, and thought the best course was to resume his conversation with the saints. He went upstairs. The candles were still burning, and the chaplain knelt down once more. The hours passed and passed, and no sounds were heard save the night wind moaning among the chestnut trees, and the deep sob of the water at the weir of the nearby mill. Julián felt a tingling and soreness in his thighs, a chill in his bones, and heaviness in his head. Two or three times he looked toward his bed, and as many times the memory of that poor girl suffering down below restrained him. He felt ashamed to yield to temptation. But his eyes were closing; his head, heavy with sleep, dropped upon his chest. He threw himself down fully dressed, promising himself he would wake instantly. He awoke when it was broad daylight.

Finding himself dressed, he remembered everything, and mentally calling himself a dormouse and a block of wood, wondered whether the new Moscoso was already in the world. He hurried downstairs, rubbing his eyelids, still half dazed. In the anteroom of the kitchen he ran headlong into Máximo Juncal, the doctor of Cebre, with a grey woollen muffler wrapped around his neck, a brown cloth overcoat, riding boots, and spurs.

“Have you only just arrived?” asked the chaplain in amazement.

“Yes, sir... Primitivo says he and two others were knocking at my door last night, but that nobody opened... It is true my servant is somewhat deaf; but even so... if they had knocked properly... In short, the message did not reach me until daybreak. In any case, it seems I arrive in plenty of time... A first confinement, after all... These battles usually last a good while... I am going in to see what is happening...”

Preceded by Don Pedro, he set off whip in hand, his spurs clinking, so that the warlike metaphor he had just employed seemed exact, and anyone would have taken him for a general arriving to decide the victory by his presence and his orders. His resolute bearing inspired confidence. He reappeared shortly afterwards asking for a piping hot cup of coffee, for in his haste to come he was fasting. The young master was served chocolate. The doctor pronounced his medical opinion: to arm themselves with patience, for the business was going to be a long one.

Don Pedro, in rather a dark mood and with features bloated from lack of sleep, insisted on knowing whether there was any danger.

“No, sir; no, sir,” replied Máximo, stirring the sugar with his teaspoon and pouring rum into his coffee. “If difficulties arise, we are here... You, Sabel: a small glass.”

Into the small glass he poured more rum, which he savoured while the coffee cooled. The Marquis offered him a full cigar-case.

“Many thanks...” said the doctor, lighting a Havana cigar. “For the present we must wait and see. The lady is a novice, and none too strong... In the cities women are given the most unhygienic education: corsets to narrow what ought to be broad; confinement to produce chlorosis and anemia; a sedentary life to congest them and breed lymph at the expense of blood... Peasant women are a thousand times better prepared for the great struggle of gestation and delivery, which after all is the true feminine function.”

He continued developing his theory, wishing to demonstrate that he was not ignorant of the most recent and daring scientific hypotheses, parading his hygienic materialism, and highly extolling the beneficent action of Mother Nature. It was evident that he was an intelligent young man, well-read and determined to do battle with the ailments of others; but the bilious yellowness of his face and the livid dryness of his thin lips gave no promise of robust health. That fanatic of hygiene did not practice what he preached. It was said that rum was to blame, together with a baker’s wife in Cebre who had enough health to supply four hygienic doctors.

Don Pedro also puffed fiercely at his cigar and chewed over the doctor’s words, which by a strange chance—considering the difference between a mind packed with modern science and one untouched even by reading—accorded entirely with his own feelings. The old-fashioned hidalgo likewise held that a woman should above all be thoroughly suited for the propagation of the species. The contrary seemed to him a crime. He thought often and deeply, with strange, almost incestuous remorse, of the robust frame of his sister-in-law Rita. He also remembered Perucho’s birth, on a day when Sabel was kneading bread. Indeed, the loaf she was kneading would hardly have had time to bake when the child was already squalling, saying in his own way that he belonged to God like anyone else and needed sustenance. These recollections suggested an important idea to him.

“Tell me, Máximo... do you think my wife will be able to nurse the child?”

Máximo burst out laughing, relishing his rum.