-Xvii-

Let Máximo Juncal, since it is his trade, minutely inspect the basin of the milky river of that mighty brute of a woman, brought by the Marquis of Ulloa—not without astonishment on the part of the onlookers—upon the front pommel of his mare’s saddle, there being in Castrodorna no other means of transport, and Don Pedro’s impatience not permitting the nurse to travel on foot. The mare will remember all her life, with a shudder running through her whole frame, that memorable journey in which she had to endure at once the weight of the present representative of the Moscosos and that of the wet-nurse of the future Moscoso.

Don Pedro’s heart sank within him when he saw that his heir had not yet arrived. At that moment it seemed to him that an event so long awaited would never come to pass. He urged Sabel to hasten supper, for he had returned with a ferocious hunger. Sabel served it in person, Filomena the maid, who usually waited at table, being that day heavily occupied. Sabel looked fresh and appetizing as ever, and the blooming flesh of her bare arm, the coppery sheen of the waves of her hair, the honeyed tenderness and sensuality of her blue eyes seemed in stark contrast with the situation, with the woman suffering agonizing torments, half dying, only a short distance away. It was a long time since the Marquis had seen Sabel close at hand. Rather than merely looking at her, he might be said to have scrutinized her leisurely for some minutes. He noticed that the girl wore no earrings and that one ear was torn; then he recalled having split it himself when he crushed her filigree earring with the butt of his shotgun in a fit of brutal jealousy. The wound had healed, but the ear now possessed two lobes instead of one.

“Does the mistress not sleep at all?” Julián enquired of the doctor.

“At intervals, between one pang and the next... Precisely that stupor into which she falls pleases me very little. Things make no progress and gather no momentum, and the worst of it is that she is losing her strength. She grows weaker by the hour. She may be said to have gone forty-eight hours without tasting food, for she confessed to me that long before informing her husband, very long before, she already felt ill and could not eat... These little naps do not suit my fancy. To my mind, rather than drowsiness, they are actual fainting fits.”

Don Pedro rested his head dejectedly on his clenched fist.

“I am convinced,” he said emphatically, “that such things happen only to young ladies brought up in towns with certain silly fancies and mincing ways... Let them come to the country wenches with their fainting fits and swoons... They toss off half a jug of wine and dispatch the business singing.”

“No, sir, there are all kinds... The lymphatic-nervous ones collapse... I have had cases...”

He described at length several struggles, not many as yet, because he was only just beginning to practice, so to speak. He was an advocate of watchful waiting: the best accoucheur is he who knows best how to bide his time. Nevertheless, a point is reached where to lose a second is to lose everything. As he asserted this, he sipped his rum.

“Sabel?” he called suddenly.

“What do you wish, Señorito Máximo?” answered the girl readily.

“Where have they put a case I brought?”

“In your room, upon the bed.”

“Ah! Good.”

Don Pedro looked at the doctor, understanding what was meant. Not so Julián, who, frightened by the deep silence that followed this exchange between Máximo and Sabel, enquired indirectly to learn what the mysterious case contained.

“Instruments,” stated the doctor curtly.

“Instruments... for what?” asked the chaplain, feeling a cold sweat breaking out at the roots of his hair.

“To operate upon her, what the devil! If a consultation of physicians could be held here, I might perhaps allow things to take their measured course; but the entire responsibility for whatever happens rests upon my shoulders alone. I will not sit with folded arms and let myself be taken by surprise like a simpleton. If by daybreak her exhaustion has increased and I see no clear symptoms that this will resolve itself... a decision must be taken. You had better begin praying to blessed Saint Raymond, Father Chaplain.”

“If praying were all!” exclaimed Julián ingenuously. “I have done little else since yesterday!”

From so simple a confession the doctor took occasion to tell a thousand amusing anecdotes, wherein devotion and obstetrics were delightfully mingled and Saint Raymond played a prominent role. He told of his professor in the clinic at Santiago who, on entering the room of a woman in labour and seeing the print of the saint with its attendant tapers, was wont to shout furiously: “Gentlemen, either I am superfluous or the saint is... For if she dies, they will lay the blame on me, and if we pull through, they will say it was his miracle...” He also related something rather grotesque concerning roses of Jericho, ribbons of the Virgin of Tortosa, and other pious talismans employed in critical junctures. At last he ceased his chatter, for sleep was overcoming him, aided by the rum. In order not to drop off completely in the comfort of a bed, he stretched himself upon the bench in the dining room, using a basket for a pillow. The young master, folding both arms upon the table, had let his forehead drop upon them, and a muffled whistling, prelude to a snore, announced that he too was being overtaken by the urge to sleep. The tall grandfather clock struck midnight with a weary chime.

Julián was the only one awake; he felt a chill in his marrow and a feverish heat in his cheekbones. He went up to his room, and soaking his towel in cold water, pressed it to his temples. The candles on the altar had burned out; he replaced them, and laid a pillow on the floor to kneel upon, for the most troublesome thing was always that wretched pins-and-needles sensation. And he began with good heart to climb the steep hill of prayer. At times he faltered, and his youthful body, wrapped in the grey mists of slumber, longed for the clean bed. Then he clasped his hands together, digging the nails of one into the back of the other to keep awake. He wished to pray with devotion, to be conscious of what he was asking of God, and not to speak by rote. Nevertheless, he was failing. He remembered the agony in the Garden and that distinction so accurately drawn between the willingness of the spirit and the weakness of the flesh. He recalled also a biblical passage: Moses praying with hands upheld, for if he lowered them, Israel would be overcome. Then it occurred to him to put into execution an idea that floated in his imagination. He removed the pillow, leaving his bare knees resting upon the stone floor; he raised his eyes, seeking God beyond the prints and rafters of the ceiling; and extending his arms in the form of a cross, he began to pray fervently in that posture.

The air turned icy; a faint light, more livid and opaque than moonlight, appeared behind the mountain. Two or three birds chirped in the orchard; the murmur of the mill-dam grew less deep and mournful. The dawn, which had only laid one of its rosy fingers upon that corner of the earth, ventured to stretch forth its whole little hand, and a bright, pure gleam bathed the slate rocks, making them shine like polished steel plates, and entered the chaplain’s room, swallowing up the yellow light of the tapers. But Julián saw neither the dawn nor anything else... That is to say, he saw those lights that the disturbance of the blood kindles in our brain, those little violet, greenish, crimson, sulfur-colored stars that quiver without illuminating; which we perceive mingled with the buzzing of our ears and the gigantic pendulum stroke of the arteries, ready to burst... He felt himself swooning and dying; his lips no longer uttered phrases, but a murmur that still retained the cadence of a prayer. In the midst of his agonizing vertigo he heard a voice that seemed to him resonant as a clarion call... The voice was saying something. Julián understood only two words:

“A girl.”

He attempted to rise, breathing a great sigh, and did so, aided by the person who had entered and who was none other than Primitivo; but scarcely was he on his feet when an excruciating pain in his joints and a sensation like a sledgehammer blow upon his skull threw him to the floor once more. He swooned away.

Below, Máximo Juncal was washing his hands in the pewter basin held by Sabel. On his face shone the joy of triumph mingled with the sweat of battle, which trickled in drops half frozen already by the morning chill. The Marquis was pacing the room with a scowl on his face, tense, sullen, with that expression at once gloomy and stupid which lack of sleep imparts to vigorous men who are heavily subject to the laws of matter.

“Now you may rejoice, Don Pedro,” said the doctor. “The worst is over. What you so much desired has been attained... Did you not want the child to come forth alive and uninjured? Well, here we have her, safe and sound. It cost some little trouble... but at last...”

The Marquis shrugged his shoulders disdainfully, as though belittling the practitioner’s merit, and muttered something between his teeth, continuing his pacing up and down the room with hands thrust deep in his pockets, his trousers drawn tight as was the temper of their owner.

“She is a little angel, as the old women say,” added Juncal maliciously, appearing to delight in the squire’s rage; “only a female angel. One must be resigned to these things; no method has yet been invented for writing to heaven to order and specify the sex one desires...”

Another burst of rage and coarse abuse escaped Don Pedro’s lips. Juncal broke into a laugh, drying his hands with the towel.

“At least half the blame must lie with you, Marquis,” he exclaimed. “Will you do me the favour of a cigar?”

While offering the open cigar-case, Don Pedro asked a question. Máximo regained his gravity to answer it.

“I did not say as much as that... I do not think so. It is true that when battles are very stubbornly contested, the combatant may remain an invalid; but Nature, who is very wise, while subjecting woman to such rude trials, also provides the most unexpected repairs... Now is not the time to think of that, but of restoring the mother to health and rearing the little girl. I fear some immediate complication... I shall go and see... The lady has been left so exhausted...”

Primitivo entered, and without showing either excitement or alarm, said that “Don Máximo should go upstairs, for something had happened to the chaplain; he was lying like a corpse.”

“Let us go up, man, let us go up. That was not in the programme,” muttered Juncal.

“What the ways of a woman that priest has! What a frail shell! He will certainly never shoulder a blunderbuss, even if the bands should rise of which that wild boar the Abbot of Boán is dreaming.”