Kate, The Pale Lass—Roberto’s Love Affairs—Military Punctilio—Wicked Women—Anthropological Disquisitions A month after they were settled in their new apartment, Christmas came, and, as there were holidays in all the schools, the baroness went to fetch her daughter at the Sacred Heart, returning with her in a carriage.
Ni?a Chucha undertook to inform Manuel about the baroness’s daughter, and give him full details.
“She’s a simpleton, understand? A pale, insipid creature, who looks like a doll.”
Manuel knew her, but he was not sure whether she would recall him. During the years since he had seen her she had grown into a winsome girl. She did not resemble her mother, though, like her, she was blonde; she must rather take after her father. She was pale, with correct features, clear blue eyes, golden eyebrows and lashes, and fair hair that lacked lustre, yet was quite alluring.
When the schoolgirl arrived, Ni?a Chucha outdid herself in demonstrations of affection; the newcomer recognized Manuel, and this filled him with a deep satisfaction.
The baroness’s daughter was called Catalina, her relations from Antwerp called her Kate, but the[84] baroness generally referred to her as La Nena,—the baby.
With the arrival of Kate the habits of the household underwent a marked change; the baroness abandoned her nocturnal excursions and put a check upon her loose tongue. At table with a sad smile, she gave ear to the school tales that her daughter related, without the slightest interest in what she heard.
There was no harmony between the two characters. Kate was slow of understanding, but deep; her mother, on the other hand, was gifted with the subtlety and cleverness of the moment. The baroness, at times, grew impatient as Kate spoke on, and would say, with mingled kindliness and boredom:
“Oh, what a simpleton of a baby I have!”
Since Kate’s coming, Ni?a Chucha and Manuel ceased keeping the baroness company in the dining-room. This did not trouble Manuel in the least, but the mulattress was quite put out, and she attributed this arrangement to Kate, whom she considered a pale, proud doll, cold and heartless. Manuel, who had no reason for disliking Kate, found her very simple, very likeable, although lacking vivacity.
During the Christmas holidays mother and daughter often went out together on shopping tours; they were accompanied by Manuel, who returned loaded with bundles.
One day, shortly after the New Year, when the baroness, Kate and Manuel had gone to the Apolo[85] Theatre to see “Captain Grant’s Nephews,” Manuel caught sight of Roberto Hasting following them at a certain distance. As they left the theatre, Roberto shadowed them; the girl pretended she had noticed nothing.
The next day, it was snowing. Manuel noticed Roberto walking across the Plaza del Oriente, seemingly very much engrossed.
Manuel sought a pretext under which to leave the house and Roberto at once came over to him.
“Are you in her house?” he asked hurriedly.
“Yes.”
“You must deliver a letter to her.”
“Certainly.”
“I’ll bring it to you this afternoon. Give it to her and tell me how she receives it. She’ll not answer me, I know she’ll not answer me. But you’ll hand it to her, won’t you?”
“Of course. Don’t worry.”
Surely enough, that very afternoon Roberto walked again through the falling snow, Manuel ran down, took the letter and dashed back into the house.
At that moment Kate was amusing herself with her wardrobe. She had a thousand gew-gaws stored in a number of little boxes; in some, medallions; in others, small prints, chromographs, gifts from her schoolmates or the family. Her prayer books were filled with little pictures and souvenirs.
Manuel, with Roberto’s missive in his pocket, drew near to the girl like a criminal. La Nena exhibited all her wealth to him; he swelled with pride. Manuel scarcely dared to touch the medallions, the[86] jewels, the thousand things that Kate had treasured up.
“My uncle gave me this chain,” said the schoolgirl. “This ring comes from my grandfather. This pansy I picked in Hyde Park, when I was at my uncle’s in London.”
Manuel listened to her without a word, ashamed to have the letter in his pocket. La Nena continued showing new things to him. She still preserved her childhood playthings; in her wardrobe everything was classified with the utmost precision; each article had its place. In some of the books she pressed pansies and other flowers, afterwards copying them and filling in the sketch with water-colours.
Manuel made two or three attempts to bring the conversation round to Roberto, but his courage failed him.
All at once, after much clearing of his throat, he stammered:
“D-do you know ...?”
“What?”
“Roberto ... that fair student who used to board at the other house ... the fellow who was at the theatre yesterday ... he gave me a letter for you.”
“For me?” And Kate’s cheeks flushed pink, while her eyes sparkled with much more than their usual vivaciousness.
“Yes.”
“Give it to me.”
“Here it is.”
[87]
Manuel handed over the letter and Kate quickly thrust it into her bosom. She finished arranging her wardrobe and soon afterward locked herself in her room. Two days later Kate sent Manuel off with a note for Roberto, who responded at once with another for Kate.
One day Kate went with Manuel to his school, where they were giving a Nativity play, and she was accompanied both ways by Roberto. They both were very talkative. The student expatiated upon his plans. It struck Manuel that this love business was rather queer. As far as he could see, Roberto did not say a thing worth hearing, and yet Kate listened to him with her soul hanging upon every word.
Roberto, to Kate, was the paragon of respectability. She spoke to him with calm solemnity, making no attempt to appear gay or clever; she was very attentive to all he said.
Manuel became the confidant of Roberto and Kate. The girl was of immaculate candor and innocence, and extraordinarily ignorant in matters of guile. Manuel felt a genuine submissiveness before that aristocratic, elegant nature; he was filled with a feeling of inferiority that in no wise troubled him.
La Nena recounted to Manuel all the things she had seen in Paris, Brussels, Ghent; she told him about the parks of London, much to his amazement. In return, Manuel enlightened Kate as to life in the underworld of Madrid, filling her in turn with the utmost astonishment: the cellars, the taverns, the[88] tramps; he described to her the urchins who ran away from home and slept in the nooks and crannies of the churches; he spoke to her of the ragamuffins who pilfer in the laundries; he told her what the shelters were like....
Manuel possessed a certain gift for imparting his impressions; he would exaggerate and fill in with figments of his imagination the gaps left by reality. La Nena would listen to him in a rapture of interest.
“Oh, how frightful!” she would say. And the mere thought that this wretched rabble of which Manuel spoke might rub elbows with her made her tremble.
The maiden felt a deep repugnance for the common people; she would not go out on Sundays, so as to avoid mingling with soldiers and men in labourers’ smocks. It seemed to her that common folk must be inherently wicked. As soon as the street lamps were lighted she preferred to be indoors.
They used to hold their conversations at nightfall in a room that looked out on to the street, whence could be seen the Plaza de Oriente, like a wood, and the Royal Palace, to whose cornices hundreds of pigeons repaired after winging about all day in flocks. As a background there was the Casa del Campo and the horizon which reddened with the approach of dusk....
After Epiphany, Kate returned to school, whereupon the old habits were re-established in the household and the customary disorder reigned.
The first nocturnal sally that the baroness made[89] was to her Cuban friend, in the company of Manuel. The baroness and Manuel left after supper. The Cuban lady lived in the Calle Ancha. They knocked; a diminutive lackey in blue livery and gold braid opened the door, and they passed through a corridor into a lavishly lighted drawing-room, decorated in cheap, loud taste. In the centre stood an electric lamp with a cluster of seven or eight globes; there was a huge sofa upholstered in a very flowery stuff; two gilt chairs shone beside a fire-place, upon the marble mantelpiece of which sat a clock in the form of a ball, a barometer fashioned like a hammer, a thermometer that represented a dagger, and sundry other things in the most absurd shapes. Photographs hung on every wall.
Only a few disreputable looking women were present; they humbly rose. The baroness took a seat, and shortly after, the Cuban entered,—a very common, brutal woman, dressed in an exceedingly loud costume, and wearing thick diamonds in her ears and on her fingers. She took the baroness’s hand and sat down on a sofa beside her. It could easily be seen that she desired to flatter her visitor. The Colonel’s wife was more than a common woman; she was bestial. She had a prominent jaw, tiny black eyes and a mouth that bespoke cruelty. Her features betrayed a certain disturbing, menacing lubricity; one imagined that such a woman must be the prey to strange vices,—that she was capable of crime.
Manuel, from his place in a corner, busied himself[90] with the examination of a photograph album that he discovered upon a night table.
The wife of the colonel, whom the baroness had known as a sergeant in Cuba, said that she thought her younger girl, Lulu, would make her début as a dancer in a certain Salon; she was giving her the final lessons.
“Really?” asked the baroness.
“Oh, yes, indeed. Mingote got her the contract and has taken charge of the finishing touches, as he puts it. Ah, what an accomplished fellow! He’s in the dining-room now, with some friends. He’ll be right in. Mingote brought a poet along who has written a monologue for the dear, clever little girl. It’s called “Snap-shots.” That’s a modernistic name, isn’t it?”
“I should say.”
“It’s supposed to be a girl who goes out into the streets to take photographs and she meets with a young blade who approaches her and suggests that she make him a reproduction or a group, and she replies: ‘Hey there, don’t you dare touch my chassis!’ Now, isn’t that clever?”
“Exquisite,” declared the baroness, eyeing Manuel and laughing.
The other women,—distinguished kitchen-maids to judge from their appearance,—nodded their heads in token of assent, and smiled sadly.
“Have you many guests in your room?” asked the baroness.
“As yet no one has come. In the meantime, suppose[91] the child dances a little and lets you see what she can do.”
The Colonel’s wife shouted into the corridor, whereupon Lulu appeared, attired in a skirt covered with spangles, and wearing curly bobbed hair. She was all put out because she had not been able to find a wrist-watch, and was shrilling in her thin, rasping voice.
“Let the people inside know,” said the Colonel’s wife, “that you’ll be here.”
The girl left with the message, and within a short while the colonel himself appeared,—a respectable gentleman, with a white beard, who was lame and leaned upon Mingote’s arm. Behind these two came a slender young man with fair moustaches and red cheeks; this was, as the baroness gathered, the poet. Then followed a long-haired personage, the piano instructor, on whose arm nestled the elder daughter of the house,—a fair, buxom wench who seemed to have escaped from a painting by Rubens.
“Well, which shall we have first?” asked the Colonel’s wife. “The monologue or the dance?”
“The monologue, the monologue,” was the general chorus.
“Let’s see, then. Silence.”
The poet, who, to judge from the glitter in his eyes and the colour of his cheeks, was quite drunk, smiled amiably.
The little girl began to recite very badly, in the voice of a hoarse rooster, a heap of coarse banalities in doggerel that would have brought a blush to the[92] tanned and weather-beaten cheeks of a coast-guard. And every one of these banalities wound up with the refrain
Don’t you dare touch my chassis!
At the conclusion the colonel offered the opinion that the verses struck him somewhat ... somewhat,—oh,—just a wee bit free, and he looked from one face to another for corroboration. The point was heatedly discussed. The head of the house presented his arguments, but Mingote’s rebuttal was conclusive.
“No, my dear Colonel,” ended the ex-loan shark excitedly. “The fact is that you feel military honour too keenly. You regard this from the standpoint of a soldier.”
The baroness stared at Mingote in amazement, and could not contain her laughter.
The colonel explained in confidence to Mingote the reason why the military conception of honour must perforce be more rigid than that of civilians. There was the necessity of discipline, there was order, and the uniform.
After the monologue, the personage with the flowing hair sat down to the piano and the little girl began to dance the tango. In this, too, there was something that required elucidation, and the Colonel’s wife was eager to have it settled at the very moment. Of such vital importance was it. There is a genuinely solemn, transcendental part to the tango: that hip-movement which the public[93] scientifically calls “the hinge.” “Now,” asked the Colonel’s wife, “how is Lulu to perform this part of the tango,—that is, the hinge? Is she to play it to the limit, or cover it up a trifle?”
The baroness did not think that the tango should be so highly accentuated; a little of that movement would not be so bad. The Colonel’s wife and Mingote protested, affirming that the public always prefers the “hinge,” as it is more exciting.
The colonel, despite his military honour, was of the opinion that the public really did prefer “the hinge,” but that a little more or less of wiggling was a minor matter.
Whereupon Mingote, in order to show the little girl how to do that movement, arose and began to wiggle his hips in the most grotesque fashion.
The girl imitated his example smilingly, but without the least enthusiasm. At this juncture the Colonel’s wife whispered into the baroness’s ear that only a man could teach a woman the grace and charm of that movement. The baroness smiled discreetly.
The diminutive gold-braided lackey entered with the announcement that Se?or Fernández had arrived. This Fernández must have been a person of some importance, for the Colonel’s wife arose at once and prepared to leave.
“Hurry, start the roulette,” said the colonel to his wife. “And have the lights put on in the large room. What do you say?” he went on, turning to the baroness. “Shall we go into the game as partners?”
[94]
“We’ll see later, my dear Colonel. At first I’ll try my luck alone.”
“Very well.”
Lula danced another tango and after a brief while the Colonel’s wife returned.
“You may come in,” she said.
The old kitchen-maids got up from their chairs and, crossing the corridor, entered a large room with three balcony windows. There were two tables, one of them with a roulette wheel and the other bare.
The three old women, the baroness, the colonel and his two daughters sat down before the roulette table, where the banker and the two payers were already seated.
“Faites vos jeux,” said the croupier with the impassivity of an automaton.
The white sphere danced around the wheel and before it came to a stop the croupier pronounced:
“Rien ne va plus!”
The two payers placed their rakes upon the cloth to prevent the laying of any further bets. “No more bets,” they repeated, at the same time, in a monotonous voice.
Gradually the room was filling with people, and the seats around the table were taken.
Beside the baroness a man of about forty had taken a chair. He was tall, robust, broad-shouldered, with black, kinky hair and white teeth.
“Why, my boy, you here?” exclaimed the baroness.
“And how about you?” he retorted.
[95]
He was a second or third cousin of the baroness; his name was Horacio.
“Didn’t you tell me that you invariably retired at nine?” asked the baroness.
“It’s only an accident that I came here. It’s the first time.”
“Bah.”
“I assure you it is. Shall we go in it together?”
“That is not a bad idea.”
They pooled their money and continued playing. Horacio played according to the baroness’s directions. They were lucky and won. Gradually the parlor became thronged with a variegated, exotic crowd. There were two well-known members of the aristocracy, a bull-fighter, soldiers. Several women and their daughters were pressed closely around the tables.
Manuel caught sight of Irene, Do?a Violante’s granddaughter, beside an old gentleman with his hair pasted down. The man was playing heavily. His fingers were fairly concealed by rings set with huge stones.
Seated upon a divan near Manuel, a very pale and emaciated old gentleman with a white beard was conversing with a beardless youth who looked bored.
“Have you withdrawn from the game so soon?” asked the young man.
“Yes. I withdrew because my money ran out. Otherwise I’d have kept on playing until they found me lying dead across the green cloth. To me, this is the only life. I’m like La Valiente. She knows[96] me, and she says to me now and then: ‘Let’s go in it together, Marquis?’—‘I won’t bring you bad luck,’ is my answer.”
“Who is La Valiente?”
“You’ll see her soon, when the baccarat begins.”
A light was turned on over the table.
An old man with moustaches like a musketeer’s arose with a deck of cards in his hands and leaned against the edge of the table.
“Who deals?” asked the old man.
“Fifty duros,” murmured one.
“Sixty.”
“A hundred.”
“A hundred and fifty duros.”
“Two hundred,” shrieked a woman’s voice.
“That’s La Valiente,” said the marquis.
Manuel contemplated her with curiosity. She was between thirty and forty; she wore a tailor-made costume and a Frégoli hat. She was very dark, with an olive complexion and beautiful black eyes. She would gamble until she could hardly see, and then go out into the corridors for a smoke. She brimmed over with energy and intelligence. They said she carried a revolver. She had no use for men and fell passionately in love with women. Her most recent conquest had been the colonel’s elder daughter, the buxom blonde, whom she dominated. At times she was favored by the most unbelievable luck, and to assuage her pangs of passion, she played and won in most insolent fashion.
“And that fellow who never plays, yet is always[97] here,—who is he?” asked the young man, pointing to a coarse looking old fellow of about seventy, with dyed moustaches.
“He’s a moneylender who, I believe, is the partner of the Colonel’s wife. When I was Governor of La Coru?a he was waiting trial for some piece of smuggling or other that he had perpetrated at the Customs House. They removed him from office, and then gave him a commission in the Philippines.”
“As a reward?”
“My dear man, everybody has to live,” replied the marquis. “I don’t know what he did in the Philippines, but he was in court several times, and when he was free they gave him a position in Cuba.”
“They wanted him to make a study of the Spanish colonial régime,” suggested the youth.
“Doubtless. He got into a few scrapes over there, too, until he returned and went into the money-lending business. They say now that he is worth not less than a million pesetas.”
“The deuce, he is!”
“He’s a serious, modest fellow. Up to a few years ago he lived with a certain Paca, who was the proprietress of a dyer’s shop on the Calle de Hortaleza, and on Sundays they’d both go out to the suburbs like a poor couple. This Paca died, and now he lives alone. He’s shy and humble; many a time he himself goes out and does the buying, and then cooks his own meal. His old secretary is a really interesting chap. When it comes to forgery he can’t be beaten.”
[98]
Manuel listened most attentively.
“That’s what you really can call a man,” said the marquis, eyeing the secretary closely.
The man they were watching,—a person with a red, pointed beard and a mocking air, turned around and saluted the speaker affably.
“Hello, there, Master,” said the marquis to him.
“You call him Master?” asked the young man.
“That’s what everybody calls him.”
Lulu, the colonel’s daughter, and two girl friends of hers passed by the marquis and his young companion.
“How pretty they are,” commented the marquis.
The place took on the mixed appearance of a brothel and a high-class den of vice. There was here neither the anxious silence of the gambling-house nor the confused clamour of a brothel: people gambled and loved with discretion. As the Colonel’s wife put it, this was a very modernistic gathering.
On the divans the girls were conversing very animatedly with the men; they were discussing and studying out combinations for the game....
“All this delights me,” said the marquis with his pale smile.
The baroness was beginning to feel somewhat nauseated and wished to be going.
“I’m off. Will you come along with me, Horacio?” she asked of her cousin.
“Certainly. I’ll accompany you.”
The baroness arose, then Horacio; Manuel joined them.
[99]
“What a mob of creatures, eh?” said the baroness with that peculiar, ingenuous laugh of hers, once they were in the street.
“That’s amorality, as they say nowadays,” replied Horacio. “We Spaniards aren’t immoral. The fact is that we simply have no notion of morality. When I got up to take a little air, the colonel said to me, ‘You see, you see, they’ve cut down my pay: reduced it from eighty to seventy. So clearly enough I have to find other sources of income. That’s why soldiers’ daughters have to become dancers ... and all the rest.’”
“Did he say that to you? What a barbarian!”
“What? Does that shock you? Not me. It’s just a natural and necessary consequence of our race. We’ve degenerated. We are a race of the lowest class.”
“Why?”
“Because we are. All you’ve got to do is look around you. Did you see the head on the colonel’s shoulders?”
“No. Has he anything in his head?” asked the baroness jokingly.
“Not a thing. The brains of a Papuan. Morality is found only in superior races. The English say that Wellington is superior to Napoleon because Wellington fought through a sense of duty and Napoleon for glory. The idea of duty never penetrates into craniums like the colonel’s. Talk to a Mandingo of duty. Nothing doing. Oh, anthropology is a most instructive science. I explain everything by anthropological laws.”
[100]
They were passing by the Café de Varela.
“Shall we go in here?” asked her cousin.
“Let’s go.”
The three sat down around a table, each asked for a favourite drink and the baroness’s cousin continued his speech.
The man was a queer type; he spoke an almost incomprehensible Andalusian dialect, with a guttural h; he had enough money to subsist upon and with this, and a minor position in a ministry, he managed to get along. He dwelt in a very carefully regulated disorder, reading Spencer in English and changing his mode of life at certain seasons.
Like the whimsical fellow he was, he had been sunk for the past four or five years in the swampy fields of sociology and anthropology. He was convinced that intellectually he was an Anglo-Saxon, who need not be occupied with questions pertaining to Spain or to any other nation of the South.
“Yes, indeed,” continued Horacio as he filled his glass with beer, “I explain everything, down to the tiniest detail, by social or biological laws. This morning, as I was getting up, I heard my landlady conversing with the baker about the rise in the cost of bread. ‘Why has bread gone up?’ she asked him. ‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘They say that the harvest is good.’ ‘Well, then?’ ‘I don’t know.’ I went off to the office at the precise hour, with English punctuality; there was nobody there; that’s the Spanish custom. So I asked myself, How does it happen that bread goes up if there’s a good[101] harvest? And I hit upon the explanation which I think will convince you. You know that there are tiny cells in the brain.”
“How should I know anything about that?” retorted the baroness, dipping a biscuit into her chocolate.
“Well, take my word for it, there are cells, and, according to the opinion of the physiologists, each cell has its own particular function; one serves for one thing, another for another. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. Now just recall that in Spain there are some thirteen millions of inhabitants who can neither read nor write. Do you follow me?”
“Certainly. Of course.”
“Very well. That cell which in educated persons is employed in attempts at understanding and thinking, is here left unemployed by thirteen millions of the population. That energy which they should expend in discussion, they waste in bestial instincts. As a consequence, crime increases, so does sexual appetite, and with the increase of sexual appetite comes an increase in the consumption of food, whereupon bread goes up.”
The baroness could not help bursting into laughter at her cousin’s explanation.
“That’s no mere fancy,” replied Horacio, “it’s the God’s honest truth.”
“Indeed I don’t doubt it, but the news strikes me funny.” Manuel, too, had to laugh.
“Where did you pick up this kid?”
[102]
“He’s the son of a woman we knew. What does your science tell you of him?”
“Let’s see. Remove your cap.”
Manuel removed his cap.
“He’s a Celt,” proclaimed Horacio. “Fine race. Facial angle open; broad forehead; not much jaw....”
“And what does all this signify?” queried Manuel.
“In the final analysis, nothing. Have you any money?”
“I? Not a button.”
“Then let me tell you this: since you have no money, and aren’t a man of prey, and can’t use your intelligence, even though you may have some, which I believe is the case, you’ll probably die in a hospital.”
“How rude!” exclaimed the baroness. “Don’t talk like that to the boy.”
Manuel greeted the prognostication with laughter; it seemed very comical to him.
“On the other hand, I,” went on Horacio, “have no fear of dying in a hospital. Look at my head; see that jaw; tokens of a most brutal instinct of acquisitiveness. I’m a Berber by race,—a Euro-African. And fortunately, I may add, I have been influenced by the ideas of Lord Bacon’s pragmatic philosophy. If it weren’t for that, I’d now be dancing tangoes in Cuba or Puerto Rico.”
“So that, thanks to this Lord, you’re a civilized man?”
“Relatively civilized. I don’t pretend to compare myself to an Englishman. Can I be certain[103] that I’m an Aryan? Am I, perhaps, a Celt or Saxon? I don’t deceive myself. I am of an inferior race. What am I going to do about it? I wasn’t born in Manchester, but in Camagüey, and I was brought up in Málaga. Just imagine that!”
“And what has that to do with the case?”
“Everything, my dear. Civilization comes with rainfall. It is in the moist, rainy countries that the most civilized types are nurtured, and the most beautiful as well. Types such as your daughter, with those blue eyes of hers, her fair complexion and her blond hair.”
“And how about me? What am I?” asked the baroness. “A little of what you said before?”
“A tiny bit Berber, you mean?”
“Yes. I think that was it. A tiny bit Berber, eh?”
“In character, perhaps, but not in type. You’re pure Aryan; your ancestors must have come from India, from the meseta of Pamir or the valley of Cabul, but they did not pass through Africa. You may rest easy on that score.”
The baroness eyed her cousin with a somewhat enigmatical expression. After a short while the cousins and Manuel left the café.