The Berber Feels Profoundly Anglo-Saxon—The Mephistophelian Mingote—Cogolludo—Kate’s Departure Ever since the baroness and the sociologist had met at the garrulous gathering of the Colonel’s wife, Horacio began to frequent the baroness’s house and deliver courses in anthropology and sociology in the dining-room. Manuel had no idea as to what those sciences might be in the original, but as translated into Adalusian by the baroness’s cousin, they were certainly picturesque. Manuel and Ni?a Chucha listened to the Berber with intense interest, and at times offered objections, which he answered, if not with very scientific arguments at least with an abundance of wit.
Cousin Horacio got into the habit of staying for supper and finally remained after supper as well. Ni?a Chucha favoured the Berber perhaps through racial affinity, and laughed, showing her white teeth, whenever Don Sergio came on a visit.
The situation was compromising because the baroness cared not a whit about anything. After having used Mingote, she sent him away two or three times without so much as a céntimo. The agent began to threaten, and one day he came resolved[105] to raise a scandal. He spoke of the forging of Manuel’s certificates, and hinted that this would cost the baroness a term in jail. She replied that the responsibility of the forgery rested with Mingote,—that she would find some one to protect her, and that, in case justice should intervene, the one to go to jail would be he.
Mingote threatened, shrieked, shouted at the top of his lungs, and who should come walking in at the height of the dispute but Horacio.
“What’s the trouble? You can hear the noise from the street,” he said.
“This man is insulting me,” cried the baroness.
Horacio seized Mingote by the scruff of the neck and shot him through the doorway. Mingote dissolved into curses, introducing Horacio’s mother into the altercation, whereupon the latter, forgetting Lord Bacon, felt the Berber in his blood, raised his foot and planted the toe of his boot upon Mingote’s buttocks. The agent shouted even more loudly, whereupon the Berber again caressed with his foot the roundest part of Mingote’s person.
The baroness foresaw that the agent would need time to take his revenge; she did not believe that he would dare to mention the forgery of the documents involving Manuel’s paternity, for his fingers would be caught in the same door. He would, however, be likely to inform Don Sergio of cousin Horacio’s presence in the house. Before he could do this, she wrote the merchant a letter asking for money with which to pay off certain debts. She sent Manuel with the missive.
[106]
The chalky old fellow read the letter and grew uneasy.
“See here, tell your ... mistress she’ll have to wait. I, too, have to wait very often.”
The baroness was furious at this reply.
“The coarse old brute! The vile beast! It’s all my fault for having bothered with the disgusting old duffer. Just wait till he comes. I’ll tell him what’s what.”
But Don Sergio did not show up, and the baroness, who surmised what had taken place, moved to a cheaper house in order to economize. Ni?a Chucha, Manuel and the three dogs were thus transferred to a third-floor apartment on the Calle del Ave María.
Here the idyll begun between the baroness and Horacio resumed its course, despite the fact that the latter, because of his Anglo-Saxon, phlegmatic temperament, or because of the low esteem in which he held women—a patrimony of the southern races—attached little importance to flirtations of this kind.
From time to time, in order to meet the expenses of the house, the baroness would sell or pawn a piece of furniture; but, with the disorder which reigned in that household, the money did not last long.
When they had been settled for about a month in the Calle del Ave María, Don Sergio appeared one morning boiling with indignation. The baroness refused to receive him, and sent the servant[107] maid to say that she was out. The old man went away and that afternoon wrote the baroness a letter.
Mingote had not “peached.” Don Sergio fumed; it did not appear seemly to him that Horacio should spend his days and nights in the baroness’s home; he did not mind an occasional visit from her cousin, but his assiduity,—that was the rub. The baroness showed the letter to her cousin; he, who doubtless was just hunting for some pretext under which he might escape, bethought himself of Lord Bacon, suddenly felt the Anglo-Saxon in him rise,—the Aryan, man of morals,—and ceased his visits to the home of the baroness.
The baroness, who was suffering from the final flush of romanticism that comes with the Indian summer of youth, sank into despair, addressed epistles to the gallant, but he continued to feel Anglo-Saxon and Aryan, ever mindful of Lord Bacon.
In the meantime Don Sergio, finding that his letter had produced no results, returned to his mission and came again to the house.
“My dear Paquita, what can possibly be the trouble with you?” he asked, gazing upon her altered features.
“I believe I’ve caught the grippe, my head feels so heavy. I have aches all over my body. Here you see me, utterly abandoned. It is God’s will, I suppose.”
Don Sergio listened silently to the whirlwind of[108] words and wails with which the baroness tried to clear herself of blame; then he said:
“This sort of life can’t go on. You must introduce some method, some semblance of order. Things simply can’t go on like this.”
“That’s just what I’ve been thinking,” answered the baroness. “I understand well enough that this sort of life isn’t for me. I’ll go back to another house at twelve duros.”
“And the furniture?”
“I’ll sell it.”
How was she to tell him that she had already sold it?
“No, I....” The chalky fellow was about to speak like a crafty merchant, but he did not dare. “Then again,” he went on, “these frequent visits of your cousin aren’t at all nice.”
“But what can I do if he pursues me,” murmured the baroness in a plaintive voice. “That man is simply mad over me. I know that such a passion is rare. A woman of my years....”
“Don’t talk like that, Paquita.”
“Well, then, there you are. He follows me like a shadow. But you’ll see, now; I’ll see that he never comes here any more.”
“Never come! He certainly will come, until you tell him not to, in so many words....”
“That’s just what I’ve told him, and that’s why he’ll never come any more.”
“All the better, then.”
The baroness glared at Don Sergio in indignation, and then assumed an air of deep contrition.
[109]
Don Sergio brought forward his plans for regeneration, and was of the opinion that Paquita ought to get rid of Ni?a Chucha, whom the chalky old gentleman detested most cordially. But the baroness protested that she loved the girl as her own child—almost as much as, if not more than, the dogs, which were the very apple of her eyes.
The baroness suddenly sat up on the sofa.
“I have a plan,” she said to Don Sergio. “Tell me what you think of it. In yesterday’s Imparcial I saw advertised a country house in Cogolludo, with a garden and orchard, at fifty duros per annum. I imagine that it must be a pretty bad place; but, at least it’s a bit of land and a place to live, and even a tiny cabin is enough for me. I could be fitting up the cabin gradually. What do you think of the suggestion, Don Sergio?”
“But why should you leave this place?”
“I didn’t want to tell you,” answered the baroness. “But that fellow simply persecutes me with his insistent attentions.” And she related a heap of lies. The good lady solaced herself with the illusion that her cousin was pursuing her relentlessly, and all the letters that she had written to him she represented as having been written by him to her.
“Naturally,” she went on, “I don’t have to go to the end of the world to avoid that ridiculous troubador.”
“But there’s no train to Cogolludo. You’re going to be awfully bored.”
“Bah! I’ll simply shut myself up in my hut like[110] a saint, and devote myself to watering my garden and tending my flowers ... but I am so unlucky that I’m certain some one must have rented the place by now.”
“No, I’m sure not. But I really don’t see the necessity of your leaving. The boy won’t be able to attend school.”
“He doesn’t need it any more. He’ll continue his studies independently.”
“Very well. We’ll rent the house.”
“Yes, for otherwise that low fellow will keep on pestering me. I wish they’d drag him off to jail and hang him! Ah, Don Sergio! When will Carlos VII come? I don’t believe in liberty or constitutional guarantees for rascals.”
“Come, come, woman. This will all straighten itself out in due season. Take heart, and make haste.”
“Thanks, Don Sergio. You were always such a strong man. A rock.... A Tarpeian rock. And you don’t know where to keep your money. Keep me in mind! You know that I’m a most orderly creature and that I neither stint nor squander.”
This was great virtue of the baroness—she knew herself thoroughly.
Once the decision was reached to go to Cogolludo, Ni?a Chucha and Manuel began to pack the furniture. In the midst of the packing, however, the mulattress remarked that she was very sorry, but that she would remain at a house in Madrid.
[111]
“But, my dear girl, what are you going to do?”
The servant, annoyed by these questions, confessed that a young gentleman from South America, a little rastacouère who felt homesick for his cocoa-nut trees, had offered her a place as housekeeper in his apartment.
The baroness did not dare speak of morality, and the sole bit of advice that she offered was, that if the South American were not to content himself simply with her services as housekeeper, she had better watch out for her interests; but the girl was no fool and, as she said, had already taken all precautions to land safely, on both her feet.
Manuel was left alone in the house to finish the tasks necessary to the removal. One afternoon, as he was returning from the Estación del Mediodía, he came upon Mingote, who, the moment he spied Manuel, ran after him.
“Where are you rushing?” he panted. “Any one would have thought that you were trying to get away from me.”
“I? What nonsense! I’m very glad to see you.”
“I, too.”
“What do you say to going into this café? I’ll pay for the drinks.”
“Come on.”
They walked into the Café de Zaragoza. Mingote ordered two coffees, note paper, pen and ink.
“Would you mind writing something that I’ll dictate to you?”
[112]
“Well, that depends upon what it is.”
“All I want you to do is to write a letter telling me that you’re not Sergio Figueroa but Manuel Alcázar.”
“And what do you want me to write that for? Don’t you know it as well as I do?” asked Manuel, innocently.
“Oh, it’s a plan I’m working on.”
“And what is there in it for me?”
“Thirty duros.”
“You mean it? Hand ’em over!”
“No, not now. When the deal is put through.”
Finding Manuel so favourably inclined, Mingote told him that if he could manage to steal the forged documents of his paternity from the baroness and hand them over to him, he’d add twenty more duros to the thirty already offered.
“I have the papers put away,” said Manuel. “If you’ll wait here a moment I’ll bring them to you at once.”
“Fine. I’ll be waiting here. What a sorry idiot this boy is,” thought Mingote. “He really imagines that I’m going to give him fifty duros. The fool!”
An hour went by; then another. No Manuel was forthcoming.
“Can the idiot have been myself?” exclaimed Mingote. “No doubt about it. Can that damned kid have fooled me?”
While Mingote stood there waiting, the baroness and Manuel had taken the train.
[113]
They reached Cogolludo and the baroness was bitterly disappointed. She had thought that the town would be a sort of gipsy hamlet, and instead she found an ugly village in the midst of a plain.
The house she had rented was on the outskirts of the village; it was spacious, with a blue door, three tiny windows peeping on to the road, and a poultry-yard in the rear. It must have been standing vacant for the past ten years. On the day after they arrived the baroness and Manuel swept and cleaned and dusted. The poor woman bitterly lamented her action.
“Oh, God in heaven, what a house!” she wailed. “What ever in the world did we come here for? And such a village! I had caught a passing glimpse of one or more towns in Spain, but in the North, where there are trees. This is so dry, so barren!”
Manuel was in his glory; the land near the house produced only nettles and dwarf elders, but he imagined that he could transform that patch of earth, so parched and stifled with noxious growths, into a flourishing garden. He set to work with a right good will.
First he weeded the ground and then burned all the grass of the garden.
Then he ploughed up the earth with a goad, and planted chick-peas, kidney-beans and potatoes indiscriminately, without troubling to find out whether it was the proper time for sowing. Then he spent hour after hour drawing water from an exceedingly deep well that was situated in the middle of the[114] garden; and as the rope scraped his skin, and, moreover, the soil would be dry within a half hour of watering, he contrived a sort of winch with the aid of which it took him half an hour to draw a bucket of water.
After they had been there a fortnight, the baroness engaged a servant, and when the house was thoroughly cleaned, she went off to Madrid, took Kate from school, and brought her to Cogolludo.
Kate, being of a practical turn of mind, filled several flower-pots with earth and planted various flowers in them.
“Why do you do that?” asked Manuel, “since the whole place will be covered with blossoms in a short time?”
“I want to have my own,” answered the girl.
A month passed, and despite Manuel’s exertions, not a seed sown by him showed any signs of sprouting. Only a few geraniums and some garlic planted by the servant grew admirably, despite the dryness.
Kate’s pots likewise prospered; during the height of the day’s heat she would take them indoors and water them. Manuel, beholding the ignominious failure of his horticultural efforts, devoted himself energetically to the extermination of the wasps, who took shelter in large honeycombs of cells symmetrically arranged, hidden in the interstices of the tiles.
He waged a war to the death against the wasps, but could not conquer them; it seemed that they had conceived a hatred for him; they launched such furious attacks against him that most of the time he[115] had to beat a retreat, and was exposed to the danger of falling from the roof riddled with stings.
Kate’s diversions were of a less strenuous, more pacific nature. She had arranged her room in perfect order. She knew how to beautify everything. With the bed covered by a white quilt and hidden by curtains, the flower-pots on the window ledge already showing signs of sprouting, her wardrobe, and the chromographs on the blue walls, her bedchamber assumed an aspect of charming grace.
Then she was an affable, even-tempered lass.
She had found a wounded cat in the fields, which some urchins had been chasing with stones. She picked it up, at the risk of being scratched, took care of it, and nursed it back to health. Now the cat followed her wherever she went and would stay only with her.
Manuel obeyed La Nena blindly, and felt, moreover, an intense satisfaction in this obedience. He looked upon her as a paragon of perfection, yet despite this, not even in his innermost self, did it ever occur to him to fall in love with her. Perhaps he considered her too good for him, too beautiful. Manuel experienced the paradoxical tendency of all imaginative men who believe that they love perfection and then fall in love with imperfection.
The summer went by pleasantly. The chalky old fellow came twice to Cogolludo, and was seemingly content. At the end of August, however, the pesetas that the baroness regularly received did not put in their appearance.
She wrote several times to Don Sergio, pleading[116] again the persecution of which she was the victim, for in this wise she satisfied both her vanity and the self-conceit of “old Cromwell.” But Don Sergio did not fall into the trap.
There could be no doubt about it; Mingote had informed. For a while the baroness bided her time, obtaining money on one pretext or another, piling up debts. One day, toward the beginning of autumn, the house agent appeared, requesting her to vacate the premises, as they had not paid the rent in Madrid. The baroness broke into insults, and tore to pieces the character of Don Sergio; the guard, however, said that his orders were not to permit the removal of the furniture before he was paid the rent. The baroness was overwhelmed to think that her daughter would learn of her wicked life; she calculated the value of the furniture, which even in Madrid, with the forced sale of some and the pawning of other pieces, had been reduced to those articles which were strictly indispensable, and made up her mind to leave them behind and flee from Cogolludo.
One afternoon when they left the village for a stroll, the baroness explained the situation to Kate, who received the news in utter confusion.
“Shall we go to Madrid?” she concluded.
“Let’s go,” said Kate.
“This very moment?”
“This very moment.”
“It’s cold. It’s beginning to drizzle.”
The railway station was in a nearby village. Manuel knew the way. The three of them strode[117] along amid low hillocks; they met nobody. Kate was still somewhat upset.
“We must look pretty queer,” said the baroness.
About an hour and a half after having left the village, suddenly, around a bend in the road, they sighted the semaphore of the railroad,—a white disc that looked like a gaunt spectre. A barely perceptible breeze was blowing. Soon they heard from a distance the shrill whistle of the locomotive; then came gleams of the red and white lanterns on the engine, which grew rapidly in the darkness; the earth trembled, the cars thundered by with an infernal roar, a puff of white smoke rolled up, shot through with luminous incandescencies, and fell in a shower of sparks to the ground. The train sped on, leaving two lanterns, one red and the other green, dancing in the gloom of the night, until they, too, were engulfed in the darkness. By the time they entered the station the three were exhausted. They waited several hours, and on the morning of the following day they arrived in Madrid.
The baroness was worried. They went to a lodging-house; they were asked whether they had any luggage; the baroness answered no, and could find no pretext or explanation. They were told that they could not be accommodated without luggage, unless they paid in advance, and the baroness left in shame. Thence they proceeded to the house of a friend, but she had moved away. Neither did they know Horacio’s whereabouts. The baroness was compelled to pawn Kate’s watch and the trio took rooms in a third-class hotel.
[118]
On the fourth day their money gave out. The baroness had lost her self-composure, and her features betrayed her weariness and discouragement.
She wrote a humble letter to her brother-in-law, begging hospitality for herself and daughter. The answer was slow in coming. The baroness hid from Kate, to cry her fill.
The proprietress of the hotel presented their account; the baroness entreated her to wait a few days until a certain letter should come, but the landlady, who would not have been perturbed by the request made in some other form, imagined from the tones employed by the baroness that deception was afoot, so she answered that she would not wait, and that, if on the next day she were not paid, she would notify the police.
Kate, seeing that her mother was more troubled than ever, asked her what was the matter. The baroness explained the dire straits in which they found themselves.
“I’m going to see the ambassador of my country,” declared Kate with determination.
“You, alone? I’ll go with you.”
“No, let Manuel accompany me.”
The two went off to the Embassy; they entered through a wide doorway. Kate handed her card to an attendant and was admitted at once. Manuel, seated on a bench, waited for fifteen minutes. At the end of this time the maiden came out in company of a venerable old man.
[119]
He saw her to the door and spoke to a uniformed lackey.
The lackey opened the door of a carriage that stood opposite the entrance and remained standing with his hat in his hand.
Kate bade the old gentleman good-bye. Then she said to Manuel:
“Come along.”
She stepped into the carriage, followed by the astounded Manuel.
“Everything’s all arranged,” said the girl to Manuel. “The ambassador has telephoned to the hotel requesting them to send the bill to the Embassy.”
Manuel noticed on this occasion, and in later years more than once corroborated the observation, that women accustomed from childhood to submit and to conceal their desires, possess, when their hidden energies are brought into play, a most extraordinary power.
The baroness received the news in astonishment and in an access of tenderness showered kisses upon Kate, weeping bitterly as she did so.
Some days later there came an answer from the baroness’s brother-in-law, together with a check covering the expenses of the journey.
Despite what the baroness had promised Manuel, he knew that he would not be taken along. It was natural. The baroness bought some clothes for La Nena and herself.
One autumn afternoon mother and daughter departed.[120] Manuel accompanied them to the station.
The baroness was deeply depressed to think of leaving Madrid; La Nena was, as always, apparently serene.
During the ride none of the three spoke a word.
They stepped out of the carriage into the waiting-room; there was a trunk to be registered; Manuel saw to it. Then they went to the platform and took seats in a second-class coach. Roberto, pale, was pacing up and down the platform.
The baroness promised the boy that they would return.
The station bell rang. Manuel stepped into the coach.
“Better be getting off,” said the baroness. “The train is about to start.”
Manuel offered his hand timidly to La Nena.
“Embrace her,” said her mother.
Manuel scarcely dared to put his arms around the maiden’s waist. The baroness kissed him upon both cheeks.
“Good-bye, Manuel,” she said, wiping a tear.
The train started; La Nena waved her hand from the window; one car after another rumbled along the tracks; the locomotive gathered speed. Manuel grew heavy hearted. On sped the train, whistling through the fields, as Manuel raised his hands to his eyes and felt that he was weeping.
Roberto clutched his arm.
“Let’s get out of here.”
[121]
“Is that you?” asked Manuel.
“Yes.”
“They were very good to me,” commented Manuel, sadly.