SE?ORA PATROCINIO seated herself at the table. She was a thin, lean old woman, with a yellow complexion, a hooked nose which was on friendly terms with her chin, grey hair, and a wrinkled skin.
Don Gil took a drink, and continued as follows:
The store was located in a large, antique house, painted blue. On the ground floor were four grated windows, a door, and two little shops. One of these was a mat store, and the other was the one El Pende had rented.
It was a tiny apartment, scarcely three metres square, with a few living-rooms beyond a dark back room.
El Pende put neither signs nor decorations on his shop; he placed a counter painted with red ochre in the middle of the floor, set up a few pine shelves, and commenced business.
All kinds of things to eat and to drink and to burn were sold at the store; a heterogeneous assortment was heaped upon the shelves; there were soaps, silks, taffy of all kinds, and dyes from the most distinguished factory in the whole world, which is that of the Calle de Mucho Trigo; there were hemp-seeds roasted in honey, candied pine-nuts, almond paste, and those thin little wafers that you must have seen, that look like priests’ hats.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
“Come, don’t get tiresome,” said Se?ora Patrocinio.
“If you interrupt me, Sister Patrocinio, I shall refuse to go on,” answered the narrator.
“You are losing the thread of your story. Come to the point, Don Gil, come to the point.”
“Very well, then—I refuse to continue.”
“Go on, man, go on; you’re crankier than a wheat-sifter,” said the old woman.
“Where was I?” murmured Don Gil. “I believe I’ve forgotten.”
“You were telling us what the store contained,” suggested Quentin.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Of drinkables (the arch?ologist continued), there were all sorts of brandies and refreshing beverages; rossolis, which they call ressolis here; Cazalla, and wild cherry brandy in green jars which some call parrots, and others greenfinches.
The little store in the Calle de la Zapatería soon had customers. Country folk used to go there to take a little nip in the morning; a few servant girls and a great many children used to stop there to buy sweets.
El Pende stayed behind the counter where he received his friends, who sometimes spent a little money. The most assiduous in his attendance at these gatherings, was a ruined hidalgo by the name of Palomares, whom El Pende had known since childhood, and who, having nothing to do, used to take refuge in the shop. In order not to be in the way, and at the same time to make himself useful, he used to wait on customers himself.
This hidalgo, Diego Palomares, was an adventurer, a son of Lucena. He had departed from his home town for the first time when he was eighteen years old, to attend the Seville Fair. He lost all his money and his desire to return to his native city, by gambling, and acquired, in exchange, a desire to see the world; so he went to Cadiz and embarked for America. There he had his ups and downs successively: he was a merchant, a super-cargo on a ship, and after many years of hard and fatiguing work, he returned to Cordova, thirty-six years old, penniless, and prematurely aged.
When Diego Palomares saw that his friend was getting on well with the store, he joined him.
While El Pende sat at the counter tending the store, Fuensanta continued to help the silversmith.
Six months after the first gift, the old Marquis sent for Fuensanta and gave her another hundred dollars.
From the wife’s hands they passed into those of her husband, who used them all in the store.
El Pende asked the landlord to give him another room, and to remove one of the grated windows, that he might enlarge his store. His request was granted, and in place of the grating, they installed a show-window.
Then El Pende had a sign painted, and hanging from the board, a gilt, many-pointed star.
How many arguments he and Palomares had as to whether the star was right or not!
I remember that one day, when I was on my way to the Casino, they called me in to elucidate the question for them; and you ought to have heard me give them a talk about office-signs of all kinds! It is a matter to which few people pay any attention.
“Come, there you go again, wandering away from your subject,” said the old woman.
“Be quiet,” Don Gil ejaculated. “This matter of signs is very interesting; don’t you think so?” he asked Quentin.
“I don’t know anything about it.”
“Oh, don’t you? Well, for example, some night you may see a closed store with a sign which reads ‘Perez,’ with two red hands hanging from the board. What kind of business do those red hands indicate?”
“A glove store, perhaps?” asked Quentin.
“That’s right. How clever the lad is! What does a basin indicate?”
“That’s well known—a barber shop.”
“And a rooster on top of a ball?”
“That I don’t know.”
“Why, a poultry shop. And a red or blue ball in a show-case?”
“A drug store.”
“Very good. And a little tiny mattress?”
“A mattress-maker’s store.”
“And one or two black hands holding a bunch of keys?”
“I think I have seen that in front of locksmiths’ shops.”
“That’s right. And a large book?”
“A bindery.”
“But what a clever chap he is! And large eyeglasses—very large?”
“An optician’s.”
“And the bust of a woman leaning from a balcony as though taking the air?”
“I don’t know.”
“A ladies’ hair-dressing salon: but they don’t have as many here as they do in Madrid. And a horse-shoe?”
“You’re the one that ought to be horse-shoed,” ejaculated Se?ora Patrocinio. “Are you going on with the story or not, Don Gil?”
“But you two are confusing me! You make me lose the thread. Where was I?”
“You were telling us,” said Se?ora Patrocinio, “about how they fixed up the store with the Marquis’ money.”
“Ah! That’s so.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
They widened the store; left off several articles that were not very productive, and devoted themselves exclusively to selling comestibles. They bought casks of Montillo wine, Montero oil, sugar, coffee, and hired some chocolate makers to make chocolate.
Palomares, whom El Pende had engaged as a clerk when he saw the prosperity of the establishment, spent the day wrapping up cakes of chocolate, toasting coffee, and mixing peanuts and chicory.
Palomares had a great talent for labelling his mixtures. When he had faked up something, he called it “Extra-Superior”; if the fake was so complete that one could not tell what kind of a product it was, then he called it “Superior” or “Fine.”
Besides these hyperbolical names, there were other more modest ones, such as “First Class,” “Second Class,” and “Third Class.” These divisions were hard to define; yet Palomares asserted, not that they were good, but that one could easily distinguish a difference between them.
According to him, it was clear that the “Second Class” was worse than the “First Class,” and that the “Third Class” was worse than the “Second Class”; but this was not saying that the “First Class” and the “Second Class” were good, or even passably so.
In spite of the chemistry that El Pende and his assistant employed, the store grew in reputation. The show-window was full of sausages wrapped in tinfoil, prunes, and tins of preserves. On the shelves were loaves of sugar, bottles of sherry, and jugs of gin. Upon the floor in sacks, were rice, kidney-beans, and casks of sardines.
Money began to flow into the store in such a quiet and unobtrusive manner that no one was aware of it. The old silversmith grumbled at the thought that some fine day they would leave him; but Fuensanta deceived him by telling him that the store was not getting along very well, and that they would get rid of it if they had a chance.
El Pende, who lacked the patience of his wife, wished to emancipate himself completely from the old man, so he rented the first floor of the house in which the store was located, giving the back room to Palomares.
Then Fuensanta hired a servant girl, and every minute she had free, she went to keep the old silversmith company. This procedure was very much praised by the old wives of the community, and Fuensanta enjoyed much popularity. At the same time, El Pende succeeded in making people forget his family nickname, and everybody called him Rafael, or Se?or Rafael, and some even called him Don Rafael.
The family was progressing economically, and acquiring more respectability, when the lad Quentin began to make trouble. He ran away from home; he stole; once he came near poisoning the whole family; he did terrible things.
Then the old Marquis, to whose knowledge his grandson’s escapades had come, had him brought before him and sent him away to school in England.
Quentin left, and the family continued their progress. Fuensanta had her fourth child, a daughter; and during the confinement, Don Andrés Salvador, the silversmith, died from heart failure.
When they opened the old man’s will, they found that his fortune, almost in its entirety, with the exception of a few bequests to two distant relatives, was left to Fuensanta. The fortune, including the money and the house, amounted to somewhere near thirty thousand dollars.
Then Fuensanta and El Pende tried to rent the whole lower floor of the house on the Calle de la Zapatería, with the idea of converting it into a large warehouse. The landlord was willing, but the man who rented the mat store said that he would not move, that he had a ten-year contract with the landlord, and that he did not intend to leave. They offered to pay him an indemnity, but he persisted in his recalcitrant attitude.
And maybe the fool wasn’t stubborn! El Capita was a man of evil intent with a magnificent history. Some time ago he lived with a widow who had two daughters in school. When the elder daughter graduated, the man fell in love with her, and married her; though he continued his relations with her mother. El Capita was an artful chap. His wife found out about the affair, and was indignant. She ran away with her husband’s clerk out of revenge; but El Capita did not worry about the matter. Along came the second daughter, and El Capita, who was very astute, began to make advances to her, which she, more accommodating than her elder sister, willingly accepted.
El Capita was very content with his store; doubtless he had an affection for all those panniers and headstalls—mute witnesses of his drunken parties and tempestuous love affairs, and he got it into his head that he was not going to move. But the man reckoned without his hostess; and in this case, his hostess was Fuensanta, who when she said that she was going to do a thing, did it regardless of all obstacles.
Fuensanta very quietly transferred the inherited silversmith’s shop; then she sold the house in the Calle de Librerías, and with the money from the transfer and the sale, bought the house in the Calle de la Zapatería; and El Capita had to get out in a hurry, willy nilly, with all his pack-saddles and panniers.
Fuensanta and El Pende converted the whole lower floor into a warehouse. They furnished the barracks and the prison with goods at wholesale; but as they did not wish to kill their retail trade, they rented a store in the Calle de la Espartería near the Arco Alto and the Calle de Gitanos. This place, which was known in ancient times by the name of El Gollizno on account of its extreme narrowness, is one of the busiest corners in Cordova. Certainly there . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
“Good lord! Another digression?” exclaimed Quentin. “Haven’t you finished yet?”
“Yes.”
“Tell us the rest,” said the old woman. “What happened to that El Pende fellow?”
“Nothing: they elected him to the council, then they made him lieutenant-mayor, and now he is a wealthy merchant, a banker; and we who were rich once, haven’t a penny now. Eh? Well, that is the story. Come—pass me some more wine.”
Don Gil seized the bottle with one hand, brought it to his mouth, and began to drink.
“Enough, man, enough,” said Se?ora Patrocinio.
The arch?ologist paid no attention to her, and never stopped until he had emptied the bottle. Then he gazed about the room, shut his eyes, leaned his head upon the table, and an instant later, commenced to snore noisily.
“The compadre is rather intoxicated,” said Quentin as he looked at Don Gil.
“Come, you’re feeling pretty good yourself,” replied the old woman.
“I? I was never so calm in my life. It takes a lot to get us people from England drunk.”
“Ah! Are you English?”
“No; I come from here.”
“And are you a friend of the Quentin of whom there has been so much talk tonight?”
“Ha ... ha ... ha!”
“What are you laughing at?”
“Why, that Quentin ... is me!”
“You?” and she used the familiar tu.
“Ha ... ha! Now the old dame is beginning to ‘thee and thou’ me!”
“Is it you, Quentin?”
“Yes.”
“I am a relative of yours.”
“Really? I’m very glad to hear it.”
“I can’t explain anything to you now, because you are drunk. Come some other day and we’ll talk it over. I’ll help you.”
“Very good; I shall take advantage of your protection.... Ha, ha!”
“You shall see. You won’t have to work.”
“Work! Ha ... ha ... ha! That is an idea that never occurred to me, good dame. Far from me is that vulgar thought.... Ah!... Ha ... ha ... ha!”
Se?ora Patrocinio seized Quentin by the arm and led him to the street.
“Now, go home,” she said to him; “some other day I shall tell you something that may interest you. Should you need money, come here before you go anywhere else.”
This said, she pushed Quentin into the middle of the street. The coolness of the night air cleared his head. Day had not yet dawned; the sky was clean and cloudless; the moon was low in the heavens—just touching the horizon.
MORE INCOMPREHENSIBLE THAN THE HEART OF A GROWN WOMAN, IS THAT OF A GIRL-CHILD
QUENTIN did not abandon the idea of becoming intimate with Rafaela.
He now knew the close relationship that united them. They were of the same family. Things would have to turn out badly indeed not to be advantageous to him.
One morning Quentin again went to his cousin’s house. He found the gate open, and went as far as the interior of the garden without ringing. He found Juan, the gardener, busily occupied in trying to turn the key which let the water out of the pool; an undertaking in which he was not successful.
“What are you trying to do?” Quentin asked him.
“To turn this key; but it’s so dirty....”
“Let me have it,” said Quentin; and taking a large crowbar, he turned the key with scarcely an effort. A jet of water ran into a small trough, from which it flowed through the various ditches that irrigated the different parts of the garden.
“Where are the young ladies?” asked Quentin.
“At mass: they’ll be back in a little while.”
“What’s doing here? How is everything getting on?”
“Badly. Worse every day,” answered the gardener. “How different this house used to look! Money used to flow here like wheat. They said that every time the clock struck, the Marquis made an ounce of gold. And such luxury! If you had walked through these patios thirty years ago, you’d have thought you were in heaven!”
“What was here?”
“You would have met the armed house-guards, all gaudily attired—with short coats, stiff-brimmed hats, and guns.”
“What did they do?”
“They accompanied the Marquis on his trips. Have you seen the coach? What a beauty it is! It will hold twenty-four persons. It’s dirty and broken now, and isn’t a bit showy; but you should have seen it in those days. It used to take eight horses and postillions a la Federica to haul it. And what a to-do when they gave the order to start! The guards, mounted on horseback, waited for the coach in that little plazoleta in front. Then the cavalcade started off. And what horses! He always had two or three of those animals that cost thousands of dollars.”
“It must have cost him a lot to maintain a stable like that.”
“Just think of it!”
“When did these grandeurs come to an end?”
“Not very long ago, believe me. When the Queen came to Cordova, she rode from the Cueva del Cojo to the city in our coach.”
“How is it that the family could fall so far?”
“It has been everybody’s fault. God never granted much sense to the members of this household; but the administrator and the Count, who is the young ladies’ father, were the ones who brought on most of the ruin. The latter, besides being a libertine and a spendthrift, is a fool. People are always deceiving him; and what he doesn’t lose through foolishness, he does through distrust. Once he bought twenty thousand gallons of oil in Malaga at seventy reales, brought them here, and sold them in a few days, at forty.”
“That certainly was an idiotic thing to do.”
“Well, he’s done lots more like it.”
“What has become of him now? Where does he live?”
“He goes about the city with toreadors and horse-dealers. He has separated from his wife.”
“Did he marry again?”
“Yes; the second time, he married the daughter of an olive merchant: a beautiful, but ordinary woman who is giving the town a lot to talk about. Since he is a fool, and she a sinner, after two or three years of married life, they separated—throwing things at each other’s heads. Now he is living with a gipsy girl named La Mora, who relieves him of what pennies he has left. The girl’s brothers and cousins go into retirement with him in taverns, and make him sign papers by threatening him with violence: why, they haven’t left him a penny! And now that he has no money, they no longer love him. La Mora throws him out of his house, and I believe he crawls back to her on his knees.”
“Meanwhile, what about his wife?”
“She gets worse and worse. She has been going about here with a lieutenant ... she’s a wild hussy.”
The gardener took his spade and made a pile of earth in a ditch to keep the water away from a certain spot. While Juan worked, Quentin turned his ambitious projects over and over in his mind.
“What a superb stroke!” he was thinking. “To marry the girl, and save the property! That surely would be killing two birds with one stone. To have money, and at the same time, pass for a romantic chap! That would be admirable.”
“Here come the young ladies,” said Juan suddenly, looking down the corridor.
Sure enough; Rafaela and Remedios, accompanied by the tall, dried-up servant, appeared in the garden. The two girls were prettier than ever in their mantillas and black dresses.
“See how pretty they are!” exclaimed Juan to Quentin, arms akimbo. “Those children are two slices out of heaven.”
Rafaela laughed the laugh of a young woman utterly lacking in coquetry; Remedios looked at Quentin with her great, black eyes, waiting, perhaps, for a confirmation of the gardener’s compliment.
Rafaela removed her mantilla, folded it, stuck two large pins in it, and gave it to the maid; then she smoothed her hair with her long, delicate-fingered white hand.
“I have a favour to ask of you,” she said to Quentin.
“Of me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Command me: I shall consider myself most happy to be your slave.”
Rafaela laughed musically and said:
“Goodness me! How quickly you take your ground!”
“I am not exaggerating; I am saying what I feel.”
“Then be careful, for you seem to me to be a trifle restless for a slave, and I may have to put you in irons.”
“It won’t be necessary for you to do that. Tell me what you want me to do.”
“Well, a very simple thing. My father, who is not all a gentleman should be, took a little silver jewelcase out of my room the other day. It is a souvenir of mother. I think he must have sold it, and I wish you would take the trouble of looking for it. You’ll find it in some pawn-shop on the plaza. There is a coronet upon the cover of the case, and in the silk lining are the initials, R. S. If you find the little box, please buy it, and I shall pay you whatever it amounts to.”
“No, not that.”
“Oh, I don’t want it under any other condition.”
Apropós of the little box, Rafaela spoke sadly of her mother.
Remedios, who had taken off her mantilla, took a hoop from a corner and began to play with it.
“Remedios!” said Rafaela. “You have your new dress on. Change it, and study your lessons immediately.”
“No, not today,” replied the child.
“Why not? And she says it so calmly! Big girls don’t play with hoops. If I don’t watch this child, she plays all sorts of games, just like a little street urchin. Do you think that is right, girlie?”
Remedios looked at her sister impudently, and only whistled as an answer.
“Don’t whistle, please.”
“I will,” answered Remedios.
“I’ll shut you up in the dark room. We’ve had two days this week without our lessons. If you don’t learn any more than that, you’ll be a little donkey.... Just about as clever as Pajarito.”
“No!” exclaimed the little girl, stamping her foot.
“Yes, yes,” said Rafaela, smiling.
“No.”—And throwing her arms about her sister’s neck, Remedios climbed into her lap.
“I believe you have lost your moral strength,” Quentin said to her.
“Yes; I think so too,” added Rafaela.
Safe in her sister’s lap, Remedios began to chatter, while Rafaela patted her like a baby. She told several stories in which Pajarito, Juan and the genet appeared.
“What a little story-teller you are!” said Rafaela, laughing.
When she grew tired of this, Remedios jumped from her sister’s lap, and began to run about the garden. Presently she appeared riding astride of the donkey.
“The child is wild today,” said Rafaela, gazing severely at Remedios.
The little girl noticed that her sister was annoyed, and jumping from the donkey at the risk of falling, she went up to her.
“Juan said that we can pick oranges now.”
“Girlie, will you kindly be less of a busybody, and a little more quiet?”
“Well, that’s what he said!” exclaimed Remedios, making an expressive gesture, and rolling her great, black eyes.
Quentin began to laugh. Rafaela joined him.
“What are you laughing at?” demanded Remedios of her sister.
“I’m not laughing, child.”
“Yes, you are. Let’s get out of here.”
“But, why?”
“Yes; come on.”
“It’s just a little notion the girl has taken,” murmured Quentin.
“What business is it of yours?”
“My dear child, if you grow up like this, no one will be able to resist you.”
Remedios remained frowning by Rafaela’s side; then she saw Juan’s little dog, took it in her arms, and running to the pool, threw it into the water.
“What a creature!” said Rafaela, vexed.
They went to the pool; the dog swam to the edge and began to flounder about without being able to get out. Quentin knelt upon the ground, and stretching out his arm, lifted the little animal from the water.
“He’s shivering,” said Rafaela. “Do you see what you have done?” she added, turning to her sister—“He may die.”
Remedios, who had watched the rescue impassively, went to a corner and sat upon the ground with her face to the wall.
“Remedios!” called Rafaela.
The child made no reply.
“Come, Remedios,” said Quentin, going over to her.
“Go away!”
“Come, you’re exhausting my patience.”
“I won’t.”
Rafaela tried to seize the girl, but she began to run, shouting:
“If you follow me, I’ll throw myself into the pool.”
And she was making for it when Quentin seized her firmly about the waist, and heedless of her shrieks and kicks, handed her over to Rafaela.
“No, no; you must go into the dark room. What a child!”
“No, I won’t do any more, I won’t do any more,” sobbed Remedios, hiding her head on her sister’s shoulder, overcome with shame, and weeping like a Magdalene.
“When the tears are over, she’ll be a little lamb. Will you undertake my mission?” Rafaela asked Quentin.
“If the little box is in Cordova, you may be sure that I shall find it.”
“Good! Adiós. We are going in to get over this,” said Rafaela, smiling ironically.
Rafaela and Remedios went up to their rooms, and Quentin went out into the street.
“IN those days,” asserted Don Gil Sabadía in a notable article in El Diario de Cordova, “La Corredera was a large, rectangular plaza surrounded by houses with heavy balconies and porticos supported by thick columns. At that time the plaza had no dirty and ugly brick market-place; nor were the houses as neglected as they are today; nor did so much hedge-mustard grow on the balconies. With a daily open-air market, a plaza used on great occasions for bull-fights and jousts, La Corredera constituted a commercial, industrial, and artistic centre for Cordova. In that spot were celebrated regal fiestas of great renown in our locality; there autos da fé were consummated; there Se?or Pedro Romero and Pepe Hillo fought bulls when Charles IV visited the city; there the Tablet of the Constitution was set up in 1823 with great enthusiasm, only to be torn down and dragged about that same year; there the bodies of a few splendid youths were exposed, killed in the hills with their guns in their hands; there also the last executioners of Cordova, the two Juans—Juan García and Juan Montano—both masters of the art of hanging their fellow men, had splendid opportunities to perform the extremely important duties that had been conferred upon them. Lastly, from there, from La Corredera, sprang the rogues of Cordova, relatives of the rascals of Zocodover and Azoguejo, fathers of the scoundrels of Perchel, and of the lancers of Murcía, and remote ancestors of the Madrid golfos.”
And Don Gil, after enumerating the beauties of La Corredera, terminated his article with the following lament: “One more reason we have for thanking our much-boasted-of progress!”
Quentin had been told that nearly all of the pawn shops in Cordova were situated in La Corredera, and the morning after his conversation with Rafaela, he appeared there, resolved to leave no stone unturned until he had discovered the little box which he had been entrusted to find.
He entered La Corredera through the Arco Alto. From this spot, the plaza presented a pleasing and picturesque spectacle. It was like a harbour filled with yellow and white sails shaking in the breeze, shining with light, and filling the whole extent of the plaza. Under the dark and sombre porticos, in the tiny shops and booths, there were little piles of black objects.
Quentin walked through the centre of the plaza. He saw permanent booths, like large huts, where they sold grains and vegetables; and some that were portable, like great umbrellas with long sticks, which belonged to green-grocers and fruit-sellers. Other booths were a bit more simple, being merely wide, awningless tables upon which walnuts and hazelnuts were heaped. Others, simpler still, were upon the ground, “upon the stone counters,” as the itinerant pedlars called them.
Quentin left the centre of the plaza and entered the arcade, resolved to leave no second-hand store or pawn-broker’s establishment unvisited. Each space beneath the arcade was occupied by a booth, and each column had a little stand at its base. On the inside of the covered walk were the gateways of inns with their classic patios, and their splendid old names; such as the Posada de la Puya, or the Posada del Toro.... The sandal stores displayed coils of plaited grass as signs; the drink establishments, shelves full of coloured bottles; the saddleries, headstalls, cinchas, and cruppers; the tripe shops, bladders, and sieves made of the skins of Lucena donkeys. Here a cane weaver was making baskets; there, a pawnbroker was piling up several greasy books; and near him, an old fright of a woman was taking a piece of hakefish from a frying-pan and placing it upon a tin plate.
Even the sidewalks were occupied; a vendor of Andújar ware was pacing up and down before his dishes: large water-jars, and small, green jugs which were arranged in squares upon the stones. An old countrywoman was selling rolls of tinder for smokers; a man with a cap was exhibiting cigar cases and shell combs upon a folding table.
At each column there was a grinder with his machine, or a hatter with his caps in a large basket, or a fritter-maker with his caldron, or a cobbler with his bench and cut leather and a basin to dampen it in. There were notes of gaiety which were struck by stockings and handkerchiefs of vivid colours; and sinister notes: rows of different sized knives tied to a wall, on whose blades were engraved mottoes as suggestive as the following:
Si esta víbora te pica,
No hay remedio en la botica.
(If this viper should sting thee, there is no cure for it in the drugstore.)
Or as that other legend, laconic in its fidelity, written below a heart graven in the steel:
Soy de mi due?o y se?or.
(I am of my lord and master.)
Although he visited every pawn shop and second-hand dealer in the plaza, Quentin failed to find the jewel-case. Somewhat dazed by the sun and the noise, he stopped and leaned against a column for a moment. It was a babel of shouts and voices and songs—of a thousand sounds. The hardware dealers struck horse-shoes with their hammers in a queer sort of rhythm; the knife-grinders whistled on their flutes; the vendor of medicinal herbs emitted a melancholy cry; the pine-nut seller shouted like a madman: “Boys and girls, weep for pine-nuts!”
There were cries that were languid and sad; others that were rapid and despairing. Some vendors devoted themselves to humour; like the seller of rolled wafers who began his advertisement by saying: “Here’s where you get your wafers ... they came from El Puerto—all the way for you!” and then mixed up a lot of sayings and refrains. Other merchants added a scientific touch; like the seller of tortoises, who dragged the little animals along the ground tied to a string, and shouted in a voice made husky by brandy: “Come and buy my little sea-roosters!”
All this rabble of vendors, of farmers, of women, of naked children, and of beggars; talked, shouted, laughed, gesticulated; it flowed from the Arco Alto to the Calle de la Espartería, where the orchardists from El Ruedo waited to bargain with the farmers; it entered the Plaza de las Ca?as, and while the multitude moved about, the winter sun, yellow, brilliant as gold, fell upon and reverberated from the white awnings.
Quentin went through the Arco Bajo to a plazoleta where a group of old men were sunning themselves, with their cloaks tied to their bodies and their stiff, broad-brimmed hats pulled down over their eyes. The majority of them were so preoccupied in their noble task of doing nothing, that Quentin dared not bother them with questions, so he made his way toward a lupine-seller who was seated beneath a small awning which sheltered him from the sun.
The man had fastened a frame to the wall which served him as an awning. As the red disk of the sun descended in the heavens, the man changed the angle of the frame, always keeping himself in the shade.
This wise fellow, who was reading a paper at the moment through a pair of glasses, wore a high-crowned, sugar-loaf hat; he had the small, gentle eyes of a drunkard, a long, twisted, red nose, and a white, pointed beard. When Quentin accosted him, he lifted his eyes with indifference, looked over his glasses, and said:
“Sweetmeats? Lupine?”
“No; I would like you to tell me if there is a pawn shop around here besides those in La Corredera.”
“Sí, Se?or; there is one in the Plaza de la Almagra.”
“Where is that?”
“Near here. Would you like me to go with you?”
“No, thanks. They might steal your wares.”
“Pish! What would they want them for?” And the ingenious chap with the sugar-loaf hat came out from behind his awning, tipped his hat toward one ear, caressed his goatee, and flourishing a white stick, abandoned his basket of lupine to fate, and accompanied Quentin until he left him in front of a second-hand store.
“Thank you very much, caballero,” said Quentin.
The wise man smiled, shifted his high-crowned hat from his left ear to his right, swung his stick, and, after bowing ceremoniously, departed.
Quentin entered the shop and explained to the clerk what he was looking for. The man, after listening to him, said:
“I’ve got that jewel-case.”
“Will you show it to me?”
“I don’t know why I shouldn’t.”
The man opened a writing-desk, and from the bottom of one of the drawers took out a small, blackened box. It had a coronet upon the cover, but the lining had been torn out, so they could not see the initials that Rafaela had mentioned to Quentin. Nevertheless, it was probably the right box. Quentin wished to make sure.
“Do you mind telling me,” he asked, “where this box came from?”
“Are you so interested in it?” questioned the pawnbroker rather sarcastically.
“Yes; but it is because I wish to make sure that it is the one I am looking for.”
“Well, I don’t mind saying where it came from, for I am sure that the man who sold it to me owned it.”
“Is it from the house of a marquis?”
“Sí, Se?or.”
“Of one who lives on the Calle del Sol?”
“Sí, Se?or.”
“How much do you want for it?”
“Seventy dollars.”
“The devil! That’s a good deal.”
“It’s worth it. A man who knew about such things would give me a hundred dollars for it; perhaps more....”
“Very well. If I cannot come and get it today, I shall be here tomorrow.”
“Very well.”
Quentin went home deep in thought. Where was he going to get those seventy dollars? He entered the store and went to see Palomares.
“Could you let me have seventy dollars today?” he inquired.
“Seventy dollars! Where am I going to get it?”
“Don’t you know any one who lends money?”
“You’ve got to have a guarantee if you want any one to lend you money; and what guarantee are you going to give?”
“The fact is, I’ve got to have the money today.”
“Look here; come to the store on the Calle de la Espartería this evening, and we’ll see what we can do.”
At six o’clock, Quentin went to the store. He had never been there before. It was small, but overstocked with goods, and, at that hour, crowded with purchasers.
“Is Don Rafael in?” Quentin asked a clerk.
“There, in the back room.”
Quentin went in, and found himself in a small room with various shelves full from top to bottom of tins of all kinds and colours, bottles, flasks, and jars. One breathed there a mixed odour of cinnamon, petroleum, coffee, and cod-fish. In that little shop of nutritious produce, three persons were engaged in conversation with Don Rafael. Quentin greeted them and sat down.
One of the three persons was a prebendary by the name of Espego, whom they called Espejito on account of his small stature. Espejito had a sly look, and was pacing about the back room with his hands behind his back.
The second member of the coterie was a lean man with very thin legs, which were wide apart like those of a compass; he had a face like a tunny-fish, with a fixed, penetrating, and suspicious glance. He was called Camacha, and was a solicitor. He wore a short moustache, side-whiskers that reached to the bottom of his ears, a broad-brimmed hat tipped to one side, and very tight trousers.
The third member was leaning back in a chair; he was a sexagenarian with a roman profile; his face was full of fleshy wrinkles; his nose, crooked and aquiline, hung over his upper lip like a vulture over its prey; his eyes were staring and sunken; his mouth contemptuous and bitter, and his skin, lemon-coloured. He wore a black handkerchief tied about his head; over it, a broad-brimmed hat, also black; and over his shoulders, a roomy, dark-brown cloak with large folds.
This gentleman, the owner of a number of farms about Cordova, was called Don Matías Armenta.
The four men talked slowly and disjointedly.
“I believe there are guarantees,” murmured one of them from time to time.
“That’s what I think.”
“The condition of the house....”
“Is not satisfactory, that’s certain; but to respond....”
“That’s what I think.”
“We’ll speak of that some other day.”
“I’m in the way here,” thought Quentin, and he went into the store and sat down upon a bench, waiting for Palomares to appear.
Palomares went into the back room, and at the end of a short time, came out and said to Quentin:
“Well, my lad, it can’t be done.”
Quentin went into the street cursing his stepfather and the old cronies who were with him for a trio of usurers of the worst kind. He was walking along the streets wondering how he was to get the money, when he remembered the offer Se?ora Patrocinio had made to him the night he and Don Gil Sabadía were in her house.
“Let’s go there,” he said to himself. “We’ll see if she makes good her offer.”
He made his way to Los Tejares where Se?ora Patrocinio lived. The door of the house was open. Quentin knocked, and, as no one answered, he walked in.
“Se?ora Patrocinio!” he cried.
“Who is it?” came from above.
“A man who comes to ask for something.”
“Well, we give nothing here.”
“I am Quentin.”
“Ah! It’s you? Come in and wait for me.”
“What beautiful confidence!” said Quentin, seating himself in the vestibule, which was nearly in darkness.
Just then he heard footsteps upon the stairs, and a woman veiled in a black mantilla descended with Se?ora Patrocinio.
The veiled lady looked at Quentin as she passed; he returned the look with curiosity, and would have gone to the door to see her better, had not Se?ora Patrocinio seized him by the arm.
“Come,” said the old woman, “what’s the matter?”
“Se?ora Patrocinio,” Quentin stammered, “send me away and take me for an idiot if my request seems stupid to you. I have come to ask for money.”
“Have you been gambling?”
“No.”
“How much do you need?”
“Seventy dollars.”
“Come, that’s not much. Follow me.”
Quentin and the old woman climbed to the second floor and entered a room which contained a large bed. Se?ora Patrocinio took a key from her pocket, and opened a cabinet. She clawed inside of it with her deformed hands until she brought forth a bulging purse. She opened it, removed from it a roll of coins wrapped in paper, broke it over the bed, and scattered several gold-pieces upon the coverlet. The old woman counted out twenty twenty-peseta pieces and offered them to Quentin.
“Take them,” she said.
“But you’re giving me too much, Se?ora Patrocinio.”
“Bah! They won’t weigh you down.”
“Thanks very much!”
“You must not thank me. I only want one thing, and that is that you come to see me now and then. Some day I’ll explain our relationship and what I expect of you.”
“Very well.”
Quentin took the money and left the house joyfully. It was night, and he thought that the pawn shop on the Plaza de la Almagra might be closed, but he went by to make sure, and found it still open. He took the jewelcase and went home.
“The truth is, I’m a lucky man,” he murmured gleefully.
Quentin slept peacefully, rocked by sweet expectations. The next afternoon he went to the Calle del Sol.
He found the gate open, and passed on into the garden. The gardener was not there. He went upstairs and rang the bell. The tall, dried-up servant who came to the door, said:
“The young ladies are in the kitchen.”
“Well, let’s go there.”
They went through a series of corridors and entered the kitchen. It was an enormous place, with a high skylight through which at that moment there filtered a ray of sunlight that fell upon the blond, somewhat mussed-up hair of Rafaela.
Rafaela and Remedios turned at the sound of footsteps.
“Oh, is it you? You have found us in a pretty mess,” said Rafaela, showing him her hands covered with flour.
“What are you making?” asked Quentin.
“Some fried-cakes.”
“It smells deliciously in here.”
“Have you a sweet tooth?” asked Rafaela.
“Somewhat.”
“This is the one with a sweet tooth,” said Rafaela, indicating Remedios. “Let’s get out of here, she’ll have indigestion if we don’t.”
Rafaela washed her hands and arms, dried them carefully, and led the way from the kitchen into the drawing-room.
“I’ve got the little box here,” announced Quentin.
“Oh, really? Give it to me. Thank you! Thank you very much indeed! How much did it cost you?”
“Nothing.... A mere trifle.”
“No, no, that’s not possible. Please tell me how much you paid for it.”
“Won’t you accept this small favour from me?”
“No; for I realize that it must have cost you a lot.”
“Bah!”
“I’ll find out, and then we’ll talk about it further.”
Remedios, approaching Quentin mysteriously, said to him:
“Is it true that there is a store in your house?”
“Yes.”
“Are there sweets in it?”
“Yes.”
“Will you bring me some?”
“What do you want me to bring you?”
“Bring me some white taffy, some hard candy, a ladyfinger, and a sugar-plum.”
“But, child, you want a whole candy shop!” said Rafaela.
“Then just some taffy and cake, eh?”
“Very well.”
“But lots of it.”
“Yes.”
“Fine: now sing for us!”
“Gracious, what a bold little girl!” exclaimed Rafaela.
They opened the drawing-room windows, and Quentin sat at the piano and played the opening chords of the baritone aria from Rigoletto. Then, in a hearty voice, he began:
Deh non parlare al misero
del suo perduto bene....
He suddenly recalled his school, his friends; then he felt sentimental, and put a real sadness in his tones. When he sang, Solo, difforme, povero, he felt almost like weeping.
After Rigoletto came the song from Un ballo:
Eri tu che machiavi....
Quentin exhausted his repertoire; he sang all the songs from the Italian operas that he knew; and then, exaggerating his English accent, he sang Rule Britannia! and God Save the Queen!
The two sisters and the old servant sewed as they listened to Quentin, who kept up a steady stream of conversation like a stage comedian. They laughed at his stories and clownish tricks.
He had an inexhaustible supply, and related many anecdotes and adventures that were mostly invented by himself....
The afternoon passed very quickly. From the balcony they could see the dark mountain outlined strongly against the blue of the sky. The sun, very low in the horizon, was leaving long shadows of chimneys and towers on the grey roofs, and reddening the belfries with an ideal light that grew paler with each passing moment.
They could scarcely see within the room; the old servant brought in a lamp and placed it upon the table. Quentin took leave of the two sisters.
On his way out, he paused before the window overlooking the garden. The atmosphere was unusually clear; the sky was deepening to an intense blue. Distant objects; the white gardens upon the hillside, the hermitages among the cypress trees, the great round-topped pine trees upon the summit, ... all could be seen in detail.
It grew darker; in the black, rectangular patch of the pool, a star commenced to twinkle, then another, until a multitude of luminous points trembled in its deep, quiet waters.
“AREN’T you going to Los Pedroches?” Remedios asked Quentin one day. The two sisters and the old woman were sewing in the drawing-room.
“What’s doing there?” he asked.
“The Candelaria Picnic,” answered Rafaela.
“Are you going?”
“Yes, I believe so. We are going with our cousins.”
Quentin fell silent for a moment.
“Aren’t you going?” Remedios asked again.
“I? No. I don’t know any one.”
“Don’t you know us?” she asked.
“Yes; but I’d bother you....”
“Why?” asked Rafaela pleasantly.
“And if I did not bother you, I should be certain to annoy your cousins; perhaps they wouldn’t like me to bow to you.”
Rafaela became silent; implying, though perhaps unwittingly, that what Quentin had said might be true. So, somewhat embarrassed, he said:
“What do they do there?”
“Not much nowadays,” answered the old woman. “There are a few dances and supper parties ... but the best thing about it used to be the return home: it was the custom for every lad to bring a lass back to town on his horse’s croup.”
“Has that custom died out?” asked Quentin.
“Yes.”
“Why don’t they still follow it?”
“On account of the fights they had coming back,” answered the old woman. “Boys, and men too, took to scaring the horses, and some of the riders fell off and began to fight furiously with both fists and guns.”
“You seem to know all about it,” said Rafaela to the old woman. “Have you ever been in Los Pedroches?”
“Yes; with a sweetheart of mine who carried me behind him on his horse.”
“My! What a rascal!... What a rascal!” exclaimed Rafaela.
“When we reached Malmuerta,” the old servant continued, “they frightened our horse, so my sweetheart, who had a short fowling-piece on his saddle, made as if to shoot it, and the people couldn’t get away fast enough....”
Quentin decided to go to the picnic.
“I’m going to Los Pedroches, mother,” he said to Fuensanta.
“That’s good, my son,” she replied, “go out and have a good time.”
“To tell you the truth, I haven’t any money.”
“I’ll give you what you need; and I’ll find you some riding clothes, too.”
Quentin hired a big horse with a cowboy saddle; then, following his mother’s instructions, he put on a short jacket covered with ribbons and braid, fringed leggings, a tasseled shawl across the saddle bow, and a broad-brimmed hat.
He mounted at the door of his house. He was a good horseman, and as he jumped into the saddle, he made his horse rear. He brought him down at once, waved to his mother who was on the balcony, and rode off at a smart pace.
He went out through the Puerta de Osario to the Campo de la Merced, under the Arco de la Malmuerta and turned his horse’s head toward the Carrera de la Fuensantilla. There he noticed the unusual exodus of people making their way in groups toward Los Pedroches.
It was a splendid February afternoon. The sun poured down like a golden rain upon the green countryside, and smiled in the fields of new wheat which were dotted with red flowers and yellow buds. Here and there a dark hut or a stack of straw surmounted by a cross arose in the broad expanse of cultivated lands.
Quentin rode swiftly along the highway, which was bordered at intervals by large, grey century-plants, from among whose pulpous branches rose flocks of chirping birds.
He reached the picnic-grounds: a meadow near the Los Pedroches ravine. The people were scattered over the meadow in groups. The bright and showy dresses of the girls shone in the sun afar off against the green background of the field. As Quentin drew near the fiesta-grounds, some groups were eating supper, and others were playing the guitar and dancing.
In some places, where the dancers were doubtless experts, curious onlookers crowded about them. An old man with side-whiskers was playing the guitar with great skill, and a dancer in a narrow-waisted suit was pursuing his graceful partner with his arms held high in the air; and one could hear the clacking of castanets, and the encouraging applause of the onlookers.
It was a peaceful happiness, dignified and serene. Girls in showy dresses, Manilla shawls, and with flowers in their hair, were strolling about, accompanied by sour-visaged due?as and proud youths.
A little apart from the centre of the picnic, the more wealthy families were lunching peacefully; while little boys and girls were screeching as they swung in the swings hung from the trees.
There were vendors of oranges and apples and walnuts and chestnuts; and taffy women with their little booths of sweets and brandy.
Quentin went around the grounds looking all about him, searching for his cousins; and at last, in a little unpopulated grove, he caught sight of them among a group of several boys and girls.
Remedios recognized Quentin when he was still some distance away, and waving her hand at him, she rose to meet him. Quentin rode up to her.
“Where are you going?” the girl inquired.
“For a little ride.”
“Do you want a cake?”
“If you will give....”
“Come on.”
Quentin dismounted, walked up to the group, gave his hand to Rafaela, and greeted the others with a bow. Undoubtedly Rafaela had informed her friends who the horseman was, for Quentin noticed that several of the girls looked at him curiously.
He took the cake that Remedios gave him, and a glass of wine.
“Won’t you sit down?” Rafaela asked him.
“Thank you, no. I’m going for a ride along the mountain.”
As he drew near Rafaela, Quentin noticed the look of hatred that one of the young men present cast at him.
“He’s a rival,” he thought.
From that instant, the two boys were consumed with hatred for each other. The young man was tall, blond, with a certain rusticity about him in spite of his elegant clothes. Quentin heard them call him Juan de Dios. The youth spoke in a rather uncultured manner, converting his s’s into z’s, his r’s into l’s, and vice versa. He gazed fixedly at Rafaela, and from time to time said to her:
“Why don’t you drink a little something?”
Rafaela thanked him with a smile. Among the girls were Rafaela’s two cousins; the elder, María de los Angeles, had a nose like a parrot, green pop-eyes, and a salient under lip; Transito, the younger, was better looking, but her expression, which was half haughty and half indifferent, did not captivate one’s sympathies. Like her sister, she had green eyes, and thin lips with a strange curve to them that gave her a cruel expression.
Transito questioned Quentin in a bantering and sarcastic tone; he replied to her pleasantly, with feigned modesty, and in purposely broken Spanish. Presently he announced his intention of going.
“What, are you going?” asked Rafaela.
“Yes.”
“Are you afraid of us?” said Transito.
“Afraid of being enchanted,” replied Quentin gallantly, as he bowed and went in search of his horse.
“Wait! Take me on the croup,” Remedios shouted.
“No, no; you’ll fall,” said Rafaela.
“No, I won’t,” replied the child.
“The horse is gentle,” Quentin put in.
“Very well then; you may take her for a while.”
Quentin mounted rapidly, and Remedios climbed upon the step of the carriage that stood near. Quentin rode up to her and stuck out his left foot for her to use as a support. The little girl stepped upon it, and seizing Quentin about the waist, leaped to the horse’s croup and threw her arms about the rider.
“See how well I do it,” said she to her sister, who was fearfully watching these man?uvres.
“I see well enough.”
“Where shall we go?” Quentin asked the girl.
“Right through the picnic-grounds.”
They rode among the groups; the arrogance of the rider and the grace of Remedios with her red flower in her hair, attracted the attention of the crowd.
“There’s a pair for you!” said some as they watched them ride by; and she smiled with her shining eyes.
Following Remedios’ orders, Quentin rode back and forth among the places which she pointed out to him.
“Now let’s go to the mountain.”
Quentin rode up hill for half an hour.
The afternoon was drawing to a close; the shadows of the trees were lengthening on the grass; white clouds, solid as blocks of marble, with their under sides ablaze, floated slowly over the mountain; the air smelt of rosemary and thyme. Cordova appeared upon the plain enveloped in a cloud of golden dust; beyond her undulated low hills of vivid green, stretching in echelon one behind the other, until they were lost in the distance in a golden haze of vibrating light. Over the roofs of the city rose church towers, slate-covered cupolas, black, sharp-pointed cypresses. From between the walls of a garden, with a very tall and twisted trunk, a gigantic palm tree raised its head—like a spider stuck to the sky....
Quentin turned back with the idea of leaving Remedios with her sister.
“Well, well!” Rafaela exclaimed. “You certainly can’t complain. We’ve been waiting for you to go home with us. Come, get down.”
“No; he’s going to take me home—aren’t you, Quentin?”
“Whatever you wish.”
“Well, let’s be going.”
“We’re off!”
“Look out for jokers,” warned Rafaela’s cousin Transito.
They took the road cityward, riding among the groups who were returning from the fiesta.
They could see Cordova in the twilight with the last rays of the sun quivering upon its towers. In some houses the windows were commencing to light up; in the dark blue sky, the stars were beginning to appear.
Neither Quentin nor the girl spoke; they rode along in silence, swaying with the motion of the horse. They reached the Carrera de la Fuensantilla, and from there followed Las Ollerías. At the first gate they came to, El Colodro, Quentin thought he saw a group that might have stationed itself there with the intention of frightening the horses of the passers-by; so he went on through the Arco de la Malmuerta to the Campo de la Merced.
Here there was a group of little boys and young men, one of whom had a whip.
“Be careful, child; hold on to me tightly,” said Quentin.
She squeezed the rider’s waist with her arms.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
The group of young people came toward Quentin, one of them brandishing the whip. Before they had time to frighten his horse, Quentin drove in his spurs and slackened his reins. The animal gave a jump, knocked down several of the jokers, and broke into a gallop, spreading consternation among the youngsters. When they had passed the Campo de la Merced, Quentin reined in his horse and began to walk again.
“How did you like that, little girl?” asked Quentin.
“Fine! Fine!” exclaimed Remedios, brimming over with delight. “They wanted to shoot us.”
“And they fell down.”
The girl laughed delightedly. Quentin guided his horse to the Puerta del Osario, and once through it, threaded his way along lonely alleyways. The horse went at a walk, his iron shoes resounding loudly on the pavement.
“Would you like me to treat you?” asked Quentin.
“Yes.”
They were passing a tavern called El Postiguillo; so Quentin stopped his horse, clapped his hands loudly twice, and the innkeeper appeared in the doorway.
“What does the little girl want?” said the man.
“Whatever you have,” answered Remedios.
“A few cakes, and two small glasses of Montilla?”
“Would you like that?” asked Quentin.
“Very much.”
They ate the cakes, drank the wine and went on their way. Just as they reached the Calle del Sol, a carriage stopped at the door, from which Rafaela, her cousins, and the blond young man descended. The latter, who helped the girls down, called to Remedios: “I’ll be with you in a moment!” But the girl pretended not to hear him, and called Juan. Quentin took the child by the waist and lifted her into the arms of the gardener; then he bowed, and turned his horse up the street.
When he reached his house, he found that his family had not yet returned from the picnic. He saw Palomares in the street and joined him; gave his horse to a boy to take to the livery stable, and, in the company of the clerk, entered a café. He told him how he had passed the afternoon, and then began to speak casually of his grandfather’s family.
“It looks as if they were about ruined, eh?”
“Yes; completely.”
“Still they must have some cash haven’t they?”
“Oof! The old man was very rich; more through his wife than himself. He is a fine man but very extravagant. When the rebel leader Gomez took possession of Cordova the old Marquis, who was then a Carlist, took him in and gave him thousands of dollars. He has always spent his money lavishly.”
“What about the son?”
“The son is nothing like his father. He is a disagreeable profligate.”
“And the son’s wife?”
“La Aceitunera? She’s a sinner of the first water.”
“Pretty, eh?”
“Rather! A fine lass with unbounded wit. When she left her husband, she went to live with Periquito Gálvez; but now they say she is trotting about with a lieutenant. Just pull Juan the gardener’s tongue a bit, and he’ll tell you some curious things.”
“Didn’t the family ever have any relative clever enough to save it from ruin?”
“Yes; the Marquis has a brother called El Pollo Real; but he is a selfish sort who doesn’t want to mix in anything for fear they will ask him for money. Have you never seen him?”
“No.”
“Well, El Pollo Real has been a Tenorio. Now he is a half paralytic. They say that he is devoting himself to writing the history of his love affairs, and has hired a painter to paint pictures of all his mistresses. He’s been at it for years. The first artist he had was a friend of mine from Seville, and he used to tell me that El Pollo Real would give him a miniature or a photograph for him to enlarge, and then he would explain what the subjects looked like: whether blondes or brunettes, tall or short, marchionesses or gipsies.”
“Do you know Rafaela?”
“Do I know her! Rather! Poor little girl!”
“Why ‘poor little girl’?” exclaimed Quentin, feeling cold from head to foot.
“The girl has had hard luck.”
“Why, what happened to her?”
“Oh, affairs of a wealthy family, which are always miserable. After she was thirteen or fourteen years old, Rafaela was engaged to the son of a Cordovese count. It seemed as if the two children loved each other, and they made a fine couple. They were always seen together; going for walks, and in the theatre; when it began to be rumoured that the Marquis’ family was on its way to ruin. Then her sweetheart went away to Madrid. Month after month went by, and the lad did not return; finally some one brought the news that he had married a young millionairess in Madrid. Rafaela was ill for several months, and since that time she has never been as well or as gay as she used to be.”
Quentin listened to this story profoundly mortified. He no longer cared to ask questions; he arose, left the café, and took leave of Palomares.
He was unable to sleep that night.
“Why this anger and mortification?” he asked himself. “What difference does it make whether Rafaela has had a sweetheart or not? Aren’t you going to work out your problem, Quentin? Aren’t you going to follow out your plan in life? Aren’t you a good B?otian? Aren’t you a swine in the herd of Epicurus?”
In spite of Quentin’s efforts to convince himself that he ought not to be irritated, it was impossible to do so. Merely to think that a man, probably a young whipper-snapper, had scorned Rafaela, offended him in the most mortifying manner.
NO; he was no B?otian; he was no Epicurean; he could not say that in his heart, he followed the admirable advice of the great poet: “Pluck today’s flower, and give no thought to the morrow’s.”
He was passing through all of the most common and most vulgar phases of falling in love; he had moments of sadness, of anger, of wounded and maltreated self-esteem.
He tried to analyze his spiritual condition coldly, and he considered it best and most expedient to make an effort not to appear at Rafaela’s house for a long time.
“I must be active,” he said to himself. At other times his reason appealed to him: “Why not go to see her as I used to? What is it that I want? Do I want her to cease having a sweetheart she has already had? That would be stupid. We must accept things that have already been.”
At this, his wounded pride responded with fits of anger, obscuring his intelligence; and the pride generally came out victorious.
Quentin did not appear at Rafaela’s house for some time. Alone, with nothing to occupy him, friendless; he was desperately bored. How the Andalusian spring oppressed him! He wandered about from place to place, without plans, without an object, without a destination.
The sun inundated the silent, deserted streets; the sky, a pure, opaque blue, seemed something tangible—a huge turquoise, or sapphire in which roofs and towers and terraces were embedded.
Everything gave the impression of profound lethargy.... The houses: blue, yellow, pale rose, cream-coloured, all hermetically sealed, seemed deserted; the irrigated vestibules flowed with water; one smelt vaguely the odour of flowers, and a penetrating perfume of orange blossoms arose from the patios and gardens.
The plazas, like white whirlpools of sunlight, were blinding with the reverberation of light against the walls. In the alleys, tenebrous, narrow, shadowy, one felt a damp, cave-like cold.... Everywhere silence and solitude reigned; in some lonely spot, a donkey, tied to a grating, remained motionless; a hungry dog scratched in a heap of refuse; or a frightened cat ran with tail erect until it disappeared in its hiding-place.
In the distance, the crowing of a cock rang out like a bugle call in the silent air; one heard the melancholy cry of the vendors of medicinal herbs; and through the deserted plazoletas, through the narrow and tortuous alleys, there rose the song of love and death that a grancero was singing as he rode along on his donkey.
In La Ribera, some vagabonds and gipsies were sunning themselves, while others played quoits; little children with brown skins ran about bare-legged, covered only by a scanty shirt; sunburned old women came to the windows and gratings; and along the white, the very white highway, which resembled a great chalk furrow, there passed gallant horsemen, raising clouds of dust.
The river wound peacefully along—blue at times, at times golden; wagons and herds passed slowly over the bridges—so slowly that from a distance they seemed motionless.
An oppressive calm, a tiresome somnolence weighed down upon the city; and in the midst of this calm, of this death-like silence, there sounded a bell here, another there—all extremely languid and sad....
At nightfall, the magic of the twilight touched the city and the distant landscape with gold—-‘d lights; splendid colours of extraordinary magnificence. The clouds became rosy, scarlet.... The country was tinged with gold, and the last rays of the sun set fire to the rocks and peaks of the mountain-tops.
In the streets, which were bathed with light, a narrow strip of shadow appeared upon the walks, which grew and widened until it covered the whole pavement. Then it slowly climbed the walls, reached the grated windows and the balconies, scaled the twisted eaves.... The sunlight completely disappeared from the street, and there only remained the last vestiges of its brilliancy upon the towers, the high look-outs, and the flaming windows....
The air grew diaphanous, acquired more transparency; the horizon more depth; and the sides of the white walls of garrets and corners, as they reflected the scarlet or rosy sky, resembled blocks of snow animated by the pale rays of a boreal sun....
Presently the lamps were lighted; their little red flames flickering in the shadows; and squares of lighted windows punctured the fa?ades of the houses.
At this hour on work days, women visited the stores; wealthy families returned in their coaches from their orchards; youths rode back and forth on horseback; and the nocturnal life of Cordova poured through the central streets, which were lighted by street lamps and shop windows.
Quentin wandered from place to place, ruminating on his sadness; walked indifferently along streets and plazas; watched the young ladies coming and going with their mammas, and followed by their beaux. When his irritation disappeared, he felt discouraged. The melancholy calmness of the city, the dreamy atmosphere, produced within him a feeling of great lassitude and laziness.
At times he firmly believed that Rafaela would trouble him no more; that his feeling of love had been a superficial fantasy.
In the morning Quentin often went to the Patio de los Naranjos where El Pende’s father used to spend his time with a coterie of old men, beggars, and tramps, which all Cordova ironically called La Potrá, or the herd of young mares.
El Pende senior, or Matapalos, passed his time there chatting with his friends. He was an original and knowing fellow who spoke in apothegms and maxims. He dominated the meetings as few others could. No one could, like him, so slyly introduce a number of subjects in a conversational hiatus, or in the act of rolling a cigarette. Of course, for him, this last was by no means a simple affair; but rather an operation that demanded time and science. First, Matapalos took out a little knife and began to scrape a plug of tobacco; after the scraping came the rubbing of it between his hands; then he tore a leaf of cigarette paper from its little book, held it for a moment sticking to his under lip, and then began to roll the cigarette first on one end, and then on the other, until the man?uvre was happily consummated. This operation over, Matapalos removed his cala?és, placed it between his legs, and from somewhere within the hat drew forth a little leather purse, from which he extracted flint and steel and tinder.
After this, he slowly covered himself and from time to time, in the midst of the conversation, struck the steel with the flint until he happened to light the tinder, and with the tinder, his cigarette.
The old man lived in a hut in the Matadero district; he knew everything that had occurred in Cordova for many years, and boasted of it. For Matapalos, there were no toreadors like those of his own time.
“I’m not taking any merit away from Lagartijo or Manuel Fuentes,” he said, “but you don’t see any more toreadors like El Panchón, or Rafael Bejarano, or Pepete, or El Camará. You ought to have seen Bejarano! He was such a great rival of no less a person than Costillares, that in my time they used to sing:
“Arrogante Costillares,
anda, vete al Almadén
para ver bien matar toros
al famoso Cordobés.”
(Proud Costillares, come, and go to the Almadén to see the famous Cordovese kill bulls right.)
In this subject Matapalos had a formidable adversary; another old man whom they called Doctor Prosopopeya, who, as a native of Seville, never admitted that a Cordovese toreador could come up to one from Seville.
Quentin found Matapalos very funny and very amusing, and he often went to listen to him.
While the old man related ancient history in his quiet, peaceful voice, Quentin contemplated the Patio de los Naranjos, sometimes listening to what was said, sometimes not.
The orange trees were in full blossom, and their penetrating perfume produced a certain giddiness; from time to time one could hear distant bells which the cathedral bell seemed to answer, clanging loudly.... Then silence again reigned; the birds chirped in the trees; the water murmured in the fountain; the butterflies bathed in the pure air; and the lizards and salamanders glided along the walls.
Among the shadows of the orange trees shone vivid splashes of sunlight; doves tumbled from the cathedral roof and flew softly through the blue and luminous air, making a slight sound of ripping gauze; sometimes they made a metallic whirr as they rapidly beat their wings.
The majority of the Potrá was made up of beggars and tramps. These beggars were neither emaciated, squalid, nor ill; but strong, vigorous men, hirsute, with long, matted locks, sunburned, covered with rags.... Some wore threadbare cala?és hats; others, broad-brimmed sombreros worn over grass handkerchiefs; some, a very few, wore loose, yellowish coats with long sleeves; a good many wrapped themselves up in grey cloaks of heavy cloth and many folds. Nearly all of them had private homes where they were given leavings and cigarette butts; those who did not, went to the barracks, or to a convent; no one lacked the hodge-podge necessary for wandering on, though poorly, through the bitter adversities of life.
From time to time the Potrá came into a little money; and then ten or twelve of them got up a pool to play the lottery.
In that troop there was a beggar with a black beard, younger than the rest, bent almost double at the waist, who went about leaning on a short crutch. They called this man El Engurru?ao. He had one shrunken leg wrapped in rags, although really he had no illness at all. He howled in a doleful voice after every decently-dressed passer-by, and he took in plenty of money.
Through the conversations of these tramps and beggars, Quentin came to know Cordova life, and that of the principal families of the town. Through them he learned that the majority of the great families were on their way to poverty.
One example of an economic catastrophe was that of a gentleman who walked through the arcade of the Mosque every morning. This gentleman was dressed like a dandy of other days: well-fitting coat, flowing black cravat, tall silk hat with a flat brim, and, on some cold days, a blue cape. The poor man was emaciated, had long, grey, bushy hair, and wore yellow gloves.
He was a ruined aristocrat. It was pitiful to see that living ruin walking up and down under the porticos, with his hands behind his back, talking to himself with a gesture of resignation and sadness....
ONE morning Quentin met Juan, the gardener.
“You don’t come to the house any more, Se?orito.”
“I’ve had lots to do these days.”
“Have you heard the important news?”
“What is it?”
“The Se?orita is going to be married.”
“Rafaela?”
“Yes.”
“To whom?”
“To Juan de Dios.”
Quentin felt as if all his nerves had let go at once.
“The Marquis is getting worse every day,” the gardener continued, “so he thought the Se?orita ought to get married as soon as possible.”
“And she.... What does she say?”
“Nothing, at present.”
“But will she oppose it?”
“How do I know?”
“Are the family affairs in such bad shape that the Marquis was forced to take this course?”
“They are very bad. The grandfather hasn’t much longer to live; the Se?orita’s father is a profligate; and El Pollo Real doesn’t care to do anything at all. To whom will they leave the girls? Their stepmother, La Aceitunera, is no good. Have you ever heard of a Se?ora Patrocinio who has a house in Los Tejares? Well, she goes there every day. Why, it’s a shame.”
“And this Juan de Dios ... is he rich?” asked Quentin.
“Very; but he is very coarse. When he was a little boy he used to say: ‘I want to be a horse,’ and he used to go out to the stable, pick up some filth in his hands, and say to the people, ‘Look, look what I did.’”
“He is coarse, then—eh?”
“Yes; but he’s got noble blood in him.”
Quentin left Juan and went home perplexed. Indubitably, he was no B?otian, but a vulgar sentimentalist, a poor cadet, an unhappy wretch, without strength enough to set aside, as useless and prejudicial, those gloomy ideas and sentiments: love, self-denial, and the rest.
And he had thought himself an Epicurean! One of the few men capable of following the advice of Horace: “Pluck today’s flower, and give no thought to the morrow’s!” He! In love with a young lady of the aristocracy; not for her money, nor even for her palace; but for her own sake! He was on a level with any romantic carpenter of a provincial capital. He was unworthy of having been in Eton, near Windsor, for eight years; or of having walked through Piccadilly; or of having read Horace.
In the miserable state in which Quentin found himself, only nonsensical ideas occurred to him. The first was to go to Rafaela and demand an explanation; the second was to write her a letter; and he was as pleased with this idiotic plan as if it had been really brilliant. He made several rough drafts in succession, and was satisfied with none of them. Sometimes his words were high-sounding and emphatic; again, he unwittingly gave a clumsy and vulgar tone to his letter: one could read between the lines a common and uncouth irony, as often as extraordinary pride, or abject humility.
At last, seeing that he could not find a form clear enough to express his thoughts, he decided to write a laconic letter, asking Rafaela to grant him an interview.
He gave Juan the letter to give to his young mistress. He was waiting at the door for some one to answer his ring, when Remedios appeared.
“See here,” said the child.
“What’s the matter?”
“Don’t you know? Rafaela is going to marry Juan de Dios.”
“Does she love him?”
“No; I don’t think she does.”
“Then why does she marry him?”
“Because Juan de Dios is very rich, and we have no money.”
“But will she want to do it?”
“She hasn’t said anything about it. Juan de Dios spoke to grandfather, and grandfather spoke to Rafaela. Are you going to see sister?”
“Yes, this very minute.”
“She’s in the sewing-room.”
They went to the door.
“Tell her not to marry Juan de Dios.”
“Don’t you like him?”
“No. I hate him. He’s vulgar.”
Quentin went in, glided along the gallery, and knocked upon the door of the sewing-room.
“Come in!” said some one.
Rafaela and the old woman servant were sewing. As Quentin appeared a slight flush spread over the girl’s cheeks.
“What a long time it is since you have been here!” said Rafaela. “Won’t you sit down?”
Quentin gave her to understand with a gesture that he preferred to remain standing.
“Have you been so very busy?” asked the girl.
“No; I’ve had nothing to do,” answered Quentin gruffly. “I’ve spent my time being furious these days.”
“Furious! At what?” said she with a certain smiling coquetry.
“At you.”
“At me?”
“Yes. Will you let me speak to you alone a minute?”
“You may speak here, before my nurse. She will defend me in case you accuse me of anything.”
“Accuse you? No, not that.”
“Well, then, why were you so furious?”
“I was furious, first because they told me that you once had a sweetheart whom you loved; and second, because they say that you are going to get married.”
Rafaela, who perhaps did not expect such a brusque way of putting the matter, dropped her sewing and rose to her feet.
“You, too, are a child,” she murmured at length. “What can one do with what is gone by? I had a sweetheart, it is true, for six years—and I was in love with him.”
“Yes; I know it,” said Quentin furiously.
“If he acted badly,” Rafaela continued, as if talking to herself, “so much the worse for him. There is no recollection of my childhood that is not connected with him. In his company I went to the theatre for the first time, and to my first dance. What little happiness I have had in my life, came to me during the time I knew him. My mother was living then; my family was considered wealthy.... Yet, if that man were free, and wished to marry me now, I would not marry him; not from spite, no—but because to me he is a different man.... I say this to you because I feel I know you, and because you are like my sister Remedios: you demand an exclusive affection.”
“And don’t you?” demanded Quentin brusquely.
“I do too; perhaps not as much as you; but neither do I believe that I could share my affection with another. I must not deceive you in this. You would be capable of being jealous of the past.”
“Probably,” said Quentin.
“I know it. I don’t believe that I have flirted with you; have I?”
Rafaela spoke at some length. She had that graciousness of those persons whose emotions are not easily stirred. Her heart needed time to feel affection; an impulse of the moment could not make her believe herself in love.
She was a woman destined for the hearth; to be seen going to and fro, arranging everything, directing everything; to be heard playing the piano in the afternoons. In a burst of frankness, Rafaela said:
“Had I listened to your hints, I should have made you unhappy without wishing to, and you would have made me miserable.”
“Then how is it that you are going to marry Juan de Dios?” asked Quentin brutally.
Rafaela was confused.
“That’s different,” she stammered; “in the first place, I have not decided yet; and besides, I have made my conditions. Then again, there is this great difference: Juan de Dios is not jealous of my past love affair ... he wants my title. Moreover, my whole family is interested in my marrying him. If I do so, my grandfather, poor dear, will be easy in his mind; Remedios will be sure of being able to live according to her station,—and so shall I.”
“You are very discreet; too discreet—and calculating,” said Quentin bitterly.
“No; not too much so. What would happen to us girls otherwise?”
“What about me?”
“You?”
“Yes, me; I would work for you if you loved me.”
“That could never be.”
“Why?”
“For many reasons. First of all, because I am older than you....”
“Bah!”
“Let me speak. First, because I am older than you; second, because you would be jealous of me and would continually mortify me; and lastly, most important of all, because you and I are both poor.”
“I shall make money,” said Quentin.
“How? With what? Why aren’t you making it now?”
“Now?” questioned Quentin after a pause. “Now I have no ideal; it’s all the same to me whether I’m rich or poor. But if you believed in me, you’d find that I could snatch money from the very bowels of the earth.”
“Possibly, yes,” said Rafaela calmly; “because you are clever. But those are my reasons. Some day, when you recall our conversation, you will say: ‘she was right.’”
“You are very discreet,” said Quentin as he turned toward the door; “too discreet; and you have discreetly torn asunder all my illusions, and have left my soul in shreds.”
“Do you hate me now?” she said sadly.
“Hate you, no!” exclaimed Quentin with emotion, effusively pressing the hand Rafaela held out to him. “You are an admirable woman in every respect!”
And trembling violently, he left the room.
As he went down the stairs Remedios rushed up to him.
“What did she say to you?” she asked.
“It’s no use; she’s going to marry him.”
“Did she tell you that herself?”
“Yes.”
“And you. What are you going to do?”
“What can I do?”
“I’d kill Juan de Dios,” murmured the girl resolutely.
“If she wished it, I would, too,” replied Quentin, and he stepped into the street.
He walked along in a daze; he repeated Rafaela’s words to himself, and discovered better arguments that he might have put forward in the interview, but which did not occur to him at the moment. Sometimes he thought, more rationally: “At least I came out of it well;” but this consolation was too metaphysical to satisfy him.
He spent a sleepless night at his window watching the stars and thinking. He analyzed and studied his moral problem, proposing solutions, only to reject them.
At dawn he went to bed. He believed that he had hit upon a definite solution—the norm of his existence. Condensed into a single phrase, it was this:
“I must become a man of action.”
QUENTIN got up late, ate his breakfast and wrote several letters to his friends in England. In the evening he looked through the amusement section of the paper and saw that there was to be an entertainment in the Café del Recreo.
He asked Palomares where this café was, and was told that it was on the Calle del Arco Real, a street that ran into Las Tendillas.
The constant irritation in Quentin’s mind troubled him so, that he calmly decided to get drunk.
“Tell me,” he said to the waiter after seating himself at a table in the café, “what refreshments have you?”
“We have currants, lemons, blackberries, and French ice-cream.”
“Fine! Bring me a bottle of cognac.”
The waiter brought his order, filled his glass, and was about to remove the bottle.
“No, no; leave it here.”
“Aren’t you going to see the show?” asked the waiter with obsequious familiarity. “They are giving La Isla de San Balandrán: it’s very amusing.”
“I’ll see.”
After Quentin had emptied several glasses, he began to feel heartened, and ready for any folly. At a near-by table several men were talking about an actress who took the principal part in a musical comedy that had just been put on. One with a very loud voice was dragging the actress’ name through the mire.
This man was extremely fat; a kind of a sperm whale, with the bulging features of a dropsical patient, a shiny skin, and the voice of a eunuch. He had a microscopic nose that was lost between his two chubby cheeks, which were a pale yellow; his hatchet-shaped whiskers were so black that they seemed painted with ink; his stiff, bluish hair grew low on his forehead, with a peak above the eyebrows. He wore diamonds upon his bosom, rings upon his pudgy fingers, and, to cap his offensiveness, he was smoking a kilometric cigar with a huge band.
The bearing, the voice, the diamonds, the cigar, the waddling, and the laughter of that man set Quentin’s blood afire to such an extent, that rising and striking the table where the whale was talking to his friends, he shouted:
“Everything you say is a lie!”
“Are you the woman’s brother or husband?” inquired the obese gentleman, staring into space and stroking his black sideburns with his much bediamonded hand.
“I am nothing of hers,” replied Quentin; “I don’t know her, and I don’t want to know her; but I do know that everything you say is a lie.”
“Pay no attention to him,” said one of the fat man’s companions; “he’s drunk.”
“Well, he’d better look out, or I’ll strike him with my stick.”
“You’ll strike me with your stick!” exclaimed Quentin. “Ha ... ha ... ha!... But have you ever looked into a mirror?... You really are most repulsive, my friend!”
The fat man, before such an insult to his appearance, rose and endeavoured to reach Quentin, but his friends restrained him. Quentin quickly removed his coat and rolled up his sleeves, ready to box.
“Evohé! Evohé!” he thundered. “Come who will! One by one, two by two, every one against me!”
A thin, blond man with blue eyes and a golden beard, stepped up to him; not as though to fight, but with a smile.
“What do you want?” Quentin asked him rudely.
“Oh! Don’t you remember Paul Springer, the son of the Swiss watch-maker?”
“Is that you, Paul?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“Because I should have liked it had it been the fat man or one of his friends, so I could have cut him open with my fist.”
“I see that you are just as crazy as ever.”
“I, crazy? I’m one of the few people on this planet in their right senses! Moreover, I have decided to become a man of action. Believe me!”
“I can’t believe anything of you now, my lad. What you ought to do is to put on your coat and go to bed. Come, I’ll go with you.”
Quentin assented, and went home with his friend.
“We’ll see each other again, won’t we?” said the Swiss.
“Yes.”
“Then, until another day.”
They took leave of each other. Quentin remained in his doorway.
“I’m not going in,” he said to himself. “Am I not a man of action? Well, adelante! Where can I go? I’ll go and see Se?ora Patrocinio. I’ll take a few turns about here until my head is a little clearer....”
He knocked at the house in Los Tejares, and the door was immediately opened to him.
“Ah! Is it you?” said the old woman, as she lifted the candle to see who it was.
“Yes, it is I.”
“Come in.”
The old woman lit the lamp in the same room on the lower floor that Don Gil Sabadía and Quentin had occupied.
“What’s the matter?” asked Se?ora Patrocinio. “Do you need money?”
“No. Do you, too, wish to offend me?”
“No; I just wanted to give you some.”
“Thanks very much! You are the only person who takes any interest in me—why, I don’t know.... I have come to see you tonight because I am unhappy.”
“I know.... Rafaela is going to get married.”
“And how do you know that that is the reason for my unhappiness?”
“Nothing is secret from me. You liked her, but you will get over it soon. She was fond of you, too.”
“Do you think ...?”
“Yes; but the poor girl had a bad beginning in life, and does well not to get mixed up in adventures; for the majority of men aren’t even worth the trouble of looking in the face. Still, what her sweetheart did was disgraceful. Rafaela was brought up weakly,—too carefully guarded; then she began to grow quite happy, what with taking care of her mother and her betrothal. Then her mother died; her father remarried immediately; in a few months it began to be rumoured that her family was on the verge of ruin, and her sweetheart skipped out. Think of it! The poor abandoned girl began to turn yellow, and thought she was going to die. I believe that she owes her cure to the trouble her younger sister gave her.”
“Yes; I understand that she has no faith in men. Probably I ought not to have paid any attention to the fact,” Quentin added ingenuously. “But won’t this Juan de Dios make her suffer?”
“No. He’s coarse, but good at heart. What are you going to do?”
“I! I don’t know. We live in such a contemptible epoch. If I had been born in Napoleon’s time! God! I’d either be dead by now or else on the road to a generalship.”
“Would you have enlisted with Napoleon?”
“Rather!”
“And would you have fought against your own country?”
“Against the whole world.”
“But not against Spain.”
“Especially against Spain. It would be pretty nice to enter these towns defended by their walls and their conventionalities against everything that is noble and human, and raze them to the ground. To shoot all these flat-nosed, pious fakers and poor quality hidalgos; to set fire to all of the churches, and to violate all the nuns....”
“You’ve been drinking, Quentin.”
“I? I’m as calm as a bean plant, which is the calmest vegetable there is, according to the botanists.”
“You must not talk like that of your native land in front of me.”
“Are you a patriot?”
“With all my heart. Aren’t you?”
“I am a citizen of the world.”
“It seems to me that you’ve been drinking, Quentin.”
“No; believe me.”
“I say this to you,” added the old woman after a long pause, “because for me, this is a solemn moment. I have told no one the story of my life until this moment.”
“The devil! What is she going to tell me?” mumbled Quentin.
“Are you vengeful?” asked the old woman.
“I?”
Quentin was not sure whether he was vengeful or not, but the old woman took his exclamation for one of assent.
“Then you shall avenge me, Quentin, and your family. We are of the same blood. Your grandfather, the Marquis of Tavera, and I are brother and sister.”
“Really?”
“Yes. He doesn’t know that he has a sister living. He thinks I died a long time ago.”
Quentin scrutinized the old woman closely and discovered certain resemblances to the old Marquis.
She pressed Quentin’s hand, and then commenced her story as follows:
“In villages, there are certain families in which hatred is perpetuated through century after century. In cities, after one or two generations, hatred and rivalry are gradually wiped out until they disappear altogether. Not so in the villages: people unconcerned in the quarrel carry the story of it from father to son, present the chapter of insults to different individuals, and go on feeding the flame of rancour when it tends to extinguish itself.
“I was born in a large, highland village, of such an illustrious family as that of Tavera. My mother died young, my older brother went to England, the other to Madrid to take up a diplomatic career, while I remained in the village with my father and two maiden aunts.
“My mother, whom I scarcely knew, was very good, but rather simple; so much so that they say that when the fishes in our pool did not bite, she called in a professional fisherman and gave him a good day’s wages to teach them to do so.
“My family came from an important village in the province of Toledo, near La Puebla, where long ago there used to stand a tower and a castle and various strongholds, which are now nothing but ruins.
“According to my father, a harsh man, proud of his titles and lineage, we came from the oldest nobility, from the conquerors of Cordova, and were related to the whole Andalusian aristocracy: the Baenas, Arjonas, Cordovas, Velascos, and Gúzmans.
“In spite of our ancestry, our family did not enjoy any especial respect from the townspeople on account of the display we made, because our property had diminished somewhat, and also because the new liberal ideas were beginning to make themselves felt.
“My father owned nearly the whole village; he received a contribution from every chimney; he had the only interment chapel in the large church; and a patronage in several smaller churches and hermitages. In spite of the prestige of his lineage and his wealth, every one hated him—justly, I believe, for he was despotic, violent and cruel.
“That was about fifty years ago. My nose did not try to meet my chin then, nor did I lack any teeth; I was a lass worth looking at; graceful as a golden pine, and blonder than a candle. Any one seeing me in those days would have liked to know me! I lived with my father, who used to aim a blow at me every once in a while, and with my aunts, who were busybodies, meddlers, and crazy.
“As I have already said, my father had enemies; some openly avowed, others secret, but who all did the greatest amount of harm they could. Among them, the most powerful was the Count of Do?a Mencia, whose family, much more recently come to the village than ours, was slowly acquiring property and power.
“The rivalry between the two houses was increased by a lawsuit which the Do?a Mencias won against us, and it grew into a savage hatred when my father committed the offensive act of violating one of the rival family’s little girls.
“The Do?a Mencias took the child to Cordova; my father once heard a bullet whistle by his head as he was on his way to a farm—and this was the state of affairs, my family hated by our rivals and by nearly all of the townspeople, when I reached my eighteenth year, with no one to advise me but my aunts.
“I was, as I have said before, very pretty, and attracted attention wherever I went. Even at that age I had already had two or three beaux with whom I used to talk through my window-grating, when the Count of Do?a Mencia’s eldest son began to call upon me, and finally to ask for my hand. The whole village was surprised at this; I was disposed to pay no attention to him; moreover, I received several anonymous letters telling me that if I listened to the Count’s son, very disagreeable consequences might arise, because the hatred was still latent between the two families. I was just about decided to refuse him, when my aunts, crazy novel readers that they were, insisted that I ought to listen to him, for the boy’s intentions were honourable, and in this way I could once and for all put an end to the rivalry and hatred.
“My father prided himself upon the fact that he never interfered with what was happening in the family; his only occupations were hunting, drinking, and chasing after farm girls, and if I had consulted him about the affair, he would have sent me harshly about my business.
“So, following my aunts’ advice, I accepted the enemy of our home as a sweetheart, and received him for a year. One time in the garden, which was where we used to see each other, he threw himself upon me and attempted to overpower me; but people came in answer to my cries. My betrothed said that I had foolishly taken fright, as he was only trying to kiss me; I wanted to break the engagement, but instead of breaking off our relations, the affair only hastened the wedding.
“Grand preparations were made, but so sure were the townspeople that my sweetheart would never marry me, that servants, friends, every one, gave me to understand that the wedding would never take place, and that my betrothed would be capable of changing his mind at the very foot of the altar. Thus warned, I attempted to lessen the expense of the wedding, but my aunts tried to convince me not to do such a crazy thing.
“In fine, the day which was as dreaded as it was hoped for, arrived; my betrothed appeared at the church, and the wedding was celebrated. God knows how many hopes I had of being happy. The marriage feast was eaten; the ball was held. The festivities lasted until midnight, when we retired.
“The next morning when I awoke, I looked for my husband at my side, but did not find him. He never appeared all day long; they looked for him, but in vain. Days and days passed, and more days, while I waited for him, fearing an accident rather than an insult. After a long time, I received a mocking letter from him in which he told me that he would never come back to me.
“From that one wedding night, I became pregnant, and on this account suffered much anxiety. My father, in whom the affair had rekindled the anger at the rival family, assured me that he would strangle the child if it were born alive: my aunts did nothing but weep at every turn.
“I was restless; I don’t know whether from pain or what, and gave premature birth at eight months to a dead boy.
“A short time after, my father died of a fall from his horse, the administrator started a lawsuit against us, and took all our property from us; my older brother was travelling, the other was in Rome; I wrote to them, and they did not answer; my aunts took refuge in the house of some relatives, and I went where the will of God took me.
“At first I was in mortal terror, but I soon got used to it, and did everything. I’ve lived like a princess and like a beggar; I’ve intrigued in high circles, and have been an army vivandière. I have been in a battle in the Carlist wars, and have walked among the bullets with the same indifference with which I walk the streets of Cordova today.
“After a while, with the pain I suffered, I forgot everything,—everything except my husband’s infamy, and that of his whole family.
“That family has gone on implacably bringing disgrace to ours. When they killed your father there was a man pursuing him with the soldiers. Do you know who he was? My husband’s son. And his grandson was Rafaela’s sweetheart, the one who left her when he thought she was penniless.
“My husband married again. He is a bigamist, and probably falsified my death certificate. Today he moves in high circles, but the blow he gets from his downfall will be all the greater.”
“What are you thinking of doing?” asked Quentin.
“Of denouncing him. I have not done so before on account of my older brother. I don’t want to bring shame to him in his last days. As for the other brother, I don’t mind; he is an egoist. When the Marquis dies, you’ll see what I shall do. If I die before he does, you will avenge me. Will you, Quentin?”
“Yes.”
“That’s all I want. Your word is enough. Ask me for whatever you want, and come to see me.”
Se?ora Patrocinio kissed Quentin’s cheek, and he left the house confounded.
“Now,” he murmured, “this woman turns out to be the sister of a marquis, married to a count, and my aunt. And she wants us to avenge ourselves. Why then let’s do so ... or let’s not. It’s all the same to me. You know your plan, Quentin,” he said to himself. “Who are you?” he asked himself, and immediately replied, “You are a man of action. Very good!”
THE coterie was the most select in the Casino. Its members used to meet there in order to speak ill of everybody. There were young men who did nothing but ride horseback, try the strength of young bulls by prodding them with long pikes from horseback, and gamble their souls away; old men whose sole occupation was talking politics; and a great variety of persons who had made a business of amusing themselves—a fact which did not prevent one from reading a gloomy weariness in their expressions.
This meeting of aristocrats and plebeians, of rich men and poor men, of vagrants employed and unemployed, possessed a rare character, which was produced by a preponderance of aristocratic prejudices, mixed with a great simplicity.
In this coterie, so democratic in appearance, high and low had their say; even the waiters in the Casino mixed in the conversation. It possessed those characteristics, partly affable, partly coarse, that the Spanish aristocracy had had until foreign ideas and customs began to transform and polish it.
In that meeting one gleefully flayed one’s neighbour. Amid jests and laughter, flagellated by jovial satire, every person of significance in the town marched in review, either on account of their merits or their vices, their stupidity or their wit. If one believed what was told there, the city was a hot-bed of imbroglios, obscenities, wild escapades.
Among the members of aristocratic families there was a multitude of alcoholics and diseased individuals; the rotten produce of vicious living and consanguineous marriages. In these families there were a great many men who seemed to be obsessed with the idea of going through their fortunes, of ruining themselves quickly; others travelled the road to ruin without meaning to, through the robbery of their administrators and usurers; the majority were simply idiots; the clever ones, the clear-sighted ones, went to Madrid to play politics, leaving the old ancestral homes completely dismantled.
The scandals of the masses were mixed with those of the aristocracy; and the ingenuous jests of the charcoal-burners, and the dissolute wit of the Celestinas, were repeated and applauded with relish.
They spoke, too, and constantly, of the bandits of the Sierra; they knew who their protectors were in and out of Cordova, where their hiding-places were: and this friendship with bandits was not looked upon as a disgrace, but rather as something that constituted, if not a glorious achievement, at least a spicy and piquant attraction for the town.
“The gangs are organized in the very jail itself, while the bandits walk about the city.”
“But, is that true?” asked some horrified stranger.
“Everything you hear is,” they told him with a laugh. “Even the abductions of Malaga and Seville are planned here.”
“And why don’t you put an end to the evil?”
When the Cordovese heard this he smiled at the stranger, and added that in Cordova they had never looked upon the horsemen as an evil.
While the aristocrats and plebeians gave food for gossip, the middle class worked: lawyers, priests, and merchants enriched themselves, conducted their business, while a cloud of citizens from Soria fell like locusts upon the town, and took possession of the money and lands of the old, wealthy families by means of their evil skill at money-lending and usury.
One evening in the early part of autumn, several gentlemen were chatting in one of the salons of the Casino. They were members of the early coterie. Some were reading newspapers, and others were talking, seated upon divans, or walking to and fro.
Springer, the Swiss watch-maker’s son, had come in to read a newspaper, and as he read, he heard them talking about his friend Quentin, whom he had not seen for some time. He listened attentively.
“But is it true he has come into some money?” asked a stout, red-faced gentleman with a grey moustache.
“I don’t know,” answered a bald-headed man with a black beard. “He undoubtedly has money. They say that he has bought a house for María Lucena.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Quentin is a child of good luck,” added another.
“I should say he is,” responded he of the black beard. “Lucky at cards, and lucky at love.”
“Couldn’t the Marquis have given him some money?” asked the stout gentleman.
“The Marquis! He hasn’t a penny.”
“But where does the boy get his money?”
“I don’t know—unless he steals it.”
“But that would be found out.”
The members of the coterie were all silent for a moment while the stout gentleman took a short nap; then he said:
“Do you know if that paper that has just been published is his?”
“What paper? La Víbora?” asked he of the bald head.
“Yes.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, they say it is.”
“It strikes me that that paper is owned by the Masons.”
“Oh, but don’t you know that Quentin is a Mason?” said a small, dark man with a black moustache.
“Really?” asked every one at once.
“Yes, indeed. I know it for a fact; he joined the Lodge this summer.”
“Perhaps he makes his living from that,” said the fat gentleman.
“No one makes a living from that,” replied the short man with a laugh. “It occurred to me when I was a student in Madrid to become a Mason, and do you know what happened? They carried me about from one place to another with my eyes bandaged, and ended by taking five dollars away from me.”
Every one laughed. At this point a young man entered and stretched out in an arm chair with an air of deep gloom.
“What’s up, Manolillo?” asked the bald-headed man.
“Nothing. Quentin is upstairs plucking everybody. If he quits in time, he’s going to come out ahead; if he stays in, he may lose everything.”
As Springer, who heard this, was a man of good intentions and a loyal friend, he arose, threw his paper upon the table, left the salon, went through a gallery paved with marble, up a flight of stairs, and entered the gambling hall.
Quentin was dealing; he had a pile of bills and gold coins before him. Springer went up to him, and put his hand upon his shoulder. Quentin turned.
“What is it?”
“I come,” said Springer in a low voice, “to give you the advice of a gambler who just left here completely plucked. He said that if you quit in time, you’ll come out ahead; if you stay in, you may lose everything.”
“Really?” exclaimed Quentin, rising, as if he had just received important news. “Well, then, the only thing I can do is to leave. Gentlemen,” he added, addressing the players, “I shall return in a little while,” and placing the bills in his folder, he rapidly picked up the gold coins.
A murmur of indignation arose among the players.
“Come!” said Quentin to Springer.
They left the hall rapidly, descended the stairs, and did not stop until they had reached the street.
“But, what has happened to you?” the Swiss asked, utterly surprised.
“Nothing; it was a stratagem,” answered Quentin with a smile. “I could not find the right moment to leave decorously. They were all after me like dogs; and there I was boasting like a man to whom four or five thousand dollars more or less are of little importance. They would have gone up in smoke soon.”
By the light of a lamp, Quentin pulled out a handful of bills, sorted them, and put them into a folder; and then, unbuttoning first his coat, and then his vest, he put them in his inside pocket.
“Aren’t you afraid something may happen to you in the street?” asked the Swiss.
“Ca!”
“Do you know that you are the talk of the town, Quentin?”
“Am I?”
“Really. Besides, you have a tremendous reputation.”
“As what?”
“As a Tenorio, a dare-devil, a gambler, and a Mason.”
Quentin burst out laughing.
“I heard in the Casino here,” Springer went on, “that you were not living at home any more, but with an actress.”
“That’s true.”
“Have you quarrelled with your family?”
“Yes; I got angry and left my stepfather. Usurers disgust me.”
“It also seems that you have received a legacy from some relation or other of yours. Is that true?”
“Boy, I don’t know,” said Quentin ingenuously. “I’ve invented so many things, that now I don’t know which is the truth and which is a lie.” Then, turning melancholy, he added, “The trouble with me is that I am out of my element. I’m a Northerner.”
“You!” said Springer; and he began to laugh so heartily that Quentin joined him.
“What are you laughing at?”
“At how well I know you. So you are a Northerner. What a faker you are!... What shocks me is that you have become a Mason. That’s absurd.”
“Yes; it’s absurd to you and me, but it isn’t to many people.”
“Where is your Lodge?”
“In the Calle del Cister, near the Calle del Silencio. Would you like to come?”
“What for?”
“Man, we’ll baptize you anew; we’ll call you Cato, Robespierre, Spartacus....”
“I don’t believe it’s worth while....”
“As you wish.”
“Your Masonry disgusts me.”
“It is ridiculous, but it serves for something: it is useful for propaganda.”
“What propaganda are you putting forward?”
“Just now I am a Federal Republican.”
Springer burst out laughing again.
“You’re a Federal Republican! Like my countrymen, the Swiss.”
“You think it’s funny?”
“Very, my lad. You couldn’t live if you went to Switzerland.”
“Well, then, there I would be a Monarchist. I am nothing at heart. I am a man of action who needs money and complications in order to live. Do you know what name they have given me at the Lodge?”
“What?”
“Catiline. They have hit the nail on the head. I am a little Catiline. What an admirable chap was that Tribune of the people! Eh? I am very enthusiastic about him.”
“Then, Cicero would seem despicable to you.”
“Ah! absolutely despicable. Charlatan, pedant, coward ... in other words—he was a lawyer.”
“Listen,” said the Swiss. “They told me another and more serious thing: that you are the one who edits that newspaper, La Víbora. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“Are you the author of those very violent satires?”
“Not the author; the inspirer. Catiline turned libeller?... It would be unworthy of him.”
“But don’t you realize that you are exposing yourself to a very serious danger?”
“Ca! Don’t you believe it. Men are more cowardly than they seem. Moreover, I am defended by a lot of people; first by those who rejoice over and enjoy the satires—as long as they are not directed against themselves; second, by my friends, of whom the majority are very powerful people; third and last, and this is what I place most confidence in, I am defended by these fists, and because I don’t give a fig for anybody.”
“Well, you certainly are acting without scruple or conscience.”
“Is it worth while to live otherwise? I believe not.”
“Man alive! That depends upon the way one looks at it.”
“That’s the way I look at it. The spectacle is dangerous, but amusing. Well? Are you coming to the Lodge?”
“What for?”
“You will hear several orators declaim their speeches, and I shall present you to Don Paco Sánchez Olmillo, Master Surgeon and Master Mason. If you wish I’ll make a speech in your honour on human liberty. It is a discourse which I have learned by heart, and which, with a few trifling changes, I turn loose on all occasions, making it seem different each time.”
“The plan does not tempt me.”
“Then if you don’t wish to go to the Lodge, I shall take you to the tavern in the Calle del Bodegoncillo.”
“What are you going to do there?”
“I’m going to pay my retinue. Then I shall present you to Pacheco.”
“To which Pacheco? To the bandit?”
“The same. He is my lieutenant.”
“The devil! Shall I be safe with you?”
“Yes; safer than if you were with the Alcalde.”
“But you keep very bad company.”
“Whom do you mean by that? Pacheco? Pacheco is an unfortunate chap. Ask any one, and they will tell you that he was forced to take to the mountain merely on account of a rooster.”
“Was that all?”
“That was all. On account of a rooster called Tumbanavíos or Tumbalobos, I don’t exactly remember which. Pacheco used to go to the cock-fighting ring in the Calle de las Doblas, and one day he got mixed up in an argument with a fellow as to the relative merits of two fighting-cocks ... and, well, they had words. Pacheco stuck a knife into the fellow, with bad results, and left him cold.... A man’s affair!” added Quentin resignedly.
“Then one of those sergeants of the guardia civil who like to stick their noses into everything, insisted upon hunting Pacheco. He gave chase to him and caught up to him; but Pacheco, seeing that the game was about up, and remembering the words of Quevedo: that it is better to be ahead by a blow in the face than by all Castile, discharged his fowling-piece at the guard. This also had bad results, for he blew his skull open and sent him to join the other fellow.”
The Swiss applauded the story, laughing quietly.
“And is that chap from this city?” he asked.
“I think he is from Ecija or thereabouts.”
“What kind of a man is he?”
“A good fellow.”
“Does he hurt any one in the country?”
“No. He appears at a farmhouse and asks the operator for a loan of ten or twelve dollars, and the operator gives it to him. He’s a good man.”
“Is he in Cordova now?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t they arrest him?”
“They don’t dare. Don’t you see that I am protecting him?”
The Swiss looked at his friend, whom he admired deep down in his heart, and murmured again and again:
“My, what a faker!”
“It has been my custom to invite him to dine with me in the Café Puzzini and in the Rizzi Tavern,” added Quentin, “and no one has dared to interfere with him.”
Conversing in this manner, they had come out upon Las Tendillas, and were going up the Calle de Gondomar toward the Paseo del Gran Capitán. They walked past San Nicolás de la Villa, and followed the Calle de la Concepción toward the Puerta de Gallegos.
A strong breeze was blowing which made the blinds and windows rattle noisily.
“Where is that tavern?” asked Springer.
“Right here,” answered Quentin. “This is the Calle del Ni?o Perdido, a sort of cul-de-sac; it is not ours. This other is the Calle de los Ucedas; nor is that the one we are looking for, either.”
They walked on a few paces.
“This is the Calle del Bodegoncillo,” said Quentin, “and here is the tavern.”
THE tavern was a small one; it had a red counter covered with zinc, a door at one side through which one passed into a large cellar lit by two smoky oil lamps and several black lanterns. That night there was a great concourse and influx of people in the place. Quentin and Springer entered, traversed the outer room, then crossed the cellar, where there were several occupied tables, and sat down at a small one in the light of an oil lamp.
“This is our table,” said Quentin.
He clapped his hands, and the landlord, a man by the name of El Pullí, appeared; he ordered some crabs, a ration of fried fish, and a bottle of Montilla. Then he said:
“Bring me the bill for everything I owe.”
El Pullí returned presently with the crabs, the fried fish, and the wine, and, upon a dish; a paper upon which several letters and figures had been scrawled in blue ink.
Quentin took the paper, pulled out several bills from his vest pocket, and proceeded to toss them upon the plate.
“Is that right?” he asked of El Pullí.
“It must be right if you counted it,” replied the man.
“Here’s something for the boy,” added Quentin, putting a dollar upon the table.
“I have two boys, Don Quentin,” answered El Pullí slyly.
“Well, then, here’s something for the other one.”
That clinking of silver produced an extraordinary effect in the tavern. Every one looked at Quentin, who, pretending not to notice the fact, began to eat and to carry on an animated conversation with his friend.
At this point two men approached the table: one was tall, smiling, some thirty years old, toothless, with a black beard and reddish, blood-shot eyes; the other was short, blond, timid-and insignificant-looking.
Quentin greeted them with a slight nod, and indicated that they should be seated.
“Here,” said Quentin to Springer, indicating the man with the beard, “you have a thoroughgoing poet; the only bad thing about him is his name: he is called Cornejo. He is Corneille translated into Cordovese. But sit down, gentlemen, and order what you like; then we shall talk.”
The two men seated themselves.
The poet looked something like a carp, with his dull, protruding eyes. He wore very short trousers, checked yellow and black, and carried a cane so worn by use that he had to stretch out his arm to touch the ground with it. From what Quentin said, Cornejo was a fantastic individual. He had on a blue, threadbare coat which he called his “black suit,” and a ragged overcoat which he called his “surtout.” He always had patches in his trousers; sometimes these were made of cloth, and sometimes of rawhide; he lived in the perpetual combination of a zealous appetite and an empty stomach; he fed only upon alcohol and vanity; hence his poetical compositions were so ethereal that they were windy, rather than wingèd verse.
Once when he was walking with a comrade who was also a poet and a ragamuffin, he said, pointing to some grand ladies in a carriage:
“My lad, they are looking at us with a contempt that is ... inexplicable.”
The fellow went through life wandering from tavern to tavern, reciting verses of Espronceda and Zorilla; sometimes between the madrigals and romances, he composed some terrible poems of his own in which he appeared as a ferocious person who cared for no liquid but blood, for no perfume but the odour of graveyards, and for no skies but tempestuous ones.
Cornejo was very popular among the workingmen, and he knew all the toughs and ruffians who swarmed in the taverns. The short, blond chap who accompanied him was nervous.
“This gentleman,” said the poet to Quentin, pointing to the little fellow, “is the printer. If you can give him something....”
“Very well. How much do I owe you?” asked Quentin.
“Here is the invoice,” said the little man humbly.
“Don’t bring any invoices to me! How much is it?”
“Forty dollars.”
“Good. That’s all right.”
Quentin filled a glass of wine, and the printer looked at him rather anxiously.
“How much do you need to assure the publication of the paper for three months?”
The printer took out paper and pencil and rapidly made some figures.
“Two hundred dollars,” said he.
“Good,” replied Quentin, and he took some bills from his pocket-book and put them upon the table. “Here are the two hundred dollars. I’ll pay you the forty that I owe you when I can.”
“That’s all right,” said the printer, picking up the money without daring to count it. “Would you like me to give you a receipt?”
“I—What for?”
The printer rose, bowed ceremoniously, and went out.
“How about you, Cornejo?” murmured Quentin. “Do you need some?”
“Throw me ten or twelve dollars.”
“Here are twenty; but you’ve got to get to work. If you don’t, I’ll kick you out.”
“Don’t you worry.” The poet stuck the bill carelessly into his pocket, and began to listen to the conversation of the persons at the next table. One of these was a man with a huge beard whom they called El Sardino; the other was a charcoal-burner with a grimy face called El Manano.
“Listen to this conversation,” said the poet. “It’s worth it.”
“But what does that man give you?” El Manano was saying to El Sardino, making strange grimaces with his sooty face, and waving his arms.
“He gives me nothing,” replied the other very seriously, “but he reports me.”
“He reports you! You must be easy!”
“It’s true.”
“But what good has it done you to know him?”
“It’s done me a lot of good, and I am grateful.”
“That’s almost like scratching a place to lie down in, comrade,” said El Manano meaningly.
“Well, I’m like that,” replied El Sardino. “Of course nothing gets ahead of me, and I always take my hat off so they can see the way my hair is parted.”
“You’ve told me that before.”
“I don’t understand a word of what they are saying,” said the Swiss with a smile.
“Nor do they understand each other,” remarked Quentin.
“That’s their way of talking,” said the poet.
“And who are those fellows?” asked Springer.
“El Sardino is an itinerant pedlar,” replied Cornejo. “He makes sling-shots for the children out of branches of rose-bay, and whistles out of maiden-hair ferns; the kind that have little seeds in them to make them trill. El Manano is a charcoal-burner.”
“Of whom were they speaking?”
“Probably of Pacheco.”
“The bandit?” asked Springer.
Cornejo fell silent; glanced at Quentin, and then, swallowing, murmured:
“Don’t say it so loud; he has many friends here.”
“That’s what we are,” replied Quentin.
The poet could not have been pleased by this turn of the conversation, for without saying another word, he addressed the charcoal-burner:
“Hello, Manano!” he cried. “It looks as if we’d caught it now, eh? Well, look out they don’t take you to La Higuerilla!”
“Me!—to La Higuerilla?” exclaimed the drunkard; “nobody can do that!”
“Don’t you want to go there any more?”
“No.”
“Why not? You used to be glad to go.”
“Because they used to treat a fellow right; but now, as you’ve said in poetry, they don’t give you anything but water, a blow or two with a stick now and then, and that stuff that smells so bad ... pneumonia.”
The poet smiled at this testimony of his popularity.
El Sardino and El Manano had resumed their same parabolic manner of speech, when there came humming into the tavern a small, straight man with a short, black moustache that looked as if it were painted on his lip, a broad-brimmed hat pulled over his eyes, a huge watch chain across his vest, and a knotted and twisted stick.
When Springer caught sight of this ludicrous individual, he smiled mockingly, and the poet said:
“Here’s Carrahola.”
“What a funny chap!”
“He’s a bully,” replied Cornejo.
“Bah!” exclaimed Quentin, “he’s a poor fellow, who because he is so small, has the fad of carrying everything extra large: his stick, his sombrero, his cigar-case.”
And indeed, as if to demonstrate this, Carrahola pulled a silver watch, as white and as large as a stew-pan, from his vest pocket, and after ascertaining the time, asked the landlord:
“Has Se?or José come yet?”
“No, Se?or.”
“But is he coming?”
“I can’t tell you; I think so.”
Carrahola went up to the table at which Quentin, Springer, and Cornejo were sitting, drew up a chair, and sat down without greeting them.
“This is a great night for finding lone jackasses, Carrahola,” said the poet, turning to the little man.
The fellow turned his head as if he had heard the voice from the other side of the room, and paid no attention. Carrahola doubtless considered himself a great bully; he noted the expectancy in the tavern, so he seized Quentin’s glass, held it up to the light, and emptied it with one swallow. Quentin took the glass, and, without saying a word, took careful aim, and tossed it through an open window. Then, clapping his hands, he said to El Pullí who came toward him:
“A glass; and kindly notify this person,” and he pointed to Carrahola, “that he is in the way here.”
“Move on,” said the innkeeper; “this table is occupied.”
Carrahola pretended not to understand; he took a plug of tobacco and a knife from his coat, and began to scrape tobacco; then he suddenly put the instrument upon the table.
“What do you do with that?” inquired Quentin, pointing to the blade with his finger. “Flourish it?”
Carrahola rose tragically from the table, put his knife away slowly, seized his enormous knotted stick, insinuated himself into his broad hat, gave a little pull to the lapels of his coat, and said dryly and contemptuously:
“Some one is talking in here who would not dare to speak thus in the street.”
This said, he spat upon the floor, wiped away the spittle by rubbing it with the sole of his boot, and stood looking over his shoulder.
“And what does that mean?” asked Quentin.
“That means, that if you are a man, we’ll have two glasses now, and then go and cut each other’s hearts out.”
Without replying Quentin stood up, seized Carrahola by the neck of his coat, lifted him like a puppet, and let him fall upon the soles of his boots, which struck the floor with a ludicrous sound. Everybody burst out laughing. Carrahola charged furiously at Quentin with lowered head; but the latter with the easy movement of a boxer, threw him over his hip into the air; then he took him in his two strong hands, pushed him up to the window, and watch, knife, broad-brimmed hat and all, tossed him into the street.
“You’ll have to learn how to treat people politely,” said Quentin after the operation was over.
“What a lad!” exclaimed El Manano. “He dropped him in the box like a letter!”
Murmurs of admiration were heard all over the tavern. Then a boy, or a small man (one could not determine his age easily), with reddish hair and a very freckled face, a mutilated cala?és, and a twill coat, came hopping toward Quentin.
“Good evening,” he said. “El Garroso, that carter over there, has some friends who say that if he ‘tried wrists’ with you, he could beat you. We say he couldn’t do it. Would you like to try wrists with him, Don Quentin?”
“No, not now, thanks.”
“Excuse me if I was wrong to ask you; but some are betting on you and others on him.”
“Whom did you bet on?”
“On you.”
“Good, then let’s go over.”
“El Rano is always making bets,” said Cornejo.
“Is his name El Rano?”
“Haven’t you noticed his face?”
The little man turned around, and Springer was forced to suppress a smile. Sure enough, he looked exactly like a frog, with his protruding, bulgy, stupid-looking eyes, his broad face, bottle-shaped nose, and mouth that spread from ear to ear.
“Where is El Garroso?” asked Quentin.
“At that table over there.”
A man arose, smiling; he was round shouldered, with bow legs and arms, a square head, a bull neck, and a swelling something like a coxcomb in the middle of his forehead.
El Rano, El Garibaldino, and El Animero placed a table and two chairs in the middle of the tavern. El Garroso sat down, followed directly by Quentin.
“Well, as this is not a fighting matter,” said Quentin to El Garroso, “we’ll have two rounds, eh?”
“Sí, Se?or.”
They placed their elbows upon the table, clasped hands, and the chairs, the table, and even the bones of the adversaries began to creak.
El Garroso turned red; a vein in his forehead, as large as a finger, looked as if it were about to burst. Quentin was impassive.
“Do you think you are going to lose, Rano?” he said to the little man.
“No, indeed.”
“That’s right. Now you’ll see.” And without making an apparent effort—crack! El Garroso’s arm fell to the table, his knuckles striking the boards forcibly.
Every one was astonished.
“Good, now let’s try it again,” said Quentin.
“No, no. You’re stronger than I am,” murmured El Garroso.
Quentin said that it was all a matter of practice, and was chatting away, when Carrahola, who could not have been hurt by his fall, doubtless lifting himself by his hands, and hoisting himself until his head reached the height of the window through which he had made his exit so brusquely, shouted with a prolongation of the “o”:
“Gallego!”
“I’m going out and beat him up,” said El Pullí. “I’ll show him something pretty fine;” and the man closed the window and barred it with a stick.
Presently Carrahola shouted through the keyhole of the street door:
“Oscurantista!”
At this moment some one knocked at the door, Pullí opened it, and Pacheco and a friend, both wrapped in cloaks, entered, followed by Carrahola.
“The peace of God be with you, gentlemen,” said Pacheco. “Who is it that is entertaining himself by throwing my friends through the window?”
“It was I,” replied Quentin.
“Ah! Is that you? I didn’t see you.”
“Yes, sir; and I’ll throw him out again if he bothers me.”
“If it was you, that’s another matter,” said Pacheco. “I know that you don’t like to stick your nose into other people’s affairs.”
Springer observed with surprise the prestige that Quentin enjoyed among that class of people. Pacheco and his friend, who was a toreador called Bocanegra, sat down. Quentin introduced them to the Swiss, and they all fell into an animated conversation.
Carrahola remained some distance away, in an attitude of suspicion.
“Come, Carrahola,” said Pacheco, “it was your fault.”
“Then excuse me, if I was wrong,” said Carrahola.
“Nothing has happened at all,” said Quentin, holding out his hand. “Take a glass, and let’s be friends.”
Bocanegra, the toreador, said ironically:
“Come now, Carrahola, this isn’t the first beating you ever had.”
“Nor will it be the last,” replied the other very seriously.
Springer watched the people with great curiosity. He was surprised at Pacheco’s courtesy: one could see that he was cultured; a man of natural superiority, neat, and with well-kept hands. The toreador was a strong-looking fellow with bright eyes and white teeth.
“One moment,” said Quentin. “Pacheco, please come here.”
The bandit got up, and the two men went to one end of the table and conversed.
“Have you seen the Count?” asked Quentin.
“Yes.”
“What does he say?”
“That the woman is mad; that he has only been married once, like every one else.”
“All we have to do is to go to the town and get hold of the wedding certificate. Send one of your men.”
“I’ll need money for that, comrade.”
“I have some. I’m going to give you all I have left. If you have time, pay El Cuervo what I owe him.”
“Very well.”
Quentin emptied his pocket upon the table.
“There’s more than enough here,” said the bandit. “You’d better keep some.”
Quentin put away a few bills, and they rejoined the group.
The conversation again turned upon revolutionary ideas, about which Pacheco and Bocanegra were most enthusiastic. The bandit spoke very devotedly of General Prim.
“I don’t think there is a man like him in the world, and you needn’t laugh, comrade,” said Pacheco to Quentin, “you are not as patriotic as I am.”
“Every person admires his own likeness,” replied Quentin coldly.
“Do you think I am like Prim?” asked the bandit.
“No. It is Prim who is like Pacheco.”
“I think I ought to be angry with you....”
Suddenly El Sardino’s voice interrupted the conversation, shouting:
“Look here, leave me alone; you’re making my head hot.”
El Manano, in the midst of the confusion, at that moment doubtless remembered his business of charcoal-burning, for he examined closely his interlocutor’s head, which was huge, and murmured in a thick voice:
“Why, it would take a whole cartload of wood even to soften it a little!”
Everybody laughed when they saw El Sardino’s expression of indignation, and went on talking.
“One can do nothing here,” said Pacheco to Springer. “We talk a lot, but words are as far as we get. We Andalusians are very like the colts from this part of the country: a great deal of hoof with very little sole.”
“Don’t say that, Se?or José,” Cornejo ejaculated indignantly.
“I say it because it is true. What do all those men on the committee do? Will you tell me? What good is that Lodge?”
“Even God’s interpreter don’t know that,” said El Manano, who had joined the group in the last stages of alcoholic intoxication. “But here,” and he struck his chest, “is a man, Se?or José ... a man among men ... willing to die on a barricade. Sí, Se?or ... and whenever you or Don Quentin give the signal, we’ll get after the Oscurantistas.... Long live the Constipation, and death to Isabella II!”
“That will do, that will do. Get out,” said the bandit.
“But I’m always liberal, Se?or José ... here, and everywhere else....”
“Let’s go,” said Quentin. “He’ll be giving us a great drubbing.”
They got up, and the innkeeper lighted their way to the street door with a small lamp. They walked together as far as El Gran Capitán; Cornejo, Bocanegra and Pacheco turned in the direction of Los Tejares; Quentin and the Swiss went down the Calle de Gondomar.
“But what do you expect of those people?” Springer asked presently.
“I! I don’t know, my boy; now—to be strong, ... later—we shall see.”
“Do you read Machiavelli?”
“I read nothing. Why?”
“You are an extraordinary man, Quentin.”
“Bah!”
“Really. A type worth studying.”
“Well, look here, if you wish to study me, go to the Café del Recreo some night. There you’ll meet the girl that’s living with me.”
“I shall go.”
They had reached Las Tendillas; it was very late, and the two friends took leave of each other with a warm handshake.
A FEW days later, on a Sunday afternoon, Quentin went out for a horseback ride. Before turning toward the mountain, he drew rein in the Paseo de la Victoria to watch the people as they went by.
His reputation as a gambler, a dare-devil, and a rude and powerful man, made it possible for him to have his little successes with the ladies, and more than one of them looked at him with the long, staring, and penetrating glance of a woman not altogether understood by her husband.
As was customary on fiesta days, the carriages were driven to and fro along the Paseo, and among them rode several horsemen on spirited mounts. In one of his turns, Quentin saw Rafaela and Remedios alone in a carriage. Neither of the two girls noticed his presence, and in order that this should not happen again, Quentin placed himself in such a position that they would have to see him as they came back.
Remedios was the first to recognize him, and she told her sister. Quentin bowed to them very ceremoniously. When they reached the extreme end of the drive, Rafaela must have told her coachman to leave the Paseo. Remedios looked back several times. Quentin rode up to the carriage and entered into conversation with the two sisters. Rafaela was pale and had dark rings under her eyes; she was in the last month of pregnancy; her eyes were sunken and her ears transparent.
Remedios was prettier than ever; she was just reaching that intermediate stage when the child becomes the woman.
“Are you two girls well?” Quentin asked them with real interest.
“I am well,” answered Rafaela a trifle weakly. “Just waiting from day to day ... and you can see for yourself that Remedios is prettier and healthier than ever.”
Remedios burst into one of her silent laughs.
“Yes,” replied Quentin, “one can see that the country is good for Remedios.”
“Don’t you believe it!” exclaimed the child. “I would rather live in our house on the Calle del Sol.”
“They say you have become a terrible person,” said Rafaela. “I believe you write for the papers, ... that you keep bad company....”
“Nothing to it—just gossip.”
“And you don’t go to the house any more, either. You have deserted poor grandfather.”
“That’s true. I’m always thinking about going, but I never do.”
“Well, he asks after you all the time. The poor dear is very ill, and so lonely.... Since we have been in town, we have been to see him every day.”
“Well, I’ll go, too, don’t you worry.”
“Go tomorrow,” said Remedios.
“Very well, tomorrow it is. But did you two leave the Paseo on my account?”
“No,” replied Rafaela, “I don’t like to drive in that line for very long at a time. It makes my head swim. We are on our way home, now. Adiós, Quentin.”
“Adiós!”
Quentin took the mountain road, and trotted his horse as far as the Brillante lunch-room.
The encounter had given rise to a mixture of sadness and irony within him, which seemed as distressing as it did grotesque to him.
“Is there anything of special significance about it?” he asked himself.
No, there was nothing of special significance about it. It was the logical thing. She had married; her husband was young; she was going to have a child. It was the natural course of events; and yet, Quentin wondered at her.
We often see strange birds flying in the heavens. They are like men’s illusions. Sometimes these birds fall, wounded by some hunter, and when one sees them upon the ground with their sad eyes, their white feathers,—they are a surprise to whomsoever contemplates them.... It is because man idealizes all distant objects.
Quentin, dominated by his half-dolorous, half-grotesque impressions, returned slowly to the town.
When he reached the Paseo de la Victoria, night had already fallen. The line of carriages was still filing past. The mountain was wrapped in a mist; the sun was sinking over the distant meadows, its great, red disk hiding itself behind the yellow fields; a bluish hill surmounted by a castle stood out in silhouette against the rosy-tinted horizon.
Few carriages were passing now; above the old wall and gateway of Almodóvar, the yellowish tower of the cathedral showed against the azure sky, which was now beginning to be decorated with stars.
All of the carriages left the Victoria to drive up and down the Paseo del Gran Capitán.
Quentin entered a café.
“I must get out of this city,” he thought. “I ought to go to London.”
Then he remembered the frequent rain, the wooden coachmen in their cabs, the blue mist in the fields near Windsor, and the ships that glided down the Thames in the fog.
He left the café. The carriages continued to pass up and down El Gran Capitán, enveloped in an atmosphere of dust.
Quentin went home. María Lucena was getting ready to go to the theatre.
“What’s the matter with you?” she said.
“Nothing.”
Quentin stretched out upon a sofa and spent hour after hour recalling the fog, the dampness, and the cool atmosphere of England, until he fell asleep.