Chapter XXIII

Don Alfonso Saavedra's exquisite, overwhelming courtesy, his delicate attentions to every one, his respectful behavior toward ladies masked Satanic pride and boundless impudence. From an early age he had looked upon himself "as the hub of the universe," as the saying goes, and professed absolute scorn of humanity. Among rich young men, the sons of aristocratic families, this conduct is not uncommon. The only thing in which they bear a perpetual resemblance to each other is their scorn of everybody. The majority are not able to go beyond that, and full of zeal, they have no other ambition than to be able to show their fellows, whenever they can, this most noble disdain, which forms an integral part of their superiority. But so adorable is their frankness that sometimes it obliges them to put up with petty disappointments, and yet it happens that their scorn is not very well appreciated and understood; for among the many absurd whims from which humanity suffers stands that of not allowing itself to be scorned. There is no use in trying to explain this scorn by saying:--

"I owe ninety thousand duros; I am viscount, and hold my head high; I make portentous wagers at baccarat; one of my ancestors blacked King Felipe's boots; I am as good a whip as the head coachman; and a few days ago another viscount and I 'fleeced' a wise man at Vallehermoso; I wear such extraordinary pantaloons that passers-by are obliged to turn round and look at me; and I am in love with a ballet-girl of the Real."

It is idle; humanity is determined not to recognize the importance and seriousness of the reasons wherein these distinguished young men take pleasure in despising it.

Don Alfonso, naturally more cautious and more experienced by his residence in foreign countries, understood that it was expedient to flatter this whim, but at heart he professed the same ideas. That precept of the Krausist philosophy very much in vogue at that time, "Regard humanity not as a means, but as an end," was for him a dead letter.

After the calamity of the Retiro, though his pride was wounded to the very quick, he was able to hide it completely; and if he no longer made his appearance at Miguel's, it was not owing to his resentment, but lest Maximina, now on her guard, would take some violent measure that would compromise him.

She did not perfectly comprehend his character. When he accidentally met the young couple in the street, he was as polite and genial as ever, excusing his prolonged absence very gracefully by saying that an uncle had suddenly come to town, and he gave a lively and circumstantial description of the occurrence. Saavedra, without being talented or learned, had a peculiarly ludicrous turn of speech, and what he said was apt to be comical and mirth-provoking, though it was often repulsive. When he "used the scalpel" on a friend, the impression that he left on his hearers was painful.

Maximina, on meeting him, turned crimson, and it cost her great effort to calm herself, but fortunately Miguel did not notice it.

The very day that he was going to Galicia, he met Saavedra again at the Ateneo,[57] where the dandy sometimes repaired to read the French periodicals. He told him about his journey, and said good by. Don Alfonso remained a long time seated on the sofa; a frown, constantly growing deeper, furrowed his forehead. Then suddenly he smoothed out the frown; his face regained its ordinary disdainful and indifferent expression, and he got up. There was some deep resolution under that brow; something that was far removed from Krause's commandment, and still less from those of God's law.

At his aunt's house he learned that Julita was going to sleep with her sister-in-law, and spend with her all the time not occupied by her other duties, which consisted of piano and singing lessons. For nothing in the world would _la brigadiera_ permit her to relax her four hours of practising and going through the prescribed scales.

Don Alfonso spent four or five days in meditating, in playing espionage on Maximina, and in scheming; meantime he showed himself more than ever amiable and obsequious to his cousin; but he refused to accompany her to Miguel's, offering various excuses.

Saturdays he always breakfasted at _la brigadiera's_. On the first Saturday after Miguel's departure, Julita, though she usually took breakfast with Maximina, came home in honor of her cousin, and because it was no longer possible for her to hide the passionate love which she felt for him. During breakfast time he was as jovial and amusing as ever; nevertheless, Julita's loving eyes were able to detect in his gestures a peculiar excitement, as though his mind were preoccupied. Naturally she attributed it to what most concerned her; to the love constantly growing more tender and ardent which her cousin manifested toward her. When they had finished, he asked her in a careless tone:--

"Is your piano teacher coming to-day?"

"Yes; at four."

"Then," said he, still more indifferently, if possible, "you will not return to Maximina's until you have had your lesson, I suppose."

"Of course not ... there is no need of making the journey twice," replied _la brigadiera_.

They went to the sitting-room, and Julita sat down at the piano with Alfonso at her side. The charming girl struck an opportune _forte_ which drowned out the tender words which her cousin began whispering in her ear.

"Julita, your eyes shine so to-day, that if you wanted to set my heart on fire, you could do it this very instant."

"Pedal! pedal!" cried the girl, laughing; and she quenched the dandy's last words with a deafening crash.

She again put on the soft pedal, and began gently to touch the piano. Don Alfonso took advantage of the diminuendo to say:--

"Julita, I adore you; I love you more than my life...."

"Pedal! pedal!" exclaimed the girl again, and she did not allow him to finish. But after a few moments of this rapturous amusement, Don Alfonso exclaimed, raising his hand to his forehead:--

"Oh, how unfortunate!"

"What is it?"

"Why, my uncle is going to Seville to-day, and I have not yet been to the notary's to arrange my mother's papers."

"Oh, you snipe! Hurry! go and get them; you have time."

"Oh, if it were merely a question of getting them!... I must look over a good part of them, and add my signature."

"Run, then, lazybones ... run!... You may be sure that your mamma will lay your negligence at my door."

Julita said this, pretending to be angry, but without being able to hide the pleasure that the supposition caused her.

"I was going to spend such a delicious afternoon! And now to have to go to a notary's office to eat dust and make my head ache!"

"Go, go! The first thing to do is the first thing to be done!... At any rate, you were in a fair way of telling a good many fibs this afternoon...."

"Honest, genuine truths, cousin divine!"

Don Alfonso's _berlina_ was waiting at the corner of the street, according to the orders that he had given the coachman. He lighted an Havana and as he slammed the door to, he said:--

"To the Riveras'."

Any one seeing him leaning back in his carriage, with his cigar between his teeth, would have taken him for an elegant swell about to have a drive through the Castellana.

Still the same frown, a sign of intense questioning, which had appeared on his brow when he said good by to Miguel at the Ateneo, now furrowed it again, perhaps deeper and darker than ever.

"At six, as always, at the Swiss restaurant," he said to his driver, as he dismounted from the landau.

And with slow step, his face a trifle pale, he entered the doorway of Miguel's house, and mounted the staircase.

He rang the bell vigorously, like a familiar and honored friend.

Placida came to open for him.

"Senorito, it is good to see you!" she exclaimed, with the sympathy inspired in maid-servant by visitors when they are handsome men.

"_Hola!_ little one," said the _caballero_, in a condescending tone, giving her a little pat on the cheek; "your master in?"

"But don't you know that the senorito went last Monday to Galicia? It is plain enough that you don't often soil the staircase of this house with the dust of your boots."

"_La senorita?_" asked the fine gentleman, with an absent-minded gesture, at the same time depositing his cane and hat on the rack.

"She is sewing in her boudoir.... Shall I take up your card?"

"There is no need," he replied, starting with a firm step toward the parlor, and opening the boudoir door.

Maximina was sewing on some article of clothing for the baby, who, absolutely removed from the political struggles in which his papa was engaged, was sleeping in the bedroom, and occupying a good half of the bed. The young mother's thoughts were flying over the white peaks of the Guadarrama, traversing the desert plains of Castille, and losing themselves among the leafy groves of Galicia.

"Will he have socks enough?" she was asking herself, at that moment. This had been a serious anxiety to Maximina ever since her husband's departure. "Eight pairs aren't sufficient, can't be sufficient, if he changes them every day, as he usually does. In that country I believe they don't wash clothes very often. Ay! _Dios mio!_ and if it should rain, and he get his feet wet! how could he change them two or three times a day as he does here?... I am sure that it would never occur to him to buy some new ones.... He is very thoughtless!"

The door-bell rang. As she raised her head, her eyes met Don Alfonso's.

It is difficult to conceive the surprise that Maximina felt at that sudden apparition, and the surprise and terror that took possession of her. She turned pale, even livid, then her face grew crimson, then once more pale; all in the space of a few seconds.

Saavedra shut the door, and offered her his hand with perfect ease and self-possession.

"How are you, Maximina?"

She could scarcely articulate her answer. Her hand trembled violently.

"What does this mean? You are trembling," said the _caballero_, retaining it a moment in his.

She made no reply.

"If it were an enemy who came in, I should understand this agitation; but as I am such a devoted friend ... so stupidly devoted as I am to you.... I am wrong to call myself a friend: I should do better to call myself your slave, for these many days you have exercised an absolute dominion over me."

The young wife's features were contracted by a smile which seemed rather like a face of terror. Her eyes expressed the same dismay. She tried to say something, but her voice died in her throat.

"The last time that I spoke with you, Maximina," the Andalusian went on to say, after he had taken a seat at her side, "I was bold enough to give you a hint of what was passing within my heart. Perhaps I was foolish; but the step has been taken, and I cannot retrace it. I must complete to-day what then I did not do more than indicate; I must express to you,--although it is very difficult--the love, the idolatry that you inspire in me, the terrible anxieties which I have been suffering for more than a month, the state of genuine madness to which your cruelty has brought me...."

Maximina continued speechless. She looked like a statue of Desolation.

"I am going to tell you all, all! You will pardon me, will you not, lovely Maximina?"

And the audacious _caballero_ pronounced these words with his insinuating, mellow voice, at the same time gently laying the palm of his hand on the back of Maximina's. She withdrew it as though she had touched a vile animal; and leaping to her feet, as though pushed by a spring, she ran to the door, and hastened into the parlor.

Don Alfonso followed her, and caught her by her arm. Then, pulling herself away with remarkable power, she broke from his touch, but, instead of running, she faced him with flaming cheeks, looking at him with frenzied eyes that were frightful to see.

The truth is, that among the many attitudes which he had imagined that Miguel's wife might assume, Saavedra had never thought of such an one. He expected repulses, indignant phrases, even insulting words, and he was prepared to meet them with a cold and careless mien; he expected to be commanded to go on the instant, he expected the threat that she would shout, and he was likewise prepared with what to say to calm her immediately; finally, in the depths of his heart, his presumption flattered him by saying that Maximina could not long resist his attraction and his fame as a seducer. But these strange, inconvenient flights, this mute terror, surprised and somewhat disconcerted him.

"What are you going to do, Maximina," he asked, though the poor child was not doing anything; but it was well to warn her for some event.--"If you should cry or call your servants, you would be seriously compromised; there would be a scandal, everybody would know about it, including your husband, and you would lose much more than you have any idea of.... Come now, be reasonable," he added, in the same mellow voice in which he had spoken before, and approaching her. "The thing is not worth taking in this tragic fashion. It is not strange that I am desperately in love with you, nor am I to blame for it, but the God who made you so beautiful, so sweet, so _simpatica_.... And if you should grant me one little favor--let me kiss one hand as a reward for so much adoration, for so many sad and bitter hours which I have suffered during the last month, I think it would not be very strange, either. It would be on your part not a proof of love, which I know well I do not deserve, but rather of your kind heart, of your generous nature which, even on such an occasion as this, cannot be forsworn. This favor, though insignificant in the world's eyes and before your conscience, would be in mine immense; it would be a secret between us two until death.... My gratitude for it would be eternal.... Come, lovely Maximina, don't give the lie to your goodness.... I beg it of you on my knees. Let me touch my lips to your hand, and go away calm and happy.... Do you wish greater humiliation than this?"

The audacious and astute _caballero_, in saying these last words, in reality bent his knee, and seized one of the young woman's hands. But she snatched it away with surprising bravery, and glanced around with a face full of terror, as though seeking for aid. Then she went like a flash to Miguel's study. Don Alfonso followed her, likewise running. The young woman took her stand behind the table, and once more cast upon him that timid and uncertain glance, in reality like that of one insane.

Miguel had left open on the table his shaving case, and the razor that he had used lay on top, also open.

By a refinement of affection Maximina had been unwilling to touch these objects or to allow any one else to do so, but left them till his return. She quickly seized the razor, and laying it to her throat, she said in a hoarse voice:--

"If you touch me again, I will kill myself! I will kill myself!"

These were the first words that she spoke during the whole scene, though it lasted several minutes.

The tone in which she spoke and the look with which she accompanied her words, left no room for doubt. Saavedra knew that though she would not kill herself, yet that she would give herself a slash, that the blood would run, and that there would be a serious piece of mischief in which he would appear in no enviable light. Therefore he hastened to say:--

"I will not touch you; don't be afraid." And then he added with an ironical smile, in a tone overflowing with spite, "Come, come! where it is least to be expected there arises a Lucretia. If I were an artist, Maximina, I would paint you this way with your arm raised, and would send you to the exhibition. The razor is a trifle prosaic, but that is the fault of the times. Lucretias nowadays, instead of an embossed dagger use their husbands' razor!"

Perhaps the rejected seducer would have gone on flinging at his expected victim other coarse insults and cowardly jests like the above, but at that instant Maximina's quick ear caught the soft and delicate voice of her little one, who was just waking up in the sleeping-room; it was so slight a sound that only a mother could have heard it at that distance.

She threw down the razor, and exclaimed, "My heart's delight, I am coming."

She flew like an arrow past Don Alfonso. If he had attempted to stay her flight, she would certainly have knocked him over with the impetus that she had and her muscular development.

The _caballero_ had no thought of doing any such thing. What he did was to turn on his heels, take his hat, and set out to dissipate his ill humor and vexation on the Castellana.

Maximina's calmness quickly returned. Nevertheless, a few hours afterward she began to feel such an intense chill that she was obliged to go to bed and ask for a cup of _tila_. On the following day she was all right again. She thought of sending word to Miguel, asking him to come home, but on second thought she saw that she would be obliged to give some reason, and she had none. And if he should have any suspicion and oblige her to confess what had taken place? He would certainly challenge Saavedra, who, as he was an expert in such affairs, would kill him.

"Oh, I would kill myself sooner than tell him!"

And the faithful wife, at the mere thought of it, shivered with horror.