Chapter II: Paralipomena (4)

"Stop a moment," said Don Luis; "let us understand each other. Where is the money for your new bank?"

The count showed signs of confusion and disturbance.

"I have no money here," he returned, "but it seems to me that my word is more than enough."

Don Luis answered, with grave and measured accent:

"Count, I should be quite willing to trust the word of a gentleman, and allow him to remain in my debt, if it were not that in doing so I should fear to lose your friendship, which I am now in a fair way to gain; but, as I was a witness this morning to the cruelty with which you treated certain friends of mine, to whom you are indebted, I do not wish to run the risk of becoming culpable in your eyes by means of the same fault. How ridiculous to suppose that I should voluntarily incur your enmity by lending you money which you would not repay me, as you have not repaid, except with insults, that which you owe Pepita Ximenez!"

From the fact that this accusation was true, the offense was all the greater. The count became livid with anger, and, by this time on his feet, ready to come to blows with the collegian.

"You lie, slanderer!" he exclaimed. "I shall tear you limb from limb, you----"

This last insult, which concerned the honor of her whose memory was most sacred to him, was never finished; its end never reached his ears. For, with marvelous quickness, dexterity, and force, he reached across the table which was between himself and the count, and, with the light, flexible bamboo cane with which he had armed himself, struck his antagonist on the face, raising on it instantly a dark purple welt.

There was neither retort, outcry, nor uproar after this. When the hands come into play, the tongue is apt to be silent. The count was about to throw himself on Don Luis, for the purpose of tearing him to pieces, if it were in his power. But opinion had changed greatly since yesterday morning, and was now on the side of Don Luis. The captain, the doctor, and even Currito, who now showed more courage than he had done on that occasion, all held back the count, who struggled and fought ferociously to release himself.

"Let me go!" he cried; "let me get at him and kill him!"

"I do not seek to prevent a duel," said the captain; "a duel is inevitable. I only seek to prevent your fighting here, like two porters. I should be wanting in self-respect if I consented to be present at such a combat."

"Let weapons be brought!" said the count; "I do not wish to defer the affair for a single moment. At once--and here!"

"Will you fight with sabers?" said the captain.

"Yes," responded Don Luis.

"Sabers be it," said the count.

All this was said in a low voice, so that nothing might be heard in the street. Even the servants of the club-house, who slept on chairs in the kitchen and in the yard, were not awakened by the noise.

Don Luis chose as his seconds the captain and Currito; the count chose the two strangers. The doctor made ready to practice his art, and show the signal of the Red Cross.

It was not yet daylight. It was agreed that the apartment in which they were, should be the field of combat, the door being first closed. The captain went to his house for the sabers, and returned soon afterward, carrying them under the cloak which he had put on for the purpose of concealing them from view.

We already know that Don Luis had never wielded a weapon in his life. Fortunately the count, although he had never studied theology, or entertained the purpose of becoming a priest, was not much more skilled than he in the art of handling the broadsword.

The only roles laid down for the duel were that, their sabers once in hand, each of the combatants should use his weapon as Heaven might best direct him.

The door of the apartment was closed. The tables and chairs were placed in a corner, to leave a free field for the combatants, and the lights were suitably disposed.

Don Luis and the count divested themselves of their coats and waistcoats, remaining in their shirt-sleeves, and selected, each one, his weapon. The seconds stood on one side. At a signal from the captain, the combat began. Between two persons who know neither how to parry a stroke nor how to put themselves on guard, a combat must of necessity be brief; and such this one was.

The fury of the count, restrained for some time past, now burst forth and blinded his reason. He was strong, and he had wrists of steel; and he showered down on Don Luis, with his saber, a rain of blows without order or sequence. Four times he succeeded in touching Don Luis--each time, fortunately, with the flat of his weapon. He bruised his shoulders, but did not wound him. The young theologian had need of all his strength to keep from falling to the floor, overcome by the force of the blows and the pain of his bruises. A fifth time the count struck Don Luis, and this time with the edge of his weapon, although sidewise. The blood of Don Luis began to flow abundantly. Far from stopping, the count resumed the attack with renewed fury, in the hope of again wounding his antagonist. He almost placed himself under the weapon of Don Luis. The latter, instead of putting himself in position to parry, brought his sword down vigorously on his adversary, and succeeded in wounding the count in the head. The blood gushed forth, and ran down his forehead and into his eyes. Stunned by the blow, the count fell heavily to the floor.

The whole combat was a matter of a few seconds. Don Luis had remained tranquil throughout, like a Stoic philosopher, who is obliged by the hard law of necessity to take part in a conflict opposed alike to his habits and his ways of thought. But no sooner did he see his antagonist extended on the floor, bathed in blood and looking as though he were dead, than he experienced the most poignant anguish, and feared for a moment that he should faint. He who, until within the last five or six hours, had held unwaveringly to his resolution of being a priest, a missionary, a minister and a messenger of the gospel, had committed, or accused himself of having committed, during those few hours, every crime, and of breaking all the commandments of God. There was now no mortal sin by which he was not contaminated. First, his purpose of leading a life of perfect and heroic holiness had been put to flight; then followed his purpose of leading a life of holiness of a more easy, comfortable, and _bourgeois_ sort. The devil seemed to please himself in over-throwing his plans. He reflected that he could now no longer be even a Christian Philemon, for to lay his neighbor's head open with a stroke of a saber was not a very good beginning of his idyl.

Don Luis, after the agitations of the day, was now in a condition resembling that of a man who has brain-fever. Currito and the captain, one at each side, took hold of him and led him home.

* * * * *

Don Pedro de Vargas got out of bed in terror when he was told that his son had come home wounded. He ran to see him, examined his bruises and the wound in his arm, and saw that they were none of them attended with danger; but he broke out into threats of vengeance, and would not be pacified until he was made acquainted with the particulars of the affair, and learned that Don Luis had known how to avenge himself in spite of his theology.

The doctor came soon after to examine the wound, and was of opinion that in three or four days' time Don Luis would be able to go out again, as if nothing had happened. With the count, on the other hand, it would be a matter of months. His life, however, was in no danger. He had returned to consciousness, and had asked to be taken to his own village, which was distant only a league from the village which these events took place. A hired coach had been procured, and he had been taken thither, accompanied by his servant, and the two strangers who had acted as his seconds.

Four days after the affair the doctor's opinion was justified by the result, and Don Luis, although sore from his bruises, and with his wound still open, was in a condition to go out, and promised a complete recovery within a short time.

The first duty which Don Luis thought himself obliged to fulfill, as soon as he was off the sick-list, was to confess to his father his love for Pepita, and his intention of marrying her.

Don Pedro had not gone to the country, nor had he occupied himself in any other way than in taking care of his son during the sickness of the latter. He was constantly at his side, waiting on him and petting him with tender affection.

On the morning of the 27th of June, after the doctor had gone, Don Pedro being alone with his son, the confession, so difficult for Don Luis to make, took place in the following manner:

"Father," said Don Luis, "I ought not to deceive you any longer. To-day I am going to confess my faults to you, and cast away hypocrisy."

"If it is a confession you are about to make, my boy, it would be better for you to send for the reverend vicar. My standard of morality is an indulgent one, and I shall give you absolution for everything, without my absolution being of much value to you, however. But if you wish to confide to me some weighty secret, as to your best friend, begin by all means; I am ready to listen to you."

"What I am about to confess to you is a very serious fault of which I have been guilty; and I am ashamed to--"

"You have no need to be ashamed before your father; speak frankly."

Here Don Luis, growing very red, and with visible confusion, said:

"My secret is, that I am in love with--Pepita Ximenez--and that she--"

Don Pedro interrupted his son with a burst of laughter, and finished the sentence for him:

"And that she is in love with you, and that on the night of St. John's eve you were with her in tender conference until two o'clock in the morning, and that, for her sake, you sought a quarrel with the Count of Genazahar, whose head you have broken. A pretty secret you confide to me, truly! There isn't a cat or a dog in the village that is not fully acquainted with every detail of the business. The only thing there seemed a possibility of being able to conceal was, that your interview lasted until just two o'clock in the morning; but some gypsy cake-women chanced to see you leave Pepita's house, and did not stop until they had told every living creature in the place of it. Pepita, besides, makes no great effort to conceal the truth, and in this she does well, for that would be only the concealment of Antequera. Since you have been wounded, Pepita comes here twice a day, and sends Antoñona two or three times more to inquire after you; and if they have not come in to see you, it is because I would not consent to their doing so, lest it should excite you."

The confusion and the distress of Don Luis reached their climax when he heard his father thus compendiously tell the whole story.

"How surprised," he said, "how astounded you must have been!"

"No, my boy, I was neither surprised nor astounded. The matter has been known in the village only for four days, and indeed, to tell the truth, your transformation did create some surprise. 'Oh, the sly-boots! the wolf in sheep's clothing! the hypocrite!' every one exclaimed, 'how we have been deceived in him!' The reverend vicar, above all, is quite bewildered. He is still crossing himself to think how you toiled in the vineyard of the Lord on the night of the 23d and the morning of the 24th, and of how diverse a character were your labors. But there was nothing in these occurrences to surprise me, except your wound. We old people can feel the grass grow. It is not easy for the chickens to deceive the huckster."

"It is true, I sought to deceive you! I have been a hypocrite!"

"Don't be a fool; I do not say this to blame you. I say it in order to give myself an air of perspicacity. But let us speak with frankness. My boasting is, after all, without foundation. I knew, step by step, for more than two months past, the progress of your love-affair with Pepita; but I know it because your uncle the dean, to whom you were writing all that passed within your mind, has communicated it to me. Listen to your uncle's letter of accusation, and to the answer I gave him, a very important document, of which I have kept the copy."

Don Pedro took some papers from his pocket, and read as follows:

* * * * *

_The Dean's Letter._

"MY DEAR BROTHER: It grieves me to the heart to be obliged to give you a piece of bad news; but I trust that God will grant you patience and endurance to enable you to hear it without feeling too much anger or bitterness. Luisito has been writing me strange letters for some days past, in which he reveals, in the midst of his mystical exaltation, an inclination, earthly and sinful enough, toward a certain widow, charming, mischievous, and coquettish, who lives in your village. Up to the present I had deceived myself, believing Luisito's vocation to be a true one; and I flattered myself with giving to the Church of God, in him, a wise, virtuous, and exemplary priest. But his letters have dispelled my illusions. Luisito shows himself, in them, to have more of poetry than of true piety in his nature; and the widow, who must be a limb of Satan, will be able to vanquish him with but a very slight effort. Although I write to Luisito admonishing him to flee from temptation, I am already certain that he will fall into it. This ought not to grieve me; for, if he is to be false to his vocation, to indulge in gallantries, and to make love, it is better that this evil disposition should reveal itself in time, and that he should not become a priest. I should not, therefore, see any serious objection to Luisito's remaining with you, for the purpose of being tested by the touchstone and analyzed in the crucible of such a love, making the little widow the agent by whose means might be discovered how great is the quantity of the pure gold of his clerical virtues, and how much alloy is mixed with that gold, were it not that we are met by the difficulty that the widow whom we would thus convert into a faithful assayer, is the object of your own addresses, and, it may be, your sweetheart. That your son should turn out to be your rival would be too serious a matter. This would be a monstrous scandal, and, to avoid it in time, I write to you to-day to the end that, under whatever pretext, you may send or bring Luisito here--the sooner the better."

Don Luis listened in silence, and with his eyes cast down. His father continued:

"To this letter of the dean I answered as follows:

* * * * *

_Don Pedro's Answer._

"DEAR BROTHER AND VENERABLE SPIRITUAL FATHER: I return you a thousand thanks for the news you send me, and for your counsel and advice. Although I flatter myself with not being wanting in shrewdness, I confess my stupidity on this occasion; I was blinded by vanity. Pepita Ximenez, from the time that my son arrived here, manifested toward me so much amiability and affection that I began to indulge in pleasing hopes on my own account. Your letter was necessary to undeceive me. I now understand that in making herself so sociable, in showing me so many attentions, and in dancing attendance on me, as she did, this cunning Pepita had in her mind only the father of the smooth-faced theologian. I shall not attempt to conceal from you that, for the moment, this disappointment mortified and distressed me a little; but, when I reflected over it with due consideration, my mortification and my distress were converted into joy. Luis is an excellent boy. Since he has been with me, I have learned to regard him with much greater affection than formerly. I parted from him, and gave him up to you to educate, because my own life was not very exemplary, and, for this and other reasons, he would have grown up here a savage. You went beyond my hopes and even my desires, and almost made of Luisito a father of the Church. To have a holy son would have flattered my vanity; but I should have been very sorry to remain without an heir to my house and name, who would give me handsome grandchildren, and who, after my death, would enjoy my wealth, which is my glory, for I acquired it by skill and industry, and not by artifices and tricks. Perhaps the conviction I had that there was no remedy, and that Luis would inevitably go to convert the Chinese, the Indians, and the blacks of Monicongo made me resolve on marrying, so as to provide myself with an heir. Naturally enough, I cast my eyes on Pepita Ximenez, who is not, as you imagine, a limb of Satan, but a lovely creature, as innocent as an angel, and ardent in her nature, rather than coquettish. I have so good an opinion of Pepita that, if she were again sixteen, with a domineering mother who tyrannized over her, and if I were eighty, like Don Gumersindo, that is to say, if death were already knocking at the door, I would marry Pepita, that her smile might cheer me on my death-bed, as if my guardian angel had taken human shape in her; and for the purpose of leaving her my position, my fortune, and my name. But Pepita is not sixteen, but twenty, nor is she now in the power of that serpent, her mother; nor am I eighty, but fifty-five. I am at the very worst age, because I begin to feel myself considerably the worse for wear, with something of asthma, a good deal of cough, rheumatic pains, and other chronic ailments; yet the devil a wish have I to die, notwithstanding! I believe I shall not die for twenty years to come, and, as I am thirty-five years older than Pepita, you may calculate the miserable future that would await her, tied to an old man who would live forever. At the end of a few years of marriage she would be compelled to hate me, notwithstanding her goodness. Doubtless it is because she is good and wise, that she has not chosen to accept me for a husband, notwithstanding the perseverance and the obstinacy with which I have proposed it to her. How much do I not thank her for this now! Even my self-love, wounded by her scorn, is soothed by the reflection that, if she does not love me, at least she loves one of my blood; she is captivated by a son of mine. If this fresh and luxuriant ivy, I say to myself, refuses to twine around the old trunk, worm-eaten already, it climbs by it to reach the new sprout it has put forth--a green and flourishing offshoot. May God bless them both, and make their love prosper! Far from taking the boy to you again, I shall keep him here--by force, if it be necessary. I have determined to conspire against his vocation. I dream already of seeing him married. I shall grow young again, contemplating the handsome pair, joined together by love. And how will it be when they shall have given me a couple of grandchildren? Instead of going as a missionary, and bringing back to me from Australia, or Madagascar, or India, neophytes black as soot, with lips the size of your hand, or yellow as deer-skin, and with eyes like owls, would it not be better for Luisito to preach the gospel in his own house, and to give me a series of little catechumens, fair, rosy, with eyes like those of Pepita, who will resemble cherubim without wings? The catechumens he would bring me from those foreign lands I should have to keep at a respectful distance, in order not to be overpowered by their odor; while those I speak of would seem to me like roses of paradise, and would come to climb up on my knees, and would call me grand-papa, and pat with their little hands the bald spot I am beginning to get. What would you have? When I was in all my vigor, I did not think of domestic joys; but now, that I am approaching old age, if I have not already entered on it, as I have no intention of turning monk, I please myself in thinking that I shall play the _rôle_ of patriarch. And do not imagine, either, that I am going to leave it to time to bring to a happy close this incipient engagement. No! I shall myself set to work to do this. Continuing your comparison, since you transform Pepita into a crucible, and Luis into a metal, I shall find, or rather I have found already, a bellows, or blow-pipe, very well adapted to kindle up the fire, so that the metal may melt in it the more quickly. Antoñona has an understanding with me already, and through her I know that Pepita is over head and ears in love. We have agreed that I shall continue to seem blind to everything, and to know nothing of what passes. The reverend vicar, who is a simple soul, always in the clouds, helps me as much as Antoñona does, or more, and without knowing it, because he repeats to Pepita everything Luis says to him, and everything Pepita says to him to Luis; so that this excellent man, with the weight of half a century in each foot, has been converted--O miracle of love and of innocence!--into a carrier-dove by which the two lovers send each other their flatteries and endearments, while they are as ignorant as he is of the fact. So powerful a combination of natural and artificial methods ought to give an infallible result. You will be made acquainted with this result when I give you notice of the wedding, so that you may come to perform the ceremony, or else send the lovers your blessing and a handsome present."

* * * * *

With these words Don Pedro finished the reading of his letter; and, on looking again at Don Luis, he saw that he had been listening to him with his eyes full of tears.

Father and son gave each other a long and close embrace.

* * * * *

Just a month from the date of this interview, the wedding of Don Luis de Vargas and Pepita Ximenez took place.

The reverend dean--fearing the ridicule of his brother at the spiritual-mindedness of Don Luis having thus come to naught, and recognizing also that he would not play a very dignified _rôle_ in the village, where every one would say he had a poor knack at turning out saints--declined to be present, giving his occupations as an excuse; although he sent his blessing, and a magnificent pair of ear-rings as a present for Pepita.

The reverend vicar, therefore, had the pleasure of marrying her to Don Luis.

The bride, elegantly attired, was thought lovely by every one, and was looked upon as a good exchange for the hair shirt and the scourge.

That night Don Pedro gave a magnificent ball in the court-yard of his house and the contiguous apartments. Servants and gentlemen, nobles and laborers, ladies and country-girls were present, and mingled together, as if it were the ideal golden age--though why called golden I know not. Four skillful, or if not skillful at least indefatigable guitar-players played a _fandango_. Two gypsies, a man and a woman, both famous singers, sang verses of a tender character and appropriate to the occasion; and the school-master read epithalamium in heroic verse.

There were tarts, fritters, jumbles, ginger-bread, sponge-cake, and wine in abundance for the common people. The gentry regaled themselves selves with liquors, chocolate, orange cordial, honey, and various kinds of aromatic and delicate punches.

Don Pedro was like a boy--sprightly, gallant, and full of jests. It did not look as if there were much truth in what he had said in his letter to the dean in regard to his rheumatism and other ailments. He danced the _fandango_ with Pepita, as also with the most attractive among her maids and with six or seven of the village girls. He gave each of them, on reconducting her, tired out, to her seat, the prescribed embrace, and to the least serious of them a couple of pinches, though this latter forms no part of the ceremonial. He carried his gallantry to the extreme of dancing with Doña Casilda, who could not refuse him; who, with her two hundred and fifty pounds of humanity, and the heat of July, perspired at every pore. Finally, Don Pedro stuffed Currito so full, and made him drink so often to the health of the newly married pair, that the muleteer Dientes was obliged to carry him home to sleep off the effect of his excesses, slung like a skin of wine across the back of an ass!

The ball lasted until three in the morning; but the young couple discreetly disappeared before eleven, and retired to the house of Pepita. There Don Luis re-entered, with light, pomp, and majesty, and as adored lord and master, the room which, little more than a month before, he had entered in darkness, and filled with terror and confusion.

Although it is the unfailing use and custom of the village to treat every widow or widower who marries again to a terrible _charivari_, leaving them not a moment's rest from the cow-bells during the first night after marriage, Pepita was such a favorite, Don Pedro was so much respected, and Don Luis was so beloved, that there were no bells on this occasion, nor was there the least attempt made at ringing them--a singular circumstance, which is recorded as such in the annals of the village.