Chapter IV

Darlés got up next morning very early and went wandering out into the street. He was completely done up. The night had been one of terror and insomnia; and when day had dawned, finding him in his miserable little room--a room whose only furniture was a bureau covered with books and magazines, a rickety pine table and a few rush-bottomed chairs, all mean and old--the realization of his solitude had struck him with the violence of a blow. He had felt that profound agitation which psychologists call "claustrophobia," or the fear of enclosed spaces.

For a long time he wandered about, absorbed in vacillations that had neither name nor plan. He hardly knew himself. His conscience had been cruelly wrung in a few hours of suffering; and from this savage convulsion of the soul unsuspected developments were emerging, enormous moral unfoldings, filled with terrifying perplexities. His despair had loosed a stupendous avalanche of problems against the bulwark of those moral principles which had been taught him as a child. And each of these questions was now a terrible problem for him. Where, he wondered, does virtue end? Where does sin commence? And if all our natural forces should go straight toward the goal of happiness, why should there be any desires that codes of formulated ethics should judge depraved and sinful? Why should not everything which pleases be allowed?

When he reached the Calle de Atocha, he met a friend of his, called Pascual Cañamares. This friend was a medical student like himself. The two young fellows greeted each other. Cañamares was on his way to San Carlos.

"Do you want to come along with me?" he asked. "I'll show you the dissecting-room."

Darlés went along with his friend. Cañamares noticed Enrique's pallor.

"You don't look a bit well this morning," said he.

"No, I didn't sleep much last night."

"Maybe you were out having a good time?"

"No. On the contrary, I cried all night."

There was such a depth of manly pain in this reply that Cañamares did not dare probe the matter any further.

The dissecting-room, cold and white, produced some very lively sensations in Darlés. Floods of sunlight fell from the tall windows, painting a wide, golden border over the tiled walls. A good many corpses lay on the marble tables, covered with blood-stained sheets; and all these bodies had shaven heads and open mouths. Their naked feet, closely joined together, produced a ghastly sensation of quietude. An indefinable odor floated in the air, a nauseating odor of dead flesh. Darlés felt a slight vertigo which forced him to close his eyes and leave the room. For more than an hour he wandered about the gravely-echoing, spacious cloisters of San Carlos. A strange sadness hovered over the building; the damp, old building which once on a time had been a convent and now had become a school--the building where the vast tedium of a science unable to free life from pain was added to the profound melancholy of a religion which thinks only of death.

When Pascual Cañamares left his classroom, he asked Darlés to go and dine with him. Enrique accepted. It was just noon. Cañamares usually ate at a little tavern in the Plaza de Anton Martín. This was a gay little establishment, with high wooden counters, painted red. The two students sat down before a table, on which the hostess had spread a little tablecloth.

"Well, what do you want?" asked Cañamares.

"Oh, I don't care. Anything you do."

"Soup and stew?"

"All right."

Cañamares ordered, in a free and easy way:

"Landlady! Bring us a stew!"

He was a big, young fellow, twenty, plump and full-blooded, vivacious with that healthy, turbulent kind of joviality which seems to diffuse vital energies all about it. He was very talkative; and in his picturesque and frivolous chatter lay a contagious good-humor. Darlés answered him only with distrait monosyllables. His whole attention was fixed on a few coachmen at the next table. They were talking about a certain crime that had been committed that morning. Two men, in love with the same woman, had fought for her with knives, and one had killed the other. The murderer had been captured. It was a vulgar but intense crime of passion; it seemed to have a certain barbarous charm which, in its own way, was chivalric, since there had been no foul play in the crime. The fight had been fair and open. And the student admired, he even envied those two brave men who, for the sake of love, had not shrunk before the solemnity of a moment in which the death-dealing wound coincides with the knife-thrust which carries a man off to the penitentiary.

As they left the tavern, Pascual took unceremonious leave of his companion.

"I'm going to leave you," said he, "because no one can have any fun with you. Hanged if I know what's the matter with you, to-day! Why, you won't even listen to a fellow!"

Then he took his leave. Unmoved, Enrique saw him walk away; but after that he felt a painful sensation of loneliness. Yes, and this loneliness had come upon him because he had been frank enough not to hide his ugly state of mind, because he had let all the melancholy of his soul shine forth freely from his eyes. And in that moment he understood that to be thoroughly sincere is tremendously expensive, for all sincerity--even the most innocent--invariably exacts a heavy price.

That evening he ate only a very light supper and went to bed early. He lay awake a long time, tortured by a flood of disconnected memories. His father, who represented all his past, and Alicia Pardo, who symbolized his whole present, seemed to be striving for him. The image of the girl at last prevailed.

Little by little he fell to studying the perverse and mocking spirit of the woman, who, even when she had waked up in the morning with him, had looked at him and shrugged her shoulders disdainfully. Well, what had happened? Between them, where had the fault lain? Was the girl naturally a hard-hearted creature, incapable of high and lasting sentiments; or was it that he, himself, quiet and peaceful, had not been able to live up to her illusions?

Scourged by the agonizing tyranny of his will, the student's memory recalled moments, evoked phrases, and once more endowed with new reality all the details of that enchanted night in which it had seemed to him all Madrid had been perfumed with violets. And as the human heart always yearns to forgive the object of our love, Enrique succeeded at last, after much reflection, in convincing himself that Alicia was innocent.

He decided that from the first moment she had been blameless. She had encouraged him to undertake the conquest of her; and afterward completely and with no other wish than to see him happy she had opened her arms to him--Venus-like arms, which had cast about his neck a bond of pity and sweet tenderness. And he, in exchange for such supreme happiness, what had he given?

Accusingly an implacable voice began to cry out in the student's conscience. Alicia, he pondered, was accustomed to the ways of the world; she was a woman of exacting and refined tastes, who adored luxury and understood Beethoven. Many men of the aristocracy worshiped her, making a fashionable cult of her beauty; and more than one famous tenor had sung for her, alone in the intimacy of her bedroom, his favorite _racconto_. The inexorable voice continued:

"And what have you done, Darlés the Obscure, to be worthy of this treasure? What merits have you had? Women of such complete beauty as hers seek that which excels--they love strength, which is the supreme beauty of man; strength, which is glory in the artist, money in the millionaire, elegance and breeding in the man of the world, despair in the suicide, courage and outlawry in the thief who boldly dares defy the law. But you, you who are nothing, what do you aspire to? Of what can you complain?"

The student heaved a sigh, and his eyes filled with tears. He was a fool, a shrinking coward, a poltroon. A man who has ruined himself for a woman, or who, to keep her as his own, has committed murder and been sent to prison, may justly complain of her. But _he_, quite on the contrary----

Suddenly Darlés shuddered so violently that the electric shock of his nerves made him utter a cry. Deathly pale, he sat up in bed. Since he could not give Alicia either a fortune or the glory of a great artist, he must drink a toast to her with his whole honor--he must steal. This came to him as a terrible revelation, resonant of Hell. And all at once he understood the enigmatic expression which had shone in the eyes of the girl and had sounded from her lips the last time they had talked together. He had asked her: "When am I going to see you again?" And she had answered: "Never--until you bring me the necklace I have asked you for!"

Now these mystic words clearly reëchoed in his mind; now he fully understood them. Alicia was in love with a priceless jewel; and often, thinking about it, she grew very sad. Her sadness was real; he himself had seen it. Perhaps the girl, when she had dismissed him, reminding him of that necklace, had spoken in jest; perhaps it had been in earnest. Who could tell? At all events, when she had declared that they would never see each other again, she had in a veiled manner expressed her belief that he was a coward, incapable of ruining himself for her.

The feverish eyes of Enrique Darlés burned like coals. Why, indeed, should he not steal? Why should he not prove himself brave, capable of everything? At the basis of every great sacrifice lies something superhuman, that confuses and that rends the soul. If he were a thief and could pay with his bravery something that his small, poor money could not buy; if he should ruin his whole career just to please her, should bring down upon his head the rigors of the law and his father's curses, Alicia--so he fondly believed--would love him blindly, with the same sort of frenzy that Balzac's hero, Vautrin, inspired in women.

The voice which until now had been thundering accusations in the student's storm-tossed conscience, now with soft flatterings began to wheedle and cajole him, saying:

"Alicia, your beloved Alicia would be happy with the emeralds of that necklace. If you have no way to buy it for her, go steal it! You're a cowardly wretch if you don't! What does the opinion of the crowd matter to you, egoist that you are? A man incapable of becoming a thief for a woman may love her greatly, but he does not love her to distraction. What your Alicia desires, you should give her. Have no longer any doubts, but go and steal! Steal this necklace for her and then clasp it about her neck--that neck whose snow so many times in the space of one night offered its refreshing coolness to your lips!"

These ideas combined to strengthen his more recent impressions--the impression of his visit to the dissecting-room where once more he had seen that nothing matters; and the impression of that crime of jealousy which he had heard talked about in the tavern. And all at once, Enrique Darlés felt himself calmed. His future had just been decided. He would steal. Fatality, incarnate in the body of Alicia Pardo, had just mapped out his road for him.

* * * * *

Every evening at sunset, at that hour of mystery when the street-lights begin to shine and women to seem more beautiful, the student left his lodgings and, passing through the Calle Romanos and the Calle Carmen, took his way toward the Puerta del Sol, always full of an idle, loitering crowd which seems to have nowhere to go. He always stopped in Calle Mayor, to cast an eager, timorous look into the jeweler's shop, whose show-window glowed like a bed of living coals.

This calculating, daily contemplation of those treasures completely overturned Enrique's moral standards. He, himself, did not grasp the profound change coming upon him. Steadily this thought of stealing kept growing in his soul, obsessing him, evolving into a resistless, overwhelming determination.

As if to increase his torment, the emerald necklace which served as an advertisement for the shop, found no purchaser. It was far too dear.

With his nose pressed against the plate glass of the window, Enrique suffered long moments of anguish, unable to take his eyes from that abyss, that precipice of gold and velvet at the bottom of which the diamonds, topazes, emeralds, pearls, rubies and amethysts seemed the eyes of a strange multitude peering out at him. All this time his imagination was developing a mad, adventurous tale. With his prize hidden in his most secret pocket, he would go to see Alicia and would say to her: "Here, take it! Here is your necklace, the necklace that neither Don Manuel nor any of your millionaire aristocrats would buy for you. I, gambling my life, have got it for you! What do you say now?"

And thinking thus, he would close his eyes, seeming to feel that all about him the air was perfumed with violets. And then when he once more opened his eyes, the emeralds of the necklace, green and hard as Alicia's pupils, seemed to say to him: "All your dreams and hopes, all your sweet visionings, shall now come true!" It was the secret voice of temptation, a voice which had transformed itself to radiance.

One night, as he was recovering from one of these long, deep fits of abstraction, before the jeweler's window, he saw that Alicia Pardo and her friend Candelas were really drawing near. They, too, had seen him. Upset, almost speechless, the student saluted them. Alicia affectionately pressed his hand; and now more strongly than ever he breathed that violet odor which had perfumed all his dreams of theft. The girl asked:

"Well, what are you doing here?"

"Nothing much, only passing a little time."

Alicia inspected the shop window.

"Ah, yes, yes, you were looking at my necklace, weren't you?"

"Yes, that's just what I _was_ doing."

And as he said this, he blushed deeply, because this confession was equivalent to another, that he was drawing closer to her. Smilingly Candelas peered at the student. Alicia added with cruel malice:

"You know, dear, I asked him to get it for me."

"Yes, I know, I remember," said Enrique.

He spoke sadly. Alicia began to laugh.

"Well, how about it? Are you really thinking of giving it to me?"

"_¿Quién sabe?_"

Sudden anger had endowed his face with virile and aggressive tension. Forehead and lips grew pale. Candelas, good-natured in a careless way, tried to salve his misery.

"You'd better leave us women alone," said she. "We're a bad lot. Believe me, the best of us, the most saintly of us, isn't worth any man's sacrificing himself for."

Alicia interrupted her friend, exclaiming:

"What a little fool you are, to be sure! We were only joking. Do you think Enrique would really do any such crazy thing for me? What nonsense!"

Proudly the student repeated:

"_¿Quién sabe?_"

Then, after a little silence, he added:

"I don't know what makes you talk that way. You've never proved me. You don't know what kind of a man I am!"

Two months earlier, the laughing, mocking words of these girls would have disconcerted him. But now he felt himself transfigured; he felt new, vigorous ardors in his blood. He no longer doubted. An extraordinary dominating concept of his own person had taken possession of him; and this concept of his youth and boldness, of his strength and courage, had exalted him like strong drink. In a single moment the youth had grown to be a man.

Alicia closely observed him. Her mouth grew serious, and under the parting of her hair, that lay symmetrically on her forehead, her eyes became pensive. She knew little of primitive man's hunting-ways, but was expert in judging characters and stirring up passions. And though she did indeed care little for books, men's consciences lay open to her eyes; which kind of reading is far better. Her keen instincts, rarely amiss, perceived something dominant, something desperate in the student's voice and gestures. She judged it wise to end the conversation.

"So long, Enrique. By the way, Manuel's been asking for you, a number of times."

"Thanks. Give him my best regards."

"When are you coming to see me?"

Still shrouded in gloom, Darlés answered:

"I don't know, Alicia. But you can be sure I'll come as soon as I have the right to."

In this allusion to what he now called his duty, trembled indefinable bitterness and pride.

When the student found himself alone, rage seized him--rage that, unable to express itself in words, found vent in tears. He felt convinced that his answers, somewhat mysterious, had duly impressed the girl. Yes, they had been good. Now his conduct must back up his words, or he would lose all his gains. Boastingly he had pledged himself to something very serious. Nothing but ridicule could fall on him, if he failed to make good his offer. This meant he must go through, to the bitter end.

"Yes, I will become a thief," he pondered.

Calmer now, he took his way to his tavern, where he ate a peaceful supper, and went home and early to bed. He slept well, with that peace which irrevocable decisions produce in minds long racked by stress and storm. It was noon when he awoke. He got up at once, put on clean clothes and wrote his father a quiet letter that contained nothing except his studies. Then he tied up all his books and went down to the street with them enveloped in a big kerchief.

"They've all got to be sold," thought he. "If I'm caught, I'll need money. If I get away and nothing is ever found out about me, I can get them back, some time."

After having disposed of the books, he went to a fashionable restaurant and had rather a fine dinner. In all these little details, so different from the order and simplicity of his usual life, you could have seen a certain sadness of farewell. After dinner, he went to drink coffee on the terrace of the Lion d'Or, and stayed a while there, observing the women. Many, he saw, were beautiful. As yet he had decided nothing definite about what he meant to do. He preferred to let things take their own, impromptu course. Sometimes great battles are best decided off-hand, on the march, in the imminent presence of danger.

At exactly six o'clock he got up, crossed the Calle de Sevilla and went through the Carrera de San Jerónimo toward the Puerta del Sol. The street-lamps and the lights in the shops had not yet begun to burn. It was an April evening; a cool, fresh, damp breeze wafted through the streets. Far to the west, shining in rosy space, Venus was shedding her eternal beams. Darlés went peacefully along, his calm movements in harmony with the perfect equanimity that had taken possession of him. When he reached the Ministerio de la Gobernación, he stopped a while to watch the street-cars, the carriages, the crowds circulating about him. Then the idea that, before long, these people would catch him, rose in his mind once more.

"To-morrow," thought he, "I'll be seeing nothing of all this."

In his eyes gleamed the sadness of a last farewell. It seemed to him he had gone too far, now, to change his resolution of stealing.

A romantic desire, almost a dandified pride, that drove him to make good with the girl, formed the basis of his madness, rather than any carnal desire. This desire, which had at first possessed him, had now evolved into a refined and purely artistic sentiment, a wish to accomplish some heroic deed. At last analysis, merely to get possession of Alicia had become unimportant. The most vital factor, practically the only one now, was to assume in her opinion a splendid heroism. Darlés wanted to show this kind of heroism, which the adventurous soul of woman always admires. He was finding himself on a par with great criminals, with illustrious artists, with multimillionaires who wreck their fortunes in a single night, with every man who steps outside the common, beaten paths. And the poor student, reflecting how the girl would always remember that an honorable man had gone to jail for love of her, thought himself both happy and well-paid.

Absorbed in these chimerical fancies, Enrique Darlés came to the jeweler's shop in Calle Mayor. Its lights had just been turned on, and now they flung bright radiance across the sidewalk. The boy stopped in front of the window, which was filled with blinding splendor. There, in the middle of the display, was the terrible necklace of emeralds. It was hung about a half-bust of white velvet. Darlés studied it a long time, and at first felt that mingled chill and fear which the sight of firearms will sometimes produce in us. But soon this sensation faded. The green light of the emeralds exalted him. It seemed to exercise a kind of magnetic attraction, resistless as the force of gravitation. Nevertheless, the boy still hesitated. He still understood that in this little space between him and the shop-window a great abyss was yawning. But suddenly he thought:

"Suppose Alicia should see me here, now?"

This idea overthrew his last fears. With a sure hand he opened the shop door. He walked up to the counter. His step was easy and self-possessed. A tall, finely-dressed clerk, with large red mustaches, advanced to meet him.

"What can I show you, sir?" asked the clerk.

With an aplomb that just a moment before would have seemed impossible to him, Enrique answered:

"I'd like to see that emerald necklace in the window."

"Yes, sir."

Darlés glanced about him. He noted that a white-bearded old gentleman--doubtless the proprietor--was closely observing him from the rear of the shop. Already the student had made up his plan of attack. He would snatch the jewels and break for the door. He had left this door ajar, on purpose.

The clerk came back with the necklace, which he laid on the moss-green cloth that covered the show-case. Enrique hardly dared touch it.

"How much?" asked he.

"Fifteen thousand pesetas."

The student clacked his tongue, like a drinker savoring the state and quality of good wine. The clerk added:

"I'm sure you've seen very few emeralds like these."

The white-bearded old gentleman had now come nearer. Saying nothing, he slid his hands into his trouser pockets. His face looked grave and puzzled. You would have thought his merchant soul had scented danger. Darlés gave him a glance. It was not yet too late. He still was honest. There was still time for repentance.

The clerk set out a number of trays, and from these took various necklaces. His way of handling them, of caressing them with careful fingers, of spreading them out on the cloth, all showed his love of jewels. There were diamond, turquoise, sapphire, topaz necklaces.

The student hesitated. A dizzying pleasure, bitter-sweet, enveloped this nearness to crime. He kept asking:

"What's this one worth? And this?"

"This is very cheap. Two thousand pesetas."

"How about this ruby one?"

"Forty-five hundred."

Darlés took them up, studied them carefully, put them down again. Suddenly he felt his cheeks were growing very pale. To give himself countenance he commented:

"This black pearl one is very beautiful."

"Yes, and it's more expensive, too. Ten thousand pesetas."

Suddenly the old gentleman, who till then had uttered no word, exclaimed brusquely:

"Now then, I think you've talked enough!"

He turned to the clerk.

"Look out for these trays," he ordered.

Darlés raised his head, and proudly looked the old man in the eyes, with the hauteur of one still innocent.

"What are _you_ interfering for?" he demanded. "What's the idea?"

"We can't waste any more time on you," answered the jeweler. "If I'm not mistaken, you're not overburdened with money."

He turned to his clerk again. The clerk stared in amaze. Imperatively the old man ordered:

"I tell you to put these trays away!"

The student had not yet, perhaps, fully decided to steal. Perhaps something good and sound still lay in his conscience, that might have barred him from fatal temptation at the crucial moment. But the merchant's provoking words spurred him on and made him sin. A spirit of revenge drove him to it. This is no novelty. How many times is crime nothing more than the logical reaction against injustice!

Beside himself, Enrique stretched out his hand toward the place where lay the emerald necklace. His fingers clutched convulsively. He turned, and with one leap reached the door.

At that second, two shots crackled.

Darlés flung himself into mad, headlong flight toward the Viaducto. At first he heard a voice behind him, screaming:

"Stop him! Stop the thief! Stop thief!"

It was a horrible, nightmare voice. Then came the thunderous tumult of the pursuing mob. Before him, the pedestrians opened out. He saw astonishment and fear in their faces. As he rushed into the Calle de Bordadores, a man brandished a stick and tried to stop him. Darlés veered to the left, and ran up the grade of the Calle Siete de Julio with the speed of a hare.

Some one threw a chair at him, from a doorway. It hardly grazed him, but tripped up his nearest pursuers. When the human hunting-pack, raging and giving tongue, rushed in under the archways of the Plaza Mayor, its menacing tumult echoed louder than ever:

"_Thief, thief! Stop thief!_"

Beside himself with terror, the student flung himself along. He kept straight ahead, reached the park railing and leaped it with one bound. This saved him. The dim light and the shadows under the trees masked his figure. Still, he kept on running till he came to the fence again, and once more jumped it.

This time as he landed, his knees could no longer hold him up. They doubled, and he almost fell on his face. But he struggled up, once more, and still ran on and on. Now the pursuers' voices sounded far-off, under the echoing archways of the Plaza.

Darlés kept fleeing down the Calle Toledo. He noticed that a good many women were looking at him with uneasiness. One woman cried:

"He's wounded!"

When he reached the Puerta Cerrada, the student drew near the famous cross that gives its name to the square. He could do no more. His legs were collapsing with exhaustion, his heart was bursting, his tongue protruding. A number of women, frightened, crowded about him.

"You're wounded!" they exclaimed. "What's the matter? They've shot you!"

There was no anger in their cries, but only simple pity. The student felt calmer. One of the women had a water-jug.

"Give me a drink!" stammered Enrique. "Water! I'm dying of thirst!"

He raised the lip of the jug to his mouth, and drank in huge swallows. The women kept saying:

"You're wounded. Poor man! You'd better hurry to the hospital!"

To avoid waking suspicion, Darlés answered:

"Yes, I'm on my way there, now."

Then he swallowed a few more mouthfuls, and fled toward the Calle de Segovia. He ran a long, long time, till his last strength was gone. He stopped then, and gathered his wits together. His wet clothes were glued to his body, giving him a disagreeable feeling of cold. His hands were red. What he had believed to be sweat, was blood.

"I'm wounded!" he murmured.

Then he understood what the women at Puerta Cerrada had told him. Just at that moment a slight nausea overcame him, and he had to lean against a wall. Presently he opened his eyes, and looked about him. He was in a steep, deserted little alleyway, with humble houses on either hand. Very near, looming up against the black immensity of the sky, appeared the huge mole of El Viaducto--that splendid, sinister height, that bridge spanning the city, whence so many a poor soul had bowed itself down to death in the leap of suicide.

Enrique Darlés began to think again:

"Yes, I'm really wounded."

His ideas became more coherent. He thought of Alicia, of his little room in the Calle de la Ballesta. He felt of his pockets. His fingers closed on the necklace--"Her necklace!"

The student smiled. Unspeakable joy soothed his troubled heart. He sighed, and wiped away a few tears. Alicia was his! The book of his life was written, was at an end.