Chapter V

Candelas and Alicia were coming back in a landau from the race-track. The afternoon had been unseasonably chilly, but the sun had shone brightly, and the races had been exciting. Alicia smiled, contented. She had won eight hundred pesetas, and her eyes still beheld the jockeys speeding with dizzy swiftness against the background of the April landscape.

There suddenly, in the last half of the race, a horse had leaped ahead from that party-colored group of red, blue and yellow blouses and of white trousers. A horse had sped away to cross the tape; and she had found herself a winner.

There was something personal, something flattering to her vanity, in this triumph.

"The count's jockey rides like a centaur," she exclaimed. "He's English, isn't he?"

"No, Belgian," Candelas answered.

Alicia hardly remembered, very clearly, where the Low Countries might be. This answer did not satisfy her. But no matter; after all, it was enough for her to know the victorious jockey had come from one of those northern countries where all the men are blond and well-dressed.

Candelas began to explain the blind faith that the count, her friend, had in this remarkable Belgian connoisseur of horses. Then she briefly outlined the brilliant program of travels and pleasures the count and she were planning. Along toward the beginning of May they would go to London, and in June to Paris, where the count was hoping to win the _grand prix_ at Longchamps. They expected to pass the autumn at Nice.

Alicia answered:

"In September, the little marquis and I will be going to Monte Carlo. You and I simply _must_ see each other, there. There's not much fun just with the men, you know. They don't really know how to amuse us."

When the landau reached the Plaza de Castelar, Alicia asked her friend:

"Have you anything on for to-night?"

"No."

"Well then, come to the Teatro Real with me. They're going to give the divine Bizet's _Carmen_, and Nasi and Pacteschi are going to sing. Enough said!"

Candelas accepted.

"And now," said Alicia, "I want to go home, to see if any important message has come. Then I'll take you home, dear. You can change your dress and we'll go get Manuel, so he'll invite us out to supper."

The carriage stopped before Alicia's door. Teodora, who had been on the balcony, hurried down. She had a letter in her hand.

"This came for you," said she.

"Who from?"

"From Señor Enrique."

"Enrique!" repeated Alicia, surprised. And she tore the envelope with feverish haste. She read:

"_Come to my room, I beg you. I must see you to-day, without
fail._"

The only signature was "_E. D._"

Alicia seemed to ponder. She peered at her friend.

"Do you understand this?" asked she. "It's from Enrique Darlés. Remember him? A young chap--Manuel's friend."

Then she asked Teodora:

"Who brought this?"

"An old woman."

"What kind of a looking woman?"

"I don't know. Well--she looked like a janitress."

Alicia lacked decision how to act. The curt authority of those few words had created a good deal of an impression on her. This was the letter of a man; children cannot speak thus. An impatient hand, perhaps a desperate one, had written with vigorous letters the one word, "Urgent," on the envelope.

"What shall we do?" asked she.

"When he summons you, that way," judged Candelas, "something serious must have happened to him. Well----"

Alicia looked at her watch. It was just six. Without upsetting the program for the evening, she could still afford the luxury of a little condescension. She ordered the coachman:

"Number X, Calle Ballesta. Hurry!"

For a moment the two young women remained silent. Suddenly Candelas exclaimed:

"Have you seen what the papers have been saying about the robbery in Calle Mayor, last night?"

"No. What about it?"

"Oh, a jeweler's shop was robbed."

"A jeweler's!" repeated Alicia.

Her face assumed an expression of unspeakable anxiety and alarm. She remembered the emerald necklace she had spoken of, so often; and she remembered the evening, too, when Candelas and she had come across Enrique standing motionless in front of the shop window. Suddenly the student's sad face seemed to rise up in her memory. She seemed to be hearing his last words: "You've never proved me. You don't know what kind of a man I am!" And those words, that she had never paid any attention to, now sounded in her ears with prophetic tones.

"What did they steal?" she asked.

"I can't say. I only just glanced over the paper."

"And who's the thief?"

"No one knows."

"Haven't they caught him?"

"No. He was too quick for them."

"And he got away?"

"Yes."

The mystery surrounding the criminal increased Alicia's uneasiness. Still, it was an agreeable sensation, which caused her a certain vanity. "Suppose the robbery really has been done for me!" she thought. She felt a proud, unhealthy emotion, like that of man when he meets his friends and they know some woman has killed herself for love of him.

Candelas, who could read Alicia's thoughts, exclaimed:

"Strange if the criminal were Enrique Darlés!"

"I don't think it could be!"

"Well, now--it might."

"That would be a terribly bad thing for him to have done."

"Of course!"

"But if he really did do it, I don't care! Let the fool suffer for it. Did _I_ tell him to? When you come right down to it, even if I had, what the devil? The one that does a thing is more to blame than the one that asks him to!"

The carriage stopped, and Alicia and Candelas got out. They made their way in under a poverty-stricken doorway. Candelas called:

"Janitress! Janitress!"

No answer.

"Follow me," said Alicia. "I know the way."

She started along, daintily holding up her pearl-hued petticoat and shaking the big plume of her hat with a graceful motion. They went through a damp, ugly yard, then another, and began to climb a high stairway. The silken frou-frou of their skirts and the tinkling of their bangled bracelets broke the stillness. They reached the fourth story, and stopped in front of a door that stood ajar. Alicia tapped with her knuckles. No one answered. She knocked again. A voice, the voice of Enrique, feebly answered from within:

"Come!"

The girls found themselves in a dark room that stank of blood. Alicia could not repress a coarse exclamation of disgust.

"How sickening! Phew!" she cried. "What's this smell?"

At the end of the room, the silhouette of the bed was dimly visible. From that bed, Enrique Darlés stammered:

"There, on the little table--you'll find matches. Light--the lamp."

Candelas stood motionless, near the door, afraid of stumbling over something. When Alicia had made a light, the two friends cast a rapid glance about the room. The only furniture was a writing-table, a bureau with a looking-glass on it, and, along the walls, half a dozen rush-bottomed chairs. The student was lying, fully dressed, on the bed. Against the whiteness of the pillow, his crisp and very black hair lay motionless. He opened his eyes, a moment, and then, very slowly, closed them again. Over his beardless face, saddened by the pallor of his lips, wandered the ethereal, luminous whiteness of the last agony.

The two girls drew near him. Alicia called:

"Enrique! Enrique!"

He half-opened his eyes. His dark pupils fixed their gaze on Little Goldie, in a look of gratitude. She repeated:

"Enrique! Can you hear me?"

"Yes."

"They shot you, did they?"

"Yes."

"You--committed that--robbery in the Calle Mayor?"

"Yes."

Alicia looked exultingly at Candelas, as if asking her to take full cognizance of this exploit of hers. Her expression showed the same kind of pride that people sometimes manifest when they are exhibiting a work of art. She had just won a great triumph, because men dare such crimes only for women capable of inspiring mad love. Then the girl lowered her head again, to look more carefully at the student's clothing; and as she found it all stained with blood she felt a new attack of nausea. The contrast was too sharp between the hot, sickening air of that long-closed room and the life-giving breeze of the street.

"Shall I open the window?" asked she.

"No, no," murmured Enrique. "I'm very weak. The cold would kill me."

Alicia, seated on the bed--that poor bed one night perfumed with violets by her body--silently looked at him. A broad-brimmed crimson hat, decked with a splendid white plume, shaded her pale face. Her green eyes shone wickedly in the livid, bluish circles under them. The free-and-easy grace of her manner, the childish shortness of her waist, the robust fullness of her hips and breast, and the uneasiness with which her impatient, dancing little feet tapped the floor as if they wanted to run away, strongly contrasted with the ugliness of the room--the bare, half-furnished room heavy with the odors of death.

Candelas seemed truly moved. But Alicia felt as if she were choking. The terrible nausea kept gaining on her. Now and then she raised her lace handkerchief to her pleasure-loving nose--her nose which all the afternoon had breathed the free, fresh air of the race-track. Her growing disgust overcame her distress. She could not weep. And after all, why should she? Just so she could get away from there quickly, little cared she whether Enrique lived a few hours more or less. In her abysmal ingratitude, Alicia Pardo wondered that women could love a man so much as to kiss his dead lips.

Suddenly, anxious to have it all over, she asked:

"But--how did they wound you?"

Enrique opened his eyes again, and then his lips.

"I'll tell you," said he.

Despite the terrible bleeding he had suffered, some little strength still remained in him. This last, dying strength enabled him to speak.

"I stole for you, Alicia," he gasped, "because you told me, that evening you sent me away, I could see you again when I should bring you the necklace you wanted."

Alicia exclaimed:

"I don't remember that!"

"Well, I do! You told me so. I remember it all."

The young woman shrugged her shoulders. Her impure eyes, of absinthe hue, were moistened by no tear. Candelas, on the other hand, was showing herself more human, far more a woman. Her eyes were drowned with grief. Enrique continued speaking. His manner was grave. Quite suddenly the youth had become a man.

"I decided to win you back," said he, "to offer you the thing you wanted so much. Last night, when I went into that shop, I wasn't perfectly sure what I was going to do. Still, I went up to the counter, and told them I wanted to see the emerald necklace in the window. When they brought it, with some others, a kind of dizziness came over me. It veiled my eyes with dark, terrible shadows. I thrust out my hand, swiftly took one of the necklaces--I didn't know which, because they all looked green to me--and ran. But the proprietor must have been spying every movement of mine. He pulled a revolver, and fired. His aim was good. At that moment I felt nothing, and kept on running. Voices shouted after me: 'Stop thief! Stop thief!' I seemed to see revengeful hands, eager to catch me, opening and shutting like claws, behind me.

"When I came to my senses, I was in a deserted alleyway. My pursuers hadn't been able to catch me. Then I noticed my clothes were all soaked with blood, and my knees were shaking. What should I do? Night sheltered me. Slowly I came back here. To-day, I sent for you."

The ring-laden fingers of the girl twisted together with a twofold motion of interest and horror.

"And you haven't had any treatment?" asked she. "You haven't called a doctor?"

"No. I didn't want to do that. Because if anybody had seen me, they'd have suspected. And I preferred to die, Alicia, rather than to have them take away the necklace I stole for you."

Then, feeling that his last strength was running out, he added with a little gesture:

"There it is, on the bureau. Just raise up those papers--"

The scene was poignant, melodramatic with sad romanticism. At last the Magdalene's eyes grew wet.

"Boy, boy!" she sobbed. "What have you done?"

Darlés only repeated:

"You'll find it there, on the bureau."

She did as the student bade her in his eagerness not to die before seeing his gift in the well-beloved's hands of snow and pearl. Under some papers her fingers came upon a black pearl necklace.

"Oh, how beautiful!" she cried, enchanted.

Without opening his eyes, and like a man talking in his sleep, Darlés answered:

"It's not the one you wanted, I know. I found that out, afterward. But--at that moment, they all looked green to me."

Thus befell one more event, one more caprice of the bitter and eternal irony of things. To give one's life for a necklace, an emerald necklace, and then to get the wrong one! The student murmured:

"Good-by!"

A long shudder trembled through his body. Suddenly the shadow of death gave his face a stern, manly severity. His lips twisted. Candelas, kneeling beside the bed, wept and prayed. Alicia, more violent in disposition, caught Enrique by the shoulder.

"Enrique!" she cried. "Enrique!"

And for a moment she looked at him with one of those tragic, passionate expressions that sometimes explain the sacrifice of a life. The student could still whisper:

"Remember--!"

This was his final word. His eyes drooped shut. He died quietly, with no bleeding at the lips. A whitish aura spread over his face. Alicia exclaimed:

"Enrique! Can you hear me? Enrique!"

She felt of his forehead, his hands. He was dead.

"He's gone," said she.

This too, in her way of thinking, was admirable. Came a pause. Candelas had got up, and now the two friends questioned each other with their eyes. The same idea, the same terror had just struck them both. Enrique's death would compromise them. The law would institute researches, and the girls might easily be called upon to testify. Instincts of self-preservation drove memories of the dead man from them.

"We're in a terrible position," said Alicia. "It's all your fault. I didn't want to come."

Angrily Candelas retorted:

"It's _your_ fault!"

"Mine?"

"Of course! Who made him steal, but you?"

"I did? _I_?"

"Yes, you idiot!"

In Candelas' voice quivered that envious anger felt by all women against any for whose sake a man has ruined himself. Then she added, more calmly:

"It's lucky, anyhow, the janitress didn't see us coming up here."

Alicia Pardo examined the necklace. Her egotistic soul, enamored of luxury, her little soul, that worshiped loot and gain, was now thinking of nothing but the beauty of the jewels. Standing in front of the looking-glass, she clasped the necklace round her throat and began to turn her head from side to side. The contrast made by the blackness of the pearls on the ermine whiteness of her throat gave her pleasure. And for a moment her eyes burned with the insolent strength of happiness.

What had happened was by no means causing her any remorse. Why should it? Was it her fault if Enrique had taken in earnest what she had asked him by way of jest? Philosophically she reflected that the history of every courtesan always contains at least one tragic chapter. Then her mind drifted toward a shade of irony. Poor Enrique! The unfortunate boy, she pondered, was one of those luckless ones who never realize their dream, even though they lay down their lives for it.

At last, moved more by a feeling of tenderness than by any artistic delicacy, she drew near the corpse, to say farewell with one last look. At the door, Candelas summoned her:

"Let's be going! Come!"

Alicia Pardo turned. There was really nothing more for her to do there. The thick air of that room, the tiled floor all covered with crimson blotches, stifled her. Out in the street she would breathe deeply again. And she reflected that her necklace of black pearls would attract attention, that night, at the Teatro Real. She felt no sadness. As she passed in front of the mirror, she cast a sidelong glance at herself.

"It's a pretty necklace, all right," thought she.

Then she added, with a vague regret:

"Still, I'd have liked the emeralds better----"