Читать книгу Froth - Armando Palacio Valdés - Страница 7

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CLEMENTINA descended the stairs in some anxiety, and on setting foot in the street, breathed a sigh of relief. She went off at a brisk pace down the Calle del Siete de Julia, across the Plaza Mayor, and on through the Calle de Atocha. On reaching this, she suddenly remembered the youth who had previously followed her, and turned her head in anxiety. No one. There was nothing to alarm her. No one was in pursuit. At the door of one of the best houses in the street she stopped, looked hastily and stealthily both ways, and went in. A hardly perceptible sign of inquiry to the porter, was answered by his hand to his cap. She flew to the back staircase, to escape any unpleasant meeting no doubt, and ran up in such a hurry that on reaching the second floor she was quite breathless, and pressed one hand to her heart. With the other, she knocked twice at one of the doors, which was instantly and noiselessly opened; she rushed in as if the enemy were at her heels.

"Better late than never," said a young man who had opened it, and who carefully shut it again.

He was a man of eight-and-twenty or thirty, above the middle height, slightly built, with delicate and regular features, a colour in his cheeks, a moustache curled up at the ends, a pointed chin-tuft, and black hair carefully parted down the middle. He looked like a toy soldier—that is to say, he was of the effeminate military type. His face was not unlike those of the dolls on which tailors display ready-made clothing, and was not less unpleasing and repulsive. He wore a pearl-grey velvet morning jacket, elaborately braided, and slippers of the same material and colour, with initials embroidered in gold. It was evident at a glance that he was one of those men who care greatly for the decoration of their person; who touch up every detail with as much finish and attention as a sculptor bestows on a statue; who believe that curling and gumming their moustaches is a sacred and bounden duty; who accept the fact that the Supreme Creator has bestowed on them a fascinating presence, and do their best to improve on His work.

"How late you are!" he exclaimed once more, fixing on her face a conventional gaze of sad reproach.

The lady rewarded him with a gracious smile, saying at the same time in a tone of raillery, "It is never too late if luck comes at last."

She took his hand and pressed it fondly; then, still holding it, she led him along the passages to a small room which seemed to be the young man's study. It was a luxurious den, artistically decorated; the walls were hung with dark blue plush curtains, held up by rings on a bronze rod under the cornice; there were arm-chairs of various shapes and sizes, a writing-table in walnut-wood ornamented with wrought-iron, and by the side of it a book-stand with a few books—about two dozen perhaps. Suspended by silken cords from the ceiling, and against the walls, were horse-trappings and several saddles, common and military, with their stirrups hanging down; curbs of many ages and lands, whips, fine woollen horse-cloths richly embroidered, gold and silver spurs, all very handsome and in perfect order. The hippic tastes of the owner of this "study" were no less evident in the corridor which led to it from the door; everywhere there were portraits of horses saddled or stripped. Even on the writing-table, the inkstand, paper-weights, and paper-knife were decorated with horse-shoes stirrups, or whips. Through an arch with columns, only half-closed by a handsome tapestry curtain representing a youth in powder kneeling to a lady à la Pompadour, a handsome mahogany bedstead with a canopy was visible.

On reaching this little room the lady let herself drop gracefully into a pretty little lounging chair, and went on in a light jesting tone: "So you are not glad to see me?"

"Very. But I should have been glad to see you sooner. I have been waiting for you above an hour and a half."

"And what then? Is it such a sacrifice to wait an hour and a half for the woman who adores you? Have you not read how Leander swam every evening across the Hellespont to see his beloved? No, you have never read that nor anything else. Well, I believe that knowledge would not suit you. Books would spoil that pretty colour in your cheeks, and undermine the strength and agility with which you ride and drive. Besides, some men were born only to be handsome and strong and to amuse themselves, and you are one of them."

"Come, come. It seems to me that you regard me as an idiot ignorant even of my alphabet?" exclaimed the young man somewhat piqued and distressed, as he stood in front of her.

"No, my dear, no!" she replied, laughing, and seizing one of his hands she kissed it with a sudden impulse of tenderness. "Now you are insulting me. Do you think I could love an idiot? Take this," she went on, taking off her hat. "Put my hat on the bed with the greatest care. Now come here, wretch that you are. You are so touchy that you forget you began by being rude to me. An hour and a half! What then? Come close; kneel down; wait till I pull your hair for you."

But the young man, instead of obeying her, drew up a smoking chair, and perched himself on it in front of her.

"Do you know what kept me? Why that tiresome boy who followed me again."

And as she spoke she suddenly grew serious: a well-defined frown puckered her pretty brows.

"It is insufferable," she went on. "I do not know what to do. Whenever I stir, morning or evening, this shadow haunts me. I had to take refuge at Mariana's; then, having gone there I had no choice but to stay a little while. Papa came in, and to avoid his escorting me home I had to wait till he went first. So you see."

"A pretty fellow is that boy!" exclaimed the man, with a laugh.

"Very much so! It would be very amusing if he found out where I come, and every one were to hear of it, and it were to reach my husband's ears. Laugh away, laugh away!"

"Why not? Who but you would think of objecting to so platonic an admirer? Have you had any note from him? Has he ever spoken a word to you?"

"That would not matter in the least. It is the persecution which jars on my nerves. He is just such a boy as would be capable out of mere spite, if he detected me entering this house, of writing an anonymous letter. And you know the peculiar position in which I stand with regard to my husband."

"There is not a chance of it. Those who write anonymous notes are not admirers, but envious women. Shall I meet him face to face and give him a fright?"

"How can you ask such a question!" exclaimed Clementina, indignantly. "Listen Pepe, you are a man of feeling, and have plenty of intelligence, but you sadly lack a little more delicacy to enable you to understand certain things. You should give rather less time to your club and your horses, and cultivate your mind a little."

"Is that your opinion?" cried Pepe, angered extremely by this reproof.

"Well, if you wish that I should not tell you such things, there are others which you should not say."

Pepe Castro shrugged his shoulders scornfully, and rose from his chair. He paced the room two or three times with an air of abstraction, and stopped at last in front of a little picture which he took down to dust it with his handkerchief. Clementina watched him with anger in her eyes. She suddenly started to her feet as if moved by a spring; but then, controlling her petulance, she quietly went into the adjoining room, took her hat off the bed, and began to put it on in front of a looking-glass, very deliberately, though the slight trembling of her hands still betrayed the annoyance she was repressing.

"There," she presently exclaimed, in a tone of indifference, "I am going. Do you want anything out?"

The young man turned round, and exclaimed with surprise: "Already!"

"Already," replied she with affected determination.

Castro went up to her, put his arm round her neck, and raising the red veil with the other hand, kissed her on the temple.

"It is always the same," said he. "I get the broken head and you want to wear the bandage."

"What is that you are saying?" she replied in some confusion. "I am going because I have another visit to pay before dinner."

"Come Clementina, you cannot make believe, even if you wish it. You must understand that I cannot listen to insults and laugh, and you insult me at every moment."

"I really do not understand you; I do not know what insults or make believe you allude to," she replied, with affected innocence.

Pepe tried coaxingly to take her hat off again, but she repelled him with an imperious gesture. He then put his arm round her waist and led her to the sofa; he sat down and taking her hands kissed them again and again with passionate affection. She stood upright and would not be softened. However, he was so vehement and so humble in his endearments, that at last she snatched away her hands and exclaimed, half laughing, but still half vexed:

"Have done, have done: I am tired of your whining—like a Newfoundland dog! You are abject. I would be torn in pieces before I would humiliate myself like that."

She took her hat off, and went herself to place it on the bed.

"When a man is as much in love as I am," replied the youth somewhat abashed, "he does not regard anything as a humiliation."

"Really and truly, boy?" said she, smiling and taking him by the chin with her slender pink fingers; "I do not believe it. You are not the stuff that lovers are made of. Well, I will put you to the proof. If I told you to do a thing that might cost you your life, or, which is worse, your honour—a few years in prison—would you do it?"

"I should think so!"

"Well then—well then, I want you to kill my husband."

"How barbarous!" he exclaimed in dismay, opening his eyes very wide.

The lady looked at him steadily for a few minutes with scrutinising, sarcastic eyes. Then with a sharp laugh, she exclaimed:

"You see, miserable man, you see! You are a fine gentleman of Madrid, a member of the Savage Club. Neither for me nor any other woman would you exchange your dress-coat and white waistcoat for a prison uniform."

"You have such strange ideas."

"Well, well. Go on in the way which your pusillanimous nature points out to you, and do not get into mischief. You will understand that I only spoke in jest; but it has confirmed me in the opinion I had already formed."

"But if you have so poor an opinion of my devotion, I do not know why you should love me," said the young man, again somewhat piqued.

"Why I love you? For the same reason for which I do everything—Caprice. I saw you one day in the Park of the Retiro, breaking in a horse splendidly, and I took a fancy to you. Then, two months later, I saw you at the fencing gallery at Biarritz, crossing foils with a Russian, and that finally bewitched me. I got you introduced to me, I did my best to please you—I did in fact please you—and here we are."

Pepe made up his mind to endure with patience her half cynical tone of raillery, and by dint of talking she presently dropped it. Clementina when she was content, was affectionate and gay, and ready to yield to impulses of generosity; her face, as singular as it was beautiful, never indeed softened to sweetness, but it had a kind, maternal expression which was very attractive. But if her nerves were irritated, and her opinions or wishes were crossed, the under-current of pride, obstinacy and even cruelty, which lay beneath, came to the surface, and her blue eyes shot flashes of fierce sarcasm or fury.

Pepe Castro, who was neither illustrious nor clever, had nevertheless the art of amusing her with the gossip of society, and innuendoes against those persons for whom she had a marked antipathy. The means were coarse but the effect was excellent. The Condesa de T——, a lady whom Clementina hated mortally for some displeasure she had once done her, was desperately hard up; she had gone to borrow of Z—— the old banker, who had granted the loan, but at a percentage which had made the lady stare. The Marqués de L——, and his wife, for whom also she had an aversion, had, before he was in office, given entertainments to the electors at their country house, with splendid banquets; but as soon as he was made Minister, though they still gave parties there was no buffet. Julita R——, a very pretty girl who, again, was no favourite with the haughty lady, had been turned out of doors by the M—— s for having been found in their son's room—a lad of fifteen. This and much more of the same kind fell from the lips of the generous youth, with a scornful humour which put the fair one into a better temper. This was Pepe Castro's sole talent of an intellectual character; his other accomplishments were purely physical.

The clouds had cleared from Clementina's brow. She was now loquacious, smiling, and lavish of caresses; during the hour she remained with her lover, he was amply indemnified for the stabs she had given him on first arriving, as happy as their tête-à-tête could make him.

It had already long since become dusk. The youth lighted the two lamps on the chimney-piece, without calling the servant—his only servant, and the only living soul with him in his rooms.

Pepe Castro was the son of a noble house of Arragon; his elder brother bore a well-known title, and his sister had married into a family of rank. He had been educated at Madrid; at the age of twenty he lost his father. For a time he lived with his elder brother, but it was not long before they quarrelled, since the elder, who was economical to avarice, could not endure Pepe's wasteful extravagance. He then tried living under his sister's roof, but at the end of a few months incompatibility of temper between himself and his brother-in-law led to such violent disputes, that it was said in the Madrid clubs and drawing-rooms that they had cuffed and cudgelled each other soundly; a duel was only prevented by the interference of some of the more respectable members of the family. Then, after living for some time at an hotel, he decided on furnishing rooms. He engaged a servant, had his breakfast brought in from an eating-house, and dined sometimes at Lhardy's and sometimes with one or another of his numerous friends. His stables were in the immediate neighbourhood, Calle de las Urosa, and were not ill-furnished: two saddle horses, one English and one cross-bred; two teams, one foreign and one Spanish; a Berline, a cart, a mail-phaeton, and a break; it was a channel through which his fortune was rapidly running away, though it was not the principal one. He had, in fact, left the greater portion on the gaming-tables at the club, and by no means a small part bad been grabbed by certain smart damsels, whom he had promoted in a few hours to the rank of fashionable courtesans. This, however, was a fact he always denied, thinking it might diminish his prestige as a lady-killer; but it is nevertheless a fact, like everything else herein set down.

All this is as much as to say that Pepe Castro was at this moment a ruined man; nevertheless, he went on living in the same comfort and style. His losses and his borrowing cost him a great deal: loans from his brother on the mortgage of estate he could not sell, post-obits to merciless usurers on his prospects from an old and infirm uncle, accepted for three times their cash value; jewels given him by his sister, who could not give him money; exorbitant charges run up by the importers of carriages and horses; bills with the tailor, the perfumer; with Lhardy, the restaurant-keeper, with every one in short.

It seemed impossible that a man could live easy in such a tangle of toils and nets. And nevertheless, our young gentleman enjoyed the same beautiful serenity of mind and lightness of heart as many others of his comrades and acquaintances, who, as we shall have occasion to see, were no less ruined, though less fascinating.

"I have a surprise in store for you," said Clementina, as she again put on her hat and tidied her hair in front of the glass.

The handsome puppy sniffed the air, like a hound that scents game, and he went up to Clementina.

"If it is a pleasant one let me see it."

"Yes, and no less if it is an unpleasant one, rude boy. Everything I can do ought to be pleasant to you."

"No doubt, no doubt.—Let me see," he went on, trying to conceal his eagerness.

"Very well; bring me my muff."

Castro flew to obey. Clementina, when she had it in her hands, sat down on the sofa with an affectation of calm, and flourishing it in the air, she exclaimed: "Now you will not guess what I have in this muff?"

Her eyes were bright with glee and pride at the same time. Castro's sparkled with anxiety; the colour mounted to his cheeks, and he replied in a tone between assertion and inquiry:

"Fifteen thousand pesetas."[C]

The lady's triumphant expression instantly changed to one of wrath and disgust.

"Go—go away—Pig!" she furiously cried, giving him a hard box on the ear with the handsome muff. "You think of nothing but money. You have not a grain of delicacy."

"I thought——" The change in Pepe's face was no less marked; it was more gloomy than night.

"Of money, yes; I tell you so. Well then, no. Nothing of the kind. Nothing but a little tie-pin, which—fool that I am—I bought at Marbini's as I came along, to show you that I am always thinking of you."

"And I thank you from the bottom of my heart, my sweet pigeon," said the young man, making a supreme effort to recover from his sudden dejection, and producing, as a result, a forced and bitter smile. "Why do you fly into such pets? Give it me. But I know what a bad opinion you have of me."

Clementina would not give him her present. Pepe begged for it humbly; still there was in his entreaties a shade of coldness, which to the keen intuition of a woman, betrayed very plainly the disappointment at the bottom of his soul.

"No, no! My poor little pin that you despise so—I can see it in your face. It shall go into the box where I keep memorials of the dead."

She rose from her seat and pulled down her veil. Pepe was pressing in his endeavours to be attentive, and to mollify her wrath. At last, when she had almost reached the door, she suddenly turned about and drew out of her muff a neat little jewel-box, which she gave to her lover, looking him straight in the face meanwhile.

The young man's eyes opened, resting on the box with an expression of delight; then they met those of his mistress. They gazed at each other for a minute, she with a look of mischievous triumph, he with gratitude and suppressed joy.

"I always said so! No one in the world knows what love means, but you, my darling. Come here; let me thank you, let me worship you on my knees."

He dragged her to the sofa, made her sit down, and falling on his knees, kissed her gloved hands with rapture.

"Mercy, what madness!" cried the lady quite bewildered. "What a whirlwind round a trifle."

"It is not for the money, my darling, not for the money; but because you have such an original way of doing things. Because you are such a trump, such an angel!" He clasped her knees, he grovelled before her, and kissed her feet—or, to be exact, her boots.

"What an abject thing you are, Pepe!" said she, laughing.

"I don't care what you call me; I am yours, your slave till death. I owe you not only happiness, but honour. You cannot think what I have gone through these two days, over that cursed debt!" he said, in a voice of genuine emotion.

"And will you go and gamble any more, eh? Gamble, and lose it all, you wretch," said she, tumbling his hair and spoiling the beautiful parting down the middle.

"No—I swear it on my word of honour."

"On your word, and on your money, wretched man? Well, I am off," she added, with a fond little pat, and she went to look at the clock on the chimney-piece. "Mercy! How late it is—I must fly. Good-bye."

She ran to the door, waving her hand to her lover, without looking at him. He could only clutch it, and kiss the tips of her fingers.

He rushed to open the door for her, but her hand was already on the lock; indeed, she was in a fury, because her feeble efforts would not turn it.

"By-bye—till Saturday!" said she, in a whisper.

"Till the day after to-morrow."

"No, no—till Saturday."

She ran downstairs with the same cautious haste as she had used in coming up, nodded imperceptibly to the porter, and went out. She walked as far as the Plaza del Angel; there she took a hackney coach to drive home.

It was now past six; the lights in the shops had been blazing for an hour or more. She sat as far back in the corner as she could and gazed without interest or curiosity at the streets she passed through. Her face had resumed its characteristic expression of scornful haughtiness, qualified by a certain degree of disdain and absent-mindedness.

Her refined elegance, her arrogant mien, and, above all, the severe majesty of her exceptional beauty stamped Clementina beyond question as one of the most distinguées women of Madrid. At the same time, though she was recognised as such, figuring in all the drawing-rooms of the aristocracy, in all the lists of fashionable persons which the papers publish on the day after a ball, a race, or any other entertainment, by birth-right she was far from belonging to such a set. Her origin could not have been more humble. Her mother had been an Irish girl, the mistress of a cooper, who had landed at Valencia in search of work. Her name was Rosa Coote; she was extraordinarily handsome, and would have been even more so if she had cared for dressing or adorning her person; but the squalor in which the illicit home was kept had made her neglectful and dirty. The Valencia waif and the handsome Irish girl came to an understanding behind the cooper's back. Salabert was quite young and a brisk youth; he was not, like the girl's present protector, a victim to drunkenness. Rosa abandoned her former lover to go off with him. Within a few months, Salabert, who saw an opening for going to Cuba as steward on board a steamboat, in his turn deserted her. The Irishwoman, expecting then the birth of the offspring of this connection, wandered about for some time without any protector or means of living till she became acquainted with a carpenter, who ultimately made her his lawful wife. Clementina grew up as an intruder in this new home. Her mother was a violent and irascible creature, with bursts of tenderness which she kept exclusively for her legitimate children. Clementina she seemed to hate, and avenged on her her father's offence with cruel injustice.