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diff --git a/31662.txt b/31662.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ff72f34 --- /dev/null +++ b/31662.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5052 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Their Son; The Necklace, by Eduardo Zamacois, +Translated by George Allan England + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Their Son; The Necklace + + +Author: Eduardo Zamacois + + + +Release Date: March 16, 2010 [eBook #31662] +[Last updated: May 16, 2014] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEIR SON; THE NECKLACE*** + + +E-text prepared by Chuck Greif and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images of +public domain material generously made available by the Google Books +Library Project (http://books.google.com/) + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + the the Google Books Library Project. See + http://books.google.com/books?vid=zBIBAAAAMAAJ&id + + + + + +THEIR SON +THE NECKLACE + +by + +EDUARDO ZAMACOIS + +Translated by George Allan England + + + + + + + +[Illustration] + +New York +Boni and Liveright +1919 + +Copyright, 1919, +By Boni & Liveright, Inc. + +Printed in the U. S. A. + + + + +_To My Sister_ + +For valuable assistance given in the rendering of localisms and obscure +passages in the following stories, I wish to return acknowledgment and +thanks to Miss Dolores Butterfield and Dona Rosario Munoz de Morrison. + +GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND. + + * * * * * + + + + +EDUARDO ZAMACOIS + +_Artist--Apostle--Prophet_ + + +Few writers of the tremendously virile and significant school of modern +Spain summarize in their work so completely the tendencies of the +_resurgimiento_ as does Eduardo Zamacois. "Renaissance" is really the +watchword of his life and literary output. This man is a human dynamo, a +revitalizing force in Spanish life and letters, an artist who is more +than a mere artist; he is a man with a message, a philosophy and a +vision; and all these he knows how to clothe in a forceful, masterly and +compelling style, which, though not always lucid, always commands. +Zamacois _sees_ life, and paints it as it is, sometimes with humor, +often with pitiless, dissecting accuracy. + +To me, Zamacois seems a Spanish Guy de Maupassant. He tells a story in +much the same way, with that grace and charm which only genius, coupled +to infinite hard work, can crystallize on the printed page. His subjects +are often much the same as those of de Maupassant. His sympathy for what +prigs call "low life"; his understanding of the heart of the common +people; his appreciation of the drama and pathos, the humor and tragedy +of ordinary, everyday life; his frank handling of the really vital +things--which we western-hemisphere hypocrites call improprieties and +turn up our noses at, the while we secretly pry into them--all mark him +as kin with the great French master. Kin, not imitator, Zamacois is +Zamacois, no one else. His way of seeing, of expressing, is all his; and +even the manner in which he handles the Castillian, constructing his own +grammatical forms and words to suit himself, mark him a pioneer. He is a +hard man to translate. Dictionaries are too narrow for the limits of his +vocabulary. Many of his words baffle folk who speak Spanish as a +birthright. He is a _jeune_ of the _jeunes_. A creative, not an +imitative force. Power, thought, vitality, constructive ideals: these +sketch the man's outlines. He comes of a distinguished family. The great +Spanish painter, of his same name, is a close relative. + +His personality is charming. My acquaintance with him forms one of the +pleasantest chapters in a life of literary ups and downs. Ruddy, +vigorous, with short hair getting a bit dusty; with a contagious laugh +and a frequent smile; with a kind of gay worldliness that fascinates; a +nonchalant, tolerant philosophy; a dry humor; a good touch at the piano; +an excellent singing voice for the performance of _peteneras_ and +folk-songs without number; a splendid platform-presence as a lecturer on +Spanish literature and customs, Zamacois is an all-round man of intense +vitality, deep originality and human breadth. He is a wise man, widely +traveled, versed in much strange lore; and yet he has kept simplicity, +courtesy, humanity. Spain is decadent? Not while it can produce men, +thinkers, writers like this man--like this member of the new school that +calls itself, because it realizes its own historic mission, _el +resurgimiento_. + +"Nothing binds nations together so securely," he said to me one day, +"and nothing so profoundly vitalizes them, as literature and art. +Commercial rivalries lead to war. But artistic and literary matters are +free and universal. Beauty cannot be appreciated, alone. It must be +shared, to be enjoyed. My ambition--or one of my ambitions--is to bring +the old world to the new, and to take back the new to the old." He spoke +with enthusiasm, for he is an enthusiast by temperament, filled with +nervous energy that looks out compellingly from his gray eyes--not at +all a Spanish type, as we conceive the typical Spaniard. "I am sorry you +Americans know so little of Spanish letters. You have always gone to +France, rather than to Spain, for your literary loves. To you, as a +race, the names of Galdos, Benavente, Emilia Pardo Bazan, Valle Inclan, +Martinez Ruiz, Baroja, Trigo, Machado, the Quintero, Carrere, Marquina, +Dicenta, Martinez Sierra and Linares Rivas are but names. The literary +world still looks to France; but Spain is slowly coming into her own. +Her language and literature are spreading. Civilization is beginning to +realize something of the tremendous fecundity and genius of the modern +Spanish literary renaissance." + +When I asked him about himself, he tried to evade me. The man is modest. +He prefers to talk about Spain. Only with difficulty can one make him +reveal anything of his personality, his life. + +"I have no biography," he laughed, when I insisted on knowing something +of him. "Oh, yes, I was born, I suppose. We all are. My birth took place +in Cuba, in 1878. When I was three, my parents took me to Brussels. I +grew up there, and in Spain and Paris. My education--the beginning of +it--was given me in Paris and at the University of Madrid. Degree? +Well--a '_Philosophe es Lettres_.' I much prefer the title of +Philosopher of Humanity." That, alone, shows the type of mind inherent +in Zamacois. + +His first novel was published when he was eighteen. He has since written +about thirty more, together with thousands of newspaper articles in _El +Liberal_, _El Imparcial_, and no end of others. He has produced ten +plays, and many volumes of criticisms, chronicles and miscellanea, +beside two volumes on the great war. His pen must have had few idle +moments! + +In addition to all this, he has edited several papers. At twenty-two he +was editing _Germinal_. A Socialist? Yes. Once on a time more radical +than now, when the more universal tendencies have entered in, he still +believes in the principles of Socialism, as do so many of the "young," +all over Europe. + +He himself divides his work into three main epochs. The first has love +for its keynote; and here we find _El Seductor_, _Sobre el Abismo_, +_Punto-Negro_, _Loca de Amor_, _De Carne y Hueso_, _Duelo a Muerte_, +_Impresiones de Arte_, _Incesto_, _La Enferma_, _De mi Vida_, _Amar a +Obscuras_, _Bodas Tragicas_, _Noche de Bodas_, _El Lacayo_, and +_Memorias de una Cortesana_. The second epoch deals with death and +mysteries, the future life, religion. (Zamacois is religious in the +sense that so much of the young blood of the Latin world is +religious--negatively. They think more clearly than we Anglo-Saxons, in +some way, these Latins!) _El Otro_, _El Misterio de un Hombre Pequenito_ +and some others fall into this epoch. The third is characterized by a +wider vision, a more complete realization of the essential tragedy and +irony of human life, and is tempered by the understanding that comes to +all of us when graying hair and fading illusions tell us we are no +longer young. Here we find _Anos de Miseria y de Risa_, _La Opinion +Ajena_ and stories of the type of those in the present volume. Surely +_El Hijo_ and _El Collar_ are cynical enough to rank with masterpieces +of cynicism in any tongue. + +Zamacois' plays are distinguished by the same dramatic, often mystic, +elements that make his novels and short stories of such vital interest. +The more important titles are: _Teatro Galante_, _Nochebuena_, _El +Pasado Vuelve_, and _Frio_. + +"Spain still dominates the whole of Spanish literature," says Zamacois. +"The Latin new world has had but slight influence thereon. And Spain is +fast becoming liberalized. _Resurgimiento_ is the pass-word, all along +the line. Even our women are becoming liberalized--or we are beginning +to emancipate them, a little. That is highly revolutionary--for Spain! +The war has flooded Spain with new ideas, not only abstract but +concrete. We are getting free speech and a free press--is America +winning more latitude, or shrinking to less?--and we are enforcing +education. We are reviving physically. Athletic sports are coming in. +These are all signs of the Renaissance, just as the new school of +writers is a sign. I suppose most of the new blood is indifferent to +religion. Spain has a small body of religionist fanatics, a strong +minority of non-religious, intellectual elite, and a vast body of +indifferent folk, slowly making progress toward enlightenment. + +"Spain's misfortune is this--that you foreigners have seen in her only +the picturesque, the medieval, the exotic. Spain has scientific, +engineering and literary triumphs to be proud of now, as well as +ivy-grown cathedrals, bull-rings and palaces. Under her old, hard +carapace, new blood is leaping; it leaps from her strong heart, across +half the world. + +"Our real rebirth took place after the Spanish-American war, when our +colonial system collapsed and we had to roll up our sleeves and support +ourselves by hard work. Defeat was to us a blessing in disguise. Spain +is to-day a much different and better land than it was twenty years ago. +For one thing, we use more soap, these days. As the church declines, +bathtubs multiply. _?Tendre que decir mas?_ + +"A new spirit and a new life are to-day stirring in ancient Iberia. A +splendid artistic and literary renaissance, vast commercial undertakings +and enormous manufacturing enterprises are all developing hand in hand. +Spain's past is glorious. Her future is both glorious and bright." + +GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND. + +_12 Park Drive, Brookline, Mass._ + + * * * * * + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE +PREFACE: + EDUARDO ZAMACOIS vii + +THEIR SON 1 + +THE NECKLACE 91 + + + + +THEIR SON + + + + +I + + +At about the age of thirty, tired of living all alone with no one to +love, Amadeo Zureda got married. This Zureda was a stocky fellow, +neither tall nor short, dark, thoughtful, and with a certain slow, sure +way of moving. The whole essence of his face, the soul of it--to speak +so--was rooted in the taciturn energy of the space between his eyebrows. +There you found the man, more than in the rough black mustache which cut +across his face; even more than in the thickness of his cheek-bones, the +squareness of his jaws, the hard solidity of his nose. His brow was +somber as an evil memory. + +One after the other you might erase all the lines of that face, and so +long as you left the thick-tufted brows, you would not have changed the +expression of Amadeo Zureda. For there dwelt the whole spirit of the +man, reserved yet ardent. + +His marriage rescued Rafaela, whom he made his wife, from the slavish +toil of a work-woman. Rafaela was just over eighteen, a buxom brunette +with big, roguish, black eyes. Her breath was sweet, her lips vivid, her +mobile hips full and inviting, like her breasts; and she had a +free-and-easy, energetic, enterprising way of walking. Joined to a kind +of untamed grace (just a bit vulgar, in the manner of a daughter of the +people), she possessed a certain distinction both of face and manner, of +moving, of showing likes and dislikes, that enhanced and exalted her +beauty. Her hands were small and well cared for. She liked fine shoes +and starched petticoats that frou-froued as she walked. + +Her mind resembled her body. It was restless, lively and incapable of +keeping the same point of view for very long. When she talked, those +coquettish eyes of hers shone brighter than ever, with enjoyment. Her +mouth was rather large; her teeth dazzling; and the light of laughter +always shone there like an altar-lamp. + +Amadeo worshiped her. When he came home at night from work, Rafaela ran +to meet him with noisy jubilation and then cuddled herself caressingly +on his knees, after he had sat down. All this filled Zureda with +ineffable joy, so that he became quite speechless, in ecstasy. At such +times even the thoughtful scar of the wrinkle between his brows grew +less severe, in the calm gravity of his dark forehead. + +The newly married couple took lodgings on the sixth floor of a house not +far from the Estacion del Norte. The house was new, and their apartment +was full of sun and cheer, with big, well-lighted rooms. They had a +couple of balconies, too; and these the busy, artistic hands of Rafaela +kept smothered in flowers. + +Amadeo was a locomotive-engineer. The company liked him well and more +than well. During the two years he had been on the Madrid-Bilbao run he +had never been called in for reprimand. He was intelligent and a hard +worker. Fifteen hours he could stand up to the job, and still see just +as clearly as ever with those black, powerful eyes of his. In his +corduroys, this muscular, dark-skinned, impassive man reminded you of a +bronze. + +He was devoted to his job. He had learned engineering in the States, +which everybody knows is a master-country for railroading. His parents +had both died when he was very young. He had dedicated the whole +plenitude of his affections, his sap and vigor as a single man, to his +work. Foot by foot he knew the right-of-way from Madrid to Bilbao in its +most intimate details, so that he could have made that run blindfolded, +just as safely as if he had been walking about his own house. There were +clumps of trees, ravines, rivers, hills and farms that, to his eyes, had +the decisive meaning of a watch or a map. + +"At such-and-such a place," he would think, "I've got to jam the brakes +on; there's a down-grade just beyond." Or else: "Here's the bridge. It +must be so-and-so o'clock." His grip on such ideas of time and space was +always exactly right. He seemed infallible. Zureda knew that all these +inanimate objects, scattered along the line, were so many faithful +friends incapable of deceiving him. + +He shared this fetichistic love of the landscape with the love inspired +in him by his engines. Ordinarily he ran two: No. 187 and No. 1,082. He +called the first "Nigger," and the second "Sweetie." Nigger was an +intractable brute, ill-tempered and hard-bitted. When she tackled a hill +she seemed to quiver with pain, and in her iron belly strange +threatening shrieks resounded. She skidded downhill and was hard to get +under control. You would have said some wayward spirit was thrashing +about inside her, eternally rebelling against all government. She was +logy, at times, and hated to start; but once you got her going you had a +proper job to stop her. When she rushed in under the black arch of a +tunnel, her whistle shrieked with ear-splitting alarum, like a man +screeching. + +"Sweetie" was a different sort, meek, obedient, strong and good-willed +on an up-grade, cautious and full of reserve on a down, when the +headlong flight of the train had to be checked. + +Twice a week, each time that Amadeo started on a run, his wife always +asked him: + +"Which machine have you got, to-day?" + +If it was "Sweetie," she had nothing to worry about. + +"That's all right," she would say. "But the other one! I certainly am +afraid of it. It's bad luck, sure!" + +Zureda, however, liked to handle both of them. Sometimes he preferred +one, sometimes the other, according to the state of his nerves. When his +mood was cheerful, he liked "Sweetie" best, because there wasn't much +work about running her. He preferred her, usually, on quiet days, when +the sun was giving the earth a big, warm kiss. Zureda's fireman was a +chap named Pedro; an Andalusian, full of spicy songs and tales. Amadeo +rather liked to hear these, always keeping his eyes fixed on blue +distances that seemed to smile at him. Out ahead, over the boiler, the +rails stretched on and on, shining like silver in the sun. The warm air +blew about Zureda, laden with sweet country smells. Under his feet the +engineer felt the shuddering of "Sweetie," tame, laborious, neither +bucking nor snorting; and at such times, both proud and caressing as if +he loved her, he would murmur: + +"Get along with you, my pretty lamb!" + +At other times the engineer's full-blooded vigor suffered vague +irritations and capricious rages, unwholesome disturbances of temper +which made him unwilling to talk, and dug still deeper the grim line +between his brows. Then it was that he preferred to take out "Nigger." +Stubborn, menacing, rebellious against all his demands, the fight she +gave him--a fight always potentially dangerous--acted as a sedative to +his nerves and seemed to pacify him. At such times Pedro, the Andalusian +with the risque stories and the spicy songs, felt the numbing, evil +humor of his engineer, and grew still. + +All along the line, chiming into the uproarious quiverings of the engine +and the whistling gusts of wind, a long colloquy of hate seemed to +develop between the man and the machine. Zureda would grit his teeth and +grunt: + +"Go on, you dog! Some hill--but you've got to make it! Come on, get to +it!" + +Then he would fling open the furnace door, burning red as any Hell-pit, +and with his own furious hand would fling eight or ten shovels of coal +into the firebox. The machine would shudder, as if lashed by punishment. +Enraged snorts would fill her; and from her smoking shoulders something +like a wave of hate seemed to stream back. + +Zureda always came home from trips like these bringing some present or +other for his wife; perhaps a pair of corsets, a fur collar, a box of +stockings. The wife, knowing just the time when the express would get +in, always went out on the balcony to see it pass. Her husband never +failed to let her know he was coming, from afar, by blowing a long +whistle-blast. + +If she were still abed when the train arrived, she would jump up, fling +on a few clothes and run to the balcony. Her joyous face would smile out +at the world from the green peep-holes through the plants in their +flower-pots. In a moment or two she could see the train among the wooded +masses of Moncloa. On it came with a roar and a rattle, hurling its +undulating black body along the polished rails. Joyously the engineer +waved his handkerchief at her, from the engine-cab; and only at times +like these did his brow--to which no smile ever lent complete +contentment--smooth itself out a little and seem almost happy. + +Amadeo Zureda desired nothing. His work was hard, but all he needed to +make him glad was just the time between runs--two nights a week--that he +spent in Madrid. His whole brusque but honest soul took on fresh youth +there, under the roof of his peaceful home, surrounded by the simple +pieces of furniture that had been bought one at a time. This was all the +reward he wanted. The cold that pierced his bones, out there in the +storms along the railway-line, gradually changed to a glow of warmth in +the caressing arms of his wife. Body and soul both fell asleep there in +the comfort of a happy and sensual well-being. + + + + +II + + +It hardly takes more than a couple of years of married life to age a +docile man; or at least--about the same thing--to fill him with those +forward-looking ideas of caution, economy and peace that sow the seed of +fear for the morrow, in quiet souls. + +One time Zureda was laid up a while with a bad cold. Getting better of +this, the engineer on a momentous night spoke seriously to his wife +concerning their future. His bronzed face lying on the whiteness of the +pillows brought out the salience of his cheek-bones and the strength of +his profile. The vertical furrow between his brows seemed deeper than +ever, cut into the serene gravity of his forehead. His wife listened to +him attentively, sitting on the edge of the bed, with one leg crossed +over the other. She cradled the upper knee between joined hands. + +Slowly the engineer's talk unwound itself, to the effect that life is a +poor thing at best, constantly surrounded by misfortunes that can strike +us in an infinitude of ways. To-day it's a cold draft, to-morrow a chill +or a sore throat, or maybe a cancer, that death uses to steal our lives +away. All about us, yawning like immense jaws, the earth is always +opening, the earth into which all of us must some time descend; and in +this very swift and savagely universal hecatomb no one can be sure of +witnessing both the rising and the setting of the same day. + +"I'm not afraid of work, you know," went on Zureda, "but engines are +made of iron, and even so they wear out at last and get tired of +running. Men are just the same. And when it happens to me, as it's got +to, some day, what'll become of us, then?" + +Calmly Rafaela shook her head. She by no means shared her husband's +fears. No doubt Amadeo's sickness had made him timorous and pessimistic. + +"I think you're making it worse than it really is," she answered. "Old +age is still a long way off; and, besides, very likely we'll have +children to help us." + +Zureda's gesture was a negation. + +"That don't matter," he replied. "Children may not come at all; and even +if they do, what of that? As for old age being far off, you're wrong. +Even to-day, do you think I've got the strength and quickness, or even +the enjoyment in my work, that I had when I was twenty-five? Not on your +life! Old age is certainly coming, and coming fast. So I tell you again +we've got to save something. + +"If we do, when I can no longer run an engine I'll open a little +machine-shop; and if I should die suddenly, leaving you fifteen or +twenty thousand _pesetas_,[A] you could easily start a good laundry in +some central location, for that's the kind of work you understand." + +[A] Three or four thousand dollars. + +To all this Zureda added a number of other arguments, discreet and +weighty, so that his wife declared herself convinced. The engineer +already had a plan laid out, that made him talk this way. Among the +people who had come to see him, while he had been sick, was one Manolo +Berlanga, whose friendship with him had been brotherly indeed. This +Berlanga had a job at a silversmith's shop in the Paseo de San Vincente. +He had no relatives, and made rather decent wages. A good many times he +had told Zureda how much he wanted to find some respectable house where +he could live in a decent, private way, paying perhaps four or five +pesetas a day for board and room. + +"Suppose, now," went on Amadeo, "that Manolo should pay five pesetas a +day; that's thirty _duros_ a month--thirty good dollars--and the house +costs us eight dollars. Well, that leaves us twenty-two dollars a month, +and with that, and a few dollars that I'll put in, we can all live +high." + +To this Rafaela consented, rather stirred by the new ideas awakened by +the innovation. The silversmith was a free-and-easy, agreeable young +fellow, who chattered all the time and played the guitar in no mean +fashion. + +"Yes, but how about a place for him?" asked she. "Is there any? What +room could we give him?" + +"Why, the little alcove off the dining-room, of course." + +"Yes, I was thinking of that, too. But it's mighty small, and there's no +light in it." + +The engineer shrugged his shoulders. + +"It's good enough just to sleep in!" he exclaimed. "If we were dealing +with a woman, that would be different. But we men get along any old way, +all right." + +Rafaela wrote to Berlanga next day, at her husband's request, telling +him to come and see them. Promptly on the dot the silversmith arrived. +He looked about twenty-eight, wore tightly-belted velveteen trousers +gaitered under the shoe, and a dark overcoat with astrakhan collar and +cuffs. He was of middle height, lean, pale-faced, with a restless +manner, a fluent, witty way of talking. On some pretext or other the +wife went out, leaving the two men to chew things over and come to an +agreement. + +"Now, as for living with you people," said Berlanga, "I'll be very glad +to give five pesetas per. Or I'll better that, if you say so." + +"No, no, thanks," answered Zureda. "I don't want to be bargaining with +you. We can all help each other. You and I are like brothers, anyhow." + +That night after supper, Rafaela dragged all the useless furniture out +of the dining-room alcove and swept and scoured it clean. Next day she +got up early to go to a hard-by pawnshop, where she bought her an iron +bed with a spring and a woolen mattress. This bed she carefully set up, +and fixed it all fine and soft. A couple of chairs, a washstand and a +little table covered with a green baize spread completed the furnishing +of the room. + +After everything was ready, the young woman dressed and combed herself +to receive the guest, who arrived about the middle of the afternoon with +his luggage, to wit: a box with his workman's tools, a trunk and a +little cask. This cask held a certain musty light wine, which--so +Berlanga said, after coffee and one of Zureda's cigars had made him +expansive--had been given him by a "lady friend" of his who ran a +tavern. + +A few days passed, days of unusual pleasure to the engineer and his +wife, for the silversmith was a man of joyful moods and very fond of +crooking his elbow, so that his naturally fertile conversation became +hyperbolically colored and quite Andalusian in its exuberance. At +dessert, the merry quips of Berlanga woke sonorous explosions of +hilarity in Amadeo. When he laughed, the engineer would lean his massive +shoulders against the back of the chair. Now and again, as if to +underscore his bursts of merriment, he would deal the table shrewd +blows. After this he would slowly emit his opinions; and if he had to +advise Berlanga, he did it in a kind of paternal way, patiently, +good-naturedly. + +When he was quite well again, Amadeo went back to work. The morning he +took leave of his wife, she asked him: + +"Which engine have you got, to-day?" + +"Nigger," he answered. + +"My, what bad luck! I'm afraid something's going to happen to you!" + +"Rubbish! Why should it? _I_ can handle her!" + +He kissed Rafaela, tenderly pressing her against his big, strong breast. +At this moment an unwholesome thought, grotesquely cruel, cut his mind +like a whip; a thought that he would pass the night awake, out in the +storm, in the engine-cab, while there in Madrid another man would be +sleeping under the same roof with his wife. But this unworthy suspicion +lasted hardly a second. The engineer realized that Berlanga, though a +riotous, dissipated chap, was at heart a brotherly friend, far from base +enough to betray him in any such horrible manner. + +Rafaela went with her husband to the stairway. There they both began +again to inflame each other with ardent kisses and embraces of farewell. +The wife's black eyes filled with tears as she told him to keep himself +well bundled up and to think often of her. Tears quite blinded her. + +"What a good lass she is!" murmured Zureda. + +And as he recalled the poisonous doubt of a moment before, the man's +ingenuous nobility felt shame. + + * * * * * + +The life of Manolo Berlanga turned out to be pretty disreputable. He +liked wine, women and song, and many a time came home in the wee small +hours, completely paralyzed. This invariably happened during the absence +of the engineer. Next morning he was always very remorseful, and went +with contrition to the kitchen, where Rafaela was getting breakfast. + +"Are you mad at me?" he used to ask. + +She answered him in a maternal kind of way and told him to be good; this +always made him laugh. + +"None o' that!" he used to say. "I don't like being good. That's one of +the many inflictions marriage forces on a man. Don't you have enough +'being good' in this house, with Amadeo?" + +Among men, love is often nothing more than the carnal obsession produced +in them by the constant and repeated sight of one and the same woman. +Every laugh, every motion of the woman moving about them possesses a +charm at first hardly noticed. But after a while, under the spell of a +phenomenon we may call cumulative, this charm waxes potent; it grows +till some time it unexpectedly breaks forth in an enveloping, conquering +passion. + +Now one morning it happened that Manolo Berlanga was eating breakfast in +the dining-room before going to the shop. Rafaela, her back toward him, +was scrubbing the floor of the hallway. + +"How you do work, my lady!" cried the silversmith, jokingly. + +Her answer was a gay-toned laugh; then she went on with her task, +sometimes recoiling so that she almost sat on her heels, again +stretching her body forward with an energy that lowered the +tight-corseted slimness of her waist and set in motion the fullness of +her yielding hips. The silversmith had often seen her thus, without +having paid any heed; but hardly had he come to realize her sensual +appeal when the flame of desire blazed up in him. + +"There's a neat one for you!" thought he. + +And he kept on looking at her, his vicious imagination dwelling on the +perfections of that carnal flower, soft and vibrant. His brown study +continued a while. Then suddenly, with the brusqueness of ill-temper, he +got up. + +"Well, so long!" said he. + +He stopped in the stairway to greet a neighbor and light a cigarette. By +the time he had reached the street-door he had forgotten all about +Rafaela. But, later, his desire once more awoke. At dinner he +dissimulated his observations of the young woman's bare arms. Strong and +well-molded they were, those arms, and under the cloth of her sleeves +rolled up above the elbow, the flesh swelled exuberantly. + +"Hm! You haven't combed your hair, to-day," said Berlanga. + +She answered with a laugh--one of those frankly voluptuous laughs that +women with fine teeth enjoy. + +"You're right," said she. "You certainly notice everything. I didn't +have time." + +"It don't matter," answered the gallant. "Pretty women always look best +that way, with their hair flying and their arms bare." + +"You mean that, really?" + +"I certainly do!" + +"Then you've got the temperament and makings of a married man." + +"_I_ have?" + +"Sure!" + +"How's that?" + +She laughed again, gayly, coquettishly, adding: + +"Because you already know that married women generally don't pay much +attention to their husbands. That's what hurts marriage--women not +caring how they look." + +So they went on talking away, and all through their rather spicy +conversation, full of meaning, a mutual attraction began to make itself +felt. Silently this began sapping their will-power. At last the woman +glanced at her clock on the sideboard. + +"Eight o'clock," said she. "I wonder what Amadeo's doing, now?" + +"Well, that's according," answered Berlanga. "When did he get to +Bilbao?" + +"This morning." + +"Then he's probably been asleep part of the time, and now I guess he's +playing dominoes in some cafe. And we, meantime--we're here--you and +I----" + +"And you don't feel very well, eh?" she asked. + +"I?" + +Looking at Rafaela with eloquent steadiness he slowly added: + +"I feel a damn sight better than _he_ does!" + +Then, while he drank his coffee, the silversmith laid out on the table +his board-money for that week. He began to count: + +"Two and two's four--nine--eleven--thirty-eight pesetas. Rotten week +I've had! Say, I've hardly pulled down enough for my drinks." + +He got together seven dollars, piled them up--making a little column of +silver change--and shoved them over to Rafaela. + +"Here you go!" said he. + +She blushed, as she answered. You would have thought her offended by the +somewhat hostile opposition of debtor and creditor that the money seemed +to have set up between them. She asked: + +"What's all this you're giving me?" + +"Say! What d'you suppose? Don't I pay every week? Well, then, here's my +board. Seven days at five pesetas per, that's just thirty-five pesetas, +huh? What's the matter with you?" + +He made the coins jump and jingle in his agile hand, well-used to +dealing cards. Then he added: + +"To-day's Saturday. So then, I'll pay you now. That'll leave me three +pesetas for extras--tobacco and car-fare. Oh, it's a fine time _I'll_ +have!" + +With a lordly gesture, good-natured, protecting, the woman handed back +Berlanga's money. + +"Next week you can pay up," said she. "I'm fixed all right. By luck, +even if I'm not five dollars to the good, I'm not five to the bad." + +The silversmith offered the money again. But this time the offer was +weak, and was made only in the half-hearted way that seemed necessary to +keep him in good standing. Then he got up from the table, rubbed his +hands up and down his legs to smooth the ugly bulge out of the knees of +his trousers, pulled down his vest and readjusted the knot of his cravat +before the mirror. He exclaimed with a kind of boastful swagger: + +"D'you know what I'm thinking?" + +"Tell me!" + +"Oh, I don't dare." + +"Why not?" + +"You might get mad at me." + +"No, no!" + +"Promise you won't?" + +"On my word of honor! Come on, now, say anything you like, and _I_ won't +mind." + +"Well--how about--_him_?" + +"I know what I'm doing!" + +"Yes, but--see here! You don't care a hang for me, anyhow. You don't +think very much of _me_! + +"I do, too! I think a lot!" + +She looked at him in a gay, provocative manner, stirred to the depths of +her by such a strong, overpowering caprice that it almost seemed love. + +Expansively the silversmith answered: + +"Well, then, since we've got money and we're all alone, why don't we +take in a dance, to-night?" + +The whole Junoesque body of the young woman--a true Madrid +type--trembled with joy. It had been a long time since she had had any +such amusement; not since her marriage had she danced. Zureda, something +of a stick-in-the-mud and in no wise given to pleasures, had never +wanted to take her to any dances, not even to a masquerade. A swarm of +joyful visions filled her memory. Ah, those happy Sundays when she had +been single! Saturday nights, at the shop, she and the other girls had +made dates for the next day. Sometimes they had visited the dance-halls +at Bombilla. Other times they had gone to Cuatro Caminos or Ventas del +Espiritu Santo. And once there, what laughter and what joy! What strange +emotions of half fear, half curiosity they had felt at sensing the +desire of whatever man had asked them to dance! + +Rafaela straightened up, quick, pliant, transfigured. + +"You aren't any more willing to ask me, than I am to go!" said she. + +"Well, why not, then?" demanded the silversmith. "Let's go, right now! +Let's take a run out to Bombilla, and not leave as long as we've got a +cent!" + +The young woman fairly jumped for joy, skipped out of the dining-room, +tied a silk handkerchief over her head and most fetchingly threw an +embroidered shawl over her shoulders. She came back, immediately. Her +little high-heeled, pointed, patent-leather boots and her +fresh-starched, rustling petticoats echoed her impatience. She went up +to Berlanga, took him familiarly by the arm, and said: + +"I tell you, though, I'm going to pay half." + +The silversmith shook his head in denial. She added, positively: + +"That's the only way I'll go. Aren't we both going to have a good time? +That's fair, for us both to pay half." + +Berlanga accepted this friendly arrangement. As soon as they got into +the street they hired a carriage. At Bombilla they had a first-rate +supper and danced their heads off, till long past midnight. They went +home afoot, slowly, arm in arm. Rafaela had drunk a bit too much, and +often had to stop. Dizzy, she leaned her head on the silversmith's +breast. Manolo, himself a bit tipsy and out of control, devoured her +with his eyes. + +"Say, you're a peach!" he murmured. + +"Am I, really?" + +"Strike me blind if you're not! Pretty, eh? More than that! You're a +wonder--oh, great! The best I ever saw, and I've seen a lot!" + +She still had enough wit left to pretend not to hear him, playing she +was ill. She stammered: + +"Oh, I--I'm so sick!" + +Suddenly Berlanga exclaimed: + +"If Zureda and I weren't pals----" + +Silence. The silversmith added, warming to the subject: + +"Rafaela, tell me the truth. Isn't it true that Amadeo stands in our +way?" + +She peered closely at him, and afterward raised her handkerchief to her +eyes. She gave him no other answer. And nothing more happened, just +then. + + * * * * * + +During the monotonous passage of a few more days, Manolo Berlanga +gradually realized that Rafaela had big, expressive eyes, small feet +with high insteps and a most pleasant walk. He noted that her breasts +were firm and full; and he even thought he could detect in her an +extremely coquettish desire to appear attractive in his eyes. At the end +of it all, the silversmith fully understood his own intentions, which +caused him both joy and fear. + +"She's got me going," he thought. "She's certainly got me going! Say, +I'm crazy about that woman!" + +At last, one evening, the ill-restrained passion of the man burst into +an overwhelming torrent. On that very night, Zureda was going to come +home. Hardly had Manolo Berlanga left the shop when he hurried to his +lodgings. He had no more than reached the front room when--no longer +able to restrain his evil thoughts--he asked: + +"Has Amadeo got here, yet?" + +"He'll be here in about fifteen minutes," answered Rafaela. "It's nine +o'clock, now. The train's already in. I heard it whistle." + +Berlanga entered the dining-room and saw that the young woman was making +up his bed. He approached her. + +"Want any help?" he asked. + +"No, thanks!" + +Suddenly, without knowing what he was about, he grabbed her round the +waist. She tried to defend herself, turning away, pushing him from her. +But, kissing her desperately, he murmured: + +"Come now, quick, quick--before he gets here!" + +Then, after a brief moment of silent struggle: + +"Darling! Don't you see? It had to be this way----!" + +The wife of Zureda did not, in fact, put up much of a fight. + + * * * * * + +A year later, Rafaela gave birth to a boy. Manolo Berlanga stood +godfather for it. Both Rafaela and Amadeo agreed on naming it Manolo +Amadeo Zureda. The baptism was very fine; they spent more than two +thousand _reals_[B] on it. + +[B] About $100. + +How pink-and-white, how joyous, how pretty was little Manolin! The +engineer, congratulated by everybody, wept with joy. + + + + +III + + +Little Manolo was nearly three years old. He had developed into a very +cunning chap, talkative and pleasant. In his small, plump, white face, +that looked even whiter by contrast with the dead black of his hair, you +could see distinctive characteristics of several persons. His tip-tilted +nose and the roguish line of his mouth were his mother's. From his +father, no doubt, he had inherited the thoughtful forehead and the heavy +set of his jaws. And at the same time you were reminded of his godfather +by his lively ways and by a peculiar manner he had of throwing out his +feet, when he walked. It seemed almost as if the clever little fellow +had set his mind on looking like everybody who had stood near his +baptismal font, so that he could win the love of them all. + +Zureda worshiped the boy, laughed at all his tricks and graces, and +spent hours playing with him on the tiles of the passageway. Little +Manolo pulled his mustache and necktie, mauled him and broke the crystal +of his watch. Far from getting angry, the engineer loved him all the +more for it, as if his strong, rough heart were melting with adoration. + +One evening Rafaela went down to the station to say good-by to her +husband, who was taking out the 7.05 express. In her arms she carried +the boy. Pedro, the fireman, looked out of the cab, and made both the +mother and son laugh by pulling all sorts of funny faces. + +"Here's the toothache face!" he announced. "And here's the stomach-ache +face!" + +Then the bell rang, and they heard the vibrant whistle of the +station-master. + +"Here, give me the boy!" cried Zureda. + +He wanted to kiss him good-by. The little fellow stretched out his tiny +arms to his father. + +"Take me! Take me, papa!" he entreated with a lisping tongue, his words +full of love and charm. + +Poor Zureda! The idea of leaving the boy, at that moment, stabbed him to +the heart. He could not bear to let him go; he could not! Hardly knowing +what he was about, he pressed the youngster to his breast with one hand, +and with the other eased open the throttle. The train started. Rafaela, +terrified, ran along the platform, screaming: + +"Give him, give him to me!" + +But already, even though Zureda had wanted to give him back, it was too +late. Rafaela ran to the end of the platform, and there she had to stop. +Pedro laughed and gesticulated from the blackness of the tender, bidding +her farewell. + +The young woman went back home, in tears. Manolo Berlanga had just got +home. He had been drinking and was in the devil's own humor. + +"Well, what's up now?" he demanded. + +Inconsolable, sobbing, Rafaela told him what had happened. + +"Is _that_ all?" interrupted the silversmith. "Say, you're crazy! If +he's gone, so much the better. Now he'll leave us in peace, a little +while. Damn good thing if he _never_ came back!" + +Then he demanded supper. + +"Come, now," he added, "cut out that sniveling! Give me something to +eat. I'm in a hurry!" + +Rafaela began to light the fire. But all the time she kept on crying and +scolding. Her rage and grief dragged out into an interminable monologue: + +"My darling--my baby--this is a great note! Think of that man taking him +away, like that! The little angel will get his death o' cold. What a +fool, what an idiot! And then they talk about the way women act! My +precious! What'll I do, thinking about how cold he'll be, to-night? My +baby, my heart's blood--my precious little sweetheart----!" + +In her anger she tipped over the bottle of olive-oil. It fell off the +stove and smashed on the floor. The rage of the woman became frenzied. + +"Damn my soul if I know _what_ I'm doing!" she screeched. "Oh, that +dirty husband of mine! I hope to God I never see him again. And now, how +am I going to cook? I'll have to go down to the store. Say, I wish I'd +never been born. We'd all be a lot better off! To Hell with such a----" + +"Say, are you going to keep that rough-house up all night?" demanded the +silversmith. Tired of hearing her noise, he had walked slowly into the +kitchen. Now he stood there, black-faced, with his fists doubled up in +the pockets of his jacket. + +"I'll keep it up as long as I'm a mind to!" she retorted. "What are +_you_ going to do about it?" + +"You shut your jaw," vociferated Berlanga, "or I'll break it for you!" + +Then his rage burst out. Joining a bad act to an evil threat, he rained +a volley of blows on the head of his mistress. Rafaela stopped crying, +and through her gritted teeth spat out a flood of vile epithets. + +"You dirty dog!" she cried. "You pimp! All you know how to do is hang +around women. Coward! Sissy! The only part of a man you've got is your +face!" + +He growled: + +"Take that, and that, you sow!" + +The disgusting scene lasted a long time. Terrified, the woman stopped +her noise, and fought. Soon her nose and mouth were streaming blood. In +the kitchen resounded a confused tumult of blows and kicks, as the +silversmith drove his victim into a corner and beat her up. After the +sorry job was done, Berlanga cleared out and never came back till one or +two in the morning. Then he went to his room and turned in without +making a light, no doubt ashamed of his cowardly deed. + +For a while he tried to excuse himself. After all, thought he, the whole +blame wasn't his. Rafaela's tirade and the wine he himself had drunk, +had been more than half at fault. Men, he reflected, certainly do become +brutes when they drink. + +The young woman was in her bedroom. From time to time, Berlanga heard +her sigh deeply. Her sighs were long and tremulous, like those of a +child still troubled in its dreams after having cried itself to sleep. + +The silversmith exclaimed: + +"Oh, Rafaela!" + +He had to call her twice more. At last, in a kind of groan, the young +woman answered: + +"Well, what do you want?" + +Slyly and proudly the silversmith grinned to himself. That question of +hers practically amounted to forgiveness. The sweet moment of +reconciliation was close at hand. + +"Come here!" he ordered. + +Another pause followed, during which the will of the man and of the +woman seemed to meet and struggle, with strange magnetism, in the +stillness of the dark house. + +"Come, girl!" repeated the smith, softening his voice. + +Then he added, after a moment: + +"Well, don't you want to come?" + +Another minute passed; for all women, even the simplest and most +ignorant, know to perfection the magic secret of making a man wait for +them. But after a little while, Berlanga heard Rafaela's bare feet +paddling along the hall. The young woman reached the bedroom of the +silversmith, and in the shadows her exploring hands met the hands that +Manolo was stretching out to greet her. + +"What do you want, anyhow?" she demanded, humble yet resentful. + +"Come to bed!" + +She obeyed. Many kisses sounded, given her by the smith. After a while +the man's voice asked in an endearing yet overmastering way: + +"Now, then, are you going to be good?" + + * * * * * + +Amadeo Zureda came back a couple of days later, eminently well pleased. +His boy had played the part of a regular little man during the whole +run. He had never cried, but had eaten whatever they had given him and +had slept like a top, on the coal. When Zureda kissed his wife, he +noticed that she had a black-and-blue spot on her forehead. + +"That looks like somebody had hit you," said he. "Have you been fighting +with any one?" + +She hesitated, then answered: + +"No, no. Why, who'd I be fighting with? Much less coming to blows? The +night you left, the oil-bottle fell off the sideboard, and when I went +to pick it up I got this bump." + +"How about that big scratch, there?" + +"Which one? Oh, you mean on my lip? I did that with a pin." + +"That's too bad! Take care of yourself, little lady!" + +Manolo Berlanga was there and heard all this. He had to bite his +mustache to hide a wicked laugh; but the engineer saw nothing at all. +The poor man suspected nothing. He remained quite blind. Even if he had +not loved Rafaela, his adoration of the boy would have been enough to +fill his eyes with dust. + + + + +IV + + +Truth, however, is mighty and will prevail. After a while Zureda began +to observe that something odd was going on about him. Slowly and without +knowing why, he found a sort of distance separating him from his +companions, who treated him and looked at him in a new way. You would +almost have said they were trying to extort from his eyes the confession +of some risque secret he was doubtless keeping well covered up and +hidden; a secret everybody knew. A complex sentiment of curiosity and +silence isolated him from his friends and seemed to befog him with +inexplicable ridicule. After a while he grew much puzzled by this +phenomenon. + +"I wonder if I've changed?" thought he. "Maybe I'm sick, without knowing +it. Or can it be that I'm mighty ugly, and nobody dares to tell me so?" + +Not far from the station, and near Manzanares Street, there was an +eating-house where the porters, engineers and firemen were wont to +foregather. This establishment belonged to Senor Tomas, who in his youth +had been a toreador. The aplomb and force, as well as the +stout-heartedness of that brave, gay profession still remained his. +Senor Tomas talked very little, and for those who knew him well his +words had the authority of print. He was a tall old fellow, with +powerful hands and shoulders; he wore velveteen trousers and little +Andalusian jackets of black stuff; and over the sash with which he +masked his growing girth he strapped a wide leather belt with a silver +buckle. + +One evening Senor Tomas was enjoying the air at the door of his +eating-house when Zureda passed by. The tavern-keeper beckoned the +engineer; and when Zureda had come near, looked fixedly into his eyes +and said: + +"You and I have got to have a few words." + +Zureda remained dumb. The secret, chill vibration of an evil +presentiment had passed like a cold wind through his heart. Presently +recovering speech, he answered: + +"Any time you say so." + +They reentered the tavern, which just then was almost without patrons. A +high wooden shelf, painted red and covered with bottles, ran about the +room. On the wall was hung the stuffed head of the bull that had given +Senor Tomas the tremendous gash which had torn his leg open and had +obliged him to lay aside forever the garb of a toreador. At the rear, +the bartender had fallen asleep behind the polished bar, on which a +little fountain of water was playing its perpetual music. + +The two men sat down at a big table, and the tavern-keeper clapped his +hands together. + +"Hey you, there!" he cried. + +The bartender woke up and came to him. + +"What'll you have?" asked he. + +"Bring some olives and two cups of wine." + +A long pause followed. Senor Tomas with voracious pulls at his +smoldering cigar set its tip glowing. A kind of gloomy preoccupation +hardened his close-shaven face--a face that showed itself bronzed and +fleshy beneath the white hair grandly combed and curled upon his +forehead. + +Presently he began: + +"I hate to see two men fight, because if they're spirited it's bound to +be serious. But still I can't bear to see a good man and a hard-working +man be made a laughing-stock for everybody. Get me?" + +Amadeo Zureda first grew pale and then red. Yes, he knew something was +up. The old man had called him to tell him some terrible mystery. He +felt that the strange feeling of vacancy all about him, which he had +been sensing for some time, was at last going to be explained. He +trembled. Something black, something vast was closing over his head; it +might be one of those fearful tragedies that sometimes cut a human life +in twain. + +"I don't know how to talk, and I don't like to talk," went on the +tavern-keeper. "That's why I don't beat round the bush, but I call a +spade a spade. Yes, sir, I call things by their right names. Because in +this world, Amadeo--you mark my words--everything's got a name." + +"That's so, Senor Tomas." + +"All right. And I'm one of those fellows that go right after the truth +the way I used to go after the bull--go the quickest way, which is the +best way, because it's the shortest." + +"That's right, too." + +"Well, then. I like you first-rate, Amadeo. I know you're a worker, and +I know you're one of those honest men that wouldn't stand for any +crooked work to turn a dollar. And I know, too, you're a man that knows +how to use his fists and how to run up the battle-flag of the soul, when +you have to. I'm sure of all this. And by the same token, I won't let +anybody make fun of you." + +"Thanks, Senor Tomas." + +"All right! Now, then, in my house, right here, people are saying your +wife is thick with Manolo Berlanga!" + +The eyes of the tavern-keeper and the engineer met. They remained fixed, +so, a moment. Then the eyes of Zureda opened wide, seemed starting from +their sockets. Suddenly he jumped up, and his square finger-nails fairly +sank into the wood of the table. His white lips, slavering, stammered in +a fit of rage: + +"That's a lie, a damned lie, Senor Tomas! I'll cut your heart out for +that! Yes, if the Virgin herself came down and told me that, I'd cut her +heart out, too! God, what a lie!" + +The tavern-keeper remained entirely self-possessed. Without even a +change of expression he answered: + +"All right! Find out what's true or false in this business. For you know +there's no difference between the truth and a lie that everybody's +telling. And if you decide there's nothing to this except what I say, +come and tell me, for I'm right here and everywhere to back up my +words!" + +The tavern-keeper grew silent, and Amadeo Zureda remained motionless, +struck senseless, gaping. + +After a few minutes his ideas began to calm down again, and as they grew +quiet they coordinated themselves; then the engineer felt an unwholesome +and resistless curiosity to know everything, to torture himself digging +out details. + +"You mean to tell me," asked he, "that they've talked about that, right +here?" + +"Right on the spot, sir!" + +"When?" + +"More than once, and more than twenty times; and they say worse than +that, too. They say Berlanga beats your wife, and you're wise to +everything, and have been from the beginning. And they say you stand for +it, to have a good thing, because this Berlanga fellow helps you pay the +rent." + +A couple of porters came in, and interrupted the conversation. Senor +Tomas ended up with: + +"Well now, you know all about it!" + +When Zureda left the tavern, his first impulse was to go home and put it +up to Rafaela. Either with soft words or with a stick he might get +something about Berlanga out of her. But presently he changed his mind. +Affairs of this kind can't be hurried much. It is better to go slow, to +wait, to get information bit by bit and all by one's self. When he +reached the station it was six o'clock. He met Pedro on the platform. + +"Which engine have we got to-day?" asked Amadeo. + +"Nigger," answered the fireman. + +"The devil! It just had to be her, eh?" + +That run was terrible indeed, packed full of inward struggles and of +battles with the rebellious locomotive--an infernal run that Zureda +remembered all his life. + +With due regard for the prudent scheme that he had mapped out, the +engineer set himself to observing the way his wife and Manolo had of +talking to each other. After greatly straining his attention, he could +find nothing in the cordial frankness of their relations that seemed to +pass the limits of good friendship. From the time when Berlanga had +stood godfather for little Manolo, Amadeo had begged them to use "thee" +and "thou" to each other, and this they had done. But this familiarity +seemed quite brother-and-sisterly; it seemed justified by the three +years they had been living in the same house, and could hardly be +suspected of hiding any guilty secret. + +None the less, the jealousy of Zureda kept on growing, rooting itself in +every pretext, and using even the most minor thing to inflame and color +with vampire suspicion every thought of the engineer. The notion kept +growing in Zureda; it became an obsession which made him see the dreaded +vision constantly, just as through another obsession, Berlanga's desire +for Rafaela had been born. + +At last Amadeo became convinced that his skill as a spy was very poor. +He lacked that astuteness, those powers of detection and that divining +instinct which, in a kind of second sight, makes some men get swiftly +and directly at the bottom of things. In view of his blunt character, +unfitted for any kind of diplomatic craft, he thought it better to +confront the matter face to face. + +As soon as he had come by this resolution, his uneasiness grew calm. A +sedative feeling of peace took possession of his heart. The engineer +passed that day quietly reading, waiting for night to come. Rafaela was +sewing in the dining-room, with little Manolo asleep on her lap. Half an +hour before supper, Zureda tiptoed to their bedroom and took from the +little night-table his heavy-bladed, horn-handled hunting knife--the +knife he always carried on his runs. After that he put on a flat cap, +tied a muffler round his neck--for the evening was cold--and started to +leave the house. In the emptiness of the hallway his heavy, determined +footfalls, echoing, seemed to waken something deadly. + +A bit surprised, Rafaela asked: + +"Aren't you going to eat supper here?" + +"Yes," he answered, "but I'm just going out to stretch my legs a little. +I'll be right back." + +He kissed his wife and the boy, mentally taking a long farewell of them, +and went out. + +In Senor Tomas' tavern he found Manolo Berlanga playing _tute_ with +several friends. The silversmith was drunk, and his arrogant, defiant +voice dominated the others. Slowly, with a careless and taciturn air, +the engineer approached the group. + +"Good evening, all," said he. + +At first, no one answered him, for everybody's attention was fixed on +the wayward come-and-go of the cards. When the game was done, one of the +players exclaimed: + +"Hello there, Amadeo! I didn't see _you_! But I saw your wife and kid +yesterday. Some boy! And that's a pretty woman you've got, too. I don't +say that just because you're here. It's true. Anybody can see you make +all kinds of money, and spend it all on your wife!" + +"Yes, and if he didn't," put in Berlanga, offering Zureda a glass of +wine, "there'd be plenty more who would. How about that, Amadeo?" + +Zureda remained impassive. He gulped the wine at one swallow. Then he +ordered a bottle for all hands. + +"Come on, now, I'll go you a game of _mus_," he challenged Berlanga. +"Antolin, here, will be my partner." + +The silversmith accepted. + +"Go to it!" said he. + +The players all sat down around the table, and the game began. + +"I'll open up." + +"Pass." + +"I'll stay in." + +"I'm out." + +"I'll stick." + +"I'll raise that!" + +"I renig!" + +Now and then the players stopped for a drink, and a few daring bets +brought out bursts of laughter. + +"Whose deal, now?" + +"Mine!" + +All at once Amadeo, who was looking for some excuse to get into a row +with the silversmith, cheated openly and took the pot. Manolo saw him +cheat. Incensed, he threw his cards on the floor. + +"Here now, that don't go!" he cried. "I don't care if we _are_ friends, +you can't get away with _that_!" + +All the other players, angered, backed up the silversmith. + +"No, sir! No, that don't go, here!" they echoed. + +Very quietly the engineer demanded: + +"Well, what have _I_ done?" + +"You threw away this card, the five o' clubs," replied Berlanga, "and +slipped yourself a king, that you needed! That's all. You're cheating!" + +The engineer answered the furious insult of the silversmith with a blow +in the face. They tackled each other like a couple of cats. Chairs and +table rolled on the floor. Senor Tomas came running, and he and the +other players succeeded in separating them. A crowd, attracted by the +noise of the fight, gathered like magic. The tumult of these +curiosity-seekers helped Amadeo hide his words as he and Manolo left the +tavern. He said in his companion's ear: + +"I'll be waiting for you in front of San Antonio de la Florida." + +"Suits _me_!" + +And, a few minutes later, they met at the indicated spot. + +"Let's go where nobody can see us," said the engineer. + +"I'll go anywhere you like," answered Berlanga. "Lead the way!" + +They crossed the river and came to the little fields out at Fuente de la +Teja. The shadows were thicker there, under the trees. At a +likely-looking spot the two men stopped. Zureda peered all about him. +His eyes, used to penetrating dark horizons, seemed to grow calm. The +two men were all alone. + +"I've brought you here," said the engineer, "either to kill you or have +you kill me." + +Berlanga was pretty tipsy. Brave in his cups, he peered closely at the +other. He kept his hands in the pockets of his coat. His brow was +frowning; his chin was thrust out and aggressive. He had already guessed +what Zureda was going to ask him, and the idea of being catechized +revolted his pride. + +"It looks to me," he swaggered, "like you and I were going to have a few +words." + +And immediately he added, as if he could read the thought of Zureda: + +"They've been telling you I'm thick with Rafaela, and you're after the +facts." + +"Yes, that's it," answered the engineer. + +"Well, they aren't lying. What's the use of lying? It's so, all right." + +Then he held his peace and looked at Zureda. The engineer's eyes were +usually big and black, but now by some strange miracle of rage they had +become small and red. Neither man made any further speech. There was no +need of any. All the words they might have hurled at each other would +have been futile. Zureda recoiled a few steps and unsheathed his knife. +The silversmith snicked open a big pocket blade. + +They fell violently on each other. It was a prehistoric battle, body to +body, savage, silent. Manolo was killed. He fell on his back, his face +white, his mouth twisted in an unforgettable grimace of pain and hate. + +The engineer ran away and was already crossing the bridge, when a woman +who had been following him at a short distance began to cry: + +"Catch him! Catch him! He's just killed a man!" + +A couple of policemen, at the door of an inn, stopped Zureda. They +arrested him and handcuffed him. He made no resistance. + +Rafaela went to see him in jail. The engineer, because of his love for +her and for the boy, received her with affection. He assured her he had +got into a fight with Manolo over a card-game. Fourteen or fifteen +months later he maintained the same story, in court. He claimed he and +Manolo had been playing _mus_, and that by way of a joke on his friends +he had thrown away one of the cards in his hand and slipped himself +another. Then he said Berlanga had denounced him as a cheat; they had +quarreled, and had challenged each other. + +Thus spoke Amadeo Zureda, in his chivalric attempt not to throw even the +lightest shadow on the good name of the woman he adored. Who could have +acted more nobly than he? The state's attorney arraigned him in crushing +terms, implacably. + +And the judge gave him twenty years at hard labor. + + + + +V + + +Scourged by poverty, which was not long in arriving, Rafaela had to move +away to a little village of Castile, where she had relatives. These were +poor farming people, making a hard fight for existence. By way of excuse +for her coming to them, the young woman made up a story. She said that +Amadeo had got into some kind of trouble with his employers, had been +discharged and had gone to Argentina, for there he had heard engineers +got excellent pay. After that, she had decided to leave Madrid, where +food and lodging were very dear. She ended her tale judiciously: + +"As soon as I hear from Amadeo that he's got a good job, I'm going out +there to him." + +Her relatives believed her, took pity on her and found her work. Every +day, with the first light of morning, Rafaela went down to the river to +wash. The river was about half a kilometer from the little village. By +washing and ironing, at times, or again by picking up wood in the +country and selling it, Rafaela managed, with hard, persistent toil, to +make four or five _reals_[C] a day. + +[C] Twenty or twenty-five cents. + +Two years passed. By this time the neighbors were beginning to find out +from the mail-carrier that the addresses on all the letters coming to +Rafaela were written by the same hand and all bore the postmark of +Ceuta. This news got about and set things buzzing. The young woman put +an end to folks' gossip by very sensibly confessing the truth that +Amadeo was in prison there. She said a gambling-scrape had got him into +trouble. In her confession she adopted a resigned and humble manner, +like a model wife who, in spite of having suffered much, nevertheless +forgives the man she loves, and pardons all the wrongs done her. People +called her unfortunate. They tattled a while, and then took pity on her +and accepted her. + +Worn out by time and hardships, her former beauty--piquant in a way, +though a bit common--soon faded away. The sun tanned her skin; the dust +of the country roads got into her hair, once so clean and wavy; hard +work toughened and deformed her hands, which in better days she had well +cared for. She gave over wearing corsets, and this hastened the ruin of +her body. Slowly her breasts grew flaccid, her abdomen bulged, her whole +figure took on heavy fullnesses. And her clothes, too, bit by bit got +torn and spoiled. Her petticoats and stockings, her neat patent-leather +boots bought in happier days, disappeared sadly, one after the other. +Rafaela, who had lost all desire to be coquettish or to please men, let +herself slide into poverty; and, in the end, she sank so low as to slop +round the village streets, barefooted. + +This disintegration of her will coincided with a serious loss and +confusion of her memory. The poor woman began to forget everything; and +the few recollections she still retained grew so disjointed, so vague +that they no longer were able to arouse any stimulating emotion in her. +She had never really loved Berlanga. What she had felt for him had been +only a kind of caprice, an unreasoning will o' the wisp passion; but +this amorous dalliance had soon faded out. And the only reason she had +kept on with the silversmith had been because she had been afraid of him +and had been weak-willed. The smith, moreover, had become jealous and +had often beaten her. Thus his tragic death, far from causing her any +grief, had come to her as an agreeable surprise. It had quieted her, +rested her, freed her. + +If the punishment of Zureda and his confinement in prison walls wounded +her deeply, it was not on account of her broken love for the engineer. +No, rather was it because this disaster had disturbed the easy, +comfortable rhythm of her life and because the exile of her husband had +meant misery for her, poverty, the irremediable overthrow of her whole +future. + +After the crisis which had wrecked her home, Rafaela--hardly noticing +it, herself--had grown stupid, old and of defective memory. The many +violent and dramatic shocks she had borne in so short a time had +annihilated her mediocre spirit. She suffered no remorse and had no very +clear idea as to whether her past conduct had been good or bad. It was +as if her conscience had sunk away into unthinking stupor. The only +thing that still remained in her, unchanged, was the maternal instinct +of living and working for little Manolo, so that he, too, might live. + +True enough, on certain days the wretched woman drank deeply the cup of +gall, as certain memories returned. Now and then there came to her a +poisoned vision of black recollections that rose about her, stifling +her. This usually happened down at the river-bank, while she was +washing, at times of mental abstraction caused by her monotonous and +purely mechanical toil. Then her eyes would fill with tears, which +slowly rolled down her cheeks and fell upon her hands, now reddened by +hard labor and the cold caress of the water. The other washwomen, all +about her, observed her grief, and fell to whispering: + +"See how she's crying?" + +"Poor thing!" + +"Poor? Well--it was her own doing. Fate is just. It gives everybody what +they deserve. Why didn't she look out who she was marrying?" + +From time to time away down at the end of the valley, shut in behind an +undulating line of blue hills, a train passed by. Its strident whistle, +enlarged and flung about hither and yon by echoes, broke the silence of +the plain. Some few of the younger washwomen usually sat up on their +heels, then, and followed with their eyes the precipitate on-rushing of +the train. You could behold a dreaming sadness in their eyes, a vision +of far-off, unseen cities. But Rafaela never raised her head to look at +the train. The shrieking whistle tore at her ears with the vibration of +a familiar voice. She kept on washing, while her tear-wet eyes seemed to +be peering at the mysteries of forgetfulness in the passing water. + +Despite the great physical and moral decline of the poor woman, she did +not fail to waken thoughts and hopes in a certain man. To her aspired a +fellow named Benjamin, by trade a shoemaker. He was already turning +fifty years, was a widower and had two sons in the army. + +This Benjamin's affairs went along only so-so, because not all the +people of the village could afford to wear shoes, and those who could +afford them did not feel any great need of wearing fine or new ones. +Rafaela washed and mended his clothes, and ironed a shirt for him, every +saint's-day. He paid her little, but regularly, for these services; and +gradually friendship grew up between them. This mutual liking, which was +at first impersonal and calm, finally grew in the shoemaker's heart till +it became the fire of love. + +"If you were only willing," Senor Benjamin often said to Rafaela, "we +could come to an understanding. You're all alone. So am I. Well, why not +live together?" + +She smiled, with that disillusion which comes to a soul that life has +bit by bit ravaged of all its dreams. + +"You're crazy to talk that way, Benjamin," she would answer. + +"Why?" + +"Oh, because." + +"Come now, explain that! Why am I crazy?" + +Rafaela did not want to annoy the man, because she would thus lose a +customer, and so she gave him an evasive answer: + +"Why, I'm already old." + +"Not for me!" + +"I'm ugly!" + +"That's a matter of taste. You suit _me_ to a T." + +"Thanks. But, what would people say? And suppose we had any children, +Benjamin! What would they think of us?" + +"Oh, there's a thousand ways to cover it all up. You just take a shine +to me, and I'll fix everything else." + +Rafaela promised to think it over; and every night when she came home +from work, Benjamin jokingly asked her, from his door: + +"Well, neighbor, how about it?" + +"I'm still thinking it over," she answered, with a laugh. + +"It seems to be pretty hard for you to decide." + +"It surely is!" + +"Yes, but are you going to get it settled?" + +"How do _I_ know, Benjamin? Sometimes I think one thing, and sometimes +another. Time will tell!" + +But the soul of Rafaela lay dead. Nothing could revive her illusions. +The shoemaker, after many efforts, had to give her up. And always after +that, when he saw her pass along, he would heave a sigh in an absurd, +romantic manner. + +On the first of every month, Rafaela always wrote a four-page letter to +Zureda, containing all the petty details of her quiet, humdrum life. It +was by means of these letters, written on commercial cap, that the +prisoner learned the rapid physical growth of little Manolo. By the time +the boy had reached twelve years he had become rebellious, quarrelsome +and idle. He was still in the pot-hook class, at school. Stone-throwing +was one of his favorite habits. One day he injured another boy of his +age so severely that the constable gathered him in, and nothing but the +fatherly intervention of the priest saved him from a night in the +lock-up. + +Rafaela always ended up the paragraphs thus, in which she described the +fierce wildness of the boy: + +"I tell you plainly, I can't manage him." + +This seemed a confession of weariness, that outlined both a threat and a +prophecy. + +The prisoner wrote her, in one of his letters: + +"The last jail pardon, that you may have read about in the papers, let +out many of my companions. I had no such luck. But, anyhow, they cut +five years off my time. So there are only six years more between us." + +Regularly the letters came and went between Rafaela and the prisoner at +Ceuta. Two years more drew to their close. + +But evil fortune had not yet grown weary of stamping its heel on Amadeo +Zureda's honest shoulders. + +"Please forgive me, dear Rafaela," the prisoner wrote again, after a +while, "the new sorrow I must cause you. But by the life of our son I +swear I could not avoid the misfortune which most expectedly is going to +prolong our separation, for I don't know how long. + +"As you may guess, there are few saints among the rough crowd here, that +are scraped up from all the prisons in Spain. Though I have to live +among them, I don't consider them my equals. For that reason I try to +keep away from them, and have nothing to do with their rough mirth or +noisy quarrels. Well, it happened that the end of last week a +smart-Aleck of a fellow came in, an Andalusian. He had been given twelve +years for killing one man and badly injuring another. As soon as this +fellow saw me, he took me for a boob he could make sport of, and lost no +chance of poking fun at me. I kept quiet, and--so as not to get into any +mix-up with him--turned my back on him. + +"Yesterday, at dinner, he tried to pick a quarrel. Some of the other +prisoners laughed and set him on to me. + +"'Look here, Amadeo,' said he. 'What are you in for?' + +"I answered, looking him square in the eyes: + +"'For having killed a man.' + +"'And what did you kill him for?' he insisted. + +"I said nothing, and then he added something very coarse and ugly that I +won't repeat. It's enough for you to know your name was mixed up in it. +That's why your name was the last word his mouth ever uttered. I drew my +knife--you know that in spite of all the care they take, and all their +searches, we all go armed--and cried: + +"'Look out for yourself, now, because I'm going to kill you!' + +"Then we fought, and it was a good fight, too, because he was a brave +man. But his courage was of no use to him. He died on the spot. + +"Forgive me, dearest Rafaela of my soul, and make our boy forgive me, +too. This makes my situation much worse, because now I shall have +another trial and I don't know what sentence I'll get. I realize it was +very bad of me to kill this man, but if I hadn't done it he would have +killed me, which would have been much worse for all of us." + +Several months after, Zureda wrote again: + +"I have been having my trial. Luckily all the witnesses testified in my +behalf, and this, added to the good opinion the prison authorities have +of me, has greatly improved my position. The indictment was terrible, +but I'm not worrying much about that. To-morrow I shall know my +sentence." + +All the letters of Amadeo Zureda were like this, peaceful and noble, +seemingly dictated by the most resigned stoicism. He never let anything +find its way into them which might remind Rafaela of her fault. In these +pages, filled with a strong, even writing, there was neither reproach, +dejection, nor despairing impatience. They seemed to be the admirable +reflection of an iron will which had been taught by misfortune--the most +excellent mother of all knowledge--to understand the dour secret of +hoping and of waiting. + + + + +VI + + +The very same day when Amadeo Zureda got out of jail, he received from +Rafaela a letter which began thus: + +"Little Manolo was twenty years old, yesterday." + +The one-time engineer left the boat from Africa at Valencia, passed the +night at an inn not far from the railroad station, and early next +morning took the train which was to carry him to Ecks. After so many +years of imprisonment, the old convict felt that nervous restlessness, +that lack of self-confidence, that cruel fear of destiny which men +ill-adapted to their environment are accustomed to feel every time life +presents itself to them under a new aspect. Defeat at last makes men +cowardly and pessimistic. They recall everything they have suffered and +the uselessness of all their struggles, and they think: "This, that I am +now beginning, will turn out badly for me too, like all the rest." + +Amadeo Zureda had altered greatly. His white mustache formed a sad +contrast with his wrinkled face, tanned by the African sun. The +expression of an infinite pain seemed to deepen the peaceful gaze of his +black eyes. The vertical wrinkle in his brow had deepened until it +seemed a scar. His body, once strong and erect, had grown thin; and as +he walked he bent somewhat forward. + +The rattling uproar of the train and the swift succession of panoramas +now unrolling before his eyes recalled to the memory of Zureda the joys +of those other and better times when he had been an engineer--joys now +largely blotted out by the distance of long-gone years. He remembered +Pedro, the Andalusian fireman, and those two engines, "Sweetie" and +"Nigger," on which he had worked so long. An inner voice seemed asking +him: "What can have become of all this?" + +He also thought about his house. He mentally built up again its facade, +beheld its balconies and evoked the appearance of each room. His memory, +clouded by the grim and brutalizing life of the prison, had never dipped +so profoundly into the past, nor had it ever brushed away the dust from +his old memories and so clearly reconstructed them. He thought about his +son, about Rafaela and Manolo Berlanga, seeming to behold their faces +and even their clothing just as they had been long ago; and he felt +surprised that revocation of the silversmith's face should produce no +pain in him. At that moment and in spite of the irreparable injury which +had been done him, he felt no hatred of Berlanga. All the rancor which +until then had possessed him seemed to sink down peacefully into an +unknown and ineffable emotion of pity and forgetfulness. The poor +convict once more examined his conscience, and felt astonished that he +could no longer find any poison there. May it not be, after all, that +liberty reforms a man? + +At Jativa a man got into the car, a man already old, whose face seemed +to the former engineer to bear some traces of a friendly appearance. The +new-comer also, on his side, looked at Zureda as if he remembered him. +Thus both of them little by little silently drew together. In the end +they studied each other with warm interest, as if sure of having +sometime known each other before. Amadeo was the first to speak. + +"It seems to me," said he, "that we have already seen each other +somewhere, years ago." + +"That was just what I was thinking, myself," answered the other. + +"The fact is," went on the engineer, "I'm sure we must have talked to +each other, many times." + +"Yes, yes!" + +"We must have been friends, sometime." + +"Probably." + +And they continued looking at each other, enwrapped by the same thought. +Zureda asked: + +"Have you ever lived in Madrid?" + +"Yes, ten or twelve years." + +"Where?" + +"Near the Estacion del Norte, where I was an employee." + +"Say no more!" exclaimed Zureda. "I worked for the same company, myself. +I was an engineer." + +"On what line?" + +"Madrid to Bilbao." + +Slowly and silently memories began to rise and group themselves together +in the enormous, black forgetfulness of those twenty years. Amadeo +Zureda took out his tobacco-box and offered tobacco to his companion. +Whatever seemed to have been lacking to awaken memory, in the other's +appearance or in his voice, was now instantly supplied as the engineer +saw him take the fine-cut, roll a cigarette, light it and afterward +thrust it into the left corner of his mouth. The memories of the old +convict were flooded with light. + +"Enough of this!" cried he. "You are Don Adolfo Moreno!" + +"That's right, I'm the man!" + +"You were a conductor on the Asturias line when I worked on the one +running to Bilbao. Don't you remember me? Amadeo Zureda?" + +"Yes, indeed!" + +The two men embraced each other. + +"Why, I used to say 'thee' and 'thou' to you!" cried Don Adolfo. + +"Yes, yes, I remember that, too. I remember everything, now. We were +good friends once, eh? Well, time seems to have made some pretty big +changes in both of us." + +When the joy of the first moments of meeting had been somewhat allayed, +the former conductor and the old engineer grew sad as they recalled the +many bitter experiences life had dealt them. + +"I've already heard of your misfortune," said Don Adolfo, "and I was +mighty sorry to hear about it. Sometimes a youthful moment of madness, +that lasts only a minute, will cost a man his whole future. Why did you +do it?" + +Stolidly Zureda answered: + +"Oh, it was a quarrel over cards." + +"Yes, that's so; they told me about it." + +Amadeo breathed easy. The conductor knew nothing; and it seemed probable +that many others should be as ignorant as he about what had driven him +to kill Manolo. Don Adolfo asked: + +"Where have you been?" + +"At Ceuta." + +"A long time?" + +"Twenty years and some months." + +"The deuce! You've just come from down there?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"It's evident to me," continued Don Adolfo, "you've suffered a great +deal more than I have; but you mustn't think I have been lucky, either. +Life is a wild animal that drags down every one who tries to grapple +with it, and yet people keep right on struggling. I'm a widower. My poor +wife has been dust for nearly fifteen years. The eldest of my three +daughters got married, and both the others died. Now I'm on a pension +and live at Ecks with a sister-in-law, the widow of my brother Juan. I +don't think you remember him." + +Little by little, and with many beatings about the bush, because +confidence is a timid quality which soon takes flight from those +scourged by misfortune, the ex-convict told his plans. He hoped to +establish himself at Ecks, with his wife. He had brought about two +thousand pesetas from prison, with which he hoped to buy a little house +and a bit of good land. + +"I don't know beans about farming," he added, "but that's like +everything else. You learn by doing. Moreover, my son, who has grown up +in the town, will help me a great deal." + +Don Adolfo wrinkled his brow with a grave and reflective expression, +like a man who is remembering something. + +"From what you say," he exclaimed, "I think I know who your wife is." + +The old engineer felt shame. The bleeding image of his misfortune was +hard to wipe from his memory. The mention of his wife had freshened it. +He answered; + +"You probably do know her. The village must be very small." + +"Very small, indeed. What's your wife's name?" + +"Rafaela." + +"Yes, yes," answered Don Adolfo. "Rafaela's the woman. I know her well. +As for Manolo, your son, I know him too." + +Amadeo Zureda trembled. He felt afraid, and cold. For a few moments he +remained silent, without knowing what to say. Don Adolfo continued with +rough frankness: + +"Your Manolo is a pretty tough nut, and he gives his poor mother a +mighty hard time. She's a saint, that woman. I think he even beats her. +Well, I won't tell you any more." + +Pale and trembling, putting down a great desire to weep which had just +come over him, Amadeo asked: + +"Is it possible? Can he be as bad as that?" + +"I tell you he's a dandy!" repeated Don Adolfo. "If he died, the devil +would think a good while before taking him. He's a drunkard and a +gambler, always chasing women and fighting. He's the limit!" After a +moment he added: "Really, he don't seem like a son of yours, at all." + +Amadeo Zureda made no answer. Looking out of the car window, he tried to +distract himself with the landscape. The old conductor's words had +crushed him. He had been ignorant of all this, for Rafaela in her +letters had said nothing about it. He was astonished at realizing how +evil destiny was attacking him, denying him that rest which every +hard-working man, no matter how poor, is at last entitled to. + +Retracing the hateful pathway of his memories, he reached the source of +all his misfortunes. Twenty years before, when Senor Tomas had told him +of the relations between Rafaela and Manolo, he too had declared: "They +say he beats her." + +What connection might there be between these statements, which seemed to +weave a nexus of hate between the son and the dead lover? Once more the +words of the old conductor sounded in his ears, and prophetically took +hold upon his soul: + +"Manolo does not appear to be your son." + +Without having read Darwin, Amadeo Zureda instinctively sought +explanation and consolation in the laws of heredity, for the pain now +consuming him. Never had he, even when a young fellow, been given to +drink or cards. He had not been fond of the women, nor had he been a +meddler and bully. And how had such degradations been able to engraft +themselves into the blood of his son? + +Don Adolfo and Zureda got out at the station of Ecks. Afternoon was +drawing to its close. On the platform there were only six or seven +persons. The former conductor waved his hand to a woman and to a young +man, drawing near. He cried: + +"There are your folks!" + +This time seeing Rafaela, Amadeo did not hesitate. It was she indeed, +despite her protuberant abdomen, her sad fat face, and her white hair. +It was she! + +"Rafaela!" cried he. He would have known her among a thousand other +women. They fell into each other's arms, weeping with that enormous joy +and pain felt by all who part in youth and meet again in old age, with +the whole of life behind them. After the greeting with his wife was at +an end, the engineer embraced Manolo. + +"What a fine fellow you are!" he stammered, when the beating of his +heart, growing a little more calm, let him speak. + +Don Adolfo said good-by. + +"I'm in a hurry. We'll see each other to-morrow!" He saluted, and walked +away. + +Amadeo Zureda, with Rafaela at his right and Manolo at his left, quitted +the station. + +"Is the town very far away?" asked he. + +"Hardly two kilometers," she answered. + +"All right then, let's walk." + +Slowly they made their way down the road that stretched, winding, +between two vast reaches of brown, plowed land. Far in the distance, +lighted by the dying sun, the little hamlet was visible; that miserable +collection of huts about which Zureda had thought so many times, +dreaming that there he should find the sweet refuge of peaceful +forgetfulness and of redemption. + + + + +VII + + +After Amadeo came to Ecks, Rafaela went no longer to the river. The +former engineer was unwilling that his wife should toil. They had enough +for all to live on for a while, with what he had made in prison. They +spoke not of the past. You might almost have thought they had forgotten +it. Why remember? Zureda had forgiven everything. Rafaela, moreover, was +no longer the same. The gay happiness of her eyes had gone dead; the +waving blackness of her hair and the girlish quickness of her body had +vanished. There was a melancholy abandonment, heavy with remorse, in her +sad and flabby face, in the humility of her look, in the slow, round +fatness of her whole body. + +The ex-convict followed the advice of Don Adolfo and gave up all idea of +devoting himself to farming. In the best street of the village, near the +church, he set up a general repair-shop where he took in both wood and +iron work. There he shod a mule, mended a cart or put a new coulter to a +plow, with equal facility. + +He had not been established long when his modest little business began +to pick up and be a real money-maker. Very soon his customers increased. +The disquieting story of his imprisonment seemed forgotten. Everybody +liked him, for he was good, affable and pleasant, in a melancholy way. +He paid his little debts promptly, and worked hard. + +Zureda felt life once more grow calm. Slowly his future, which till then +had looked stormy, commenced to appear a land of hospitality, +comfortable and good. The threat of to-morrow, which makes so many men +uneasy, had ceased to be a problem for him. His future was already +founded, laid out, foreseen. The fifteen or twenty years that still +might remain to him, he hoped to pass in the loving accumulation of a +little fortune to leave his Rafaela. + +He got up with the sun and worked industriously all day, driven by this +ambition. In the evening he took a dog that Don Adolfo had given him, +and went wandering in the outskirts of the village. One of his favorite +walks was out to the cemetery. He often pushed open the old gate, which +never was quite closed, and in the burial-ground sat himself down upon a +broken mill-stone which happened to be there. Seated thus, he liked to +smoke a cigarette. + +Many crosses were blackening with age, in the tall grass that covered +the earth. The old man often called up memories of the time when he had +been an engineer. He remembered the prison, too, and his tired will +seemed to tremble. Peacefully he looked about him. Here, sometime, would +be his bed. What rest, what silence! And he breathed deep, enthralled by +the rare and calming joy of willingness to die. Here inside the old wall +of mud bricks, reddened by the setting sun--here in this garden of +forgetfulness--how well one ought to sleep! + +Only one trouble disturbed and embittered the peaceful decline of Amadeo +Zureda. This trouble was his son, Manolo. Through an excess of fatherly +love, doubtless mistaken, he had the year before got Manolo exempted +from military service. The boy's wild, vicious character was fanatically +rebellious against all discipline. In vain Zureda sought to teach him a +trade. Threats and entreaties, as well as all kinds of wise advice, were +shattered against the invincibly gypsy-like will of the young fellow. + +"If you don't want to support me," Manolo often used to say, "let me go. +Kick me out. I'll get by, on my own hook." + +Often and often Manolo vanished from the little town. He stayed away for +days at a time, engaged in mysterious adventures. People coming in from +neighboring villages reported him as given over to gaming. One night he +showed up with a serious wound in the groin, a deep knife-stab. + +"Who did that to you?" demanded Zureda. + +The youth answered: + +"Nobody's business. _I_ know who it is. Sometime or other he'll get his, +all right!" + +To save himself from police investigation, Zureda said nothing about it. +For some weeks, Manolo kept quiet. But early one morning a couple of +rural guards found the body of a man on the river-bank. His body was +covered with stabs. All investigations to find the murderer were +fruitless. The crime remained unavenged. Only Amadeo--who just a bit +after the discovery of the body had discovered Manolo washing a +blood-stained handkerchief in a water-jar--was certain that his son had +done this murder. + +Once more the sinister words of Don Adolfo recurred to his mind, +bruising him, maddening him, seeming to bore into his very brain: + +"He does not seem to be your son, at all!" + +Amadeo pondered this, and decided it was true. The boy did not seem his. +Manolo's outlaw way of living did not stop here. Taking advantage of his +mother's love and of the quiet disposition of Amadeo, almost every day +he showed the very greatest need of money. + +"I've got to have a hundred pesetas," he would say. "I've just _got_ to +have them! If you people don't come across, well, all right! I'll get +them, some way. But perhaps you'll be sorry then, you didn't give them +to me!" + +He was mad for enjoyment. When his mother tried to warn and advise him, +saying: "Why don't you work, you young wretch? Don't you see how your +father does?"--he would retort: + +"I don't call _that_ living, to work! I'd rather go hang myself, than +live the way the old man lives!" + +You would have thought Rafaela was his slave, by the lack of decency and +respect he showed her. When he called her, he would hardly condescend to +look at her at all. He spoke little to his father, and what he said was +rough and harsh. The worst boy in the world could not have acted with +more insolence. His wild spirit, lusting pleasure, seemed to burn with +an instinctive flame of hate. + +One night when Amadeo came home from the Casino where he and Don Adolfo, +with the druggist and a few other such-like worthies, were wont to meet +every Saturday, he found the door of his shop ajar. This astonished him. +He raised his voice and began to call: + +"Manolo! You, Manolo!" + +Rafaela answered him, from the back room of the house: + +"He's not here." + +"Do you know whether he's going to come back soon? I want to know, +before locking up." + +A short silence followed. After a bit, Rafaela answered: + +"You'd better lock up, anyhow." + +There seemed to be something like a sob of grief in the voice of the +poor woman. The old engineer, alarmed by a presentiment of something +terrible, strode through the shop and went on into the house. Rafaela +was sitting in front of the stove, in the kitchen, her hands humbly +crossed on her lap, her eyes full of tears, her white hair rumpled up, +as if some parricide hand had furiously seized her head. Zureda took +hold of his wife by the shoulders and forced her to get up. + +"What--what's happened?" he stammered. + +Rafaela's nose was all bloody, her forehead was bruised and her hands +bore lacerations. + +"What's the matter with you?" repeated the engineer. + +Old and dull as were his eyes, now they blazed up again with that red +lightning of death which, twenty years before, had sent him to prison. +Rafaela was terrified, and tried to lie out of it. + +"It's nothing, Amadeo," she stammered. "Nothing, I tell you. Let me tell +you! I--I fell--that's the living truth!" + +But Zureda shook the truth out of her with threats, almost with +violence. + +"Manolo's been beating you, eh? He has, hasn't he?" + +She began to sob, still trying to deny it, not wanting to accuse her +heart's darling. The old engineer repeated, trembling with rage: + +"He beat you, eh? What?" + +Rafaela took a long time to answer. She was afraid to speak, but finally +she confessed everything. + +"Yes, yes, he did. Oh--it's terrible!" + +"What did he beat you for?" + +"Because he wanted money." + +"God! The swine!" + +The rage and pain of the old convict burst out in a leonine roar, that +filled the kitchen. + +"He told you that?" demanded Amadeo. "Said he wanted money?" + +"Yes." + +"How much?" + +"Twenty-five pesetas. I refused as long as I could. But what could I do? +Oh, if you'd seen him then, you wouldn't have known him. I was awfully +scared--thought he was going to kill me----" + +As she said this, she covered her eyes with her hands. She seemed to be +shutting out from them, together with the ugly vision of what had just +happened, some other sight--the sight of something horrible, something +long-past, something quite the same. + +Zureda, afraid of showing the tumultuous rage in his heart, said nothing +more. The most ominous memories crowded his mind. A long, long time ago, +before he had gone to jail, Don Tomas in the course of an unforgettable +conversation had told him that Manolo Berlanga maltreated Rafaela. And +all these years afterward, when he was once more a free man, Don Adolfo +had said the same thing about young Manolo. Remembering this strange +agreement of opinions, Amadeo Zureda felt a bitter and inextinguishable +hate against the whole race of the silversmith--a race accursed, it +seemed, which had come into the world only to hurt and wound him in his +dearest affections. + +Next morning the old man, who had hardly slept more than an hour or two, +woke early. + +"What time is it?" asked he. + +Rafaela had already risen. She answered: + +"Almost six." + +"Has Manolo come back?" + +"Not yet." + +The old engineer got out of bed, dressed as usual and went down to his +shop. Rafaela kept watch on him. The apparent calm of the old man looked +suspicious. Noon came, and Manolo did not return for dinner. Night drew +on, nor did he come back to sleep. Zureda and his wife went to bed +early. A few days drifted along. + +Sunday morning, Zureda was sitting at the door of his shop. It was just +eleven. Women, some with mantillas, others with but a simple kerchief +knotted about their heads, were going to mass. High up in the Gothic +steeple, the bells were swinging, gay and clangorous. A neighbor, +passing, said to the old engineer: + +"Well, Manolo's showed up." + +"When?" asked Zureda, phlegmatically. + +"Last night." + +"Where did you see him?" + +"At Honorio's inn." + +"A great one, that boy is! He's certainly some fine lad! Never came near +_me_!" + +The day drew on, without anything happening. Cautiously the engineer +guarded against telling Rafaela that their son had returned. A little +while before supper, giving her the excuse that Don Adolfo was waiting +for him at the Casino, Zureda left the house and made his way to the inn +where Manolo was wont to meet his rough friends. There he found him, +indeed, gaming with cards. + +"I've got something to say to you," said he. + +The young man threw his cards on the table and got up. He was tall, slim +and good-looking; and in the thin line of his lips and the penetrant +gaze of his greenish eyes lay something bold, defiant. + +The two men went out into the street, and, saying no word, walked to the +outskirts of the town. When Amadeo thought they had come to a good +place, he stopped and looked his son fair in the face. + +"I've brought you out here," said he, "to tell you you're never coming +back to my house. Understand me?" + +Manolo nodded "Yes." + +"I'm throwing you out," continued the old man. "Get that, too! I'm +throwing you out, because I won't deal with a dog like you. I won't have +one anywhere around! I tell you this not as father to son, but as one +man to another, so you can come back at me if you want to. Understand? +I'm ready for you! That's why I've brought you 'way out here." + +As he spoke, slowly, his stern spirit caught fire. His cheeks grew pale, +and in his jacket pockets his fists knotted. Manolo's savage blood began +to boil, as well. + +"Don't make me say anything, you!" he flung at his father. + +He turned as if to walk away. His voice, his gesture, the scornful shrug +of his shoulders, with which he seemed to underscore his words, all were +those of a ruffian and a bully. Anybody would have said that the tough, +swaggering silversmith lived again, in him. Zureda controlled his anger, +and began once more: + +"If you want to fight, you'll be a fool to wait till to-morrow. I'm +ready for it, now." + +"Crazy, you?" demanded the youth. + +"No!" + +"Well, you act it!" + +"You're wrong. I know all about _you_--I know you've been beating your +mother. And you can't pay for a thing like that even with every drop of +your blood. No, sir! Not even the last drop of pig's blood you've got in +your body would pay for that!" + +Amadeo Zureda was afraid of himself. He had begun to shiver. All the +hate that, long ago, had flung him upon Berlanga, now had burst forth +again in a fresh, strong, overwhelming torrent. + +Suddenly Manolo stepped up to his father and seized him by the lapel. + +"You going to shut up?" he snarled, in rage. "Or are you bound to drive +me to it?" + +Zureda's answer was a smash in the face. Then the two men fell upon each +other, first with their fists, presently with knives. At that moment the +old man saw in the face of the man he had believed his son, the same +expression of hate that twenty years ago had distorted the features of +Manolo Berlanga. Those eyes, that mouth all twisted into a grimace of +ferocity, that slim and feline body now trembling with rage, all were +like the silversmith's. The look of the father came back again in that +of the son, as exactly as if both faces had been poured in the same +mold. + +And for the first time, after so long a time, the old engineer clearly +understood everything. + +Annihilated by the realization of this new disaster, no longer having +any heart to defend himself, the wretched man let his arms fall. And +just at this moment Manolo, beside himself with rage, plunged the fatal +blade into his breast. + +Now with his vengeance complete, the parricide took to flight. + +Amadeo Zureda, dying, was carried to the hospital. There, that same +night, Don Adolfo came to see him. The good neighbor's grief was +terrible, even to the point of the grotesque. + +"Is it true, what people are saying?" he asked, weeping. "Is it true?" + +The wounded man had hardly strength enough to press his hand a very +little. + +"Good-by, Adolfo," he stammered. "Now I know what I--had to know. You +told me, but I--couldn't believe it. But now I know you--were right. +Manolo was not--my son----" + + * * * * * + + + + +THE NECKLACE + + +The first act was finished. Enrique Darles went down to the foyer. His +provincial curiosity drew him thither. He felt an eagerness to absorb +the vast, motley spirit of the city. He wanted to behold many things, to +school himself, strengthen himself with all these new impressions. Above +all he wanted to feel the life-currents of Madrid beating about his +migratory feet. + +A few minutes before he had been sitting up there in the "peanut +gallery" of the Teatro Real. And from that vulgar place he had beheld +the theater with its vast ranges of seats and its boxes all drenched +under the blinding dazzle of hundreds of electric lights. The theater +had looked to him like some rare and beautiful garden; or maybe it had +been a kind of gigantic nosegay, where the sparkling diamonds on women's +throats had seemed dew-drops caught on great silk petals, on glossy +velvets, on white, bare shoulders. + +So entirely absorbed had he been in this spectacle that he had hardly +paid any attention at all to what the orchestra and the actors had been +about. Every other emotion had been shut from his soul by these dazzling +sight-impressions, that had never wearied him. The wonderful, human +garden spread out below him had exhaled rare perfumes. A sensual and +soporific kind of vapor had risen all about him--an incense blent of the +odors of new-mown hay, of jasmine, musk and Parmesan violets, of +daintily-bathed women's flesh, of wonderful lingerie. And he had studied +all this luminous picture, resplendent as the climax of a brilliant +play. Above all he had studied the women, with their sensuous bodies; +their unashamed bosoms that had been the targets of analytical eagerness +through many opera-glasses; their gay and laughing faces, whereof the +beauty had been enhanced by the placid security of wealth. He had +observed their deftly combed and curled little heads, their jewel-laden +hands--hands that had waved big feather-fans to and fro over the gauzy +stuff of their gowns. + +Enrique wanted to see all this wonderful world at close range, so he +went down to the foyer. And there he stopped, just a bit ashamed of +himself. For the first time he was beginning to realize that his +out-of-date slouch hat, his skimpy black suit that made him look like a +high-school boy, and his old boots that needed a shine were greatly out +of place. He felt that his flowing necktie, which he had tried to knot +up with student-like carelessness, was just as ugly as all the rest of +him. Correctly dressed men were passing all about him, with elegant +frock-coats that bore flowers in their buttonholes and with impeccable +Tuxedos. Women were regally trailing grosgrain and watered-silk skirts +over the soft, red carpet. It all seemed a majestic symphony of silks, +brocades and splendid furs, of wonderful ankles glimpsed through the +perverse mystery of open-work stockings, of fascinating adornments, of +bracelets whose bangles tinkled their golden song on the ermine +whiteness of soft arms. + +Abashed, feeling himself wholly out of place, young Darles +self-consciously strolled over to look at a bust of Gayarre--a bronze +bust that showed the man with short, up-tossed hair. Its energy made one +think of Othello. Quite at once, a hand dropped familiarly on Darles' +shoulder. The young man turned. + +"Don Manuel! You? What a surprise!" + +Don Manuel was a man of middle height, thick-set and just a trifle bald. +He looked about fifty. A heavy, curling red beard covered his +full-blooded, fleshy, prosperous cheeks and chin. He wore evening-dress. +His short, thick, epicurean nose supported gold-bowed spectacles. + +"Well, my boy," he exclaimed. "You, here?" + +Enrique blushed violently, without exactly understanding why, as he +answered: + +"Yes, I came to--to see----" + +Hardly knowing what he was about, he took off his hat, with that respect +we learn even as children, when confronted by our parents' friends. Now +he stood there, holding the hat with both hands across his breast. Don +Manuel, you know, was a deputy in the National Assembly. The great man +made Enrique put his hat on, again. + +"What are you doing in Madrid?" asked he. + +"Studying." + +"Law?" + +"No, sir. Medicine." + +"That's a first-rate profession. What year are you in?" + +"Freshman," answered Darles, and smiled in a shamefaced sort of way. He +knew his answers were short and clumsy, and the feeling of shabbiness +oppressed him more than ever. Don Manuel glanced about him, with a kind +of arrogant ease. Two or three times he murmured: "I'm waiting for +somebody." Then he began to talk to the student again, asking him about +his father and the political boss of the home town. Darles kept on +answering every question just the same way: + +"No change, down there. Everything's all right." + +And again the conversation was broken off by Don Manuel's expectant +glancing about for the friend he was to meet. + +The deputy asked, after a minute or two: + +"You're living in a boarding-house, aren't you?" + +"No, sir." + +"Where, then?" + +"In Calle Ballesta. I've rented a little inside room, on the fourth +floor. It costs me thirteen pesetas a month, and I eat at a little +tavern on the same street." + +"I see you know how to rub along. You can save money, if you're willing +to fight with landladies. After you've got thoroughly used to Madrid, +nothing can make you ever go back home. Madrid is wonderful! With money, +a clever man can have all kinds of amusement here." + +Don Manuel added, using that confidential air with which fools and +parvenus try to impress people they think beneath them: + +"See here! You're not a boy, any more. And I--hang it all!--you can't +call me old, yet. I don't see my friend showing up, anywhere, so we can +have a little talk. I've got--I've got something bothering me. You +understand?" + +Enrique nodded. + +"You know her? Alicia Pardo?" + +"No, sir." + +"She's very popular, in the gay set. A beauty! At the Casino we call her +'Little Goldie'." + +His whole expression suddenly changed. His eyes began to gleam, with +joyful gluttony. The congested redness of his cheeks grew deeper, and he +turned round, stroking his beard and straightening up his top-hat with +the vanity of a fool who thinks people are admiring him. + +The long, sharp trilling of electric bells announced that the second act +was about to begin. Everybody began crowding back into the theater; and +now, in the solitude of the foyer, the bust of Gayarre seemed higher. +Don Manuel exclaimed: + +"Come along with me. I'll introduce you to Alicia." + +Don Manuel noticed the student's dismayed look, and added: + +"That's all right about your not having a dress-suit on. You can stay in +the rear of the box." + +He started off with a firm step, trying to assume the ease and grace of +youth. Enrique followed him without a word. He felt both happy and +afraid. + +They reached the outer box, that Don Manuel judged good enough for the +young fellow. The deputy murmured: + +"This is all right, isn't it? I'll see you later. You can see +everything here." + +Enrique made no answer. The play was already going on, and in the +religious stillness of the theater the chorus of the piece was rising in +triumphal harmony. It was one of those pleasant Italian operas, +freighted for all of us with memories of youth. Darles ventured to raise +one of the heavy curtains just a little, that shut the outer box off +from the inner one. A young woman was sitting there, with her back to +him and her elbows on the railing of the box. She was all in white. He +could see the tempting outlines of her firm hips, beneath the childish +insufficiency of her girdle. Her shoulders were plump and of flawless +perfection. On the snow of her bare neck her blonde hair, tinged with +red, shadowed tawny reflections. Two splendid emeralds trembled, green +as drops of absinthe, in the rosy lobes of her small, fine ears. + +Don Manuel was beside her. Darles noted that Alicia and the deputy had +very little to say to each other. Suddenly she turned her head with an +inquisitive air, graceful and fascinating; and the student received full +in the eyes the shock of two large, green, luminous pupils--living +emeralds, indeed. Her scrutiny of him was short, searching and curious; +it changed to an expression of scorn. + +Darles flushed red and began to tremble. He let the curtain fall, and +took refuge at the rear of the outer box. His first impulse was to +escape; but presently he changed his mind, for it seemed to him more +than a little rude to take French leave. The student thought he was +bored, but in reality he was afraid. In spite of his agitation, he +waited. And bit by bit the magic spell of the opera took possession of +him and freed him from embarrassment. + +The piece now going on was one of those romantic, wholly lyric poems in +which the actors are everything. The environment about them, the sense +of objectivity, played no role. The 'cellos, sighing with lassitude and +pity, lamented in gentle accord; the violins cut through the harmony +with sharp cries of rebellion and gay arpeggios. And the voice of the +tenor rose above that many-toned, protean, orchestrated poem with warm +persuasion, wailing into inconsolable laments. + +Enrique got up again, and once more timidly drew apart the curtains of +the outer box. Nobody noticed him. Alicia still sat there with her back +toward him, transfixed by the fairy magic of the opera. Her emotions +seemed almost to transpire through the white skin of her back and +shoulders. Enrique Darles once more began to tremble. His ideas grew +fantastic. When he had seen the young woman's eyes, they had appeared +two emeralds; and now the emeralds twinkling beneath the blaze of her +hair seemed to be looking at him like two pupils. But this absurdity +soon faded from his mind. The orchestra was languorously beginning a +_ritornelle_; and all through the main motif independent musical phrases +were strung like beads. These slid into chromatics, rising, beating up +to lose themselves in one vast chord of agony supreme. And, in that huge +lamentation, there mingled depths of disillusion, whispers of hope, +desires and wearinesses, laughter and grimaces--the whole of life, +indeed, seemed blent there, swift-passing, tragic, knotted in the +bitterness of everything that ever has been and that still must be. + +Enrique sat down again. Nameless suffering clutched his throat, so that +he felt a profound desire for tears. Like a motion-picture film, both +past and present flashed across his vision in swift flight. His poor, +old father and the little chemist's shop at home appeared before +him--the miserable shop that hardly eked out a penurious living for the +old man. Then he saw himself, as soon as his studies should be finished, +condemned to go back to that hateful, monotonous little town. There he +would labor to pay back his parents everything they had given him; and +there all his years of youth, all his love-illusions, all his artistic +inspirations would soon fade. There he must bury all the finest of his +soul. Then, no doubt, he would marry and have children; and then--well, +life would stretch out into a long, straight line, unwavering, with +never any depths or heights, lost in the monotony of a blank desert. +What could be more terrible than to know just what we are destined to be +in ten years, in twenty years, in thirty? + +The poor student tugged at his hair, in desperation, and tears blurred +his sight. How he would have loved to be rich, to have no family, to be +the sport of the unforeseen! For is not the unforeseen pregnant with all +the vicissitudes of poetry? He felt the blood of conquerors pulsing in +his arteries, the energies of bold adventurers who dare brave perils and +emprise, and leave their bones on far-off shores. This fighting strain, +this crave for danger, filled him with boundless melancholy as he +reflected that he must live on, on to old age, and do no differently +than all other men do, year by year. Destiny meant for him no more than +this: to follow a costly, hard and tedious career merely that he might +make a pittance, get a wife and find some hole or corner to live +in--some poor, mean little house in a world of palaces, some commonplace +love in a world throbbing with so many passions, some paltry dole in a +world crowded with so many fortunes! + +Whipped by the music, the foolish grief of Enrique Darles broke into +sobs. + +Now the second act was done, and Don Manuel and Alicia came into the +outer box. The young woman's eyes--green, eloquent eyes--filled with +astonishment. + +"What?" she asked. "You're crying?" + +Before the student could answer, she turned to her companion and said: + +"What do you think about that, now? He's been crying!" + +In shame, Enrique answered: + +"I don't know. I--I'm upset. But--yes, maybe----" + +She smiled, and asked: + +"You've got a sweetheart, haven't you?" + +"No, no, Senorita." + +"Well then, why----?" + +"It's all foolishness, I know, but every time I hear music--even bad +music--it makes me sad." + +"That's funny! _I_ don't feel that way!" + +The red-faced, thick-set Don Manuel shrugged his square shoulders as +much as to say it mattered nothing, and introduced them to each other. +Enrique's feverish hand held for a moment the cool, soft hand--snow and +velvet--of Little Goldie. Then all three sat down on the same divan, +Alicia between the two men. Don Manuel drew out his cigar-case. + +"Smoke?" asked he. + +"No, thanks." + +"Good boy!" exclaimed the deputy. "You haven't any vices, have you?" + +"What?" asked Alicia. "You don't smoke?" + +"No, Senorita." + +"How funny you are! Well, _I_ do!" + +Enrique blushed again, and looked down. He saw quite clearly that this +little detail made the beggarliness of his clothes even more noticeable. +Women always seem to like a man to smoke. Tobacco is their best perfume. +The student felt furious at himself. To regain countenance before this +girl he would gladly have consumed all the Egyptian or Turkish +cigarettes in Don Manuel's case. But it was too late, now. Opportunity +was gone; opportunity, that master-magic which endues everything with +grace and worth. + +The young woman's self-possession was quite English in its cool +perfection as she lighted up and fell to smoking, with one leg crossed +over the other. She leaned her shoulders against the dun-hued back of +the divan. And now, all about her diabolical, reddish-gold hair, the +cigarette-smoke mounted thinly on the quiet air, and wove blue veils. +Darles observed her, from the corner of his eye. Her face was aquiline, +with wide nostrils, with a little blood-red, cruel mouth and a low +forehead that gave the impression of hard, instinctive selfishness. Her +big, greenish eyes peered out with boredom and command. Her whole +expression was cold, keen, probing, pitiless. + +A string of seed-pearls girdled her soft, rosy throat. Her fingers +blazed with the fire of her rings. Her nails were sharp as claws. In the +well-harmonized rhythms of her every attitude, in all her perfect +modelings, in every nuance and detail of her--wonderful plaything for +men's dalliance--Enrique, untutored country boy though he was, discerned +a supremely selfish ego. He realized this woman was one of those +emotionless creatures of willfulness, wholly self-centered, who are +incapable of sorrow. + +Don Manuel's mood was brusque, with that brusquerie of a rich, healthy +man who has a pretty woman in tow, as he exclaimed: + +"Well now, Enrique, how do you like my Little Goldie? I bet you never +saw anything like her, back home!" Triumphantly he added: "She doesn't +cost much, either. When I first met her, I asked: 'What shall I give +you?' She answered: 'A box at the Teatro Real.' Why, that's a bagatelle! +Only a little more than thirteen hundred pesetas for fourteen plays. And +here we are. I tell you the little lady doesn't ask much." + +Darles answered nothing. His emotions choked him--the novelty of this +new world that till now he had not even known by hearsay; a topsy-turvy, +unmoral world where, as in art, beauty formed the only criterion of +worth; a world where women sold themselves for an opera-box. + +All this time Alicia Pardo had been studying Enrique. The downright +frankness of her look was alarming in its amusement. Enrique's extreme +youth; the simplicity of his answers; the Apollo-like perfection of his +features; the obsidian hue of his wavy hair which marked him as from the +south of Spain; the black ardor of eyes, that in their eager curiosity +contrasted with the boyish smoothness of his face; yes, even his +proneness to blush, had all greatly interested her. Above all, Alicia +found her attention wakened by the artistic spirit in him, which had +wept at the sound of the music. Alicia had never seen men weep except +through jealousy, or through some other even baser and more ignoble +emotion. Therefore in the tears of this boy she discovered something +wonderful and great. + +And through her little head, all filled with curious whims, the idea +drifted that it would be passing strange and sweet to let herself be +loved by such a boy. Suddenly she exclaimed: + +"What are _you_ doing in Madrid?" + +"I'm studying." + +"Ah, indeed? A student, eh? I read a novel, a while ago, that I liked +very much indeed. The hero was a student. Quite a coincidence, eh?" + +Darles nodded "Yes." The childish simplicity of the remark amazed him. +Goldie went on: + +"How old are you?" + +"Twenty." + +"Honest and true?" + +"Fact! Why? Maybe I look older?" + +"No, you don't. Younger, I think. I'm not quite nineteen, but _I_ do +look older." + +Don Manuel had opened a newspaper, and was reading the latest market +quotations. Alicia felt a desire to know the boy's name. She asked him +what it was. + +"Enrique?" she repeated. "That's a pretty name. Very!" + +Then she grew silent a while, remembering all the Enriques she had ever +known--and there had been plenty of them. She recalled they'd all been +nice. Thus, reviewing her life-history, she reached her childish years; +quiet years of peace, lived in the Virgilian simplicity of the country. +And she seemed to see in this boy, innocent, healthy and sun-browned, +something of what she herself had been. + +Quite beside himself with new emotions, ecstatic and open-mouthed, the +student looked at her, too, like a man studying some unusually beautiful +work of art. + +Now many footfalls echoed in the corridors again and bells began to +ring. A flood of spectators began to fill up the seats. The third act +was going to begin. Alicia and Don Manuel got up. + +"Going to stay?" the deputy asked Darles. + +"No, thanks." + +"Why not?" + +"Because--well, I've got to go to bed early. To-morrow I'm going to get +up early." + +He felt so sure that Alicia might be able to love him, and so +overpowered by the happy embarrassment of this thought, that he wanted +to be alone, to enjoy it more fully. Don Manuel added: + +"Well, suit yourself. Any time you want to see me, don't go to my house. +I'm never there. Better go to Alicia's. You'll find me there every +evening, from six to eight." + +They took leave of each other. Enrique turned his head, as he left the +box, and his eyes met the girl's. Their look was a meeting of caresses, +as if they had given each other a kiss and made a rendezvous. It was one +of those terrible looks, capable of changing the whole current of a +man's life--a look such as a man will sometimes receive in his youth, +only to find it hounding and pursuing him his whole life long. + + + + +II + + +Next day, Alicia spent the evening before her fireplace, with a book. +Don Manuel's visit to her had ended in a quarrel, and he had gone. A +great nervousness possessed the girl; she wanted to cry, to yawn, to +pull out her hair, to kick the little cabinets from behind whose crystal +panes all kinds of little figurines, porcelain dolls and extravagant +bibelots peeped out with roguish faces. + +No one who has never been really bored can grasp the complete horror, +the abysmal blackness, the silence like that of a bottomless pit or an +endless tunnel, which lies in absolute boredom. Still, just as death is +the beginning of life, so at times tedium can become a spring of +vigorous action. Many men have sown wild oats in their youth till they +have tired of them, and have in riper years become model husbands, +applied themselves to business and died leaving millions. Boredom +sometimes turns out works of art. Had not Heine and Byron been +monumentally bored, they could never have risen to the heights of song. + +Now, though Alicia Pardo was very young, she already suffered from this +malady--the malady of quietude which rubs out boundary-lines and +extinguishes contrasts. Never yet had she been in love. The selfishness +of her lovers had in the end endowed her soul--itself little inclined to +tenderness--with all the hardness of a diamond. + +"I can't love any one," she often said. "I've made a regular man of +myself." + +Since the human mind cannot long remain unoccupied by real emotions, she +had come to adore luxury. She was neither miserly nor greedy for money; +but she did indeed love purple and fine linen, noisy hats and precious +stones glimmering with sunlight. Her idea of life was to buy good +furnishings, appear in new gowns, show herself off, waste everything +without restraint. With her pretty hands, now craving money and now +throwing it to the four winds, she made ducks and drakes of men's +fortunes. She had many things and wanted more; and as one quickly tires +of what one has, her property did not increase. + +The young woman was in high dudgeon, that evening. She knew not what to +do. Her money was running short, and that morning in a bazaar she had +seen all kinds of pretty gewgaws. She had taken up a book to amuse +herself, but had not been able to read much. Her irritation would not go +away. Why couldn't she be infinitely rich? Already she was beginning to +consider this poor life of ours a grotesque affair--this life in which +so many men think themselves happy in the possession of the +ten-millionth part of what they really want. + +It was almost seven o'clock when Enrique Darles arrived. As soon as +Alicia saw the student, she heaved a sigh of contentment and threw the +book into the fire. + +"What are you doing, there?" cried Darles, to whom every book was +sacred. + +"Nothing," she answered. "It's a stupid novel. We ought to do the same +with everything that bores us." + +Enrique sat down and asked: + +"Don Manuel--?" + +"He's been here a while, but he's gone. I mean, I sent him away. I tell +you I'm unbearable, to-day. I'd like to fight with everybody. I don't +know what I wouldn't give to feel some new sensation--something real and +strong. I'm in despair, I tell you! It's these nerves, these cursed +nerves, that wake up everything ugly and vulgar in us. To-day is one of +the black days when even the good luck of our friends makes us +miserable." + +She stopped and peered closely at Darles. His close-shaven face, his +southern eyes and wavy black hair made him look like some handsome, +gentle boy. + +"I'm strange," she continued. "I'm a chatter-box, ungrateful and never +able to love anything very long. That's why you attracted my attention +the first minute. You look like a man of strong passions. I like radical +characters, good or bad. I like iron wills. Lukewarm temperaments, +undecided and ready to fit into any situation, look to me like +half-season clothes that are always disagreeable. In summer they're too +warm and in winter too cold." + +Darles ventured to say with some timidity: + +"What's the reason you're put out to-day?" + +"I don't know." + +"What?" + +"It's true. Unless it might be----" + +She stopped, inwardly searching her thoughts, then went on: + +"It's because you're very young that my words astonish you. Sometime +you'll be older, and then you'll understand the world better. You'll +know the cause of all these little vexations that embitter life can't be +found in concrete facts. We have to recognize such vexations as the +total, the corollary of our whole history, of everything we've lived +through. For example, we're sad now because we were sad before, or maybe +gay. In to-day's tears you'll find the bitter-aloes of the tears of long +ago; and there's the weariness of dead laughter there, too. Understand? +Don't wonder, therefore, that you can't comprehend exactly why I'm in +such a bad temper, to-day." + +She grew quiet, sinking down into a brown study that drew a vertical +line upon her pretty brow. Then she asked: + +"Do you often go through Calle Mayor?" + +"Yes. Why?" + +"Do you remember the jeweler's shop on the right, on the even-numbered +side, near the Puerta del Sol?" + +The student nodded. + +"Well, if you like jewels," continued Alicia, "take a look at that +emerald necklace in the middle of the window. I just happened to see it, +to-day, and it made such an impression on me that I haven't been able to +get it out of my mind. It's magnificent, not only in size and in the +wonderful luster of the stone, but also on account of its splendid +clasp." + +"Worth a lot, eh?" + +"Fifteen thousand pesetas." + +Darles said nothing to this. But his brows lifted with admiration. Such +figures filled his provincial simplicity with panic and confusion. By +comparison with the miserable shallowness of his purse, they seemed +enormous. Little Goldie continued: + +"I told Don Manuel about it, but he's a clever fox. He's a sly one! +There's no way in this world to rake _him_ into spending any extra +money. That's partly what we've just now been quarreling about. Believe +me, it's men's own fault if we aren't more faithful to them." + +Ignorant as he was of feminine psychology, Enrique understood that +Alicia's black humor was on account of that emerald necklace she so +deeply admired and so greatly wanted. Unsatisfied desires are like +undigested foods. At first they cause us a vague ill-ease, which soon +increases until indigestion sets in. Following this same line of +thought, is not disappointment or grief, in a way, the indigestion of a +caprice? Ingenuously, without realizing the indiscretion of promising +anything to women or children, Enrique exclaimed: + +"If I were only rich--!" + +The pause that followed was like that in a romance; one of those +silences during which women decide to do any and everything. Then all at +once, with the same bored gesture she had used when she had tossed the +book into the fire, Alicia put one of her little hands into the bony, +trembling hands of the student. + +"Do you like my hands?" she queried. + +"Enormously!" + +"People say they're very big." + +"Oh, no! Very small, indeed!" + +With ravishment he examined the fine softness of her wrist, the +wandering lines traced by the blue veins beneath the whiteness of the +skin, the little dimples that adorned the back of her hand. That hand +was an artist's, a dancer's. Its fingers were showily covered with +rings. Alicia studied these rings. In their settings, the sapphires, the +blood-red rubies, the topazes and diamonds filled with light blent into +bouquets of tiny, never-fading flowers. + +"Next time you go through Calle Mayor," directed the young woman, "take +a good look at the necklace I've told you about. There are two necklaces +in the window. One is of black pearls, the other of emeralds. I'm +talking about the emerald one. You'll find it a little to the left, on a +bust of white velvet." + +The vision of the precious stones persisted in her memory with the +tenacity of an obsession. It filled her mind and dominated all her +thoughts with a dangerous kind of introspective tyranny. + +Eight o'clock sounded. Enrique Darles got up. + +"Going, already?" asked the girl. + +"Yes, I'm going to supper." + +She looked him over, from head to foot, and saw that he was slender, +with an almost childish beauty, as he stood there in his modest suit of +black. Then she thought about having nothing to do, that night, and how +horribly bored she was going to be. + +"Why not stay here and have a bite with me?" she questioned. + +"What for?" he demanded. + +"What a question! Why, so we shan't have to separate, so soon." + +"I--well, all right. Anything you like. But I'm afraid I'll bother you." + +"What an idiot you are! Quite the contrary. Your conversation will amuse +me. You'll see how quickly I'll be good-natured, again." + +She got up with a swift, supple movement that made her petticoats rustle +and that infused a perfume of violets through the room. She pressed an +electric button. A maid appeared. + +"Tell Leonor," she ordered, "that I have a guest. Senor Enrique is going +to have supper with me." + +She approached a mirror, to arrange her hair. She seemed happy, +transfigured with joy. + +"Have you seen the play they're giving at the Princess Theater +to-night?" asked she. + +"No, I haven't." + +"They say it's awfully good. Shall we take it in? There's time enough, +yet. We'll have supper right away." + +Darles felt a bit disconcerted, and secretly investigated his pockets, +estimating the money he had. Mentally he counted: + +"Five pesetas, ten, fifteen." + +Yes, there was enough for two seats and a carriage to come back in. + +"All right, just as you like," he answered, more reassured. + +"Then I'll go change my dress. I'll be back in a minute." + +She vanished behind the crimson curtain that draped the door of her +bedroom. The student heard a little rustling of lingerie that slid to +the floor. He heard corset-steels being tightened over a soft breast; +heard mysterious, silken sounds of undressing and of dressing; heard +closet-doors vivaciously opened and shut. + +Enrique felt upset and very happy. He had known Alicia more than a +month. During that time, using his visits to Don Manuel as a pretext, he +had seen the young woman several times. In spite of the intimacy of +these calls he had never dared let the girl see his love. His innocence +had been too great to let him approach any such difficult avowal. When +Alicia had tried to help him out of the embarrassment she had seen in +him, and had tried to turn the conversation into confidential channels, +he had evaded declaring himself. For he had been afraid of making some +stupid blunder and of appearing absurd. + +But now he felt calmer, more self-confident. Without quite understanding +why, he suspected that Alicia's ill-humor was working to his benefit. +She was keeping him with her because she was bored, because she was +afraid to pass the night alone with that gnawing desire for the jewels +that in all probability could never be hers. And Enrique reflected that +the necklace, made to encircle some wonderful throat, might become the +symbol of a bond of love now growing up between them. + +Then he realized there was something sweet and intimate in the +confidence Alicia manifested by dressing so very near him, and in the +complacency shown by the maid when Alicia had told her that Senor +Enrique was taking supper there. These were important details that +roused up his failing heart and made him understand that all this--if +his own cowardice were not too great--might lead to something much more +complete and exquisite than a mere chaste, warm friendship. + +Enrique lost himself in pleasant fancies. He remembered many novels in +which the daring and eloquent heroes had taken part in situations quite +parallel to this now confronting him, poor country boy that he was. The +beveled mirror of a clothes-press flung back at him the reflection of +his tall, slim body, his black clothes, his rather poetic face. Pale, +beardless, romantic-looking, why might not he be a hero, too? What +surprises might not destiny have in store for his youthfulness? + +To calm himself he began looking at the little bronze and porcelain +figures in the cabinets. There were cowled gnomes, dogs, cats looking +into a little mirror, with astonished grimaces. Then Darles studied the +marble clock and the big vases on the chimney-piece. He examined the +portraits and the little fancy pictures, of slight merit but gaudily +framed, that covered the green wall-paper almost to the ceiling. And in +a kind of analytical way he reflected that these portraits, these little +paintings, these pretty, frivolous furnishings were the aftermath of all +the mercenary love-affairs which had taken place here in this apartment. + +His attention was now called to a large collection of picture post-cards +stuck into a Japanese screen. There were dancers, love-making scenes and +all sorts of things. Nearly every card bore the signature of some man, +together with a line or two of dedication. Many of the cards were dated +from Paris--that City of the Sun, beloved by adventurers--while others +had come from America, from Egypt or elsewhere. And all the cards seemed +a kind of incense offered to the beauty of the same woman. Through all +the longings of exile, and from every zone, memories had come back to +her. You might almost have thought the warmth of her flesh had infused a +deathless glow in all those wanderers. + +Alicia Pardo came in again, bringing with her a gust of violet perfume. + +"Have I kept you waiting long?" asked she. "I hope not. Come on, now, +let's go to the dining-room. If we want to get to the theater in time, +we mustn't lose a minute." + +It was a light, pleasant supper--vegetable soup, partridges _a +l'anglaise_, lobster and crisp bacon, then a bit of orange marmalade and +dead-ripe bananas. At the theater, they had a couple of seats in the +second row. The play had already begun, when they got there. None the +less, Goldie's presence roused up interest among the masculine element +in the boxes. Numbers of opera-glasses focused themselves at her. On the +stage, an actor profited by one of his exits to give her an almost +imperceptible smile, to which she replied with a nod. + +Such marks of attention usually fill men of the world with pride and +complacency. But they disturb young lovers. According to the +temperaments of such youthful blades, public recognition of this kind +excites jealousy or shame. Enrique Darles felt suppressed and ill at +ease. A wave of hot blood burned in his cheeks. Not for one instant did +it occur to him that these grave, rich gentlemen--old men who never win +the favors of the demi-monde along the flowery path of real +affection--might be envying his beauty and his youth. + +Alicia felt, in the student's silence, something of the embarrassment +that possessed him. + +"What's the matter with you?" asked she. "Are you ashamed of being seen +with me?" + +Enrique tried to seem astonished. + +"Ashamed?" he repeated. "How could I be? On the contrary----" + +And his fingers closed over hers with unspeakable ardor. + +At the end of the act, the audience began to applaud. Many enthusiastic +voices called: "Author! Author!" Alicia clapped her hands wildly. + +"Oh, how I'd like to know him!" cried she. + +Enrique also applauded noisily, to please her. The curtain rose again, +in the midst of that uproarious tempest of triumph, and the author +appeared. His profile was aquiline; his theatrical triumphs and loose +way of living had enveloped him in a cloud of prestige, blent of talent +and scandal. He looked a little above forty, but his lithe body still +kept all the graceful activity of youth. The spot-light brilliantly +illuminated him; he smiled, with the arrogant expression and gestures of +a conqueror. Still applauding, Alicia exclaimed to Enrique: + +"_Isn't_ he lovely? I've got to get some one to introduce me to him. My +friend Candelas knows him very well." + +And her big green eyes widened with emotion. Her curly reddish hair +shook like a lion's mane, over her willful forehead. At that moment, +Enrique Darles once more felt himself small and obscure. He saw his love +meant nothing in the exuberant life of this girl. While he had been +holding her pretty little hand, a few minutes before, he had thought her +conquered and in love with him. Now all of a sudden he beheld her +transfigured, beside herself, her scatter-brained little head flung back +in an attitude of giving, that offered the victorious playwright her +snowy throat. Ethnological reasons underlie woman's adoration of +everything strong, shining, violent. + +"If I were not here," thought Darles with melancholy, "surely she would +go to him." + +The student got back his gayety, during the second act. Alicia pressed +up against him, slyly and nervously, and her restless curls produced +little electric ticklings on his temples. When the play was done, the +ovation broke out again, and the author once more appeared. Enrique's +applause was only mild. For a moment he thought the playwright's eyes +fell with avidity on Alicia. This painful impression still lay upon the +student as they went out into the street. The young woman walked beside +him, holding his arm and shivering with cold in her handsome gray cloak. +The night was sharp. Rain had been falling. Alicia said: + +"Well, where are we going?" + +He answered, in surprise: + +"I'm going to take you home. We'll call a carriage." + +"No, I don't want to go home." + +"What?" + +"Come on! I'm going to give you a treat, to-night." + +She looked up at him, smiling in a fascinating, promising way that +foreshadowed paradise. In anguish the poor fellow remembered he had +hardly ten pesetas left. To escape the jostling and rude staring of the +passers-by, Alicia took refuge in a doorway. Her feet were stiff with +cold. The wetness of the pavement was soaking through the thin soles of +her shoes. + +"Decide on something, quick," she shivered. "I'm dying of cold!" + +Enrique exclaimed, with a resolution he thought very like that of a man +of the world: + +"If you want to eat, we'll go to Fornos." + +The girl made a grimace of horror. + +"Never!" she cried. "Everybody knows me there!" + +"Well then, let's go to Moran's." + +"Worse still! I'd be sure to run into some friend or other." + +"How about Vina P?" + +"I should say not! I don't dare." Then with cruel frankness she added: +"Do you know why I don't dare? The women there look down on girls like +me. And if any of my friends--they're all serious men--should see me +with you, there, they'd call me flighty. They'd think me mad." + +Enrique understood but little. He vaguely felt, however, that all this +held some kind of humiliation for him. Suddenly, like one who clutches +at a saving idea, Alicia exclaimed: + +"What time is it?" + +"Quarter past one." + +"Well then, see here. Let's go to Las Ventas, or La Bombilla. The same +carriage that takes us out can bring us back." + +"Well--it----" + +He hesitated, knowing not how to confess his absurdity, how to own up to +the enormous, unpardonable stupidity of being poor. At last he made up +his mind to speak, wounded by the questions of Alicia, who by no means +understood his uncertainty. + +"You know, I--forgive me, but--I haven't got money enough," said he. + +"What a boy you are!" she answered. "Why, you don't need hardly any, at +all. Haven't you even got, say, two hundred pesetas?" + +"Two hundred pesetas!" stammered Enrique, horror-stricken. "No, no, I +haven't." + +"Well, a hundred, then?" + +"No." + +"All right. Come, tell me. How much _have_ you got?" + +Enrique would have gladly died. Gnawing his lips with desperation, he +answered: + +"I've hardly got ten left." + +She burst out laughing, one of those frank, bold laughs such as perhaps +she had never known since the time when some rich man, setting her feet +on the path of sin, had taken from her the gentle happiness of being +poor. + +"And you were talking about going to Fornos?" she demanded. + +Enrique answered, in shame: + +"I'm not good enough for you, Alicia! I'm not worthy of you! I'll take +you home." + +The girl answered, charmed by the bohemian novelty of the adventure: + +"Never mind about the money. I want to have something to eat with you. +Take me to some tavern or other, some cheap little dive. It's all +right." + +He still hesitated. She insisted. The terror of falling from her good +graces enfolded him. + +"What if the food is bad, and you don't like it?" he asked. + +"Fool! I don't want luxury, to-night. I want memories of other times. +Was I always rich, do you think?" + +"Well, in that case----" + +"Yes, yes, take me along! Show me something of your life!" + +Arm in arm they went down the street. Their feet kept time, together. +Feverishly he repeated: + +"Alicia! Oh, my Alicia!" + +Then, as he buried his white and trembling lips in the hair of the +greatly desired one, it seemed to him that all Madrid was filled with +perfumes of fresh violets. + + + + +III + + +Some days drifted by, after that unforgettable night, without Darles +getting any chance to see Alicia. Several afternoons he went to her +house, between half-past two and three, at which hour Don Manuel was +never there. But Teodora, the maid, never let him get beyond the parlor. +Sometimes Alicia was out, the maid said; again, she was asleep or had a +headache, and could not see him. Teodora spoke drily, disconcertingly. +If there is any way to sound the good or bad opinion any one has of us, +it is surely in the attitude of that person's servants. The student +would murmur: + +"And she didn't leave any word for me?" + +"No, sir. Not any." + +Then, at sight of the maid's sly and mocking face, Enrique would feel +his countenance lengthen with sadness. His eyes would grow dim with +grief and humility, like those of a discharged servant. But then, not +being quite able to give up the illusion that had brought him there, he +would say: + +"Well, all right, if that's how it is. Tell her I called, and say I'll +be back to-morrow." + +As he went down the stairs, very sadly, that idea of his own inferiority +which had wounded him on the night he had been introduced to Alicia once +more overcame him. Yes, he was beaten at the start. He was inept and +worthless. What could he offer her? Not money, since he was poor; nor +fame, since he was not a noted artist; nor yet could he bring her gayety +and joy, for whatever of these he had until now possessed in his +sentimental, introspective soul, had been taken away from him by +Alicia's indifference. + +Many days, at nightfall, the student went to Calle Mayor and stood in +front of the jeweler's window where he could see the sparkling of that +magnificent emerald necklace that Alicia had told him about. Now he +would walk up and down the street, wrapped in his cloak with a certain +worldly aplomb; now he would pause to look at the shop, whose electric +lights flooded the passers-by under a rain of brilliancy. He would stand +a long time in front of the window, enthralled by the spell of the +bleeding rubies, the topazes which burned like wounds, the celestial +blue turquoises. He would stare at the chains and rings, shimmering with +gold on the artistically-wrinkled, black velvet, which finely carpeted +the broad reach of the window. And this vagrant attraction, wakened in +him by the jewels, seemed to cause a kind of presentiment. All the time, +his immature mind would be thinking: + +"Alicia would be happy if she should pass along, now, and see me here." + +During those first days of separation, the memory of the beloved one +rooted itself into the student's memory under the strange sensation of +violet perfume. He either did not remember, or he pretended not to +remember, the big, green eyes of the girl, her cruel and epigrammatic +little mouth, her firm, white body. But all the more did that violet +perfume possess him. He seemed to find his clothes, his hands, his +text-books, his poor little bed all odorous of violets. Still, even this +sweet illusion began to fade. Time began to blur it out, as it had +blurred his recollections of the girl. Darles wept a great deal. And one +night he wrote her a desperate, somewhat enigmatic note: + +"I'm going to see you, to-morrow. If you won't let me in, I shall die. +Be merciful! My little room no longer smells of violets." + +Alicia felt annoyed by the student's note. What was the idea of these +ostentatious hyperboles of passion? Could Darles have got it into his +head that what had happened--one of many adventures in her path--had +been anything but perfectly worthless and common? Alicia felt so sure of +this that her emotion was one of astonishment, more than of disgust. +Yet, in the beginning, her surprise caused her a certain pleasure. + +"It really would be interesting," thought she, "if this boy should fall +in love with me like the hero of a play." + +But the pleasure of such a curiosity hardly lasted a minute. Soon the +girl's cold, selfish spirit, that always traveled in straight lines +toward its own ends--the spirit and the will that never let themselves +be interfered with--reacted against this romantic possibility. Alicia +neither wanted to love nor be loved. For through the experiences of her +girl friends she had learned that love, with all its jealousies and +pains, is harshly cruel to lover and beloved, alike. + +She attached no importance whatever to the caprice that had momentarily +thrown her into the student's arms. The evening before their first and +only night together, Darles had just happened to find her in one of +those fits of the blues, of eclectic relaxation, in which the volatile +feminine sense of ethics swings equidistant from good and evil. Her +virtues and her vices, alike, were arbitrary and without any exact +motive. If the student had perhaps had finer eyes, she would have +yielded to him, just the same; then too, perhaps if the emerald necklace +that, just a few minutes before, she and Don Manuel had been quarreling +about had been less desirable, she would have refused him. + +The only certain thing about it all was this, that she had accepted the +student's comradeship because in a kind of good-natured way she had +reckoned the conversation of even a poor man more entertaining than the +remembrance of a necklace. And next morning when she had got back home, +she had found herself a little surprised at her own conduct. She felt +that she had shown a generosity, a fanciful whim such as perhaps might +have driven a critic like Sarcey, after forty years of the real theater, +to some miserable little puppet-show. At all events the thing should +never happen again. It was absurd! + +Next day, Teodora had informed her that Darles had come to see her while +she had been out. Day after day, the same thing had occurred. The girl +had ended up by feeling very much annoyed at the young fellow's sad +obstinacy. A veritable beggar for love, he had come to trouble the easy +currents of her idleness. Every time Teodora had told her the student +had been back again, Alicia had grown angry. + +"What the devil does he want, anyhow?" she would exclaim. "Blest if _I_ +know!" + +In this she was really sincere. She did not know. The selfish frivolity +of her disposition could not understand how any man, after having +received the supreme gift from a woman, could do other than get tired of +her. Darles' note, complaining of her desertion of him, increased her +annoyance. Once for all she felt she must cut this entanglement. What +better way could there be than to receive the importunate young fellow +and talk to him in a perfectly impersonal way, as if no secret existed +between them? + +When Darles arrived, next day, at the usual time, Teodora led him into +the dining-room. + +"I'll tell mistress you're here," said she. + +Darles remained standing there, reflective, one elbow leaning against +the window-jamb. Once, when he had been nothing but "Don Manuel's +friend," Alicia had used to receive him informally. Nobody had announced +him, then. Now he felt himself isolated, stifled by that kind of +friendly hostility used on boresome callers. The maid came back and +said: + +"Mistress will see you. Come this way." + +Darles found the girl in her little boudoir, together with a tall, +dark-haired girl, dressed in gray. This girl wore English-looking, +mannish clothes, well set off by her red tie and by the whiteness of her +starched collar and cuffs. When Alicia saw the student, she neither +moved nor stretched out her hand to him. All she said was: + +"Hello, there! Is that you?" + +Something in the rather scornful familiarity of her greeting infinitely +humbled him. He grew pale. All the blood in his body seemed flooding his +heart, turning to ice there. Still discourteous, Alicia introduced him +to the other girl: + +"Senor Darles--my friend, Candelas." + +Candelas fixed her keen, vivid eyes on the new-comer. Then she peered at +Alicia, as if asking whether this visit might not perhaps veil some +amorous secret. The girl understood, and gave her friend's sophisticated +question a vertical answer: + +"No, you're wrong. Enrique comes here only because he's Don Manuel's +friend." + +The student nodded assent to this, and Candelas smiled coldly. Then the +two girls once more took up the thread of the conversation broken by the +arrival of Darles. The poor fellow sensed that he was isolated and +dismissed. Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed, with no break in that +animated chatter. Men's names came into it; and Candelas laughed +heartily as she reviewed the details of a recent supper she had had. +Alicia laughed, too. Quite possibly she did this to hurt the student's +feelings and to persuade herself Enrique really was nothing more to her +than just Don Manuel's friend. + +A visitor dropped in; an old woman who dealt in clothes and trinkets. +She had a heavy bundle with her, and this she put down on the floor. +Alicia asked her: + +"Well, Clotilde, what's new?" + +Clotilde fairly oozed enjoyment, in her thick cloak, as she answered: + +"I've got the finest petticoats and stockings in the world." + +"High-priced?" + +"Dirt cheap! I don't know why, but I've got it into my head you want to +spend a little money, to-day." + +Then the furnishings of the little boudoir vanished under a many-colored +flood of showy silks--green, brown, blue--which, as they were spread +out, diffused a most delightful perfume of cleanness. As if under some +magic spell, Alicia and Candelas fell a prey to the intense, acquisitive +passion that tortures women in front of shop-windows. The two girls vied +in asking the price of every treasure. + +"This petticoat here, how much?" + +"Seeing it's you, a hundred pesetas." + +"And that heliotrope one?" + +"Seventy-five. Just take a good look at it. Wonderful!" + +With amazement, Enrique studied this profusion of elegance and luxury. +He had never even dreamed civilization wove so many refinements about +the art of love. And as his frank eyes observed these petticoats that +gently rustled, or took in the lace of these night-dresses--majestically +full as senatorial togas--he sadly recalled the poor little white +chemises and coarse underwear lacking in all adornment, that the women +of his home-town hung out to dry on their clothes-lines. + +Now a new detail came to increase his misery. The peddler and Alicia +were arguing excitedly over the price of the heliotrope petticoat. +Clotilde wanted seventy-five pesetas, and the young woman vowed she +couldn't go over fifty. The peddler insisted: + +"You'd better make up your mind to take it, because you won't get such a +bargain anywhere else. I'm only selling it at this price just to please +you, but I'm not making a penny on the deal." + +Then she turned to Enrique, and added: + +"Come now, this gentleman will buy it for you!" + +Darles blushed, and found nothing to say. Men without money are +contemptible; and as Alicia did not even deign to look at him, the +student knew he had lost her. Dear Lord, if there had only been some +devil's bank where lovers might barter off the years of their life, for +money, gladly would he have sold his whole existence for those cursed +seventy-five pesetas! + +Tired of arguing, the peddler gathered up her things and packed them +into her valise. The conversation drifted off to other things. The women +began talking about jewels. Candelas showed a brooch that had been given +her. Clotilde offered the girls a necklace. + +"If you'd like to see it, I'll bring it," said she. "I've got it at +home." + +Alicia sighed deeply; and that long sigh, broken like a child's, +expressed enormous grief. She said: + +"I'm in love with a necklace in a shop on Calle Mayor, and I don't want +any other. I dream about it all the time. I never saw anything so +wonderful! I tell you the man who gives me _that_, can have me." + +"How much is it?" + +"Fifteen thousand pesetas." + +Then she fixed an inscrutable look on Darles, and added: + +"I think this gentleman here is going to get it for me. Aren't you, +Enrique?" + +Candelas was about to laugh, but checked herself. Her penetrating eyes +had just seen in the student's congested face something of the terrific +inner struggle now possessing him. Darles was no longer able to contain +himself. He got up to leave, and his eyes showed such despair and shame +that Alicia took pity on him. + +"I'll see you out," said she. + +They left the little boudoir. When they got to the parlor, the +student--who hardly knew what he was doing--seized the girl's hands and +covered them with kisses. He began to weep desperately. + +"Alicia! Alicia!" he stammered, "what makes you so cruel to me? I'm +dying for you! Alicia! Oh, why can't you love me?" + +But she had already recovered from her brief emotion, and now tried to +rid herself of him. + +"Come, come, now," she exclaimed, "what a fool you are!" + +"I adore you, Alicia! Heart of my soul!" + +"Come now, be good! Keep quiet--good-by! You're getting me into +trouble!" + +"But I've got to see you--see you!" + +"All right! Only _do_ keep quiet! Good-by--keep quiet, I tell you! +Candelas might get wise to something, and I don't want her making fun of +us!" + +She spoke in a low tone, and at the same time kept pushing Darles toward +the door. He murmured: + +"Are you sending me away forever?" + +"No." + +"Yes, you are, too! You're trying to get rid of me!" + +"No, no; but for heaven's sake, get out!" + +"Yes, you are; you're throwing me out--getting rid of me because I'm +poor, because I don't know how to win you! But how _can_ I win you, if +you won't give me a little time?" + +She was growing angry; her face became hard. The student clasped his +hands and cried: + +"You're doing a wicked thing to send me away like this!" + +"All right, all right----" + +"A wicked thing, because any man that loves as much as I do can do +anything. Even if I _am_ poor, some time I might be rich. Even if I _am_ +obscure, I might become a noted artist, if you wanted me to. I'd kill, +I'd steal for you!" + +"For heaven's sake, shut up and get out!" + +"Yes, I'll go because you tell me to. But--hero or thief--I'd be +anything to stay with you, anything for you! Alicia, oh, my Alicia, I'll +do anything you want me to--yes, by God, if I get twenty years for it!" + +The poor, innocent young chap, without suspecting it, was uttering a +great phrase; he was laying all his youth at the feet of this ungrateful +woman--offering her the same treasure of youth to gain which Faust lost +his soul. + +Alicia already had the door open. + +"Good-by," she whispered. "Do get out! Manuel might come!" + +"When am I going to see you again?" + +"Oh, some time." + +"When?" + +"I don't know. _Won't_ you go?" + +"To-morrow?" + +"No." + +"Tell me! Tell me what day! I'll be patient. I'll wait. When can I see +you?" + +She hesitated. Ardently he insisted: + +"When?" + +"Oh, you make me sick!" + +"Come, have it over with. Tell me, when?" + +A look of perdition, of madness, gleamed in the green eyes of the +Magdalene. This look seemed to illuminate her whole face, to change into +a smile on the tyrannical line of her lips. + +"When?" he repeated. + +Without knowing why, the student was afraid; but almost at once he +gathered himself together. + +"Tell me, tell me, when?" he stammered. + +"I don't know." + +"You've got to tell me!" + +"You're crazy!" + +"No matter, tell me, when?" + +Insidiously she replied: + +"Never. Or--when you bring me the necklace I asked you for!" + +Struck dumb, he peered at her, because he realized the girl meant what +she said. She added: + +"Then----" + +The door closed. Enrique Darles blundered, weeping, down the staircase. + + + + +IV + + +Darles 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 Canamares. This friend was a medical student like himself. The +two young fellows greeted each other. Canamares was on his way to San +Carlos. + +"Do you want to come along with me?" he asked. "I'll show you the +dissecting-room." + +Darles went along with his friend. Canamares 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 Canamares did +not dare probe the matter any further. + +The dissecting-room, cold and white, produced some very lively +sensations in Darles. 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. +Darles 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 Canamares left his classroom, he asked Darles to go and +dine with him. Enrique accepted. It was just noon. Canamares usually ate +at a little tavern in the Plaza de Anton Martin. 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 Canamares. + +"Oh, I don't care. Anything you do." + +"Soup and stew?" + +"All right." + +Canamares 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. Darles +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, Darles 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 Darles 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 reechoed 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 Darles 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 +Darles 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?" + +"_?Quien 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: + +"_?Quien 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, Darles 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 Jeronimo 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. Darles 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 Gobernacion, 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. Darles 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 Darles 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. Darles 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." + +Darles 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. +Darles 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." + +Darles 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. + +Darles 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. + +Darles 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. Darles +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. + +Darles 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, Darles 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 Darles 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. + + + + +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 Senor 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 Darles. 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 Darles!" + +"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 Darles 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?" + +Darles 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, Darles +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----" + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEIR SON; THE NECKLACE*** + + +******* This file should be named 31662.txt or 31662.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/1/6/6/31662 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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