CHAPTER XXXIII
THE FINAL TRAGEDY
GONZALO did not leave his father-in-law's house; and at the end of five or six days after the duel, Don Rosendo returned from taking Ventura to the Ocaña Convent. But his life was sad and depressed. He declined Pablo's persuasions to go shooting or walking, and the thousand pretexts made by his father-in-law and his friends, who came to see him at Tejada, to induce him to get out, proved fruitless.
Although Gonzalo did not openly refuse to accompany his friends, he managed to elude them and remained at home, where he sat alone.
His uncle, Don Melchor, came to see him, and advised him to travel for a time; Gonzalo did not reject the idea, but he always postponed it on the pretext of want of health.
Don Rosendo, upon the advice of Las Cuevas and other friends, decided to move to Sarrio to see if the society of acquaintances might not cheer the young man up a little. But all attempts to rouse him proved failures. Gonzalo let himself be taken to town without offering any objection, but he continued just as anxious to be alone, and to live retired from social life.
He only went out early in the morning and took a few turns at the end of the landing-stage, where he contemplated the sea with far-away eyes, sometimes so full of sadness that they would have alarmed any onlooker. As soon as the place became frequented, and the town awoke from its sleep, he hastily returned home.
Why did he not leave Sarrio, the scene of his troubles, and go for a time to Madrid, Paris, or London? This was the question asked by all the people of the town, without receiving any satisfactory answer, nor was it easy for one to be found. There are very few competent to explain the secret origin, the final cause of human actions, because very few study psychology, deeming it useless, and those who are endowed with an understanding, both subtle and perspicacious, devote it solely to the study of self-interest, so that hardly anybody sounds this magic casket of feelings, desires, hopes, and contradictions called the human heart.
How ashamed Gonzalo would have been if any one had told him that he did not leave Sarrio because he did not wish to quit the place associated with his wife, whom he still adored in secret, while feigning to hate her before the world! And nevertheless it was certainly so. As long as he remained in that house, all the bonds uniting him to her did not seem to be broken. The people about him were of her flesh and blood; they loved her still, culpable as she was and they did not abuse her in his presence.
Ventura seemed to have left part of herself in the rooms and in the furniture; the bottles of essences and pots of pomades still stood half-used on the dressing-table; some of her cloaks and hats were still hanging on the pegs, and it seemed as if her fair, sunny head might appear at any moment from behind the curtains, while the air was still sweet with her favorite perfume. The husband, who had been disgracefully outraged, inhaled with delight this atmosphere of his wife, and lived in the shadow of her life, unwilling as he would have been to acknowledge it; and he lived, moreover, in the hope of one day pardoning her. This nobody knew—he had probably not formulated it to himself—nobody knew it but Cecilia, whose eyes, sharpened by love, divined her brother-in-law's most secret thoughts; and he evinced such an affectionate, enthusiastic, venerating feeling for her that it might easily have been confounded with love. Everybody's companionship, even that of his uncle, bored him more than hers.
However cast down he was with sad thoughts, which made scalding tears flow down his cheeks, the appearance of Cecilia in his room had a calming, soothing effect upon his grief.