Martí urged me to breakfast with them, but I had much to do and declined. Moreover, I must confess I felt so melancholy that I wanted to get into the street. He, as well as Doña Amparo, offered me a thousand inducements to run down to Valencia on my return to Barcelona, where the steamer always stayed for eight or ten days. He, as well as his wife, would take great pleasure in entertaining me at their home. I was obliged to promise to do so, but with the definite intention of not complying.
It was always difficult to get away from the ship; and the coldness of Doña Cristina gave me no encouragement to make such a visit.
In the afternoon Martí came on board to press my hand once more before my departure. He again urged me cordially not to fail to make them a visit. Again I made the promise, with the mental reservation already mentioned. We finally bade each other a most affectionate farewell and I put to sea, continuing my voyage to Hamburg.
CHAPTER IV.
NOT until I found myself on the bridge of my steamer, between the sky and the sea, could I take account of the impression that the wife of Martí had made upon me. How many hours I have passed that way, in the solitude of the ocean, given over to my thoughts! Seldom have they been sad. My life, after the profound grief caused by the death of my fiancée, of which I have spoken, has generally had a tranquil, if not happy, course.
I was born in Alicante, my father a seafarer. In my school days I showed a fondness for study. My father would have desired me to become a lawyer or a physician; anything rather than a sailor. But I found such careers prosaic, and impelled by the romanticism natural to youth, and to my somewhat dreamy and fanciful temperament, I preferred that calling. My father agreed to this with apparent reluctance, but was, perhaps, pleased in reality by the appreciation that I showed for his own profession. I soon learned navigation, and made two voyages to Cuba. But my only sister having died and my mother feeling rather lonely, I felt obliged to stay at home and lead the life of a young gentleman of leisure. Nobody was surprised at this. As my father was said to have amassed a reasonable fortune, I was to a good degree exempt from the hard law of toil.
A few years later I fell in love. My marriage was arranged and would have taken place had not Matilde, as she was named, been taken ill. Her recovery was hoped for, but hoping and hoping, the good and beautiful girl passed from life. My grief was so intense that my health and even my reason were threatened. My parents could find no more adequate remedy than to send me to sea again. I agreed with indifference. Now I went as second officer in a steamer of the same company in which my father was employed. After a few months my father was crippled by rheumatism, and while he was undergoing treatment the owners placed me temporarily in command of the Urano. Unfortunately he could not resume his place; after dragging out a painful existence for some time he died. My mother would have liked me to forsake the sea and again live leisurely at home with her; but I had grown so accustomed to the sea, to the varied and active existence of the navigator, to-day in one port, to-morrow in another, that I could not be persuaded to forsake it. On board of my steamer, therefore, to which I had become greatly attached, I reached my thirty-sixth birthday. My mother died, and a little later the incident took place that I have just related.
I have said that when alone with my thoughts I comprehended that Doña Cristina had taken too much possession of them. Her image floated before me like a dream. That look, now grave, now roguish, of her black eyes; that impressionable shyness, her blushing like a schoolgirl in contrast with her gracious self-possession; then her facile forgiveness, and the repressed tenderness that she showed for her husband—all tended to idealize her. But more than anything, I confess, my own temperament contributed to this, and the solitude in which the mariner passes most of his time. After the death of Matilde no true love had ever occupied my heart again. Idle affairs, adventures for a few days, amused me along various degrees of the scale. And so I had come to see the first gray threads in my beard and hair. But my romantic nature, although dormant in the depths of my heart, was by no means dead. The adventures in folly, the coarse pleasures of the seaports, far from choking that tendency, encouraged its revival. I never felt more thoughtful and melancholy than after one of those affairs. To recover my equilibrium, I would stretch out under the awning with a book in my hands; filling my lungs with the pure sea air and opening my soul to the ideas of the great poets and philosophers, peace and joy would return. Reading has always been the supreme resource of my life, the most efficacious balm for its troubles.
The adventure with Doña Cristina transported me to complete ideality, and I breathed the atmosphere wherein I found myself most sane and happy. So I occupied myself with pleasurable thoughts about her, without considering that unhappy consequences might follow. Many a time, when a pretty young woman had crossed my path in port, I would afterwards tenaciously hold her image in my mind's eye. Again, in the solitude of the sea, fancy would evoke her, I would imagine her in diverse situations, I would make her talk and laugh, I would make her grow angry and weep, and would endow her with a thousand charming qualities. And in the companionship of this phantasm I would pass happy days, until on arrival in port it would dissolve or be replaced by another.
So now I attempted to do the same. But I could not succeed, even partially. Doña Cristina had not fleetingly passed me by like many other handsome women. The impression that she had left with me was much deeper; she had stirred nearly every fibre of my being. Instead of representing her as I chose, I saw her as she had appeared in reality. And again I felt the shame and the sadness that she had made me experience. On the other hand, her condition as a married woman deprived my dreams of the innocence that they had had on former occasions; it tinged them with a sombre shade that was little pleasing to my conscience.