The speaker was a young man of a very precise and rather severe expression, a good deal like his father and his brother, less handsome than María and far from the ridiculous effeteness of Polito. His face was perhaps a little hard; at any rate it indicated a firm and self-contained nature quite exceptional in the family, settled convictions and a healthy self-respect. He spoke gravely and his manners were high-bred, free alike from arrogance and from familiarity, with an equable and chilling politeness which many persons thought supreme affectation. Thoroughly honourable and gentlemanly in all the relations of life, he was also well educated, though not brilliantly talented.
Neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin, dressed in dark colours with a calm eye behind his spectacles, free from every vice—even smoking—simple in his tastes and pitiless to the dissipation of others, Gustavo, eldest son of the Marquis Tellería, was generally spoken of as the best of the family, as an honour to his rank, and one of the hopes of the country. It is needless to add that he was a lawyer. His brother Leopoldo was a lawyer too; almost all young Spaniards are; but while Polito hardly knew what a book looked like, Gustavo studied every day and even found employment under the protection of one of the most eminent pleaders of Madrid. He had chosen what may be called the national career, and having left the university a nobody, he was now on the high road to becoming somebody. It should be added that he had a natural gift for oratory.
“To you, my dear Leon,” he went on, “I may confess that the conduct of every member of my family causes me many hours of bitter reflection—excepting of course the angel who is your wife and that other angel, even more perfect perhaps, who now lives so far from us. Is it not terrible to see my brother corrupted by dissipation? Wallowing in the low frivolity which debases so many individuals—I will not say of our class, for the disgrace is not ours alone, but of every class? Desiring to play a part above what our fortune warrants, he has been led away into insane extravagance, for his companions are rich and he is not. It enrages me to see Leopoldo driving carriages and riding horses which cost more than his whole year’s income; besides, his ignorance distresses me, and his idleness makes me desperate. Ah! you were quite right in what you once said; there is a great deal of truth in your remark that ‘while there is an aristocracy of nature among the lowest, there is also a low class among the aristocracy.’—However, all this is beside the mark; we will not talk any longer on a subject that is so painful to my feelings. I have, I think, made it sufficiently clear that you really ought not to encourage Polito in his recklessness.”
Leon inserted some remark but Gustavo went on: “The blame, I admit, lies with my father. Our education was very desultory. It would be absurd to try to hide the fact that my mother, much as it costs me to own it, has never succeeded in weaning herself or in preserving us from the seductions of the gay world; she has always lived more out of her home than in it. To this day—for what is the use of denying what you know as well as I do?—to this day, when our fortune is so much impaired, and when, as I believe, the little that remains will fall into the hands of our creditors, is it not preposterous that my mother should keep up the house on a footing which is so far beyond our means? It is outrageous vanity; and you may take my word, Leon, when I tell you that I pass hours of anguish in thinking of it. When I see the expensive entertainments she gives, the outlay to keep up appearances while so many—so very many—necessaries are overlooked; when I note the shameless variety of her dresses, her constant presence at the theatres, her anxiety to vie with others who have a great deal more to spend—when I see all this, Leon, I feel impelled to renounce the career of which I have dreamed in my own country, and to go and earn my bread in some foreign land.”
Leon again put in a word, but his brother-in-law replied promptly:
“I should be quite willing to go, but what would you have me do? I cannot give up my prospects when I am on the eve of success; it is cruel to abandon a position gained by so many years of hard study. And indeed, the very fact that I foresee disaster for my family makes me feel that it is my duty to stand by the wreck. We must take life as it comes, dreary as it is.
“You can know nothing of this occult disgrace, Leon; you cannot know what it is to live in a house where nothing is paid for, from the carpets on the floors to the bread we eat; nor the shudder that comes over one at the sound of that recurring knell, the front door bell, announcing some doleful or insolent creditor come to claim his dues; you can have no idea of the farces that have to be played day after day by people whose name seems a guarantee of respectability and honour; nor dream of the moments of acute misery that we, in a more than decent position, endure for want of a sum of ready money that would not spoil the night’s rest of a common workman. You who are both rich, and moderate in your requirements—and that is as good as a double fortune—cannot conceive of the anxieties of acting this bitter comedy among scenes of vanity on the boards of poverty. You—calm and content, with no passion but for your books, superior to those ambitions which scare sleep from my pillow, and free from the slips and reverses which embitter life—you are the spoilt child of Providence; here in your own house, never besieged by creditors, never molested by intruders, in the delightful society of your wife who is a perfect angel.... Poor María!”
After a brief silence, during which the young lawyer seemed to be reading something on his brother-in-law’s forehead, he went on in a bitter tone:
“And yet Leon you have not made her happy!”