CHAPTER XVII.
DESERTERS.
In fact the doctors’ verdict was a hopeless one, though they thought the end was as yet far off, and this brought some relief and even hope to the anxious household. Time, whether future or past, is a great consoler, and a misfortune postponed, like a misfortune long past, is lost on the vague and distant horizon behind which lies the wide realm of forgetfulness. The Tellería family settled down into comparative ease of mind, and its members by degrees reserved their usual tone and demeanour. Gustavo was elected and spent his days in the Congress chamber. His mother, though she could not entirely throw off the anxiety that weighed upon her, resumed that sweet expression of bland conformity to the ways of the world, mixed with a certain plaintive pietism which implied that she was, on the whole, resigned to enjoy herself, and the futility of life filled up a large portion of her time.
One morning Leon found her in a state of bewildered indecision, contemplating a collection of summer hats that had come from a shop in a large basket covered with oil-cloth; there was every variety of headpiece conceived, month after month, by the ingenuity of the French mind—birds’ nests buried in ears of corn and sparkling with beetles, baskets piled up with tufts of moss, straw platters with wild flowers, round helmets, formless mats cocked into corners, saucepan-shaped erections with flat brims trimmed with hummingbirds, turban hats wreathed with gauze veils, in short every extravagant and absurd device that a milliner can create to tempt women to hasten their husbands’ ruin. The marquesa examined them all, criticising each with a sharp or a severe remark, as became a woman of superior taste. Some she tried on before the glass, turning her head from side to side to judge of the effects of shape and colour, and at last she put them all back into the basket:
“I will not take any of them,” she said. “It is quite possible that we may go to France and then I can get all I want there, as I have in former years, and bring home something new, quite new—I will make it all right with the Aduana (custom-house). Yes it is quite possible we may go to France; you did not know, Leon?”
Leon with María and Luis Gonzaga had assisted at the review of the hats, giving his opinion when it was asked. The conversation now turned from the fashions to the custom-house duties. The twins sat silent and sad, more particularly Luis, who kept his eyes fixed on the flowers in the garden which was full of rhododendrons and lovely pink-flowered azaleas.
“You did not know?” the lady repeated. “That wretched boy Leopoldo is leaving us to-day. He is off to Biarritz with some other young fellows—friends of his. I could not prevent him—I explained to him that as we had all remained at home to be with Luis, he ought to stay as well. He says that he requires sea-baths and gave no end of reasons—he is taking advantage of the convenience of going with the Duke de Ceriñola and Count de Garellano who have secured a saloon carriage.”
On enquiring of a servant for Señor Polito they learnt that he was breakfasting out, and that he intended to go straight from his friend’s house to the station without coming home again. His packing was done and his trunks locked. This extraordinary proceeding, proving how much family and filial feeling her worthless son could boast of, was a deep grief to the marquesa, who, with all her follies, lacked neither tenderness nor the sense of right. Leopoldo, she frankly admitted, had been shamefully ill-brought up—though by no fault of hers—and was a hardened scapegrace, impervious to all good feeling, and capable of leaving his family in the lurch in their hour of greatest need if he saw a chance of riding a borrowed horse, of driving a friend’s coach, or riding in a friend’s phaeton, of being hand and glove with some sprig of the nobility or staking a few dollars at cards.
The marquis, who had just come into the room in an elaborate light-coloured spring suit, heard the news with the utter indifference which some people assume as the very acme of good taste.
“It is natural,” he said, “boys must amuse themselves. They will be men all in good time, with the ties and troubles of a social position and public life, with rheumatism—for instance here am I, in absolute need of repairs, and I shall be obliged to have them. My doctor was quite furious when I told him I could not get away this summer: ‘What!’ he exclaimed. ‘Señor Marqués! the head of a family ought never to neglect his health. I condemn you to take baths; it is a sentence without appeal!’ In short my dears—I set out to-morrow.”