Once down the stairs and safe in the large hall they drew a breath of relief, as though they had accomplished a long and difficult journey, though it was full of people impatiently watching the incessant drip from the eaves, and putting out their hands to feel whether the storm were abating. Some ventured forth under umbrellas, others made a rush for an omnibus. Gentlemen’s coachmen were on the look-out for their masters, and Pepa’s took up the two ladies and the two gentlemen and rolled off, splashing up the mud, down the broad street which turns out of the Carretera de Aragón (Aragón Street). There it turned into the court-yard of the Fúcars’ house and drew up under a covered vestibule—a large alcove with scagliola columns and two enormous candelabra, shrouded in linen covers and looking like a couple of Carthusian friars.
Leaving the great staircase on the left the party went into the splendid rooms on the ground-floor which were arranged for daily use; the first-floor rooms—the most airy, sunniest, pleasant, and by far the most magnificent, were only opened to the public on great occasions; thus it is that vanity overrides sanitary considerations.
CHAPTER XXIV.
REMINISCENCES—ANXIETIES.
They sat down to dinner, as Pepa had said, a party of four. Happy to find herself with friends so good and few, the millionaire’s daughter showed her pleasure frankly but discreetly during the meal, after which they all went together into the drawing-room where Pepa received her more intimate acquaintance. There she had collected various treasures of art and numberless trifles of French workmanship, adding prettiness to splendour, and novelty to beauty, all so skilfully arranged to surprise or delight the eye that the palace of caprice itself could not be more delightful. They sat together for some time till the Countess de Vera left to go to the theatre, Don Joaquín Onésimo offering to escort her. Then the other two were alone.
On a crimson divan, over which hung a genre picture representing a squalid party of gypsies with their asses—fashion attributes a very high value to this class of work just now, and pays for them their weight in gold—while not far off, on a pedestal representing three elephants’ heads, stood a Chinese vase in which grew a drooping broad-leaved begonia—Pepa and Leon Roch sat side by side; she very communicative; he gloomy, and silent.
“It all happened just as I foresaw,” said Pepita. “Federico, far from improving at Havana, went from bad to worse. I told papa he would, here he had got into some absurd and discreditable business, and there ... well it would seem that distance makes men reckless. I am ashamed when I think of it; I cannot get used to the idea that my husband could be guilty of such dirty work. Why, out there he had to hide and make his escape, for my father’s correspondents there would have put him in prison ... when I think that it was my madness, my idiotic folly, that brought this disgrace on my father’s house!... All the mischief arose from that cursed passion for gambling; but who could control it? It was in his blood—part and parcel of his being. I assure you,” she added after a pause and passing her hand across her eyes, “that I have gone through hours of intense misery and untold struggles; for there were some things that I could not tell papa, and at the same time I was forced to apply to him to get out of the compromising difficulties in which my husband placed me by his enormous losses. But you too have suffered, more than enough Señor de Roch. I do not believe that hearts are made of flesh and blood as anatomists tell us; they are stone and iron which cannot be broken, or mine must have been crushed. I have shed so many tears,” she again wiped her eyes—“that I think I can have none left to shed if any further grief befalls me.... But how could I hope to see the fulfilment of all the fancies and bright dreams of that bygone time? Ah! reality tames us; we live to learn. Good heavens! when I think of what I have gone through for mere appearances!... Indeed Leon, I have suffered cruelly. This palace, which to others is a scene of feasting and amusement, to me is full of sorrows; there is not an object which does not bear the mark, as it were, of my sighs; there is not a spot of which I could not say: ‘Here I cried on such a day; there I thought I should die of grief.’ If I were to try to tell you all I should never come to an end.” And Pepita waved her hand to indicate the endlessness of what she might relate if she were not afraid of boring her friend.
“No, no, tell me everything. Do I not know the worst, the really incomprehensible beginning of it all: your marriage to that rascal Cimarra? That you, with your morbid imagination—a sort of moral atrophy in spite of your good heart—should have made such a mistake I cannot understand; but that your father should have consented!... To be sure, when his party came to the front and made Federico a provincial governor, he seemed for a time to have amended his ways; he was the model man in office. When he held a high position in the exchequer no one could have recognised the old Cimarra in that punctual, almost stoical functionary; he was so anxious to be thought a judicious and important personage that it was quite ridiculous, and I believe your father allowed himself to be taken in by the masquerade. Besides, your father had dealings with the exchequer in those days; I heard something of a loan on the salt tax and a mortgage on salt mines ... but it was you, Pepa, who were to be given in pledge and put in the power of that ruffian. I was not surprised at the trouble that followed, but oh! how deeply I pitied you. At the time when you married I was happy; since then ... but you see I know the worst of your miserable story, and if there is anything I do not know, lose no time in telling me.”
Pepa laughed; then turning to her friend with a reproachful air she said: