Quite early in the morning Leon set out in his carriage for Carabanchel. The air was fresh from the rain which had not ceased during the night, and every object was reflected dully in the liquid mud, as in a dirty mirror. Workmen and carters swearing like gentlemen—the comparison is commonly made the contrary way—were wending their way along the roads and across the bridge, met by muleteers from Fuenlabrada, and market gardeners from Leganés or Moraleja; while Madrid, in the dismal dawn, was sending out her pauper dead, borne on the shoulders of the living, to San Isidro or Santa María.
After passing the lower village of Carabanchel, Leon skirted a splendid park lying between the lower and the higher villages; upper Carabanchel having the advantage if not actually in point of architecture, at any rate in situation and outlook.
The demesne of Suertebella is one of those estates which ample wealth and perseverance have succeeded in creating in the neighborhood of Madrid, and which can stand comparison with the more famous grounds of Vista-Alegre, Montijo and others. There was a noble growth of elms, acacias, sophoras, with the still rarer beauty of a wide spread of turf planted with grand sequoias, Japanese medlars, magnolias and other exotic trees with huge shrubs of fuchsias, tree ferns, cactus and araucarias; aviaries full of every variety of wild and tame fowl; stables in which the horses lived like gentlemen, cow-houses and poultry-yards. There was a river running through the estate with a boat on it, a shooting-gallery, a croquet-ground, a grotto, a pond stocked with fish, and even a heap of ruins with the inevitable adjuncts of ivy and moss. The house, though recently built of brick and stucco was sumptuous and elegant; especially the interior, where a lavish hand and experienced taste had collected all the rarest and costliest luxuries that modern art can produce. All the rooms were on the ground floor, the sitting-rooms in a long suite, handsomely decorated. Of course there was an Arabian divan in the latest fashion, and a Japanese room, and a Gothic room, and an orthodox Louis XV. drawing-room. The Marquis Fúcar prided himself on each being perfectly “in keeping,” and the most beautiful object in creation would fail to meet his approval if it had not what he called “character”: “In perfect character you see,” was his favourite form of praise.
Leon made his way through half a dozen of these vast empty rooms, dismally draped in silk, like shrouded princes; their vacant spaciousness made him think of huge yawning mouths. The carpets—softer and deeper than the mattresses in some houses—deadened the sound of his steps; the splendid parcel-gilt bronzes, still smelling of the packing-case, and the varnish on the freshly-cleaned pictures reflected every intrusive ray of light, while the clocks repeated their tedious monologue, breaking the silence of the cavern-like rooms. There were historical portraits, frowning sternly; Poussinesque groups of figures dancing or playing rustic games on the tapestry; Dead Christs of jaundiced hue, reposing in the lap of the weeping Virgin; dozens of bull-fighters and mincing ladies, such as the modern Spanish school turns out by hundreds to meet the taste of the amateurs of the day; watercolours of a rather free and easy character; stalwart nymphs à la Rubens, and lean studies of racers painted with as much elaboration as though they were the most eminent portraits. Graceful vases, little porcelain kittens grinning over the edge of a jug, and flower stands supported on the backs of some hideous hippopotamus or monstrous griffin.
The servants he met, looked full of consternation and the maids had their eyes red with crying; a few hasty words put him in possession of the facts. In front of several pictures of saints, tapers were burning, and he heard the sound of prayers and sobs.
At last he reached the silent, half-darkened room which was the centre of all this woe. He approached very softly as though it were the scene of some event of transcendental importance to the whole human race. It was a very tiny, humble drama that was being enacted there; the death-struggle of a frail insignificant creature—one of those inappreciably small catastrophes which make no echo in the world since they snatch away no great man, no useful woman, though they bring anguish and terror into a thousand homes. This death would leave no one widowed or orphaned, would bring neither ruin, nor wealth, nor change, nor even mourning on any house; it would be no more than one more victim added to the hecatomb of little ones through whom Providence, by snatching them away at the very threshold of life, wrings the heart of mothers. The human race must be daily decimated it would seem, to prevent its overwhelming increase.
Pepa, still dressed as she had been at the bull-fight had sunk into a chair, her hands folded, her eyes fixed; her speechless despair terrified all who were with her, and some who could not control their grief left the room to cry. She was sitting close to a little bed so daintily pretty that the fairies themselves could make nothing more innocently fresh; it was like a little basket of gilt cane fit to contain the most delicate flowers, and the white curtains, with their lace and pink ribbands, were so fine and white that the angels might have played at hide-and-seek among the folds. Leon went up to the head of the dying child that lay heavy and motionless on the pillow; the pillow was covered with golden curls and wet with tears. Leon himself was tremulous with apprehension; his heart stood still with anguish as he looked at Monina—the little face, pale with suffering, the lips blue, the eyes wide open and the lashes wet with tears, her throat swollen and dark from the swelling of the veins—and worst of all as he heard the plaintive, stertorous groaning which was neither a cough nor a sigh—hoarse, guttural and yet sharp, as harsh as the whistle of a pipe in a demon’s mouth, a horrible, mechanical recurring crow. The child struggled with suffocation, clutching at her throat to seek relief, as if she could give a passage to the air for which her lungs were panting. This agony of an infant by strangulation with no possibility of relieving it, while neither science nor a mother’s love can loosen the invisible cord that is choking the baby throat—the little neck, generally as white as a lily and now as livid as a piece of dead flesh; the ebbing of a pure, blameless, loving, angelical life in the most tragical torments, with the convulsions of a strangled criminal and the misery of asphyxia, is one of the most appalling instances of the inexorable fate which, whether it be for trial or for punishment, oppresses humanity.
In the clutches of this monster Monina looked from one to another, at her mother and at the nurses, as if to implore them to release her from this dreadful thing, from this undreamed-of punishment—a cruel drama of Dame Nature! Despair filled every heart; in the face of this terror no one could shed a tear; through each mind flashed the sacrilegious thought, like a gleam of infernal light, that there was—there could be, no God.
Leon knew not what to say, and for a minute or two his eyes wandered in bewildered horror from the child to the mother, and noted the most trivial details; the table covered with medicine bottles, the child’s playthings scattered on the floor—shabby undressed dolls, horses without legs and cats without tails—they looked as forlorn and disconsolate as the human watchers. When he studied the child’s face and then looked into that of the doctor who was still standing by her, Leon augured the worst. Pepa looked up at him with tearful eyes and said in a low, heart-broken tone:
“She will die.”