“There is nothing for it but to submit to him. Can I put it more plainly. Either I fly with you, or I go into the wild beast’s cage.” Leon felt an internal shock; his soul seemed to leap up within him, to bound from its central seat.
“Plainer still?” she went on, going close up to him and leaning over him so that he might mark the angry glare of her small eyes. “Gustavo can give you the fullest details. Gustavo came to Papa this morning to explain to him my husband’s claims. Federico is his client; the creature has entrusted the defense of his rights to that man.”
“Now I understand why he threatened me with some mysterious punishment.—And were you present at his interview with your father?”
“Yes.—My father had just been telling me that it was this resurrection of the enemy that had been troubling him so much—he had heard that Federico had returned. Pilar told him last night that he was here.—The shock had quite taken away my breath, when in came the pompous lawyer. He came, he said, as the friend of both parties, and most anxious to compromise matters rather than bring them into court. The hypocrite! His roundabout speeches gave us the sensation of the jarring of a machine that wants oiling, which tortures one’s nerves and makes one’s head ache.... My father and he went on for ever so long, beating about the bush with high-flown phrases that made me furious. I should have turned the lawyer out of the house. But you can imagine his ponderous emphasis and the complacent twaddle with which he tormented me—and after talking for an age, he explained that he had already drawn up a statement of the case.”
Pepa paused to take breath and recruit her moral energies, of which she seemed to have an inexhaustible supply.
“My father,” she went on, “put forward a great many arguments and considerations. I said that the man who was brave enough to take my child from me, might come and drag her out of my arms. I believe that in my indignation I said very rude things to Gustavo. He apologized for his interference, alleging that he was merely an agent. All he wished was that we should come to an agreement, that the best course would be a friendly compromise, so as not to give rise to a scandal. I tried to defend myself against the horrible insinuations as to my own character, but an uneasy conscience checked me; I blundered and hesitated, and in trying to prove myself innocent I believe I did the very reverse.”
“And what more did the raving moralist say?”
“He went on for about half an hour quoting laws,” said Pepa, again trying to infuse a drop of humour in her bitter cup. “He began with Deuteronomy, went on to the Germans and Tacitus, and then referred to various modern authorities; finally, thinking he had not bored us enough, he quoted sections, chapters, schedules—what not? I really was amused as I listened to him....”
“You were amused?”
“Yes,—I thought what fun it would be to put him in the middle of our big pond and let him declaim to the frogs and fishes.—He was extremely tedious, telling me in the most elaborate and polite terms that the law was entirely on his client’s side, and that nothing could be easier than to prove me guilty. He has plenty of witnesses.”