“And everything has been settled in a satisfactory manner,” said Don Pedro, relaxing his frown and stroking his daughter’s hair with his heavy hand, while she said not a word, and did not even open her eyes. “Time, time,” he said, “time is the remedy for all things.—Do you not think so, Leon?”
“I, for my part,” said Leon, “do not expect time to give me what it has not got to bestow. I hate to forget—it is the death of the heart. My feelings will be the same that they are now to my dying day—but at a distance, where I can never be troubled by a wretch whom I have always despised, and always shall despise. I have spent my life in the pursuit of an ideal—the ideal Christian family: the centre of peace and corner-stone of virtue; the stepping-stone to moral perfection; the fount in which each and all may be baptised and purified. Such a home is an education; it compels us to grow to a higher standard and rubs off the asperities of our nature, giving us the most precious lessons by placing in our care the men of the future, that we may train them from the cradle to years of discretion.—And all this has been, and must ever be, to me no more than a dream. Two women have crossed my path, Religion gave me the first, and religion, wrongly understood, tore her from me. The second would have given me herself—gave me her heart and soul; and I took the gift; but the law deprives me of it, and I have no choice but to resign it. All my attempts to achieve the lovely reality will be no less ill-fated. Society threw this woman into the arms of another man, and if I claim her I condemn her and myself to a life of unqualified disgrace, on a level with the basest of those I most abhor. Nay, and our dishonour becomes a legacy to innocent creatures, guiltless of the errors committed before they were born, but nevertheless coming nameless and dishonoured into the world.”
He kissed Pepa’s hand which she had left in his, and then went on:
“The presence of these two persons, who will be scandalized, no doubt, by my words, shall not prevent my expressing my feelings.—To me, this woman is mine, mine by the divine law of love. I, radical as I am, bow to this law of the heart; but when I wish to put these anarchical views into practice, I tremble and dare not. The fierce rebellion lingers in my soul and cannot venture forth. Those who cannot transform the world and uproot its errors, must respect them. Those who cannot see the mysterious limit-line between legality and iniquity, must yield to the law with the patience of slaves. Those whose souls rise with cries and struggles in a revolt which seems legitimate, are nevertheless incompetent to place a sounder constitution in the place of that which crushes them, and can only suffer in silence.”
“We are all slaves to the laws of the age we live in,” said Don Justo sternly.
“That is true,” Leon said; he was evidently speaking for Pepa’s benefit alone. “Our spirits are but a part of the spirit that made those laws; we are so far responsible for their defects that we must accept the consequences. If every one who felt injured by the machine in which we move—the majority in lazy indifference—if the sufferers, I say, were to set to work to alter it and could not repair it, what a world this would become! We must submit to be torn and mangled, secretly bewailing our misery, and only wishing we could live to see new machinery at work. But even that, I have no doubt, would hurt some one, since every improvement in one phase of human life brings some fresh form of suffering. Life is an aspiration—a thirst which revives as soon as it is quenched. If we could conceive of immortality under no other aspect, we could imagine it as consisting in seeing ourselves constantly under the dominion of—whether in small actions or in great ones—and constantly enchanted by the lovely vision of that distant horizon we call perfection.—If you, poor soul, could only know how I have fought with myself since we last talked together. I reconsidered every impossible alternative. It would be so easy to escape from this maze by simply following the impulse of my heart, and shielding myself behind theoretical and selfish arguments which no one but myself could follow and which even I could not distinctly marshall.—You were ready to come, the carriage was waiting, all the means of flight were ready, there was not an obstacle in sight and we could have afforded to think lightly of the opinion of society.—To be off and happy in some distant land! How easy and pleasant it seemed! You—not my wife—I your lover; both living in the practice of social anarchy, our illicit connection an outrage on the noblest and most necessary institution of human society; I haunted by a ghost, and you by a living man, who on every possible occasion would proclaim and urge his rights; neither of us having any claims against others while the whole world would have claims against us. Your daughter, again, growing up with this horrible example before her innocent eyes; and on what moral ground could you damn me if one day she felt inclined to become the mistress of the first man who fell in love with her? When once we break the bounds, we have no choice but to cast off all the ties that give order and stability to the world.—Yes, I thought over everything that could be said on either side. Then I considered whether I could not stay here, and soothe my anxieties with the satisfaction of being near you, even though I should neither see you nor speak to you. But that again cannot be. If I stay within reach of you, some time or other, almost without intending it, we should be certain to meet. Then that man I loathe would interfere—I should be unable to control my hatred, and I know, I feel, it would end in bloodshed. If I do not go away—far away, and soon—I know how that baleful impulse would grow stronger in me; it is like some hideous bidding to kill. Under my calmer reason turbid springs seethe in my soul, surging up to sweep away every obstacle. There is that within me which urges me to violence and rebellion; but I lack courage, for I reflect that nothing permanent, right, or moral, can be built up on anarchy or on blood. I take refuge in my conscience, and I have decided to go. I go to save your honour and the happiness of your child.”
Pepa did not lift her head nor open her eyes and she spoke with bitter despair.
“I am incapable of argument; I seek one, but in vain; I look into my soul and I find nothing but love.”
Then she slowly raised herself and opened her hot and aching eyes; but she looked at no one as she added:
“I am punished. When I see that the fetters which link me to a villain cannot be broken, I cannot help remembering that the fault is all my own.—Yes, mine; for in a fit of jealous pique I bound myself for life to a worthless wretch. I flung myself into evil; degrading myself and my father, and turning marriage into a wicked and hideous farce.—Why had I no patience? I rushed into marriage with a strange impulse towards martyrdom. It was the mad vanity of anguish which seeks to add to its tortures.—Then, when you thought I was free, why did you seek me? We both made a cruel mistake in binding ourselves with intolerable bonds. As soon as you were free, I was suddenly caught again, and in that fatal pillory; but I hoped some chivalrous hand might dash it to pieces.”