Grant that Carmen did not hate my uncle Felipe. She was incapable of feeling hatred toward anybody. My uncle had given her his name, a good position, such as it was; he did not treat her ill, nor did I even notice that he scrimped her in money-matters, although I clearly saw that if the wife were free to do as she desired she would enlarge her list of charities.
The married life of my uncle and aunt, thus, was only like that of so many husbands and wives we see nowadays; in appearance tranquil and even happy, upheld by that decorous and middle-class spirit of concord, so fashionable in our modern society, where customs as well as streets are drawn in a straight line, more precise and symmetrical every day. But as within the houses in those straight streets tragic events occur, and love, vice, and crime come and go just as they did in the crookedest alleys known to the Middle Ages, so under that couple’s cloak of harmony and mutual esteem I could perceive their incompatibility of temper; the husband’s inclination to be mean and tyrannical, and the wife’s cold, hard, and unconscious feeling of repulsion.
Sometimes I would say to myself: “Take care, for Luis is right and I am a fool! I ought not to pay the slightest attention to Carmen’s dislike to her husband, which I constantly observe. What should preoccupy me is the sentiment which I inspire in her. If she loved me as I love her, what would I care if she acted like some dramatic heroine we read of, and, without ceasing to love me madly, should still display toward her husband a most tender affection,—filial, or sisterly, or conjugal respect? Only let her return my love, and the rest, as far as I am concerned, shall be allowed to take place on the stage of the soul—where no one ought to venture. What inference can I draw from the fact that even if she does not care for her rightful lord, she never even looks at me?”
Well, I would not draw any inference, yet I kept on watching the signs of that antipathy with intense joy. Just as, when we begin to surmise that the woman we love will return our affection, we eagerly watch for a glance, a smile, a furtive blush, the trace of a passing emotion, that, tearing asunder the delicate veil which infolds a woman’s heart, betrays and lays bare the hidden flame, so I used to study the inflections of her voice, the ill-concealed flashing of her eyes, the scarcely perceptible tremor of her lips which revealed to me the wife’s moral state.
At the dinner hour I would watch her closely, though pretending to be absent-minded, playing with my fork or discussing politics with my uncle. I am sure that everything can be feigned, everything subjected to the will,—even the expression of the countenance,—but not the voice. Carmen was able to control the muscles of her face, to subdue her eyes, to prevent her delicate nostrils from dilating, but never could succeed in making her voice, usually even, soft and clear when she was addressing others, anything but harsh and muffled when she spoke to her husband. And, aside from that fact, there were a thousand plain indications. The plainest was her anxiety to prolong the evenings in the parlor. Of her own motion, that woman would never have gone to bed. What a delightful impression it made on me the few times that I succeeded in spending the evening with her, to see her retard the hour of retiring with a thousand pretexts; burying herself in her work, saying that she had a certain stint to finish, that she would not go to bed until she finished it; that she had to write to her father, or to some friends in Pontevedra; until, finally, my uncle would unceremoniously command her to retire. I was only able to make such observations on Saturday nights; the rest of the week I had to go to my room early on account of my lessons. I used to sit by the chimney in the boudoir next to her bedroom, which had moss-green plush portières. They were drawn back, so that I could look into the hateful chamber, where was daily enacted the iniquitous mystery of absolute intimacy between two beings who did not love each other or perhaps feel any esteem for each other, who had no mutual understanding or any points of contact beyond the fact that the Moorish friar had thrown the stole over them at the same time.
One morning I received a letter from my mother, written in her usual precipitate and incoherent style, without punctuation, it is unnecessary to add, and wholly devoted to giving me some strange news.
“You don’t know the greatest joke of all that the old man Aldao fell into the trap set by that horrid girl Candidiña who turned his head bewitched and made him raving mad until finally he consented to marry her secretly not publicly and the priest denies it and the old man as well but I know it by one who saw it with his own eyes and some very indecent couplets are going the rounds in Pontevedra about this phenomenon and it seems that the editor of El Teucrense wrote them and they would make one die laughing an impudent girl can succeed in anything they say he gave her a mantilla and a black silk dress may the Lord grant that we may not lose our wits and get in our dotage I don’t know whether his daughter knows it but keep quiet and let somebody else tell her for they will surely write to Felipe about this scrape a nice mess it is and now he has a step-mother and I am glad of it as he took advantage of us.”
It is needless to say that as soon as I could find Carmen alone I hastened to tell her the great news, not without great preambles and much circumlocution. Far from being startled or sorrowful, Señor Aldao’s daughter displayed great satisfaction.
“God has heard my prayers,” she exclaimed, impetuously. “God has rewarded me, Salustio. At my father’s age he had better be married than—otherwise. I am glad for his own sake. You may be sure that I rejoice, though I should have liked him to make a different choice. But now that it is over, I hope it may turn out well.”
“I don’t want to spoil your joy,” I said; “but Carmiña, a man of your father’s age runs a great risk and loses something of his dignity by marrying a girl of sixteen.”