A Wedding Trip

by condesa de Emilia Pardo Bazán

While Perico and Miranda kept off the blues in this way, Pilar’s remaining lung was gradually being consumed, as a plank is consumed with dry-rot. She did not grow worse because that was now impossible, and her existence, rather than life, was a lingering death, not very painful, disturbed only by an occasional fit of coughing which threatened to choke her. Life was in her like the flickering flame of a candle burned to the socket, which the slightest movement, the least breath of air will suffice to extinguish. She had lost her voice almost entirely, so that she could speak only in soft, low tones, such as a drum stuffed with cotton might emit. Fits of somnolence, frequent and protracted, would overpower her, periods of profound stupor, of utter exhaustion, which simulated and foreshadowed the final repose of the tomb. Her eyes closed, her body motionless, her feet side by side as if she already lay in her coffin, she would lie for hours and hours on the bed, giving no other sign of life than a faint, sibilant breathing. It was generally at the noonday hour that this comatose sleep took possession of her, and her nurse, who could do nothing for her but leave her to repose, and who was oppressed by the heavy atmosphere of the room, impregnated with the emanations from the medicines and the vapor of the perspiration—atoms of this human being in process of dissolution—would go out on the balcony, descend the stairs leading into the garden, and seating herself in the shade of the stunted plane tree, would pass there the hours of the siesta, sewing or crocheting. Her work consisted of diminutive shirts, bibs equally diminutive, petticoats neatly scalloped. In this sweet and secret occupation the hours passed by unnoticed, and occasionally the needle would slip from her skillful fingers and the silence, the solitude, the serenity of the heavens, the soft rustle of the sickly looking trees would tempt the industrious needlewoman into a pensive revery. The sun darted his golden arrows through the foliage across the sanded paths at this hour, and the air was dry and mild. The walls of the hotel and of Artegui’s house formed a sort of natural stove, attracting the solar heat and diffusing it through the garden. The railing which shut in the square bordered the Rue de Rivoli, and through its bars could be seen pass by, enveloped in the blue mists of evening, coaches, light victorias, landaus, whirled rapidly along by their costly teams, equestrians who at a distance looked like puppets, and workmen who looked like shadows cast from a Chinese lantern. In the distance gleamed at intervals the steel of a stirrup, the gay color of a gown or of a livery, the varnished spokes of a swiftly revolving wheel. Lucía’s attention was attracted by the many varieties of horses. There were Normandy horses with powerful haunches, strong necks and lustrous coats, deliberate in pace, that drew, with a movement at once powerful and gentle, the heavy vehicles to which they were harnessed; there were English horses with long necks, ungraceful, but stylish, that trotted with the precision of marvelous automatons; Arabian horses, with flashing eyes, quivering and dilated nostrils, shining hoofs, dry coats, and thin flanks; Spanish horses—although of these there were but few—with luxuriant manes, superb chests, broad loins, and forefeet that proudly pawed the air. As the sun sank lower in the west, the carriages could be distinguished in the distance by the scintillation of the lamps, but their forms and colors all blending together confusedly, Lucía’s eyes soon wearied of the effort of following them, and with renewed melancholy she fixed her gaze on the puny and consumptive-looking plants of the garden. At times her solitude was broken in upon, not by any traveler, either male or female—for visitors to Paris as a general thing do not spend the afternoon under a plane tree working—but by Sardiola, in propria persona, who, under pretext of watering the plants, plucking up a weed here and there, or rolling the sand of the path, held long conversations with his pensive compatriot. Certain it is that they were never in want of a subject on which to talk. Lucía’s eyes were no less tireless in asking questions than Sardiola’s tongue was eager to respond to them. Never were matters insignificant in themselves described with greater minuteness of detail. Lucía was now familiar with the eccentricities, the tastes and the ideas of Artegui, and knew by heart his traits of character, and the events of his life, which were in no wise remarkable. The reader may find matter for surprise in the fact that Sardiola should be so well acquainted with all that related to a man with whom his intercourse had been so slight, but it is to be observed that the Biscayan’s native place was at no great distance from the family estate of the Arteguis, and that he was the intimate friend of Ignacio’s former nurse, on whom the care of the solitary house now devolved. The pair held long and intimate conversations together in their diabolical dialect, and the poor woman never wearied of relating the wonderful sayings and doings of her nursling, which Sardiola heard with as much delight as if he had himself performed the feminine functions of Engracia. Through this channel Lucía came to have at her finger’s ends the minutest particulars regarding the disposition and character of Ignacio; his melancholy and silence as a child, his misanthropy as a youth, and many other details relating to his parents, his family, and his fortune. Does fate indeed at times please herself by bringing together mysteriously and by tortuous ways two lives that constantly come in contact with and influence each other, without apparent cause or reason? Is it true that, as there are secret bonds of sympathy between souls, so there are other bonds connecting events, which link them together in the sphere of the material and the tangible?

“Don Ignacio,” said the good Sardiola, “was always so. You see they say that he never had any bodily ailment, not even so much as a toothache. But his nurse Engracia says that from the cradle he suffered from a kind of sickness of the soul or the mind, or whatever it may be called. When he was a child, he was subject to strange fits of terror when night came, without any known cause for them. His eyes would grow larger and larger like that” (Sardiola traced in the air with his thumb and forefinger a series of gradually widening circles) “and he would hide in a corner of the room, huddled up like a ball, and stay there without budging until morning dawned. He would never tell his visions, but one day he confessed to his mother that he saw terrible things—all the members of his family, with the faces of corpses, bathing and splashing about in a pool of blood. In short, a thousand wild fancies. The strangest part of the matter was that in the daytime the Señorito was as brave as a lion, as everybody knows. At the time of the war it was a pleasure to see him. Why bless you! he would go among the balls as if they were sugar plums. He never carried arms, only a hanging satchel containing I don’t know how many things—bistouris, lancets, pincers, bandages, sticking-plaster. Besides this he had his pockets stuffed with lint and rags and cotton batting. I can tell you, Señorita, that if promotion were to be earned by showing no disgust for those good-for-nothing liberals, no one would be better entitled to it than Don Ignacio. On one occasion a bomb fell not two steps away from him. He stood looking at it, waiting for it to explode, no doubt, and if Sergeant Urrea, who was standing beside him at the time, had not caught him by the arm—— Why, he would not retire even when the enemy charged on us with the bayonet. In one of these charges a guiri[B] soldier—accursed be every one of his race—charged at him with his bayonet. And what do you suppose Don Ignacio did?—it would not have occurred even to the devil himself to do it—he brushed him aside with his hand as if he had been a mosquito, and the barbarian lowered his bayonet and allowed himself to be brushed aside. The Señorito gave him a look. Heavens! such a look, half-serious, half-smiling, that must have made the boor blush for shame.”

[B] Government.

Then followed an account of the attentions lavished by the son upon his mother during her last illness.

“I fancy I can see them now. There, there where you are sitting, Doña Armanda; and he just here where I am standing, be it said with all respect. Well, he would bring her down into the garden and he would place her feet on a stool and put a dozen pillows of all sizes and shapes behind her head, to help the poor lady to breathe easier. And the potions! and the draughts!—digitalis here, atropina there. But it was all of no use—at last the poor lady died. Would you believe that Don Ignacio showed no extravagant grief? He is like a well; he keeps everything inside, so that, having no outlet, it suffocates him. But he did not deceive me with his calmness, for when he said to me, ‘Sardiola, will you watch by her with me to-night,’ I thought of—see what a foolish fancy, Señorita—but I thought of a cornet in our ranks who used to play a famous reveille, that was so clear and full and beautiful; and one day he played out of tune, and as we laughed at him he took his cornet and blew it and said, ‘Boys, my poor little instrument has met with a misfortune, and it has cracked.’ Well, the same difference of sound that I noticed in the cornet of that fool, Triguillos, I noticed in the voice of the Señorito. You know what a sonorous voice he has, that it would be a pleasure to hear him give the word of command; but that day his voice was—well, cracked. In short, he himself arrayed Doña Armanda in her shroud, and he and I sat up with her, and at daybreak off to Brittany in a special train,—with the body in a lignum-vitæ coffin, trimmed with silver,—to the old castle, to bury the poor lady among her parents, her grandparents, and all the rest of her ancestors.”

Lucía, who, her work fallen on her lap, had been listening with all her faculties, now concentrated them in her eyes to put a mute question to Sardiola. The quick-witted Biscayan answered it at once.

“He has never come back since and no one knows what he intends to do. Engracia has not had a word from him. Although, indeed, for that matter, he never tells his plans to a living soul. Engracia is there alone by herself, for he dismissed all the other servants, rewarding them well, before he went away. She attends to the little, the nothing, indeed, there is to attend to, opening the windows occasionally, so that the dampness may not have it all its own way with the furniture,—passing a duster——”

Lucía turned her head and looked intently at the windows, closed at the time, behind which she could see passing at intervals the figure of an elderly woman, whose head was covered with the traditional Guipuscoan cap, fastened with its two gilt pins.

“The house ought to be taken care of,” continued Sardiola, “for that blessed Doña Armanda kept it like a silver cup—it is handsomely furnished and very spacious. And now that it occurs to me,” he exclaimed suddenly, slapping his forehead, “why don’t you go to see it, Señorita? I will speak to Engracia, she will show us over it. Come, make up your mind to go.”

“No,” answered Lucía faintly; “what for?”