“Why, to see it, of course. You will see Señorito Ignacio’s room, with his books and the toys he had when he was a child, for his nurse Engracia has kept them all.”
“Very well, Sardiola,” answered Lucía, as if asking a respite. “Some day when I am in the humor. To-day I am not in the mood for it. I will tell you when I am.”
Lucía was, in fact, greatly preoccupied by a matter which gave more anxiety to her than to any one else. Duhamel had told her that Pilar’s end was drawing near, and Pilar, who had not the slightest suspicion of this, gave no indication of wishing to prepare her soul for the solemn change. They talked to her of God, and she answered, in a scarcely audible voice, with remarks about fashions or pleasure parties; they wished to turn her thoughts toward solemn things and the unhappy girl, with scarcely a breath of life left in her body, uttered some jest that sounded funereal, coming from her livid lips.
All Lucía’s pious eloquence was of no avail to conquer the invincible and beneficent illusion that remained with Pilar to the last. She appealed to Miranda and Perico, but they both shrugged their shoulders and declared themselves altogether inexperienced in such duties and but little adapted for them. The very day on which it occurred to her to speak to them of the matter, they had a supper arranged with Zulma and some of her gay companions in the snuggest and most retired little dining-room at Brébant’s—a fit time this to think of such things. Lucía, however, found some one to help her out of her difficulty, and this was no other than Sardiola, who was acquainted with a Jesuit, a compatriot of his, Father Arrigoitia, and who brought him in a trice. Father Arrigoitia was as tall as a bean-pole, with stooping shoulders; and was as gentle and insinuating in his manners as his compatriot, Father Urtazu, was harsh and abrupt. He made his first visit with the pretext of bringing news from Pilar’s aunt; he returned to inquire, with a great appearance of interest, about the bodily health of the sick girl; he brought her some earth from the holy grotto of Manresa, and some pectoral lozenges of Belmet, all wrapped up carefully together; and, in short, used so much tact and skill that after a week’s acquaintance with him Pilar asked of her own accord for what the Jesuit so greatly desired to give her. As Father Arrigoitia was leaving the room of the now dying girl, after having pronounced the words of absolution, he heard behind the door sobs, and a voice saying: “Thanks, many thanks!” Lucía was there, weeping bitterly.
“Give them to God,” answered the Jesuit gently. “Come, there is no occasion for grief, Señora Doña Lucía; on the contrary, we have cause for congratulation.”
“No, no; I am weeping for joy,” answered the nurse. And as the black cassock and the tall belted figure of the Jesuit were receding from view, she softly called to him. The priest retraced his steps.
“I too, Father Arrigoitia, desire to confess myself, and soon, very soon,” she said.
“Ah, very good, very good. But you are in no danger of death, thanks be to God. In San Sulpicio, in the confessional to the right, as you enter—I am always at your service, Señora. I shall return shortly to see our little patient. There, don’t cry, you look like a Magdalen.”
That afternoon Lucía went down as usual into the garden. But so exhausted was she both in mind and body that, leaning back against the trunk of the plane tree, she soon fell fast asleep. Before long she began to dream, and the oddest part of her dream was that she did not imagine she was in any strange or unknown place, but in the very spot where she sat in the garden, only that this, in the capricious mirroring of her dream, instead of being small and narrow, seemed to be enormous. It was the same garden but seen through a colossal magnifying-glass. The railing had receded far, far away into the distance and looked like a row of points of light on the horizon; and this increase in its size increased the gloom of the little garden, making it seem like a dry and parched field. Casting her eyes around, Lucía fixed her gaze on what seemed to be the front of Artegui’s house, from one of whose open windows issued a pale hand that made signs to her. Was it a man’s hand or a woman’s hand? Was it the hand of a living being or of a corpse? Lucía did not know, but the mysterious beckoning of that unknown hand exercised a spell over her that grew stronger every moment and she ran on and on, trying to approach the house. But the field continued to stretch away; one sandy belt followed another; and after walking hours and hours she still saw before her the long row of sickly plane trees fading into the distance and Artegui’s house further off than ever. But the hand continued to beckon furiously, impatiently, like the hand of an epileptic agitating itself in the air; its five fingers resembled whirling asps, and Lucía, breathless, panting, continued to run on and on, and one plane tree succeeded another and the house was still in the distance. “Fool that I am!” she cried, “since I cannot reach it running, I will fly.” No sooner said than done; with the ease with which one flies in dreams, Lucía stood on tip-toe, and presto! she was in the air at a bound. Oh, happiness! oh, bliss! the field lay beneath her, she winged her way through the serene, pure blue atmosphere; and now the house was no longer distant, and now there was an end to the interminable row of plane trees, and now she distinguished the form to which the hand belonged. It was a form, slender, without being meager, surmounted by a countenance manly, though of a melancholy cast, but which now smiled kindly, with infinite tenderness. How fast Lucía flew! how blissfully she drew her breath in the serene atmosphere! Courage, it is but a little distance now! Lucía could hear the flapping of her wings, for she had wings, and the grateful coolness refreshed her heart. Now she was close beside the window.
Suddenly she felt two sharp pains pierce her flesh as if she had received two wounds at once, made by two different weapons; hovering in the air above her she saw an enormous pair of shears, two white dove’s wings stained with blood fell to the ground, and losing her power she, too, fell, down, down, not on the soil of the garden, but into an abyss, a deep, deep gulf. At the bottom two lights were burning, and the pitying eyes of a woman dressed in white were fixed upon her. It seemed to her as if she had fallen into the grotto at Lourdes—it could be no other; it was exactly as she had seen it in the church of St. Louis at Vichy, even to the roses and the chrysanthemums of the Virgin. Oh, how fresh and beautiful was the grotto with its murmuring spring! Lucía longed to reach it—but as generally happens in nightmares, she was wakened by the shock of her fall.