“See,” she said, putting her head out of the carriage door, “for the present I cannot give you a decided answer as to whether I will take you or not. Come to the house to see me to-morrow morning about this time. I should be glad to—but I must think the matter over. If I should not be able to take you myself, I will look for a place for you with some other Galician family. Tell me your conditions, in case any one else should want to know.”
Esclavita, meantime, stood rolling an end of her black silk handerchief between her thumb and forefinger.
“May God reward you!” she answered. “As for the wages, a dollar more or a dollar less makes no difference to me. Work does not frighten me. I would not engage as a cook, for I don’t know how to make those fine dishes that are the fashion now. I understand simple dishes like those of my native place. In everything else I think I could give satisfaction—in the cleaning, the mending, and the ironing. All I ask is that in the family you look for there should not be—well, men, who——”
“I understand, I understand,” interrupted Doña Aurora. And she added jestingly, “But in that case, tell me why you want to come to my house. Haven’t you seen that there is a man in it?”
And she pointed to Rogelio who, relieved from his embarrassment by his mother’s presence, stood leaning against the carriage door, looking at the girl. Esclavita followed the direction of Señora Pardiñas’ hand; for the first time her eyes, green, changeful, sincere, rested on the student. After a pause she said with a smile:
“Is that young gentleman your son? May God spare him to you for many years. That isn’t the kind of man I mean, he is only a boy.”
Rogelio changed countenance as if he had received the most outrageous insult. He tried to disguise his annoyance by a laugh, but the laugh died away in his throat. It must be confessed that he even felt his eyes fill with tears of vexation. It was one of those moments of insensate and profound rage which must come at one time or another to the man whose childhood has been unduly prolonged; moments in which he desires, as if it were the highest good, to possess the bitter treasure of experience—sorrows, disappointments, trials, struggles, sickness, gray hairs, wrinkles, calamities, betrayal of friendship and of love—all, all, so that he may hear the supreme word, so that he may taste the fruit of good and evil, the immortal apple, golden on the one side, blood-red on the other. All, so that he may fulfill the destiny of humanity, all, so that he may pass through the cycle of life.
VI.
When the driver whipped up his horse, Señora Pardiñas called out to her son, who was on the box:
“Give him Rita Pardo’s direction.”