XV.
Notwithstanding her positive promise, when Rogelio opened his eyes after a peaceful and beneficial sleep, he saw Esclavita standing at his mother’s bedside, giving her a cup of broth. Señora de Pardiñas complained greatly of the contusion in the spine, but her headache was much better. Sanchez de Abrojo soon came and justified her complaints by saying that, judging by the symptoms, the contusion threatened to assume an erysipelatous character, for which reason, in order to avoid the pernicious effects of cold on the injured parts, it would be well to remain in bed. “And even if he had given me permission, I could not have got up,” Señora de Pardiñas said. “I feel as if I had been tossed in a blanket and been beaten with sand-bags afterward. There is not a bone in my body that does not ache. It is only now that I begin to feel the full effects of the bruise.”
Rogelio took his chocolate, seated at the foot of his mother’s bed, and showed little inclination to stir from there. But Doña Aurora soon observed this. “Oh, oh, child,” she cried, “Hurry off to college! You know very well that the professors, especially Ruiz del Monte, won’t excuse absences. The examinations will come afterward, and then you will be wondering why you didn’t pass.”
He must, then, shake off his laziness, go to his room, bathe his face with cold water, wrap himself well in his cloak and proceed to the confounded “chocolate factory,” as he called the University, for the reason that in no place is there more grinding going on. When he left the warm atmosphere of the house, his faculties brightened by his matutinal ablutions, and felt the cold of the early morning in his eyes and on his lips, it seemed to Rogelio as if a veil of fog had suddenly been rent apart and his recollections of the day before took clear and distinct shape in his mind. At this hour his sweetheart, the little girl with the superfluous tooth, would be leaning over the balcony to see, first the mounted artillerymen, and then himself pass by. Rogelio shook with laughter when he recalled this episode. “What a joke!” he said to himself. “What a way I took to find a sweetheart!” Then he remembered what had passed during the night. “I don’t know what came over me,” he thought. “Mamma’s fall dazed me. I said some stupendous things to Esclavita. That, indeed, was like a declaration of love, in earnest; yes, truly. And I felt it all, and if I had not tried hard to control myself, I should have cried. And she, too, was inclined to be sentimental. But looking at it calmly, nothing that we said to each other compromises either of us. They were words that slip from one—well—because at times—if I were required now to give an explanation of why I said them I could not do it. They came without my thinking. Perhaps this is love; as for the other, that was pure make-believe. Well, this at least, if mamma were to find it out, would not vex her so much as what was near happening the other day. In what happened last night I don’t see anything bad.” And as he exchanged a salutation at the door of the University with the sleepy door-keeper, his thoughts took another direction, and he said to himself, “I shall make a nice show of myself if I am questioned on the lesson to-day.”
In the afternoon the house was full of friends who had heard of the accident and who had come to offer their services. There were two or three ladies who were allowed into the bed-room to chat with the patient, whose head was well now and who, consequently, was not disturbed by the noise. The habitués of the house came as usual and remained in the dressing-room to accompany the “son of the victim,” as Rogelio laughingly called himself. They discussed the possible consequences of the fall; they devoted a good half hour to a consideration of what would have happened if the patient, instead of setting her heel down in this way had set it down in that. Only Lain Calvo, the representative in that senile assemblage, at once of common sense and of malevolence, pretended deafness more than ever, confining himself to stirring the fire and looking over the pictures and caricatures in the illustrated periodicals. Two or three times he took his ear-trumpet from his pocket and made a pretense of cleaning it and putting it into his ear, but the plainest proof that he heard perfectly was, that under pretense of showing some illustration or other in La Ilustracion Iberica to Rogelio, he leaned toward the student and said to him with a look that would better have become the face of a mischievous urchin than of a grave old man:
“When are those manikins going to stop their senseless chatter, boy? They are even more idiotic to-day than usual. What is the use of talking about what the possible consequence might be of something that might possibly have happened but that didn’t happen? It is like saying, ‘If she had fallen on her head instead of on her side it would have killed her.’”
Then another discussion arose—in relation also to the great event of the fall—as to whether it might not be well for some friend to stay and take care of the patient, as there were certain services which Rogelio, being a man and inexperienced in such matters besides, could not very well render her. But here Don Gaspar Febrero broke out, emphasizing his asseverations by striking the ferule of his crutch against the chimney-guard:
“Why, she has the best nurse she could possibly have! Don’t be afraid but that our friend Doña Aurora will be well taken care of by the sympathetic Esclavita. You may be sure she will wait on her like a sister of charity. Don’t pity Doña Aurora; pity a poor fellow like me, rather, who will have no Esclavita at his pillow to close his dying eyes, when his last hour comes.”
The company here all protested, with the exception of Lain Calvo, whose attention seemed to be occupied in adjusting his trumpet in his ear.