There then took place in the little domestic drama that was now drawing near to its dénouement one of those byplays, like momentary truces, during which the actors, while appearing to be occupied with other interests, or while thus occupied in reality, do not yet lose sight of the main subject of the drama, continuing still to play a part, so to speak, and maintaining silence regarding the matter which chiefly occupies their minds, without deceiving anybody by this silence. Señora de Pardiñas put off the girl’s departure from day to day, calming the puerile impatience of Don Gaspar Febrero at the delay, with the excuse of the nearness of the examinations and the impossibility of remaining at such a time without a servant. Esclavita waited, hiding in the depths of her heart a tenacious hope, based on the words and the promises of Rogelio; and Rogelio, preoccupied and agitated, waited in vain for an opportunity to say something—something very serious and decided—to his mother. To speak the truth, however, if his mother had given him this opportunity he would not have known how to avail himself of it. As time passed, the courage which he had felt at first evaporated by degrees, like the essence in a vial which is left uncorked. It requires more resolution than appears at first sight for a good son to place himself in direct opposition to a good mother, and take a step, which to a certain extent emancipates him from maternal authority, but which at the same time wrings the inmost fibers of his heart. So blended together are natural duty, habit, and even that excusable selfishness which counsels us to place ourselves without reserve in the hands of one who loves us better than ourselves, that the breaking of this bond is an act of supreme courage, one of those efforts from which the will shrinks, unless it be of finely-tempered metal. Against a severe father there is always energy; his very severity serves as a tonic to the will; but a mother like Rogelio’s, whose first thought had always been her son, who had made him the object of so much solicitude, sparing him even the trouble of considering and the effort of desiring; a widowed mother, delicate in health, who had made it a practice to anticipate the wishes of her son, in this way preventing the will of her son from ever acquiring the robustness which struggles and privations give, was an adversary against whom Rogelio had not the strength to measure himself. “If she herself would introduce the subject,” he thought. But the truth is that if she had introduced it, the result would have been the same. All he ventured to do was to enter a mute protest, to show himself melancholy at times, and at times ill-tempered and sullen. “Mamma, in order not to see me looking unhappy, is capable of anything,” he reasoned, with the logic of a spoiled child. Only that his mamma knew how to discriminate between toys.
The examinations, too, had their effect in weakening his resolution still more. What with his studies, his fears of failure, and the coming and going of the friends who brought him an account of the rise and fall, so to say, of the marks, Rogelio found himself outside the magic circle by which an absorbing passion surrounds us, and if it were not that occasionally a pair of greenish eyes looked steadily into his, he would even have forgotten the danger which, by a curious illusion, seemed to him every day less imminent, being in reality more so, for the departure for Galicia was inevitably to take place immediately after the examinations.
And the examinations came, and Rogelio found that he had passed in two branches, but in one—the most difficult and uncongenial to him—there came upon him, like a dash of cold waiter, a conditioned. “I know who is to blame for this!” thought his mother, looking through the half-closed door at Esclava, who was dusting the pictures in the parlor. “This is what comes of flirtation; but what is to be done? every age has its tastes. He will gain in September what he loses now; he is young enough, provided he keeps well. And let us be just; the pony, too, made him lose his head in this last term. It is true that that was all the better. About the time lost in that way I don’t complain. The pony has behaved well. It deserves a lump of sugar.”
XXIII.
“A great many friends came to bid them good-by.”
On the last evening spent in Madrid by Doña Aurora and her son, before setting out for their native place, a great many friends came to bid them good-by, and there was a pleasant informal reception at the house. It was now the end of June, and the most enjoyable hour for a social gathering was really between ten and eleven at night, when a fresh and healthy breeze blows even through the heated streets of old Madrid, the Madrid which is not shaded by trees and which enjoys little of the benefit of the municipal watering. The neighbors on the second floor, nieces of a brigadier, came down, and they were also joined by the Marchioness de Andrade, a compatriot of Doña Aurora, a handsome and elegant woman who moved in aristocratic circles, and was consequently accustomed to keep late hours. Señora de Pardiñas, finding herself surrounded by visitors, gave herself up to the task of entertaining them to the best of her ability, without seeking to guide the conversation, which soon drifted to subjects connected with the country to which she was about to return after an absence of so many years. The Marchioness, who was of a vain and lively disposition, said that she thought of going to Vigo soon, displaying at the same time a new bracelet of sapphires and diamonds, with an air of mystery. “She is evidently thinking of marrying again,” thought Doña Aurora. “Who may her intended be? God grant she may choose well.”
Rogelio had quietly slipped away without saying a word to any one. His retreat did not pass unnoticed by his mother, but, besides there being no remedy for it, she discovered other reasons for resignation. “Bad luck is not always going to follow us, and, at the worst, we are going away to-morrow,” she thought. (Esclavita still foreboded danger and trouble, but far in the distance.) “To-morrow at this hour we shall be near Avila. When shall I hear the whistle of the train?”
Rogelio retired to his study, impelled by a vague hope of seeing the girl, explaining to her his attitude during these days, and the impossibility of his acting differently, of rebelling and refusing to go with his mother. He foresaw that Esclavita, availing herself of the occasion, would soon join him, and to attract her attention he lighted a lamp, striking a great many matches in the operation, and walking about the room noisily; he opened the drawers and made the door creak two or three times. He did not venture to call her, through fear of his mother’s keen ear, for, according to his paradoxical and hyperbolical expression, she could hear better than the deaf Candás.
He was not obliged to wait long. After ten minutes or so he heard a knock at the door, and before he had time to say, “Come in,” Esclavita entered. The light of the lamp standing on the table of the study which communicated with the bedroom and dressing-room of the student, fell full on the girl’s face, and Rogelio suddenly realized how thin and pale her face had grown during the last fortnight, presenting now a spiritual and refined type of beauty that might have served as a model for one of those waxen images which are used to inclose the bones of unknown martyrs.