Don Fermin proceeded on his way, drawing his comforter up closer around his ears. That woman was mad; she had not taken the disease lightly, it seemed. And how altered she was! How old she had grown in these last few months! Old women were worse than young girls when they fell in love. He had done wisely, very wisely in telling her nothing about Segundo's new plans. She was capable of tearing down the house if he had told her. No, silence, silence. A shut mouth catches no flies. Let her find it out through someone else besides him. And with these sensible ideas and worthy intentions Tropiezo reached Agonde's, and before a quarter of an hour had elapsed unbosomed himself of his news: Segundo García was going to America to seek his fortune—as soon as he should be entirely well, of course. He would take the steamer at Corunna.
The occasion was a favorable one for the company to lament once more in concert the death of Don Victoriano Andres de la Comba, protector and father of all the Vilamortans in want of situations, a useful representative and an untiring worker for the district. If he were alive now most assuredly a young man of so much ability—a poet—that night the party all agreed that Segundo had ability and was a poet—would not be obliged to go across the raging seas in quest of a decent situation. But since they had lost Don Victoriano, Vilamorta was without a voice in the regions of influence and favor, for Señorito de Romero, the present representative of the district, belonged to the class of docile representatives who give no trouble to the Government, who vote when their votes are wanted, and who hold themselves cheap, valuing themselves at no more than a few tobacco shops, and half a dozen or so of official appointments. Agonde took his revenge that night, expatiating on his favorite theme, and abusing the pernicious Eufrasian influence which was responsible for the decadence of Vilamorta, on account of which its youth were obliged to emigrate to the New World. The apothecary expounded his theories—he liked the representative of a district to show himself in it occasionally. Otherwise of what use was he? In his eyes the ideal representative was that famous politician from whom the barber of the town he represented had asked a place, basing his request on the fact that, owing to the distribution of appointments among the persons of his station in the town, there were no customers left for him to shave and he was starving. The Alcalde here interposed, saying that he had it on very good authority that Señorito de Romero intended to interest himself in earnest for Vilamorta; the confectioner and some others of those present confirmed this statement, and then arose a discussion in which it was proved beyond a doubt that a dead representative has no friends and that the new representative of the district had already, in the very stronghold of the former Combista radicals, friends and adherents.
XXVIII.
The Swan has left his native lake, or rather, his pool; he has crossed the Atlantic on the wings of steam. Will he ever return? Will he come back with a sallow countenance, a disordered liver, and some thousands of dollars, in bills of exchange, in his pocketbook, to end his life where it began, as the ship disabled by storms receives its last repairs in the dockyard in which it was built? Will the black vomit, that terrible malady of the Antilles, the scourge of the Iberians who seek to emulate Columbus conquering a new world, attack him on his arrival on the young continent? Will he remain in the tropics, riding in his carriage, united in the bonds of matrimony to some Creole? Will he preside one day over one of those diminutive republics, in which the doctors are generals and the generals doctors? Will his melancholy be cured by the salty kiss of the ocean breeze, by the contact of virgin soil, the sharp spur of necessity, that, pushing him into the conflict, will say to him, "Work"?
History may perhaps at some future day relate the story of the metamorphosis of the Swan, of his wanderings and his vicissitudes; but years must first elapse, for it was only yesterday, as one might say, that Segundo García quitted Vilamorta, leaving the schoolmistress behind him dissolved in tears. And the story of the schoolmistress is the only episode in the chronicle of the Swan which we can at present bring to an end.
Leocadia was the theme of much gossip in Vilamorta. She was seriously ill, according to some, according to others, ruined, and according to many, touched in her mind. She had been seen haunting the neighborhood of Segundo's house on various nights during the poet's illness; it was affirmed that she had sold her land and that her house was mortgaged to Clodio Genday; but the strangest thing of all, that which was most bitterly censured, was her neglect of her son after having cared for him and watched over him from his infancy, never going to Orense to see him, while old Flores went there constantly, bringing back worse and worse news of the child every time she went—that he was wasting away, that he spit blood, that he was dying of grief, that he would not last a month. Leocadia, as she listened, would let her chin fall upon her breast, and at times her shoulders would move convulsively, as if she were weeping. Otherwise she appeared calm, although she was very silent and had lost her former activity. She helped Flores in the kitchen, attended to the children of the school, swept and dusted—all like an automaton, while Flores, who pitilessly spied out every occasion to find fault with her, took pleasure in crying:
"Woman, you have left this side of the pan dirty—woman, you haven't mended your skirt—woman, what are you thinking about? I am going to Orense to-day and you will have to take care of the puchero."
At the end of the summer Clodio demanded the interest on his loan and Leocadia was unable to pay it; she was notified accordingly that, after the necessary legal proceedings, the creditor would avail himself of his legal right to take possession of the house. This was a terrible blow for Leocadia.