“Good heavens! what more do you want?”
“I want you to go to the circulating library and ask them to send me some novels. But I forgot—the library is closed. Above all, don’t stay away long.”
With two tears trembling on her lids Luiza finished the last page of the “Dame aux Camelias.” She breathed a sigh, and leaning back in her easy-chair, with the book resting on her knees, she began to sing softly, and with profound emotion, the final aria of “Traviata”:—
“Addio del passato
Igli rosi pallenti.”
The death of Marguerite Gautier, her letters, had produced in her nerves a kind of sentimental vibration.
Suddenly the news she had read in the paper of the return of her Cousin Bazilio recurred to her mind. A vague smile parted her rosy lips. Cousin Bazilio! He was her first love. She was just eighteen at the time. No one was acquainted with this fragment of the past, not even Jorge or Sebastião. It is true, indeed, that it had lasted only eight months.
Besides, she was then but a child. When she recalled the tender emotions, the tears of those happy days, she laughed at herself for her folly. How changed must her Cousin Bazilio be! She remembered him perfectly. He was tall, somewhat slender, of a distinguished appearance, with a mustache curling up at the ends, a bold glance, and a peculiar habit of putting his hands in his pockets and jingling his keys and his money. This episode in Luiza’s life had had its beginning at Cintra, at the villa of her uncle João de Brito, while the others were engaged in playing billiards. Bazilio had just returned from England; and had come home somewhat of an Anglo-maniac, awakening the admiration of the colony at Cintra by his red neckties, which he wore passed through a gold ring, and his white flannel suits. The billiard-room was a corner room, whose yellow-painted walls gave it an air of grandeur, as if it belonged to a family of illustrious lineage. A large door at the foot of the avenue opened into a garden to which one descended by three stone steps. The fountain was surrounded by pomegranate-trees, whose red blossoms Bazilio would pluck for her. The dark green foliage of the tall camelias formed shady walks. The water of the fountain sparkled in the sunlight; two turtle-doves cooed monotonously in their wicker cage; and in the midst of the sylvan silence of the villa the noise made by the billiard-balls had a quite aristocratic sound. Then followed all the well-remembered episodes in Lisbon of this love-affair begun at Cintra,—the moonlight rambles over the dark grass to Sitiaes, with long and silent pauses at Penedo da Saudade, before them the valley, and the distant sandy plains, illuminated by a light, dim, ideal, and dreamy; the midday hours passed under the shades of Penha Verde, listening to the cool murmur of the waters that fell, drop by drop, upon the rock; the evenings spent in a boat on the water darkened by the shadow of the trees at Collares, and those bursts of laughter when their boat ran into the tall grass, or her little straw hat caught, in passing, on the overhanging branches of the elms. She had always liked Cintra. A soft and pleasing melancholy stole over her whenever she penetrated into the cool and shady depths of Ramalhão.
She and her Cousin Bazilio had enjoyed complete liberty together. Her mother, poor lady, always engrossed in herself and her rheumatism, would send them away smiling, and then fall asleep. Bazilio called her Aunt Jójó, brought her boxes of bonbons, and she was happy. When the winter arrived, their love took refuge in the old red-tapestried parlor in the street of the Magdalena. What happy nights!—her mother, snoring peacefully, her feet enveloped in a rug, and a volume of the Ladies’ Library resting on her knees. They sat, to their supreme content, side by side, upon the sofa. The sofa! what memories it called up before her! It was low and small, covered with light cashmere, with a strip down the middle which she herself had embroidered,—a marvellous compound of red and yellow on a black ground. One day the catastrophe came. João de Brito, who was a partner in the house of Bastos and Brito, suspended payment and declared himself insolvent. The house at Almada and the villa at Collares were sold.
Bazilio, left penniless, went to Brazil. Luiza passed the first days after his departure seated on the beloved sofa, sobbing quietly over her cousin’s likeness. Then came the surprises of letters long looked for, and the persistent calls at the consignatorial agency when the steamers were behind their time.