The pretty sister of José / 1889

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

In all his plannings it was Pepita José had thought of first. Madrid to him was only a sort of setting for Pepita; the clean, comfortable cottage a home for Pepita; the roses and lemon blossoms she would wear in her hair; under the fine grape-vines she would sit in the evening and play on her guitar. His wages would give her comfort and buy her pretty simple dresses. And then every one would see her beauty, and when she went to mass, or with himself and Jovita to the Prado or the Paseo de la Virgen del Puerto, people would look at her and tell each other how pretty she was, and all this would end in time in a good marriage perhaps. And she would be loved by some nice fellow, and have a home of her own, and be as happy as the day was long. There was only one obstacle in the way of this excellent plan; it was only a small obstacle, but—it was Pepita herself! Singularly enough, Pepita had a fixed antipathy to marriage. She had early announced her intention of remaining unmarried, and those young men who in her native village had desired to make love to her had been treated with disapproval and disdain. Knowing as little of love as a young bird unfledged, her coldness was full of innocent cruelty. She made no effort to soften any situation. She was willing to dance and laugh and sing, but when she found herself confronting lover-like tremors and emotion, she was unsparing candor itself.

“Why should I listen to you?” she had said more than once. “I do not love you. You do not please me. When you wish to marry me, I hate you. Go away, and speak to some one else.”

“I will never marry any one,” she said to José. “I will stay with you and be happy. Girls who marry grow ugly and are wretched. Their husbands do not love them after they are married. They must work and slave and take care of the house and the children. Look at Tessa! Her husband used to be wild about her. She could make him pale with misery if she turned away from him; he used to follow her about everywhere. Now he makes eyes at Juanita, and beats Tessa if she complains. And don’t we both remember how it was with our mother? I will never love any one, and never be married. Let them love me if they are so stupid, but I will be left alone. I care nothing for any of them.”

The truth is that José knew it was what she remembered of her mother’s unhappiness and what Jovita had told her, which was the foundation of all this. Did he not remember it himself, and remember, with a shudder, those first miserable years of their childhood—the great, beautiful, wretched eyes of their mother, their gay, handsome father, and his careless cruelty and frequent brutality? Had not Pepita and himself clung together hidden in the loft at night, listening to their mother’s sobs, and often to the sound of blows and curses rained down upon her because she was no longer a beauty, and there were beauties who had smiles to bestow on handsome fellows who were free, and even upon those who were not? It was enough to irritate any handsome fellow—this one had thought—to come home to a squalid place after enjoyment, and be forced to face poverty and children and a haggard wife with large staring eyes, red with weeping. Yes, Pepita and José remembered all this, and upon Pepita’s character it had left curious traces. Young as she was, she had awakened quite grand passions in more than one heart, and on two or three occasions the suitors had been of far better fortune than herself—one of them, indeed, being the only son of a rich farmer, who might have chosen a wife of much greater importance than this pretty, scornful child, and whose family rebelled bitterly against his folly, and at last sent him away to Seville, but not before Pepita herself had coolly trodden him under her small feet.

“I like you less than any of them,” she said, fixing her great, direct eyes upon him when he revealed his frenzy. “Go and marry that girl your father chose for you—if she will have you. They have no need to be afraid and speak ill of me. I don’t want you. I can’t bear to have you stand near me.”

To José it never occurred to complain of her, but Jovita’s sense of worldly advantage was outraged at this time, and she did not hesitate to express herself with much freedom and grumbling.

“God knows, I want no haste,” she said; “but this is a chance for any girl. And see what a fool she is. But that is as it always happens. There will come along some worthless fellow, and she will be fooled like the rest, and be ready enough to run after him.”

“I!” said Pepita, who stood in the doorway. “I!” And she opened her dark eyes in genuine anger and amazement.

“Yes, you,” answered Jovita. “And you will be worse than any of them. Girls who think themselves too good to be spoken to are always easiest to coax when they find their match. Let him come, and you’ll drop like a ripe grape.”

“He will never come,” said Pepita. “Never!” And there was not a shade of doubt in her look—nothing but cold indignation at Jovita’s ill-humor. “I am not afraid of men. They are all stupid. They think they can have anything they want, and they can have nothing. They have to ask, and it is the girls who can say ‘No;’ and then they are miserable, and beg and beg until one detests them. If any one said ‘No’ to me, I would not let them see it hurt me. They should think I did not care.”