Strange that contact with reality should have made him forget the occurrences of the afternoon! At this moment he had only a vague notion of the things he had so recently been feeling, of the things he had so recently been doing. He knew simply that he had just been living hours of intense spiritual excitement—an exhilaration approaching delirium, dominated by an obsession which had severed every connection between him and his material surroundings, and left him completely indifferent to whatever lay outside of his own inner preoccupations.
After leaving Nacha's apartment he had wandered about the streets for a time. Then, a little quieted, he had called at the Ministry, less to inquire about the position promised him than to give himself something to do. There he met Ruiz de Castro, who had a few days before invited him to dinner, and who now insisted on his acceptance for that evening. He did not refuse. Why should he? Was he, perhaps intending to withdraw from society altogether? At any rate, here he was now, surrounded by elegant women, and by fashionable men of the world.
Ruiz de Castro, a classmate of Monsalvat's, was a likable fellow. His principal occupation was making himself agreeable to everyone, old or young, man or woman. He was a tall man and held himself extremely well, though his carefully nursed mustache, the height of his collars, the variety and splendor of his cravats, the profusion of jewelry on his fingers, left a faint suggestion of the Don Juan and of the fop in the total impression he made. Never had anyone seen Ruiz de Castro in clothes which did not look fresh from the tailor's; and he never failed to wear gloves even on the most terrible of summer's days. To a small fortune of his own he had added that of a millionaire's widow. His principal social hobby was the giving of suppers and small receptions to persons chosen from the most select circles of Buenos Aires. A lawyer by profession, he had read a great deal on all sorts of subjects and could talk entertainingly on art, and letters in particular; indeed by virtue of this intellectual pose, he considered himself superior to his surroundings. His guests were always men of recognized talent; doctors, distinguished lawyers, university professors, men prominent in politics or literature. At such intimate parties these "highbrows" and their wives, all of whom were art enthusiasts, talked painting and sculpture, music and verse. Of course, for this élite, nothing done in Argentina was of any account. To Monsalvat the women seemed to be better informed on the whole, more sensitive and discerning than the men. Of the ten there assembled, all of them elegant, beautiful, and witty—were they not Argentine?—one wrote with real talent, though not for the public; another knew the art and literature of France better than a majority of Argentine novelists of much more serious pretentions to learning; still another, a young woman who was seated near Monsalvat, had studied philosophy diligently and had even attended Bergson's seminars in Paris. On this particular evening they were discussing Rodin, Debussy, Strauss and Zuloaga whose pictures at the Exposition had aroused general enthusiasm among the artists and amateurs of the capital.
Monsalvat felt out of place in this atmosphere. Most of the young women he had not met until then, though he had some acquaintance with their husbands. His being there at all was due to Ruiz de Castro's affection for him. De Castro, a good Argentine and a good porteño, instinctively admired success; and from his law school days had been wont to see in this young fellow, who always came out highest in examinations, and delivered the most impressive dissertations in class, a quite exceptional being, destined to social and public recognition. Monsalvat, for that matter, possessed a genuine distinction of his own in Castro's eyes. His natural and simple manners were a delight to the more sophisticated attorney, as were his quiet and correct conduct, his way of never calling attention to himself even by his clothes, his manner of speaking—which was not the fruit of careful premeditation, but the spontaneous expression of a real preference for simplicity. It was Ruiz de Castro who had done most to draw Monsalvat towards society, literally dragging him into the Jockey Club, and then prompting various of his invitations to society functions; for the ambitious lawyer felt certain that a man of Monsalvat's promise would never fail to do honor to his sponsor; and he was ingenuously eager out of sincere friendship to have his friend's personal worth recognized by his own particular set.
Monsalvat, however, was too modest for the rôle assigned him: he had an exaggerated fear of appearing ridiculous. Dread of standing awkwardly in the limelight, of doing the wrong thing there, always made him keep his opinions to himself, no matter how much to the point they might have been. Timid, lacking confidence in himself and in others, he never gave anyone a glimpse of his real nature. Only a few intimate friends, among them the women who loved him, knew and appreciated his qualities. For them his was a deep, a noble, a generous spirit, modest and simple, without ambitions; a man who lived a satisfying inner life, and possessed an unusually rich culture. For others he was a colorless uninteresting individual, a bore and a nonentity.
The subjects touched upon in the conversation at the dinner-table developed nothing in common between Monsalvat and his neighbors. Art had never attracted him; and he knew little about literature. He had read voraciously, but rarely a novel or a volume of verse, or of literary criticism. Thus it was that when the ladies around him talked in dithyrambic ecstasies of Chabas or Loti, the conviction that he did not belong in these surroundings, bore in upon him not without a twinge of shame.
Monsalvat was not then thinking, nor did he wish to think, of what had so profoundly absorbed him during the afternoon and the preceding evening. Nacha's final attitude towards him, the manner of his dismissal, had deeply humiliated him, and made him long for the seclusion of his customary mode of living. What a fool to have believed it possible to regenerate such a woman! But his dinner-coat helped him to forget all this, clothing him for the moment with self-importance, and inclination toward frivolity. He put his sister, Pampa Arnedo, his conversation with Torres, all out of his mind.
One of the only two bachelors present among all these married people, Monsalvat had been seated between two niñas, "girls," as unmarried women, of whatever age, are chivalrously called in the Argentine. The one on his right, Elsa, was a delightful creature, blond, virginal, with the unspoiled, however mature, freshness of her twenty-five years. The rather angelic slenderness of her shoulders gave her something of the ingenuously innocent appearance of Botticelli's maidens, with which the burning roses of her cheeks and lips scarcely harmonized. But she differed from the paintings of the early masters in not having a line that was either angular or rigid. Roundness, indeed, was the conspicuous trait in the lines of her figure, the slope of her shoulders, the modelling of her cheeks and chin. She spoke with a certain ingenuous and charming candor, turning to full account her acquaintance with books and authors, which was remarkably varied. Monsalvat had known her in Paris five years before, and had called at her rooms there. He had observed with astonishment that this Botticellian virgin had among her favorite volumes the Satiricon of Petronius, Willy's latest novels, and other productions of the same outlook on life. Elsa's main sport was playing with men and their foibles. Her wide blue eyes, of a surpassing beauty, gazed out at the world in such fashion that no male could long resist their spell. She would smile maliciously at her victim and assail him on the side of vanity, praising his talents, or whatever claim to distinction he might have. She would listen to the frankest allusions—provoked, of course, by her—without a trace of embarrassment or annoyance, though she herself always avoided improprieties in speech, indeed every word that came from her lips seemed the very breath of youthful innocence itself. Nevertheless there were hostile tongues to criticise Elsa. When an unfavorable comment reached her ears she would evince a discreet amount of alarm, and then smile to show how little importance she attached to such matters after all. As to love and marriage she had no illusions. How could she, when every husband who came her way, no matter how exemplary by reputation, made love to her at the slightest provocation? Looking at the world through fin de siècle French novels and the anecdotes of her friends, she judged it even worse than it is, seeing in it only the play of gross or perverted instincts. Never having felt or inspired love, she could not recognize it in the world about her. As to her women friends, they interested her so little that she never thought of inquiring what women were really like. In her heart she despised them and thought them poor fools to be talking of the love their sweethearts and husbands had for them. She "knew!" On more than one occasion, when she had heard a husband praised for his faithfulness, she found a way of having a few moments' conversation alone with him; and infallibly the model of fidelity soon was a model no more. Monsalvat had had with her several diverting and flirtatious conversations. But now, in his present critical state of conscience, at the awakening within him of far different desires, he could not possibly talk with her in the same tone. The young woman on his left, addressed as Isabel, had a lively intelligence but few physical charms. Nevertheless she displayed a certain attractiveness that evening. She knew how to make the most of her few good points, chief among which were her eyes, eager, sympathetic, trusting, questioning, quick to show embarrassment. Her face was too long, her mouth too large. Though her teeth were not pretty, she knew how to laugh—the clear, happy laughter of youth—and she showed them constantly. Her temperament and ideas were the exact opposites of Elsa's. Coming from a family of the old Spanish stock, and of devout catholicism, Isabel was always talking "tradition"; while Elsa, from one of the newer families, typified the modern pagan and cosmopolitan spirit of Buenos Aires. Isabel was all prejudices and enthusiasms. She talked excitedly, with passion. She was incapable even of suspecting the true nature of Elsa's cynical temperament. To her the world seemed better than it is. Only unmarried men interested her, though the idea of marrying frightened her. Some of the world's injustices were quite beyond her ken; but she believed that whatever they might be, one should practise resignation. For priests, whose words on any theme were pure gospel for her, she had a superstitious reverence; she believed them pure and saintly all.
Monsalvat and his neighbors had maintained the most trifling of conversations. Elsa, as was her way, tried to give it a suggestion of intimacy, to which Monsalvat did not lend himself very cordially. He would have preferred to talk to Isabel. But was even this pious woman, with her dogmatic education, her habit of never doubting anything, likely to understand the complex anxieties besetting him? He reached the conclusion that he had nothing in common with his neighbors on either side, addressed them only when courtesy required, and directed his attention to the plump young woman opposite him, a rather amusing person, well-read, talkative, and critical of things and persons. At the moment she was running on about the theatres.
"You simply can't go to the Odéon! At least not on subscription nights! It's scandalous, the plays those French writers give the public! There's never a decent character in them. What right have they to oblige the people who really support the theatres to listen to plays full of workmen, strikers, thieves—all the rabble! I'm sure I don't understand why the managers present such stuff!"