"How art thou?" she asked, clasping one of Juan's hands between both her own. She remained thus, silent and timid in the presence of Dr. Ruiz and other friends who stayed by the sick man's bedside. Had she been left alone perhaps she would have knelt beside her husband asking his forgiveness. Poor fellow! She had made him desperate by her cruelty, sending him to his death. She wished to forget it all. And her simple soul looked out of her eyes with self-abnegation, her humility mingled with wifely love and tenderness.
Gallardo seemed to have grown smaller with so much suffering; he was thin, pale, and shrunken. Nothing was left of the arrogant youth who fired the public with his daring. He complained of his inactivity and of his useless leg, heavy as lead. The terrible operations he had undergone in full consciousness seemed to have made him a coward. His fortitude in bearing pain had disappeared and he groaned at the slightest molestation.
His room was like a place of reunion through which the most celebrated connoisseurs of the city passed. The smoke of their cigars was mingled with the stench of iodoform and strong liniments. Bottles of wine that had been presented by the callers stood on the tables among medicine flasks and packages of cotton and bandages.
"That is nothing," shouted his friends, wishing to encourage the bull-fighter with their noisy optimism. "Inside of a couple of months thou wilt be fighting bulls again. Thou hast fallen into good hands. Doctor Ruiz works miracles."
The doctor was equally encouraging.
"We have a man on our hands again. Look at him; he is smoking. And a sick man that smokes—"
CHAPTER XI
DOCTOR RUIZ ON TAUROMACHY
FAR into the night the doctor, the manager, and members of the cuadrilla kept the wounded man company. When Potaje came he sat near the table trying to keep the bottles within reach of his hand. The conversation between Ruiz, the manager, and Nacional was always about bulls. It was impossible to be with Don José and talk of anything else. They commented on all bull-fighters' defects, discussed their merits and the money they earned, while the convalescent listened in forced inactivity or fell into a drowsy torpor stupefied by the murmur of conversation.
Generally the doctor was the only one who talked, followed in his pompous argument by Nacional's grave and admiring eyes. "Bull-fighting is an evolution," said he. "Dost thou understand, Sebastián? A development from the customs of our country, a modification of the popular diversions which Spaniards of olden times were given to; those times of which Don Joselito must often have talked of to thee."
Dr. Ruiz, with a glass in one hand, talked and talked, only stopping to take a sip.