Ah! those days of bull-fights, feast-days, on which the sky seemed more beautiful and the once solitary street resounded beneath the feet of the holiday crowd, when guitars strummed with accompaniment of hand-clapping and song in the tavern at the corner. Carmen, plainly dressed, with her mantilla over her eyes, left the house as if fleeing from evil dreams, going to take refuge in the churches. Her simple faith, which uncertainty burdened with superstitions, made her go from altar to altar as she recalled to mind the merits and miracles of each image. She went to San Gil, the church that had seen the happiest day of her existence, she knelt before the Virgin of Macarena, provided candles, many candles, and by their ruddy glow contemplated the brown face of the image with its black eyes and long lashes, which, it was said, resembled her own. In her she trusted. For a good reason was she Our Lady of Hope. Surely at this very hour she was protecting Juan by her divine power.
But suddenly indecision and fear rudely burst through her beliefs, tearing them asunder. The Virgin was a woman and women are so weak! Her destiny was to suffer and weep, as she wept for her husband, as the other had wept for her Son. She must confide in stronger powers; she must implore the aid of a more vigorous protection. And, in the stress of her agony, abandoning the Macarena without scruple as a useless friendship is forgotten, she went at other times to the church of San Lorenzo in search of Jesus, He of the Great Power, the Man-God crowned with thorns with the cross on his back, sweaty and tearful, the work of the sculptor Montañés, an awe-inspiring image.
The dramatic sadness of the Nazarene stumbling against the stones and bent beneath the weight of the cross seemed to console the poor wife. Lord of the Great Power! This vague and grandiose title tranquillized her. If the god dressed in brown velvet and gold would but deign to listen to her sighs, to her prayers repeated in eager haste, with dizzy rapidity, she was sure that Juan would walk unscathed out of the ring where he was at that moment. Again she would give money to a sacristan to light candles, and she passed hours contemplating the vacillating reflection of the red tongues on the image, believing she saw in the varnished face, by these alternations of shade and light, smiles of consolation, kind expressions that promised felicity.
The Lord of Great Power did not deceive her. On her return to the house she was presented with the little blue paper which she opened with a trembling hand: "As usual." She could breathe again, she could sleep like the criminal that is freed for the instant from immediate death; but in two or three days again came the agony of uncertainty, the terrible torture of doubt.
Carmen, in spite of the love she professed for her husband, had hours of rebellion. If she had known what this existence was before she married! At certain moments, craving the sisterhood of pain, she went in search of the wives of the bull-fighters who figured in Juan's cuadrilla, hoping they could give her news.
Nacional's good woman, who kept a tavern in the same ward, received the master's wife with tranquillity, wondering at her fears. She was accustomed to such an existence. Her husband must be all right since he sent no word. Telegrams cost dear and a banderillero earns little. If the newsboys did not shout an accident it was because none had happened. And she continued attentive to the service of her establishment as if no trace of worry could make its way into her blunted sensibility.
Again, crossing the bridge, Carmen went to the ward of Triana in search of the wife of Potaje, the picador, a kind of gypsy that lived in a hut like a hen-house surrounded by coppery, dirty youngsters whom she threatened and terrified with stentorian yells. The visit of the master's wife filled her with pride, but the latter's anxiety almost made her laugh. She ought not to be afraid. Those on foot always escaped the bull and Señor Juan Gallardo's good angel watched over him when he threw himself upon the beasts. The bulls killed but few. The terrible thing was being thrown from the horse. It was known to be the end of all picadores after a life of horrible falls; those who did not die suddenly from an unforeseen and thundering accident finished their days in madness. Thus poor Potaje would die—and so many hard struggles in exchange for a handful of duros,—while others—
This last she did not say but her eyes revealed the protest against the favoritism of Fate for those fine youths who, by a thrust of the sword, took the applause, the popularity, and the money, with no greater risks than those faced by their humbler associates.
Little by little Carmen grew accustomed to this new life. The cruel suspense on bull-fight days, the visits to the saints, the superstitious fears, she accepted them all as incidents necessary to her existence. Moreover, her husband's good luck and the continual conversation in the house on the events of the contest finally familiarized her with the danger. The fierce bull became for her as for Gallardo a generous and noble beast come into the world with no other purpose than to enrich and give fame to those who kill him.
She never attended a bull-fight. Since that afternoon on which she saw him who was to be her husband in his first novillada, she had not returned to the plaza. She lacked courage to witness a bull-fight, even one in which Gallardo did not take part. She would faint with terror on seeing other men face the danger dressed in the same costume as her Juan.