NACHA REGULES

NACHA REGULES

BY

MANUEL GÁLVEZ

Authorized Translation from the Original Spanish

BY

LEO ONGLEY

NEW YORK

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

681 FIFTH AVENUE

Copyright, 1922
By E. P. Dutton & Company

All Rights Reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

NACHA REGULES

NACHA REGULES

CHAPTER I

An August night! Hot with the fever of her adolescence as a national capital, Buenos Aires was ablaze with millions of lights and rejoicing in noisy revelry.

The Centennial festivities had been going on since May. Thousands of people had flocked in from every corner of the country, from neighboring states and even from Europe. During these great days of a nation's coming of age, the crowd, in one enormous, slowly moving procession, thronged the asphalt pavements of the principle avenues. The very streets and houses appeared to be in motion. When, toward evening, the multitude increased, the congestion caused a swelling which, it seemed, must at a given moment burst the bounds on either side. At night some forty theatres, and innumerable movie-houses and concert halls, crammed overflowing masses into their hungry maws, while in the cabarets boisterous licence rubbed elbows with curiosity.

The cabaret, of "the Port"—as Argentina calls its chief city—is a public dance hall: it provides a room, tables for drinking, and an orchestra. The patrons are young men of the upper classes with their mistresses; tourists and rustic sight-seers; and girls "of the town," who come alone. The tango, almost the only dance seen there, and the orchestra, composed usually of white gangsters and mulattos are—with the champagne bottle and the tuxedo—the normal expressions of the Argentine suburban "soul"!

The musicians sing, shout, strike on the wooden pans of their instruments, gesticulate. The silhouettes of the dancers twist and intertwine, weave in and out across the floor, blend, and neutralize each other; and the mandola, with its dark low tones, underlines the tangos with long shadows of pain.

But there are other things in the cabaret besides dancing. On some nights a sudden outburst of noise, from end to end of the hall, cuts the tango in two, as it were, with an enormous, quivering gash. A man's persistent ogling of another fellow's girl, a violent collision of dancers, the suspicion of ridicule or insult, bring threats from mouths contorted with anger, while revolvers are flourished in the air. The patota, the inevitable leading actor in such scenes, is a group of wealthy roisterers whose greatest pleasure is to annoy, insult, attack with fist or weapon, in short, transform peaceable pleasure seeking into a tavern brawl. To show resentment toward a patota, to resist its aggressions, is to invite a drubbing from a pack trained to fight as a gang, or an unfailing bullet fired treacherously from behind.

On that August night, in one of these crowded cabarets, frenzied dancing was going on. Some gigantic invisible hand seemed to be reaching down from the top of the hall, and incessantly stirring the couples round and round. All the tables were full. Champagne bottles raised their aristocratic necks from the icy prisons which held them. Under the glow of the lights evening gowns blazed dazzlingly, and the women's flesh shone gleaming, vibrant, golden, from the low cut dresses. Tangos, tangos, more tangos! With the speed of a movie film, and in chance groupings, graceful poses and involuntary caricatures were sketched. The musicians, caught up in the madness of the throng, shouted phrases of double meanings caught up for the purpose from the latest song hits. A couple of "professionals" suddenly emerged, amidst wild applause, from the common herd of the dance, which opened from the centre to make way; and there, surrounded by a ring of faces, incited by exclamations, admiring and picturesque, the two embraced, separated, and came together again, interminably, with minutely patterned steps and attitudes, to the music of an uneasy, sensuous, odorous tango, which the mandola tried to sentimentalize with the wails of its deeper notes.

When the exhibition was over, many eyes turned toward a man sitting alone at a little table, conspicuous because he was so gloomy and preoccupied, so completely indifferent to everything that was going on around him. He was well dressed in a black suit that suggested both elegance and severity. His face attracted; magnetic, it might have been called; here, one felt, was a personality, a man who had fought his way up in life through suffering. His features wore an expression of mental and moral disquietude.

Unaccompanied save by his own thoughts, he was, nevertheless, furtively watching a young girl who, with several other people, sat at a table near by. This man was not in nor of the cabaret. When his gaze was not fixed on his pretty neighbor it seemed to be seeking distant worlds, wandering, perhaps, in search of something to fill his solitude or to offer to this girl in one single passionate glance.

The youths with whom she was sitting formed a patota of five. She was dividing their attentions with three other women at the table. The men did not belong to aristocratic society, though they were of "good family" as the porteños—the people of Buenos Aires—say; the names of their fathers', that is, were well-known in politics and business, and appeared frequently in the society columns of the newspapers. As individuals they had no distinction. They talked in loud, obtrusive voices, using terms of gross familiarity in addressing one another. When they laughed it was in a bellowing hilarity calculated to attract attention; just as, when they danced, it was with tremendous waggles of hips and shoulders. Of their champagne they were noisily ostentatious. It was now mid-winter in Buenos Aires; but they were wearing light suits and flashy neckties. Typical Argentine "sports" in short!

The girl, who had so impressed the solitary stranger, was taking no part in the animation around her. Her quiet melancholy shadowed a rather long face, a pair of burning dark eyes, a mouth that might have been called too large. Everything about her contributed to the tragic attractiveness of her person: the wide hat, which accentuated a child-like quality in her; the elegance, somewhat affectedly careless, of her dress; the relaxed indifference with which she moved her long arms—thin but shapely, and covered, to above the elbow, by white gloves. The low cut of her dress drew one's eye to the faint golden tints of her skin. Her hair, of a dull golden shade, fell in loops over her ears to form a frame for her features.

He observed that she was vainly trying to be merry, and to laugh with her companions; but depression had obstinately seized on her, and she lacked the will to master it. A moment came when her gloom increased to the point of tears, and her companions remarked it. One of them, in whom drink was already at work, cried out:

"What's the matter with you? Have you got the pip?"

He was a graceless individual, ugly, flat-nosed, restless, loud-voiced, constantly gesticulating, whom the others called "the Duck."

His friends greeted this witticism with bursts of laughter. The girl herself forced a smile in which the man at the neighboring table caught something of her suffering. His facial muscles contracted slightly.

"Give her another swig of booze—it's good for what ails her!" bawled the "Duck," inspired by the success of his previous venture.

"Don't mind him, Nacha!" said one of the women coldly, not as much from real sympathy as from a sense of feminine loyalty.

Again there were outbursts of laughter in the group, and even from people at other tables who had begun to listen. The girl, embarrassed, mortified, looked timidly about in every direction. When her eyes met those of the man who was sitting alone her self-consciousness increased.

The orchestra came to the end of a tango and, in the quiet which followed, the members of the patota set out to "rag" Nacha. One of them, who seemed to be her "man," egged the others on. The women playfully sided against her. Soon almost all the cabaret was taking part in the game. At last Nacha, unable to endure the banter longer, laid her face in her hands. The "Duck" moaned in burlesque: "Oh, Oh, Oh!" while some of the spectators near by almost unhinged their jaws in a roar of laughter, or chorused with the mourner in ridicule: "Oh, Oh, Oh!"

"See here, you are making a fool of me in public!" exclaimed Nacha's lover—and he added an oath.

Again the orchestra struck up a tango. The languid notes, the limping rhythms, the thick, bee-like murmur of the mandola, came to drown both curses and laughter alike. Again the couples were out on the floor, here swinging together in tight embrace, there stilting along with bodies stiffly erect and faces grave.

Nacha's "man" got up to dance with her. When, however, the girl resisted, he lifted her violently in his arms and set her down in the middle of the hall.

"Let me alone! I can't dance...."

"You are going to dance, I tell you.... You are only putting on!"

"But don't you see? I can't ... oh, please!"

The fellow grasped her around the waist and plunged with her into the rhythmic whirl on the floor. The man who sat alone had started at the brutality he was witnessing, as though a question had suddenly been settled in his mind. Something dramatic seemed about to happen, and many eyes watched him uneasily.

Nacha, with no heart for the dance, was not long in freeing herself and returning to the table; now it was quite unoccupied, since all her companions were on the floor. Her escort followed smiling with rage, and sitting down beside her, began apparently to insult and threaten her. His lower jaw was thrown far forward as he spoke; his teeth came tight together, and his lips twisted themselves into all the grimaces expressing anger and contempt.

"You'll pay for this ... as soon as we get out of here!" he said; and meanwhile he clutched her arm in a grip that hurt.

The stranger was now looking closely at the man. The latter was a tall strapping fellow, stockily built. His wide, close-shaven face showed a scar across the chin. He had broad shoulders, a dark skin; and his small hard eyes glittered with something of an Indian's haughtiness and sinister ferocity. A large pearl adorned his made-up necktie. He wore white spats over his patent leather shoes, and large rings on his fingers.

There are plenty of men like this among the porteños! As vulgar as they are rich, they are always showing off their dollars and their women. They each set up a ménage with some pretty girl—for otherwise they would lose "standing." They spend their evenings in the theatres and their nights in the cabarets or, for adventure, ragging with their pals and their sweethearts some convenient victim; drinking champagne, making an uproar, annoying everyone, bellowing at one another. Noisy, aggressive, intrusive, they allow no one to look too pryingly, too persistently, at them! Their right forefingers itch for the feel of a revolver—an appendage that Nature should, to please them, have grown on their right hands. Women, in their eyes, are mechanical toys, objects without human feelings, to be bought and sold as such. And yet women become attached to them; perhaps because they like the manliness that such violence attests; or because these fellows show their women off, give them distinction—of a certain kind. Passion also inclines them to a certain fidelity at times. Some of them moreover are university men, or belong to prominent families. However, they are all office-seekers, all gamblers. They "go across" to Europe occasionally, insulting well-bred people by their arrogance and their grossness as nouveaux riches. In Paris they are always accompanied by cocottes, and make disturbances in dance halls and cabarets to advertise their South-American spirit and self-sufficiency. A repulsive type, in short: a mixture of the barbarian and of the civilized human being, of the gangster and the respectable citizen. The urban descendent of the Argentine cow-puncher is an individual without scruples, morals or discipline, with no law but caprice, and no ideal but pleasure.

Meanwhile Nacha, her face in her hands, was weeping. Her tormentor grew angrier, raised his voice to a higher, more resonant pitch, threatened her still more violently, called her hysterical, ridiculous, said she was surely "kidding." Anything would succeed better with him, he shouted, than cry-babying, and putting on.... At the single table near by, the stranger was looking on intently, his features tense with silent determination. How much longer could a self-respecting man hold out against the challenge of that brutality?

The rapier-thrust of a violin bow gave the death stab to a dying tango. The patoteros and their women returned to their table. The fellow who had wept vociferously before broke out again into mock lamentations at sight of Nacha's tears. He stood up, rubbing his fists into his eyes, and bawling grotesquely, like the dunce in school. His mirth caught the mood of the entire cabaret. Every atom of it quivered in titters of laughter. The butt of all this humor, hardened by this time, was shedding her tears inwardly now. She even feigned indifference, shrugging her shoulders and forcing her lips into an expression of disdain. But the man who was watching saw confessed suffering in her still reddened eyes.

When the next tango crushed this wretched farce under its innumerable feet, another of the patota's members, a tall thin youth, with a girlishly slender waist, asked Nacha to dance with him.

"I said I didn't want to dance!"

"What?" Her lover sprang toward her and seized her by the arms, determined to force her to her feet.

"Oh, please! I can't! ... I can't!"

"What do you mean—'can't'!"

The contest lasted only a second. The man won, inevitably. Pulling the girl out of her chair he dragged her along to the centre of the room, so that his friend could have a dance with her. But in his anger he gave one push so violent that she fell to the floor.

And then something unheard of happened. The man who was alone had risen suddenly at the beginning of the struggle. Now, to the stupefaction of everyone, he stepped coolly forward. The crowd quivered with excitement. A ring of uneasy faces formed around the chief actors in the scene. The tango was broken off; the sombre moan of the mandola was all that remained of it.

"What do you mean?" the girl's lover spat at him, while a leer of primitive hatred flashed in his Indian eyes, now smaller and harder than ever.

The coolness of the intruder amazed the crowd. He faced the fellow calmly and addressed him with apparent indifference. Nothing but a jerking of his lip muscles and a slight trembling of his hands betrayed the indignation in him. He looked steadily at the man in front of him and said slowly:

"You will please stop ill-treating this girl!"

No one could tell whether such coolness were due to foolhardiness or to real courage. The man was of average, if not less than average build, easy picking, obviously, for that semi-Indian and his pals, who could finish him off in a jiffy, with fists or revolvers, as patota preferences and custom might decide. The other members of the party meanwhile stood about in paralyzed amazement that any one should presume to call one of their fellows to account.

"What's that?" the fellow asked, as though he had not heard distinctly.

"Stop ill-treating this...."

A sudden attack from the four other members of the patota cut off the end of his sentence. At the same moment the onlookers discreetly drew back. A chair was knocked over. There was a rush to get out through the narrow doorway.

"Hold on there! Leave this fellow to me!" roared Nacha's owner. The air was dotted for a moment with clenched, up-raised fists. Seeing his friends still hedging the intruder about, their eagerness to attack unappeased, the fellow pushed them back one by one toward their table. Then he wheeled around on the spectators.

"This is nothing to stop dancing for, gentlemen!" To the musicians he shouted: "Go on with the music! Give us a tango!"

The orchestra, which had disintegrated during the scene, assembled around the music-stands again. After a few moments of aimless strumming it began a dance in quick time. The crowd, partly out of respect for the bully, and partly out of anxiety to dance down an incident which, if repeated, could only end in a shooting, began another tango. No one cared to return to a danger once safely passed.

Meanwhile the two men stood facing one another.

"You don't know me!" said the girl's lover at last, pulling at the rings on his fingers as though to busy his hands, so eager to be at the throat of the man opposite him. "You don't know me—but I know you! You are Dr. Fernando Monsalvat. Well sir, let me give you a suggestion. Leave us alone, and get out of here at once. You are older than I—forty at least. I am only thirty, very fit, and used to these affairs; and my friends are with me, their sleeves rolled up already, you might say. Just go along home! Don't be throwing your life away! And if I give you so much good advice gratis, it's because I have my reasons for doing so!"

The fellow's friends looked at one another inquiringly.

Who could that man be? What reasons did their comrade have to prevent them from breaking the presumptuous fool's head? The girl, seated at the table, kept her eyes on her champion. The orchestra was playing a wailing dance, limping with pauses, and mournful with the sighs of the mandola. There were many couples dancing, the women clinging to their partners' necks.

Monsalvat heard the man out in silence. He replied coolly:

"You can keep your advice to yourself! Meantime I want you to stop ill-treating that poor girl!"

"That poor girl!"

The fellow took a step backward as though about to "rush" his opponent. Rapidly his eyes took in everything around him. One hand felt for his revolver. But Monsalvat's self-possession held the rowdy in check. Perplexed, and already beaten, he began to feel ridiculous. This man was not trying to provoke him; neither did he fear him. He saw that the crowd and his companions had not noticed his compromising move; and he decided he could calm down without loss of prestige. Two or three minutes passed. Monsalvat waited as though entrenched in silence and calm. Something emanated from him which quite disconcerted his enemy. The latter lay aside his swaggering and said with a forced sarcastic laugh:

"You know, I am afraid of you! That is why I don't touch you. You are a regular man-eater, you see,—and that makes me spare my friends! I don't want to see them beaten up!..."

He stopped short, for his sarcasm quite obviously fell flat, even in his own estimation. He approached Monsalvat, and putting a hand on his shoulder said:

"See here, Monsalvat, it's lucky for you that it was I you ran across here ... however ... well ... never mind all that.... I'm going to make you see you're wrong. I'm going to let you talk with her. You can ask her any questions you see fit."

He went up to the girl and brought her back to introduce her. Ashen-pale, embarrassed, she smiled an absurd little smile, probably to hide her fear of some fatal outcome to the scene. Her eyes tremulously nestled for a moment in Monsalvat's steady gaze; but the voice of her master drove them from that refuge.

"This gentleman," he guffawed, "thinks I'm a blackguard more or less! Well, I want you to tell him whether you are satisfied with what I do for you or not. Tell him the truth, don't be afraid!"

Monsalvat, charmed and saddened, was still looking at Nacha, though he scarcely saw her. His eyes, softened with a pity intense enough to be pain, were remodelling a truer image of this girl of the underworld. She did not dare look at him. Her eyes were raised to her "man." Her mute question did not, apparently, interest Monsalvat, perhaps because he knew what the answer would be.

"Answer! Are you satisfied?"

"Yes!"

Her voice was scarcely audible.

"And you have an easy time of it! You have a home, haven't you?"

Nacha saw what she must do. She must speak, declare herself satisfied with her lot. To do anything else would be to draw down on herself this man's anger at her champion. So suddenly she began to talk in a torrent of rambling, half-coherent words.

"Yes. I am satisfied. Why not? I have a home. I'm lucky all right. I don't have to chase around here and there the way I did before. And my home is fine. I have all the money I want to spend, and two servants. What more could I ask? And after all I went through before, it's quiet, and safe! You don't know what I went through!"

And, once started, she went on endlessly. She seemed to be talking into space, not addressing anyone in particular, and as if for herself alone, as if to distract her own attention with her own words. All that was not for Monsalvat's ears! She would have preferred that Monsalvat should not hear her at all! The words came out, poured out, beyond the control of will, much like a somnambulist's chatter. Monsalvat was not listening. It was enough for him to look at her and be conscious of her presence. Her gentleness, the tremulousness of her words, the sadness of her eyes, were what absorbed his whole interest. What she was saying did not matter. The tango throbbing through the air made him the more aware of the despairing monotone of her voice. The mandola with its bitter wail made her tragic melancholy only the more poignant.

Even Nacha's owner seemed for a moment to yield to the strange spell of these combining sounds. Then he interrupted:

"Well! You see? Are you convinced? Didn't I say she was putting on?"

Throwing back his shoulders, he burst into a laugh that rang with contempt. The tango was over, so was its spell.

The bully became the bully again. He approached his sweetheart, pushed her toward his comrades, who were sitting at their table waiting to see how it would all end.

"Now get out of here!" he said, turning to Monsalvat; "but before you go, I'll tell you who I am. It's to your interest, friend—just a moment—we might meet again—take a look at me!"

He was serious now. His right hand slipped through the opening of his tuxedo and rested on his belt. Then he announced solemnly:

"I am Dalmacio Arnedo, 'Pampa Arnedo,' as they call me."

Monsalvat started. Instinctively he raised a hand, but immediately let it fall. The five of the patota made a rush for him. At the same moment someone shouted: "The police!"

The cabaret seethed in confusion. Then suddenly an anxious calm fell on the room, a forced appearance of peaceableness, prearranged for the dull eyes of authority.

From the first there had been among the onlookers a certain number who took sides with Monsalvat. His manner toward the patota won him sympathizers. Some of them felt that the man had the strength to support his assurance. The girl herself aroused pity even though no one had had the courage to speak up in her defence. Two or three of these most sympathetic, or most prudent, individuals had called for the police, to have help on hand in case of an outbreak from the rowdies.

As the alarm was given the members of the patota hurried back to their places. Monsalvat, facing Arnedo, exclaimed:

"You rotter!"

Pampa Arnedo, safely seated at his table, answered with a sinister smile, while his friends beside him made noises with their lips, grimaced, and began offering toasts, simulating exaggerated merriment. Nacha looked pityingly at her protector. Who was this man? What did he want of her?

The police after a rapid glance around the room decided that "law and order" were still quite intact, and with solemn prudence went out again. Monsalvat returned to his table and paid his reckoning. The Duck began to sing the well-known tune from a popular variety show: "He's going now, he's going now!..."

The other members of the patota, and even some neutrals, joined in the chorus, "Now, now, he's going now!" Monsalvat, as he got up, saw that the girl, too, was singing and laughing. He paused a moment, reproachfully it seemed, his eyes dimmed with tears. Then quietly, without haste, he left the cabaret, while the fellow who had burlesqued Nacha's weeping broke out again with his "Oh, oh, oh!"

CHAPTER II

Monsalvat had come to a crossroad in his life. For nearly forty years he had gone straight ahead, never hesitating as to which turning to take. But now, as though a complete transformation had occurred within him, he seemed a stranger to himself, and he did not know where this stranger was going.

Heretofore he had lived without criticizing the world of which he was a part—which means that he had been fairly happy. But during the past few months he had come to view life and himself from a critical point of view, and he had reached the conclusion that as human beings go, he was one of the unfortunates.

He and his sister Eugenia were illegitimate children. His father, of the aristocracy, and rich with many millions, had, some five years before, died suddenly without leaving a will. Fernando was intelligent and had something of his father's manner and bearing; and as the legitimate heirs of the Monsalvat fortune were all girls, Fernando was given a good education while his father was still alive. In order to keep him away from his mother, an ignorant, irresponsible woman of the immigrant class, the boy was sent to a boarding school. It was only during vacations that he saw her. Fernando remembered his father's visits, the discussions with his mother, the admonitions he himself always received. Once his father had taken the boy to one of his ranches near Buenos Aires, a piece of property as big as an entire state, on which were marvelous forests, a house as magnificent as a palace, and paddocks full of splendid bulls and woolly sheep. More clearly than anything else, he remembered how his father took him along almost stealthily, and replied evasively when a friend, on the train, asked who the child with him was. Later, at boarding school, some boys who knew his father's legitimate family, enlightened him as to his own birth.

When he left college he took up law. He was an excellent student; and even before any regular admission to the bar, he was filling a place in the office of a well-known lawyer. Later he became this man's partner, made money, and won recognition. For a scruple he left the law office and went to Europe, remaining there two years. When he returned he was thirty-two. No longer wishing to continue in his profession, he finally obtained a consulship to an Italian city. It was now six months since he had returned, after seven years' absence, to settle permanently in his own country.

Fernando's mother was still living. She was ill, and aged; indeed, although not yet seventy, she seemed quite decrepit. Her son saw little of her. She lived with a mulatto servant in a rather poor neighborhood, in an apartment house facing Lezama Park. Of his own sister he had seen little.

Monsalvat had lived as do most decent men of his social position. He had worked hard in his law office, and as consul had rendered services of distinction. From boyhood, books had been his chief companions. He had taken up sociology, and from time to time he got an article published. His opinions were respected and discussed in certain intellectual circles. Though not socially inclined, and in spite of his timidity and lack of confidence, he frequented the clubs and theatres and race courses of Buenos Aires. He was not often present at more private social affairs, for the circumstances of his birth prevented his receiving invitations from certain quarters. While a student he lived on an allowance from his father. Now, on his return from Europe, he found himself possessed of no other income than three hundred pesos monthly from a piece of property which his father had given him upon his passing his law examinations.

The knowledge of his illegitimacy had exercised an incalculable influence on his character and general outlook on life. When he was a student certain youths of good family had made it plain that they did not desire his friendship; and later he had been socially snubbed on several occasions. He was, however, inclined to exaggerate the number of these slights. If an acquaintance failed to notice him, as he passed along the street, he believed the omission an intentional offense. If, at a dance, a girl chanced to refuse his proffered arm, he was beset always with the same thought.... "She does not dare to be seen with me.... She knows!..." If he received in his examinations a lower mark than the one he thought he must have earned, he did not for a moment doubt that it was the stigma of his birth which was to blame. Not a day passed that he did not at some moment revert to this preoccupation. He bore society no grudge; on the contrary, it seemed to him quite natural that, dominant ideas being what they are, he should be thought less of. Nevertheless he felt humiliated, with a vague consciousness that his value as a social being was diminished by a misfortune beyond his control.

All this, of course, tended to isolate him, and confirmed his tendencies toward bookishness. He had no real friends. He felt himself to be quite alone in life—alone spiritually, that is; for social relations in abundance could not fail a man of his intellect and professional position, whose character, moreover, was above reproach, and who, in spite of an outward coldness and an almost savage shyness that frequently took possession of him, was a kind and likeable sort of fellow.

This sense of solitude was tempered, if at all, by one or two experiences in love. His dealings with women were not those current among the young men of his generation. Gossip attributed, nevertheless, sentimental affairs to him, some of them with women of prominence in the life of the Capital. For Monsalvat, as his acquaintances noted, knew how to please. There was something that appealed to women in the soft inflections of his voice, and in the deep seriousness of his eyes. But the secret of his successes probably lay in the fact that he awakened in women that compassion which is so ruinous to them—so much so that Monsalvat was quite as often the pursued as the pursuer. Two or three times he had thought himself in love—mistakenly, as he soon discovered; and women for their part had loved him, and with passion. But these affairs were, after all, nothing but passing gratifications of the instinct of playfulness—little love episodes at best.

In other respects his life might have been considered a model and an exception. He was courteous and simple in manner, with no violent dislikes for anyone. Kind, always ready to do a good turn, he pushed considerateness even to extremes. He lived scrupulously within his means. He never paid court to those in whose power it was to further his advancement. He never indulged in petty disloyalties toward his friends nor paid off injury with injury. His relations with people were always sincere and free from intrigue. A useful and an honest fellow Fernando Monsalvat might have been considered by anyone. Yet, these several months past, he had been coming to the conclusion that he had lived in a useless sort of way, that his life had been selfish, mediocre, barren of any good. He was most of all ashamed of his articles on moral and social subjects, all of them colored with "class" prejudice, mere reflections of the conventional, insincere, and rankly individualistic standards which pervaded the University, and which never failed of approval from climbing politicians as well as from the cultured élite. Monsalvat despised himself for having lived and thought like any other man of his social group. What real good had he ever accomplished? He had lived for himself alone; worked for the money that work might bring him; written to gratify an instinct of vanity, a desire for prominence, for applause. Now he endured a hidden torment: he was disgusted with himself, with society, and even with life, repenting, in his soul's secret, of so many wasted years.

To generous spirits, such moral crises are natural; moments are sure to come when they must view their own conduct critically; and at such junctures they loathe their sterile past. But how many ever succeed in changing the direction of their lives? Most of us stifle this moral unrest in the depths of our consciousness; discontented and pessimistic, we go on living a life we hate, tempering the noble impulses that beset our guilty consciences with considerations of personal, even petty, interests that bid us take things as we find them. This latter was the case with Monsalvat.

Two trifling events of his days in Paris had cast a gloom over his outlook on life.

Convinced that he ought to put an end to his solitude, he decided to marry; and he paid court to a girl of good family with whom he had been on pleasantly cordial terms in Rome. But no sooner did the family and the girl herself become aware of Monsalvat's intentions, than all friendliness on their part vanished. An officious friend intimated to Monsalvat—he never knew whether at the girl's own request, or that of her parents—that his attentions were not desired.

Later, at the hotel where he was stopping, he made the acquaintance of another fellow countrywoman. Friendship and flirtation followed. Monsalvat became interested to the point of believing himself in love. He made an offer of marriage and was contemptuously rejected, as though such an idea on his part were in itself an insult. In situations of this kind Monsalvat did not suffer so much on his own account; it was not shame of being what he was that hurt him, but a deepening sense of the injustice inherent in people and in things.

He had given barely a thought to the imperfection, the inequalities, of the world he was living in. Full of his own thoughts, his own books, his own pleasures, he had paid no attention to the cry of anguish rising from the depths of the social order—as an established, an immutable order he had accepted it all along.

The fact that not till he had felt them himself had he opened his eyes to the flagrant injustices of society aroused a deep self-reproach in Monsalvat. It seemed to him that at the bottom of his new opinions purely selfish motives lay. On the other hand, it was to the universal, the human aspects of his own case that he gave his attention. Besides, does not selfishness play a little part in our striving toward the greatest ends?

It was some six months before the scenes in the cabaret, that Fernando Monsalvat, disheartened and disillusioned, had arrived in Buenos Aires. At first it startled him to find himself judging people and institutions so mercilessly. Why did he see everything in its darkest colors? Had he become an incorrigible cynic? Eventually he came to understand that the severe judgments he was formulating were the natural consequence of the critical spirit now aroused within him. In the complex motivation of the finest, noblest, most heroic gestures of men, how many small, unconfessable impulses always have their play?

One afternoon chance revealed to him in vivid colors the degree to which his life had been self-centered. The taxi in which he happened to be riding came to a standstill at a turning in Lavalle Square. A crowd was coming toward him, singing. It was a Sunday afternoon. He noticed that all the doors of the neighborhood were closed. The singing came nearer, swelling up from the street, rising above the tree tops. It was an irritated, exasperated, tumultuous mob which was approaching; and a song which both alarmed and attracted him was resounding from hundreds of mouths, its spirit typified in the red flag waving above the multitude. He got out of the taxi, and at that moment a bugle sounded. The mob fell in on itself like a punctured balloon. There was a volley of rifle shots, and in the confusion he could see the police charging blindly with their swords. The song continued, however, for a time; then the regimented violence of the Law was stronger than the impulsive violence of the Internationale. The rabble broke into the side streets and dispersed. The swords of the police eagerly sought out the wretches crouching for shelter in the doorways. Other wretches were in headlong flight, their eyes wide with terror. No one was paying any attention to the dead or wounded. Doors and windows remained closed and silent. To Monsalvat, sick with indignation, his soul flaming in outrage, this very silence seemed a horrible complicity in a crime.

His transformation, however, was purely an inner one. To be sure, he had somewhat changed his manner of living: he no longer went to his club nor to parties; he avoided most of his former friends. But, after all, what had he actually done these six months past? Had he perchance even discovered the road he really wanted to take? He was ceaselessly tormented by these questions, which plunged him for hours at a time into inconclusive meditations.

On one point he was resolved: he would not resume his practice of law. What need had he to earn money? To save it up? To spend it on amusements? At any rate, he might give it away. But to whom, and how? A friend, a successful lawyer, who had a high opinion of Monsalvat's judicial learning, proposed making him a partner in his firm; but Monsalvat did not accept the offer. He thought, finally, he would prefer a clerkship in the Department of Foreign Relations, where his seven years as consul would count, and where, too, he was already looked upon with great favor. The Minister had promised him a post and the appointment would be coming along almost any day.

Meanwhile he roamed the streets, gloomy and preoccupied, fleeing from his acquaintances and the Centennial festivities of the fashionable quarters to wander through the tenement districts and the slums. Sometimes he would join the spectators of some street entertainment; and as he listened to the talk of those about him, or spoke to them, men and women, it surprised him to feel suddenly so much at home with these poor people, so at one with them; till he remembered that through his mother—born of laborers who had worked their way up to the shopkeeping class—he, too, was pueblo, very much pueblo, a true child of the proletariat.

One day he went to see the building—a small tenement—on the income from which he was living. The house was a loathsome plague-spot in which some fifteen wretched families lodged. How was it that it had never before occurred to him to look this house up, he wondered, disgusted with himself. And why had his agent never reported such conditions? Then he remembered that he had visited the property in person several times before his second trip to Europe; save that then all this poverty and squalor seemed to him a natural, even an excellent, thing! Was it not just this sort of surroundings which pricked the ambition of these laboring people, spurred them to work their way up to the comfort they had learned through hard experience to appreciate? Was not this very misery the first rung on the ladder of progress in this blessed country of opportunity, where "no one need be poor unless he chooses to be"? Monsalvat thought with shame of his earlier adherence to "economic liberalism," a toothless theory, surely invented by the rich that they might continue to exploit the poor! How much he would have given now never to have written those fine articles of his! He went away resolved to mortgage the tenement, and put the money into improvements which would make the building sanitary at least.

The people of his old world, his men friends especially, made fun of his new views. He had not been talking much of his recent mental struggles; but his aloofness, coupled with a few articles of his giving voice to the protest within him, annoyed not a few of the distinguished persons who had been wont to applaud him. Something had gone wrong inside this man; and society commented on the change without forbearance. Some said he was crazy, others thought there was something off with his liver or his spleen. More than one of his old admirers looked at him with a kind of fear. What was he going to do next? Perhaps break with all established institutions.

Monsalvat, however, was nobody's enemy. Feelings of revolt could not live long in his heart, but became transformed, soon after birth, into a nameless anguish, a physical and moral uneasiness. He hated only himself. His rebellion was a rebellion only against his own selfish years.

What was it he wanted now? What was he looking for? What road was he going to choose? He did not know. Around him he felt a great emptiness that was ever growing greater. Wherever he went a sense of infinite loneliness accompanied him. He spent hours pondering the future. Meanwhile he had grown strangely sensitive emotionally; and it seemed as though the moment had come when his outward life, as well, must undergo its transformation.

One night idle curiosity led him to a cabaret. He knew little of this form of diversion. The "show" entertained him; the tangos and the orchestra stirred his emotions. This place of amusement seemed to be a note of color in the bleak immensity of Buenos Aires. On the other hand, he felt more alone than ever before. In all that dancing, in all that music, he found, he scarcely knew why, the same sadness which was in his soul. At times when the mandola wailed in a crescendo from the depth of some vulgar popular tune—fraught with all the coarseness and abjections of the tenements of the city—he seemed to hear in it a cry of loneliness, despair, and bitterness rising from the dregs of life itself.

It was on that night that his eyes first met Nacha's. They looked at one another with surprise, and with a shade of embarrassment, as though they knew one another. The girl lost her composure, lowered her eyes, twisted her fingers nervously. For two hours Monsalvat lingered in the cabaret, persisting in this flirtation. He did not understand why he had never liked loose women; indeed, it all seemed to him rather absurd—though the girl did have pretty eyes! Perhaps she was not what she seemed! Perhaps she might some day love him, chance permitting. Perhaps his loneliness would be more bearable if a woman like her were there to sympathize with him. When she left the cabaret, he followed in a taxi. With her companion, she went into a house. Monsalvat concluded that she lived there. He got out of the taxi, and loitered about in the middle of the dark street. She came out on the balcony for a moment, casting two or three rapid glances in his direction.

A few nights later Monsalvat returned to the cabaret. He did not find her there. His loneliness again became unbearably acute, and his restlessness intolerable. It seemed to him more than ever imperative that he find some purpose in life again, some clear comprehension of his mission and destiny.

A few days later the scene in the cabaret occurred.

CHAPTER III

It was one o'clock when Monsalvat came out of the cabaret. As he stepped out on the sidewalk the cold, waiting thief like at the door, leapt at his throat and face. He turned up the collar of his overcoat and walked slowly away, careless of direction, his eyes following the sidewalk in front of him as a wheel follows a groove.

At the first street corner he paused. People were leaving theatres and cafés, whirling away into the dark in taxis and automobiles. The trams were crowded. The cross-streets, of unpretentious apartment houses and second-rate shops, all darkened and asleep, were poorly lighted; but at its southern end, the center of the capital's night life dusted the sky with a golden sheen. Monsalvat turned in that direction, walking on mechanically till he came out on the brilliantly illuminated avenue. Through the immense plate glass windows of the cafés he could see the multitudes of little tables, and topping them, hundreds of human torsos gesticulating under thick waves of cigarette smoke, pierced with colored lights; while through the opening and closing doors, tango music broke in irregular surges, now strong, now weak. The street corners were sprinkled with men stragglers or survivors from larger groups of joy-seekers. Automobile horns, conversations in every tongue, the bells of blocked street-cars, rent the lurid glow with resounding, impatient clangor. But in spite of all the animation and illumination of the theatre district, the merry-making had not the enthusiasm of the earlier hours. Only that irreducible minimum of vitality remained, that residue of joy-thirst, which survives evenings of revelry, clinging tenaciously to the later hours, and scattering over the after-midnight streets a pervading sense of weariness.

Indifferent to the animation of these glittering thoroughfares, concentrated on his own inner misery, bewildered in the maze of conflicting emotions within him, Monsalvat went on his way, but walking more and more slowly now. He tried to analyze the thoughts and sensations that were tormenting him; but the effort served only to exasperate his distress. He had never suffered like this. All he knew for the moment was that his heart, with an impulsiveness which he felt certain was quite disinterested, had gone out to a girl he saw doomed, the victim of her own will to live and of the evil nature of others. How cowardly, futile, he had felt himself in the presence of her helplessness and humiliation! And then something overwhelming, imperious, had seemed to stir in his being, filling him with a courage strangely unfamiliar to him, lifting him from his chair, and throwing him forward against the girl's tormentors. But had he not played the simple fool—in public? Had not even Nacha joined in the mockery as he left the room, proving incapable of loyalty even toward the man who had defended her? Then that final thrust of the bully: "Take a good look at me! I am Dalmacio Arnedo! Pampa Arnedo!" In the days of his thoughtless prosperity as a student and man of promise, Fernando had thought little of the sister, Eugenia Monsalvat, who shared his own position in his father's family. A touch of shame and sorrow had come to him when he learned that she had left her—and his—mother's home—disappearing from even that penumbra of respectability, to live as the mistress of a man named Arnedo. So this was the man, thus crossing his path a second time, rising before him leering and insulting, and pronouncing his own name as a symbol of redoubled scorn for the name of Monsalvat! And that sister, again! Had he done anything to prevent her fall, in the first place, or to redeem her, now that she had fallen?

He was still walking slowly down the avenue of white lights when he felt a touch on his arm. It was Hamilcar Torres, one of the most intimate of his few intimate acquaintances.

"Give me a few moments, Monsalvat. Let's go in here, shall we?"

They entered one of the large cafés. The orchestra here, composed of girls, was playing a languid gypsy waltz, the music and the musicians, in combination, evoking expressions of melting languor on the faces of the males who were assembled there, most of them, at this advanced hour, gazing about in stupid rapture over wine glasses that were being filled and filled again.

"It was I who sent for the police," said Torres, when they had taken a table. He brought out the words very deliberately, marking the syllables, and in a tone calculated to emphasize the allusion, though his manner at once changed from a mood of reproving seriousness to one of amusement, and bantering knowingness.

Torres was a physician; his strikingly white teeth, crisp curly hair, eyebrows prominent over deep-set black eyes, suggested a trace of African blood in his veins. Under a thick black mustache, rather handsomely set against rosy, smooth-shaven cheeks, he smiled continuously, sometimes sadly, sometimes ironically, sometimes with affected malevolence and shrewdness.

Monsalvat did not reply. The doctor, turning sideways to the table, crossed his long legs, and, thrusting them far beyond the limits of the space which might reasonably be allowed to each patron of the café, obstructed all passage near him.

"I followed along after you," he said, shifting uneasily on his chair and turning his head so as to face Monsalvat, "because I wanted to put you on your guard. You've got to be careful with these people, old man! I know them—they won't stop at anything—and I saw that you ... and the girl ... well ... er ... eh?"

His right finger pointed, on the query, to his own right eye, then he waggled it at Monsalvat. Again his face varied from a rather exaggerated severity to a knowing smile; and turning his head so that it was once more in line with his body, and he had to look sideways at Monsalvat, he added:

"No need to deny it, my boy! After all, the girl is pretty enough! But—be careful.... When women like that get a hold of a fellow...!"

"Aren't you putting it rather strongly, Torres? I have a feeling that this particular girl is not of just the kind that...."

"Just the kind that what?" snapped the doctor, still eyeing Fernando sidewise, and with a mocking smile. "You don't know her!"

Then facing Monsalvat, and mustering a choleric frown for the occasion, he added impressively in a mysterious and earnest tone of voice, as if revealing something from a transcendental source:

"More than one man has gone to the dogs on that girl's account!"

Whereupon, with an air of philosophical indifference, he settled back to his former comfortable position.

Monsalvat was not convinced. Nacha's gentle eyes seemed to refute the miserable innuendos Torres was making. And yet, supposing it were all true? What then? A wave of passionate curiosity swept over Monsalvat. He wanted to know more. He must know more! Yet he said nothing. He could not bring out the question that was hanging on his lips. Torres divined what his friend was thinking, and pleased to be able to show how intimately he knew the ins and outs of life in Buenos Aires, he began:

"This Arnedo fellow—Pampa, as they call him—is real low-life, the kind who wouldn't hesitate to put a bullet through your body, or forge your name. Two or three times he has come near going to jail. And you saw how he treats the girl! An out and out bully!"

"What's her name? Who is she?" interrupted Monsalvat, with ill-concealed eagerness.

"She's known as Lila about town; but her real name is Ignacia Regules—Nacha, as most people call her for short. Her mother kept a student's boarding house—still does, for that matter. I knew her mother ... because once...."

"Keep to Nacha, won't you?"

"I see; you want to hear all about the girl! That's the important subject!" The doctor looked slyly at Monsalvat, enjoying the latter's confusion at this sudden self-betrayal. "I'll tell you something of what I know—not all, of course. I'm obliged to keep the most interesting parts to myself. Well, this Nacha, while still living in her mother's boarding house, fell in love with a student and ran away with him. He kept her a couple of years or so; then he left her, and at a very critical juncture—she was in the hospital, with a child that, fortunately, did not live. When she came out she took a job in a store. Probably she was willing enough to live a decent life, but the bad example of some of her girl friends was too much for her. She began to earn ten times more than what she got in the store—in a different way."

Torres winked as he now looked at Monsalvat.

"And how do you know all this?" the latter inquired.

"My dear fellow, that is something I don't tell."

The doctor did not wish to modify the effect of his story by simply stating that Nacha had known a friend of his, and once, when she was ill and Torres had been attending her, she had given him her whole story. Torres enjoyed mystification for its own sake, and preferred, just for the fun of it, to keep Monsalvat on edge a little longer.

And this game, for that matter, was working well. In utter distress, Monsalvat stared fixedly, now at his friend, now at the orchestra, now at the unknown faces about the great hall. But he did not see what was before his eyes. His mind was filled with the image of his own sister, abandoned to misfortune, perhaps now a common woman of the streets; of his mother weeping her life out over her own and her daughter's shame; of Nacha Regules, caught in the brutal clutches of Pampa Arnedo; and finally of his own past self, happy, free to travel, flirting with handsome women, courting literary fame, lounging at his club, or attending fashionable parties! While he had been idling thoughtlessly along in this relative but still gilded luxury, Eugenia Monsalvat was falling lower and lower in the social scale! His sister! But not his sister, only! Millions of women were enduring a misery like hers! And a world of well-nourished, "successful" men and women went gaily on its way, indifferent to the ceaseless suffering of these other women, proud of its money, and its easy virtue, robbing the poor of sisters and daughters, buying them, corrupting them, enjoying life.

"And then?" asked Monsalvat, noticing that Torres was studying him, and eager to learn everything he could about the life of this girl, who seemed to him at that moment to represent all the unfortunate women of the earth in her person.

"Well, she left the store—you would never guess why! She wanted to be 'respectable'! She took up some kind of work, I forget what; but eventually she drifted into a café, as a waitress. Can you imagine 'respectable'—and a café waitress!"

Monsalvat, more and more irritated at his companion's flippancy, suggested that these attempts of Nacha to work and to be "respectable" were certainly nothing against her. She might be a good girl, after all!

"Good? Of course! These girls are all good—almost all, at least. We do judge them harshly, I realize. If they do wrong, it is without knowing exactly that it is wrong. And some of them really have a high moral code—for instance...."

Torres was not smiling now. Memories of the numberless poor creatures he had known, memories of extraordinary cases of generosity, and loyalty, and even heroism, for the moment drove his superficial cynicism from him.

Monsalvat was not interested however, obsessed as he was by the image of Nacha, who seemed to be appealing to him to rescue her. And rescue her he would! He would save her from her present tragic situation, from fearful hours awaiting her in the future, and from the memory of frightful hours of the past. An idea that he must see her, speak to her again, somehow, somewhere, took possession of him. But how? And where? And supposing he should meet her again? What would he say to her? He did not know; but his determination was not shaken on that account. He would see her—and save her; not for her own sake, nor because he was himself an "unfortunate" in society; nor because she was beautiful, and his eyes had dwelt upon her; but for love of his sister rather, for the sake of his own real self!

"These poor girls are simply victims of conditions, I suppose," continued Torres. "Nacha told me once that wherever she went, in shops, or workrooms, or business offices, the men were after her. And it's true, isn't it? We men, even the best of us, are a bad lot. I'd like to know how a girl who hasn't enough to eat, and who lives in the worst sort of surroundings, can resist temptation, especially when it comes in the form of a good-looking fellow who offers to take her out of the hell she is living in.... No, they are not to blame...."

Meanwhile the "Merry Widow" waltz floated languidly through the thick air of the café like a maze of shimmering diaphanous silk or impalpable tulle. But to Monsalvat it seemed that this music was winding itself about him, body and soul, a merciless bandage which bound him tighter and tighter, treacherously increasing the pain it promised to soothe. The sadness dwelling at the core of all worldly pleasures fell from each musical phrase, each bar, each note, on the heavy air of the café. Music in such places as this always distressed Monsalvat. Tonight his whole being was an open wound, over which the ceaselessly moving grind of the music grated until he wondered that he did not scream with pain. Was his own record absolutely clean? Had he, too, not bought favors from women—be it, indeed, with flattery and favors returned? And where were those women now?

Had they, too, by selling themselves, lost all right to the world's respect, the right to be treated as human beings, to be pitied? His fault? He despised himself utterly. Only the violence of his self-reproach gave him the strength to bear his pain.

"And then what?" he queried, rousing himself from his abstraction.

Torres, who had been silent for a time, now answered the question that came almost mechanically from Monsalvat's lips, and told all he knew of Nacha's history. Outstanding in her checkered career had been her love affair with the young poet, Carlos Riga. Together they had endured the most frightful poverty in the Argentine bohemia. Nacha had left him finally, driven away by sheer hunger—and the thought that perhaps her being always with him was an unjust burden on her penniless lover. In these circumstances she'd concluded that it was no use trying to be a "decent" girl; and she had gone off "on her own," taking up with a man—who was soon followed by another—better able to support her. One day the idea came into her head that exclusive devotion to any one protector meant a sort of unfaithfulness to Riga, whom she really adored. From that moment she gave herself up to the roving life of the cabarets and places of amusement. It was during this time that she met Arnedo. He found her pretty, intelligent, admired the ease of manner she had acquired in her mother's boarding house, was impressed by the smatterings of culture she had absorbed from Riga and other young writers she had known in Riga's company—in short, decided that Nacha was the jewel he was looking for—a girl he could "flash" on Capitol sportdom, and "show off" as his "woman" among people appreciative of such display.

"A horrible story!" exclaimed Monsalvat, gloomily. "Can there be many girls like that?"

"Thousands of them. And I really know something about it.... I have long been a police physician. My dissertation was on that very subject!" And he lectured at length on the theme, sparing no details of the traffic which has made Buenos Aires famous as a market of human flesh.

Monsalvat could not speak meanwhile. He was thinking of his sister, trying to picture to himself what her lot must be. He saw her in the abandonment that followed her disgrace, struggling not to lose her grip on life, failing, struggling again to evade the deeper degradations of the outcast she saw below her; and finally sinking in the loathsome mire, dragged into its depths, by a trader's claws, perhaps, tortured, enslaved, and—who could say!—dead! He listened with speechless intentness. "What a ghastly nightmare this world is!" He stammered at last:

"And what is being done to remedy all this?"

"What is there to do, my dear fellow? We would have to destroy everything and construct society anew!"

At these words Monsalvat seized his friend's arm with violence; his eyes were moist with emotion and his voice rang with a strange solemnity, as he said slowly:

"Exactly! Exactly! Well, everything is being destroyed, and a new society is coming into being!"

Torres assented, as far as his facial muscles were concerned, responding to the suggestiveness of Monsalvat's moral earnestness, to the emotion which his friend's vision of a great and approaching Good stirred in his own sluggish depths. He even went so far as to nod.... Then came reaction. His inner, his real self recovered from the momentary spell of Monsalvat's ingenuous and lyric optimism. One look about at the café's noisy and drunken hilarity, and the man of generous instincts disappeared, giving place again to the man of the world, the man like any other man, stamped with all the ideas and sentiments of his kind. To Torres the words Monsalvat had spoken, his Quixotic theories, his grief over things that were not only irremediable and accepted, but even sanctioned, and necessary, began to appear ridiculous, and speaking as a doctor, trained to seek the origin of all human abnormalities in overstrung nerves and disturbed physical or mental equilibrium, he replied lightly and skeptically as before:

"The problem, you see, is too complex ... there is no solution really...."

Monsalvat did not hear him. Another voice was filling his ears, a voice from a thousand throats, convicting him of his own responsibility, too, for the world's crimes. His heart seemed to him a mournful, hollow, and despairing bell; his eyes saw the world as a scene ready set for tragedy—the tragedy, first, of his mother, deceived, suffering all her life, and handing on suffering to her children; then his sister's; then Nacha's. In an eternal chorus of tears rose the lamentations of the lost women of the earth, the weeping of their parents, their brothers; the cries of the children they were driven to destroy; their own screams of shame, and clamorings of hunger.

"Why, man, what's the matter with you?" asked Torres finally. "Hadn't we better be going? It's three o'clock."

Monsalvat nodded and got up. He took leave of Torres at once, on the pretext he did not feel well, and started off for the South End, toward the Avenida de Mayo, where he lived.

He went to bed at once upon reaching his rooms. But he could not sleep. He did not know why it was; but the sound of the shots that had brought down some of the human creatures in the mob at Lavalle Square, and the song they had sung, became interwoven with one of the cabaret tangos he had just been hearing. This strange music haunted his ears and drove sleep far from him. Later, when he had fallen into a kind of half slumber, there came towards him a procession of frightful figures, howling and groaning louder and louder as they approached; and he knew that this procession was Humanity. It was already dawn when he began to sleep—uneasily and for only a little while. But even this semblance of slumber brought with it a nightmare. A monstrous phantom, covered with gold, silks, and precious stones, its jaws those of an apocalyptic beast, its claws, too, dripping blood, was there before him, in his room, although scarcely contained by it. The monster approached his bed, showing its fangs, about to devour him; and this monster, with its charnel house of a belly, where lay countless generations of the world's unfortunates, was Injustice.

Monsalvat got up late. He was quiet now. At last there was new life within him. Everything had new life, new meaning. What this new life was he could not have said. But he knew that within him there was now a sense of clearness where before there had been nothing but confusion and obscurity.

He breakfasted and went out, thinking, rather vaguely, that he would go to his mother's. But, as he walked on, he turned in another direction. Moving absent-mindedly, yielding to a new sweet sense of inner calm, he seemed not to notice the streets along which he passed. When he came to himself, he noted that he was within a few yards of Nacha's house. Without hesitating, certain now that he was doing the right thing, he went up the steps and rang the bell.

CHAPTER IV

Nacha had not been able to sleep. Rarely, even in her unhappy life, had she spent so bad a night. On arriving home from the cabaret, Arnedo had gone to bed in silence. This Indian-like taciturnity of his always terrified her. Dread of the man's violence, fear of being once more abandoned, and forced to return to her former precarious circumstances, mingled with the anxieties the day had brought her. Carlos Riga, she had only that morning learned, was dying in a hospital ward. Yet curiously, what tortured her more than grief for her former lover or fear for her own life, was the uneasiness aroused within her by the memory of how she had treated that unknown man who had so chivalrously come to her defense in the cabaret. He had been ready to risk his life for her, and she had rewarded him with a laugh, a laugh half of fear, half of distraction; but to him it must have seemed one of treacherous mockery.

Into her heart that night a new, a strangely engrossing uneasiness had come, a presentiment which she could not have explained, but which she knew she must conceal from Arnedo as though it were a crime. It was a sense of impending evil, an accumulation of forebodings—reminiscences that the news of Riga's condition had brought up, memories of the evening itself; bits of her own past; pictures, which her frightened imagination painted, of a terrible future—a future with at best such poor, such ill-nourished, such unsubstantial hopes—all blending into a vague conviction that Fate had decreed some great misfortune for her.

How she longed for the relief of slumber! She would need to look fresh and happy when she faced Arnedo the following day. This preoccupation filled her insomnia with a sort of hectic frenzy.

To destroy all traces of the hours of torment she was enduring, she imagined herself digging little graves for them, and burying them one by one under a dust of forgetfulness. Meanwhile, in her desire for the dawn, she turned on the light every few minutes to see what time it was. Four o'clock, half-past four, five! Never had a night lasted so long! She thought the clock must be slow, and got up to see if there were any signs of coming day. Darkness was still unbroken. Only a faint glow in the depths of the sky seemed to presage the possibility of morning. How she hungered for light in that overwhelming darkness!

And meanwhile the image of the man in the cabaret haunted her. He looked at her so strangely! No one else had ever looked at her in just this fashion. There was not in his eyes that desire which she saw in the eyes of other men. It was something else, something else! Especially from the moment when all the café had turned on her! Why had he gazed at her so persistently? A few nights before, in this same cabaret, her eyes had met those of this man. She had not been able to keep from looking at him; she had not been able to avoid his gaze when he looked her way. And then he had followed her home—doubtless to find out where she lived. She had seen him lingering there in the street and had stepped out on the balcony for a moment.... Who was he? Did he want to take her from Arnedo, to have her for himself? Why should he wish to defend her when his doing so could only injure her? He was to blame, in large measure, for Pampa's bad humor. As for Pampa, she hated him; but she could not leave him. He had broken her spirit. He could insult her and knock her about; but instead of turning against him, she would become more submissive and obedient than before. Why? How strange life was! She would never understand herself. At times it seemed as though another being dwelt within, forcing her to do things she could not otherwise account for. Why else, for example, should she have behaved so meanly, so contemptibly, towards this man who had defended her; who, clearly, was interested in her; who was, perhaps, in love with her? Why? Why? That whole long night she had tried not to think of this stranger; but to no avail. There was something about the way he held himself, something in his eyes, and in the words he spoke, which set him apart from everyone else she knew. And this distinction fascinated her. With what spirit he had faced that hostile gang! Something was drawing her towards him. It would frighten her to meet him again—yet she longed for just such an encounter. Why should she want to see him? She did not know! She refused to know!

Only the memory of the poet who had been her lover softened the pain of that unending night. He at least was good! He was loyal! He was compassionate! His heart knew the most beautiful words in the world with which to console; he had developed her intelligence, taught her to bow her head to irremediable injustice. Only this, perhaps, had saved her from the hard, cynical desperation of other women who had, like her, been overcome by wrong. And now he was dying. He was perhaps already dead. She had seen a report of his illness in a newspaper the night before; and the shock of it had left her helpless to disguise the sadness which possessed her as she sat with the others in the cabaret.

She felt responsible in a certain way for Riga's death. Had she not abandoned him at the very moment when he most needed her support? And why had she behaved so? Why was there this incessant contradiction in her life? She had run away from home at the very time when she had become most attached to her mother and her sister. She had loved Riga passionately, and she had fled from him. She felt sympathy and admiration for the man in the cabaret, and she had mocked him. Why did she always act in this unaccountable way? Then Riga took entire possession of her thoughts, and she lived over again the time that had elapsed between their first meeting and her tragic abandonment of him.

It was in her mother's boarding house that they had begun their friendship. Later, after her misfortune, she learned of the poet's difficulties. Surrounded as she was by gross, vulgar people, she thought of him as a noble and pure spirit. Years later, when she was working as a waitress in a café, she met him again. They saw one another several times, compared their troubles, were touched by each other's sufferings. So they went to live together. This union lasted three years; and in the midst of poverty, grief and despair, they came to adore one another. They both worked hard; but Destiny seemed bent on sucking their blood. As their circumstances became poorer and poorer, Riga took refuge in drink and stopped writing. She had gone hungry, taking the bread from her own mouth to feed him, to keep him alive. But a day came when she had no more reserves of courage. She had endured all she could. Life and youth cried out for their rights; and she went away, exhausted physically and morally, weeping out all the remaining strength of her broken heart.

A little before seven o'clock, taking care not to waken Arnedo, she got out of bed again, and tiptoed to the door of the apartment, stepped out to the elevator and rang the bell. When the car came up she asked for the Patria, the newspaper to which Arnedo subscribed. The postman had not yet delivered the mail and Nacha sent the boy out to get the paper. While waiting for him to come back she walked restlessly back and forth, from the window opening on the street, to the front door. It was a dull, oppressive, cloudy morning; the sky had a yellowish, dirty look. The air was very damp and on the window-panes and outside woodwork large drops of moisture hung. Nacha had a painful presentiment. Certainly such a day could bring nothing good. Pale, trembling, she ran to the door the moment she heard the elevator start again.

She snatched the paper eagerly from the boy's hand, opened it and looked frantically at the inner page. The item, alas, was there, the news which pierced her heart, and seemed like a claw tearing at her breast! Shrinking, scarcely able to stand upright, she went to the sitting-room and, still clutching the newspaper, threw herself on the sofa. Now it seemed to her that her life was indeed all spent. She lay there a long time, weeping. This man, to whom the newspaper bade farewell with words of affection, was Carlos Riga, the poet who was all generosity, all goodness, the boy who had been her lover and her friend in the best years of her life! He was the inspired dreamer who had freed her soul from the vulgar preoccupations of her kind; he was the idealist who had shared illusions and hopes with her; he was the man who had never spoken to her a word that was not kind and affectionate. No tears were enough for this loss. What though she never saw him and could not see him? She needed to know that he was alive, so as not to be altogether bad, so as not to become utterly unworthy. She wept. For death, in taking Riga away, broke her last connection with the only happy hours she had known in her life as slave and outcast.

She sat up on the sofa at last and read and re-read the Patria's tribute to the dead poet. Then she went to a closet and took from it Riga's "Poems," which she had bought before he became her lover—later he had written in a dedication which filled the first two blank pages. With tears in her eyes she glanced over the well-known verses, but as some of Pampa's snores echoed through the apartment, she hastily kissed the volume, and put it back in its hiding place, fearful lest Pampa should appear. She must also conceal the traces of her weeping lest Arnedo get up suddenly and see her swollen face.

She returned to the sitting-room with the idea of writing perhaps to her sister. She heard the cook stirring about in the kitchen. A talk with the woman might distract her. With affected cheeriness she went out and ordered breakfast.

How afraid she was to linger in any place where she might encounter Arnedo! But she knew that he would demand an explanation of her gloom of the night before, of her refusal to obey his orders and dance. She went to the dining-room, in the corner of the apartment farthest away from the room where Pampa was sleeping. These devices seemed to postpone for awhile the moment she dreaded. What was Pampa going to say? He might beat her! He might drive her out of the house! What could she look forward to? Several times she asked the maid whether el Señor was getting up. In this way she learned when he was awake, when he asked for his breakfast, when he went to take his bath. Strange he should not be asking for her. And this silence terrified her! Finally, at noon, knowing that he must be nearly dressed, she tried to prepare herself to face him; but she was restless, anxious and nervous.

She heard his step approaching the dining-room. The door opened. Scarcely glancing at her, and without a word of greeting, from the threshold Pampa motioned to her to come to him.

As she went into the sitting-room, Nacha felt Arnedo's piercing gaze upon her face. She did not know where to turn her eyes. Back to a table, his hands in his pockets, Pampa stood watching her with a hard smile, apparently enjoying her distress.

"Well," he said at last, "I want to know what was the matter with you last night?"

"Nothing! I was ill—I told you."

She sat down as she spoke. Pampa, paying no attention to her answer, began to whistle a tango. Half dead with fear, Nacha had scarcely been able to articulate the words.

"Sick, eh?"

His hard eyes swept the girl sarcastically. A long silence followed, broken only by the jangling of some keys which Pampa was turning over and over in one of his pockets. He pretended to smile; then suddenly, exasperated, almost shouting, and with an ugly word, he broke out,

"Sick! Do you think you can get away with that excuse?"

Nacha, in terror, drew back towards the sofa, her knees and hands unsteady. Stammering, half crying, she begged him not to shout so. She had not meant to offend him!

"I've good reason to shout," he continued. "I've told you, haven't I, that I wouldn't stand your making up to anybody! You wore that fool face of yours last night because you think you're in love with someone—for all I know with that mangy cur who butted in. Well, I'm not going to be made a fool of, understand? I'm not going to support a woman who goes around cry-babying and putting on."

"I was sick, I tell you."

"And I tell you, you weren't! If you say that again, I'll break every bone you've got in your body!"

"Pampa! please, don't talk so loud!"

Arnedo began to pace up and down, a torrent of vituperation and curses flowing from his lips, his eyes glittering with savage cruelty. Nacha thought for a moment of telling him the truth, that her tears were due to her grief for the death of a man she had loved; but she knew Arnedo would not believe her. Besides, would not her feeling for a man she had broken with, irritate Pampa for the very reason that he could not understand such subtleties of emotion? It seemed safest to be silent, to endure his insults and his anger without replying.

At last, having worked off some of his temper, Arnedo announced that he was going out, and would not be back for lunch. Nacha followed him to the door, submissive, and still frightened. She even drew up to him as though expecting a caress; but Arnedo brushed her aside contemptuously and slammed the front door behind him.

Though Nacha could not restrain an access of nervous weeping she felt, after all, a sort of relief. The scene had "ended well" for her! Her thoughts were free now to return to Riga. She would go to the cemetery, and at least see where they were burying him. And she would wear black, very simple black, so as not to attract attention! In those moments at least she must appear worthy of the humble poet who had loved her!

She had just finished dressing when the maid announced a caller.

"Who is it?"

"A gentleman. He will not give his name."

Nacha's heart began to beat more quickly, and with an unaccountable expectancy.

"You know very well that I don't receive calls from gentlemen.... Is he well dressed?"

The maid nodded.

"Tell him I am not at home. Just a moment—well—yes, tell him I am not at home!"

The maid left the room, but returned almost immediately.

"He wouldn't go, Ma'am," she reported, considerably alarmed; "He walked right in.... He looks all right, but...."

Nacha, with some uneasiness, went into the sitting-room. To her amazement she found herself face to face with the stranger of the cabaret.

CHAPTER V

"Who are you?... What do you want?..." asked Nacha after the first moment of astonishment.

"Who am I? Nobody in particular! Just someone who has guessed that you are unhappy, and is anxious to help you."

"But ... you must have understood that I didn't want to see you again! I can't receive you here. You shouldn't have come to this house. It's hard on me! Think of the consequences! Perhaps I may lose my place here!"

"Your place here is what you hate more than anything else in the world!"

"How do you know? I'm not so sure.... I have a quiet home—and I'm free!"

The way the man looked at her made her break off. They were both silent for a time, the stranger, however, not taking his eyes from Nacha for a moment. She could see that he wanted to speak, but evidently did not dare. At last, in a low voice and with visible emotion, he began:

"Nacha—you see I know your name—you are not telling me the truth! You are not free!... You are suffering; and last night I saw how much! From the moment I first saw you I have felt a tremendous pity for you."

"Oh, really?" Nacha exclaimed, with a laugh of affected irony, calculated to put an end to the conversation with this man who had forced his way into her house, whose presence there was compromising to her, and who now, into the bargain, was allowing himself to express pity for her.

"Yes, real pity!" he repeated, evidently not understanding that her laugh was aimed at him.

"How kind of you! You must be an unusual sort of person!" Nacha said again, laughing scornfully.

"Your life is nothing but suffering," he continued, rather as though he were talking to himself and had not heard what Nacha said. "Here you live in humiliation, worry, perpetual terror of what is about to happen. That is not living, Nacha!"

"Call it dying if you like then. You are very amusing. I am sorry you must go at once! But if Pampa should find you here.... I wish he would come!"

They stood facing each other there in the middle of the room, the stranger listening quietly while Nacha poured out her nervousness in words, and yet more words, hurriedly, interrupting herself with her own forced laughter, and distractedly moving her hands and arms.

"Did you think you had made a hit with me? How funny! But don't fool yourself! I can't help laughing though, at the very idea! You're crazy. Only crazy people act the way you do. Anyway, I love Pampa. So there! You see what women are. He treats me badly, he despises me, he beats me—but I wouldn't leave him for the first booby who comes along!"

By way of reply he took her hand and led her to the sofa, where obediently she sat down. In a low voice that had in it the same ring of sincerity and feeling as before, he went on:

"Nacha, you accept this man's ill treatment because you are afraid of something worse. You cannot bear to think that tomorrow, or whenever he leaves you, you will have to go from one man to another—"

"This is too much! Who gave you the right to insult me? I am a decent woman!"

And then, finding her own words ridiculous perhaps, she began to laugh; and the laugh, this time, seemed to reveal her scorn for herself and her pride withal in living as she was living. The man's compassion grew.

"Why do you do it Nacha?"

"What?" she exclaimed, without checking her laughter.

"You are trying to bring together things that don't belong together. You are trying to make yourself out a bad woman, while really you are good."

Nacha, abruptly, became serious. She lowered her eyes and for several seconds sat motionless, looking at the floor, seemingly preoccupied. Finally she raised her head, and slowly turned her gaze upon this unknown friend. The peace she found in his eyes astonished her. After a long silence she asked him gently:

"Who are you? What is your name?"

He told her.

"Fernando Monsalvat...." she repeated, as though trying to inscribe the syllables on her memory. Then, apparently more at ease, she added with a smile,

"Why did you come to this house? Not to do me harm?"

"To do you good, little friend."

The girl smiled again, and again lowered her eyes, only to raise them once more to Monsalvat's face.

"Little friend—I like those words! Will you really be my friend, really, in your heart? It does me good to hear you speak to me that way. You don't know what it means to me to be told I am not bad. But, just the same, I am bad! Only I do everything I can to make people think I am even worse than I am."

She spoke in a yet lower tone as she went on, somewhat ill at ease from the intimacy of her confession:

"We girls have to make a show of being what we are not. It's easier that way for us to forget our real selves: we seem to become somebody else. I even go so far as not to blame the girl I was yesterday for all that makes me the girl I am today."

She was silent awhile, apparently searching her memory.

"Why do you try so hard to forget?" asked Monsalvat, "Wouldn't it be better to remember—if the present is so sad?"

"Sad? No, it isn't sad. Other people might think so. But really it isn't. It is worse than that rather: it is empty, without any feeling at all. We live in a sort of perpetual confusion. It's almost like not knowing whether you're alive or not."

"But why not remember what is good in the past? Why not dream?"

"Remember?" Her expression suggested that a world full of past sufferings had taken possession of her imagination.

"Why remember? Just to feel bad?"

"Yes, little friend, to feel, and to suffer. If you didn't suffer, you would be horrible, all of you. It is because you suffer that you deserve pity and sympathy; and so you ought to seek out pain, and treasure it."

Nacha raised her hands to her face. In his own trouble, and in the compassion Nacha aroused in him, Monsalvat began to feel a kind of satisfaction. If she could still feel so deeply, there was hope.

"No, no!" she broke out suddenly. "We haven't the right to suffer!"

"Human beings have no greater and more sacred right."

"But don't you see that we girls must always be gay, dance, laugh: our profession is joy, not suffering. If we're glum, we lose our jobs. If we are not ready for gaiety and caresses, we're accused of not earning our pay."

Her lips smiled bitterly. Monsalvat, sitting with one elbow on his knee, and his chin resting on his hand, was looking at her as though trying to drink in her very soul.

"We have to make ourselves over," Nacha continued, "change our natures as well as our names. Do you think it is only out of shame, or because of our families, that we hide our identities? No, it isn't wholly that. Taking another name makes us seem different somehow. It's like the Carnival. Under a disguise, you can do and say all the crazy things that come into your head. Are you ashamed afterwards? No, because when you take off your mask you are no longer the person who played all those wild pranks."

"And last night"—Monsalvat asked, after a brief pause, "why were you so unhappy?"

Through his conversation with Torres he knew the answer to this question; yet he listened anxiously for her reply.

"There you see what comes of being out of sorts!" she said at last. "Why should anyone go to a cabaret to gloom and whimper like a simpleton? Pampa had a right to be angry. I couldn't help it. I had just learned that the only real friend I ever had, the only man I ever really loved, was dying.... And you can imagine how I feel today. It's lucky I can be alone.... I can afford to let myself cry ... and remember!..."

Monsalvat had started at these words. He was glad to know that Nacha was still capable of feeling. At the same time, what she said about her love for Riga filled him with a vague uneasiness. Interrupting, he told her that he had known the poet.

"You knew him? Really? When? Where?"