STRANGE
I
We were taking tea in the house of a lady who is a friend of mine, and the talk turned upon the social dramas which develop from act to act, unheeded of the world, – dramas with whose leading characters we have been acquainted, if indeed we have not ourselves played a part in one or another of their scenes.
Among numerous other persons whom I do not remember, there was a girl of the blonde type, fair and slender, who, if she had had a lapful of flowers in place of the blear-eyed little dog that growled half hidden in the wide folds of her skirt, might have been compared without exaggeration to Shakespeare’s Ophelia.
So pure was the white of her forehead, the azure of her eyes.
Conversing with the fair girl was a young man, who stood with one hand resting on the causeuse of blue velvet where she sat and the other caressing the precious trinkets of his gold chain. In his affected pronunciation a slight foreign accent was noticeable, despite the fact that his look and bearing were as Spanish as those of the Cid or Bernardo del Carpio.
A gentleman of mature years, tall, thin, of distinguished and courteous manners, who seemed seriously preoccupied with the operation of sweetening to the exact point his cup of tea, completed the group nearest the fireplace, in whose warmth I sat down to tell this human history. It seems like a fable, but it is not; one could make a book of it; I have done so several times in imagination. Nevertheless, I will tell it in few words, since for him to whom it is given to comprehend it, these few will be more than enough.
Andrés, for so the hero of my tale was called, was one of those men whose hearts abound with feeling for which they have found no outlet, and with love that has no object on which to spend itself.
An orphan almost from his birth, he was left in the care of relatives. I do not know the details of his childhood; I can only say that whenever it was mentioned, his face would cloud and he would exclaim, with a sigh: “That is over now.”
We all say the same, sadly recalling bygone joys. But was this the explanation of his words? I repeat that I do not know; but I suspect not.
As soon as he was grown, he launched out into the world. Though I would not calumniate it, the fact remains that the world for the poor, and especially for a certain class of the poor, is not a Paradise nor anything like it. Andrés was, as the saying goes, one of those people who rise, most days, with nothing to look forward to but twenty-four hours more. Judge then, my readers, what would be the state of a spirit all idealism, all love, put to the no less difficult than prosaic task of seeking our daily bread.
Yet sometimes, sitting on the edge of his lonely bed, his elbows on his knees and his head between his hands, he would exclaim:
“If I only had something to love with all my heart! A wife, a horse, even a dog!”
As he had not a copper to spare, it was not possible for him to get anything, – not any object on which to satisfy his hunger to love. This waxed to such a point that in its acute attacks he came to feel an affection for the wretched closet where he slept, the scanty furniture that met his needs, his very landlady, that patron saint who was his evil genius.
This is not at all surprising; Josephus relates that during the siege of Jerusalem hunger reached such a point that mothers devoured their children.
There came a day when he was able to secure a very small living wage. The evening of that day, when he was returning to his boarding-house, on crossing a narrow street he heard a sort of wail, like the crying of a new-born child. He had taken but a few steps further after hearing those doleful sounds, when he exclaimed, stopping short:
“What the deuce is that?”
And he touched with the toe of his shoe a soft object that moved, and fell again to mewling and whining. It was one of those new-born puppies that people cast out to the mercy of the rubbish heap.
“Providence has placed it in my path,” said Andrés to himself, picking it up and wrapping it in the skirt of his coat; and he carried it to his miserable lodging.
“What now!” grumbled the landlady on seeing him enter with the puppy; “all we needed was this fresh nuisance in the house. Take it back this minute to where you found it, or else look up new quarters for the two of you to-morrow.”
The next day Andrés was turned out of the house, and in the course of two or three months he left some two hundred more, for the same reason. But for all these inconveniences, and a thousand others which it is impossible to detail, he was richly compensated by the intelligence and affection of the dog, with whom he diverted himself as with a person in his long hours of solitude and ennui. They ate together, they enjoyed their siestas together, and together they would take a turn in the Ronda, or go to walk along the Carabanchel road.
Evening gatherings, fashionable promenades, theatres, cafés, places where dogs are not allowed or would be in the way, were forbidden to our hero, who sometimes exclaimed from the fulness of his heart, as he responded to the caresses of his very own:
“Doggy mine! you can do everything but talk.”
II
It would be wearisome to explain how, but it came to pass that Andrés somewhat bettered his position, and seeing that he had money in hand, he said:
“If I only had a wife! But having a wife is very expensive. Men like me, before choosing a bride, should have a paradise to offer her, and a paradise in Madrid is worth as much as a man’s eye. – If I could buy a horse! A horse! There is no animal more noble or more beautiful. How he would love my dog! what merry times they would have with each other, and I with both!”
One afternoon he went to the bullfight, and before the entertainment began, he unpremeditatedly strolled out into the court-yard, where the horses who had to take part in the contest were waiting, already saddled.
I do not know whether my readers have ever had the curiosity to go and see them. For myself, without claiming to be as tender-hearted as the protagonist of this tale, I can assure you that I have often had a mind to buy them all. So great was the pity that I felt for them.
Andrés could not fail to experience a most grievous sensation on finding himself in this place. Some of the horses, with drooping heads, creatures all skin and bone, their manes rough and dirty, were standing motionless, awaiting their turn, as if they had a foreboding of the dreadful death which would put an end, within a few hours, to that miserable life of theirs; others, half blind, were sniffing about for the rack and eating, or, tearing the ground with the hoof and snorting wildly, were struggling to pull themselves loose and flee from the peril which they scented with horror. And all those animals had been young and beautiful. What aristocratic hands had patted their necks! What affectionate voices had urged on their speed! And now all was blows from one side, oaths from the other, and death at last, death in terrible agony accompanied by jests and hisses!
“If they think at all,” said Andrés, “what will these animals think at the core of their dim intelligence, when in the middle of the ring they bite their tongues and expire with a frightful spasm? Truly the ingratitude of man is sometimes inconceivable.”
He was startled out of those reflections by the rough voice of one of the picadores, who was swearing and cursing while he tested the legs of one of the horses, striking the butt-end of his lance against the wall. The horse did not seem entirely contemptible; apparently it was crazy or had some mortal disease.
Andrés thought of buying it. As for the cost, it ought not to cost much; but how about its keep? The picador plunged the spur into its flank and started to ride toward the gate of the ring; our youth wavered for an instant and then stopped him. How he did it, I do not know; but in less than a quarter of an hour he had induced the horseman to leave the beast behind, had hunted up the contractor, made his bargain for the horse and taken it away.
I suppose it is superfluous to say that on that afternoon he did not see the bullfight.
He led off the horse in triumph; but the horse, in fact, was or appeared to be crazy.
“Use plenty of stick on him,” said one authority.
“Don’t give him much to eat,” advised a blacksmith.
The horse was still unruly. “Bah!” at last exclaimed his owner. “Let him eat what he likes and do as he chooses.” The horse was not old, and now began to fatten and grow more docile. It is true that he still had his whims, and that nobody but Andrés could mount him; but his master said: “So I shall not be teased to lend him; and as for his oddities, each of us will get accustomed to those of the other.” And they came to such a good understanding that Andrés knew when the horse felt like doing a thing and when not, and as for the horse, the voice of his master was enough to make him take a leap, stand still, or set off at a gallop, swift as a hurricane.
Of the dog we need say nothing; he came to be so friendly with his new comrade that neither could go out, even to drink, without the other. From this time on, when Andrés set off at a gallop in a cloud of dust on the Carabanchel road, with his dog frisking along beside him, dashing ahead to turn back and hunt for him, or letting him pass to scamper up and overtake him, he believed himself the happiest of men.
Time went by; our young man was rich, or almost rich.
One day, after a long gallop, he alighted, tired out, near a tree and stretched himself in its shade.
It was a spring day, bright and blue, – one of those days in which men breathe voluptuously the warm air impregnated with passion, in which the blowing of the wind comes to the ear like distant harmonies, in which the clear horizons are outlined in gold, and there float before our eyes shining motes of I know not what, motes like transparent forms that follow us, encompass us and intoxicate us with sadness and with happiness at once.
“I dearly love these two beings,” exclaimed Andrés as he reclined there stroking his dog with one hand and with the other giving to his horse a handful of grass, “dearly; but yet there is a vacancy in my heart which has never been filled; I still have it in me to lavish a love greater, holier, purer. Decidedly I need a wife.”
At that moment there passed along the road a young girl with a water-jar upon her head.
Andrés was not thirsty, but yet he begged a drink of water. The girl stopped to offer it to him, and did so with such gentle grace that our youth comprehended perfectly one of the most patriarchal episodes of the Bible.
“What is your name?” he asked when he had drunk.
“Placida.”
“And what do you do with yourself?”
“I am the daughter of a merchant who died ruined and persecuted for his political opinions. After his death, my mother and I retired to a hamlet, where we get on very badly with a pension of three reales [fifteen cents a day] for all our living. My mother is ill, and everything comes on me.”
“And why haven’t you married?”
“I don’t know; in the village they say that I am good for nothing about work, that I am very delicate, very much the señorita.”
The girl, with a courteous good-bye, moved away.
While she was still in sight, Andrés watched her retreating form in silence; when she was lost to view, he said with the satisfaction of one who solves a problem:
“This is the woman for me.”
He mounted his horse and, followed by his dog, took his way to the village. He promptly made the acquaintance of the mother and, almost as soon, utterly lost his heart to the daughter. When at the end of a few months she was left an orphan, he married her, a man in love with his wife, which is one of the greatest blessings life affords.
To marry, and to set up housekeeping in a country mansion situated in one of the most picturesque spots of his native land, was the work of a few days.
When he saw himself in this residence, rich, with his wife, his dog and his horse, he had to rub his eyes; he thought he must be dreaming. So happy, so perfectly happy was poor Andrés.
IV
So he lived for a period of several years, in divine bliss, when one afternoon he thought he noticed that some one was prowling about his house, and later he surprised a man fitting his eye to the key-hole of one of the garden-doors.
“There are robbers about,” he said. And he determined to inform the nearest town, where there was a brace of civil guards.
“Where are you going?” asked his wife.
“To the town.”
“What for?”
“To inform the civil guards that I suspect some one is prowling about our house.”
When his wife heard that, she paled slightly. He, giving her a kiss, continued:
“I am going on foot, for it is not far. Good-bye till I come again.”
On passing through the court-yard to reach the gate, he stepped into the stable a moment, looked his horse over and, patting him, said:
“Good-bye, old fellow, good-bye; to-day you shall rest, for yesterday I put you to your paces.”
The horse, who was accustomed to go out every day with his master, whinnied sadly on hearing him depart.
When Andrés was about to leave the premises, the dog began to frolic for joy.
“No, you are not coming with me,” he exclaimed, speaking as if the dog would understand. “When you go to the town, you bark at the boys and chase the hens, and some fine day somebody will give you such a blow that you will have no spirit left to go back for another. Don’t let him out until I am gone,” he continued, addressing a servant, and he shut the gate that the dog might not follow him.
He had taken the turn in the road before he ceased hearing the prolonged howls.
He went to the town, despatched his business, had a pleasant half-hour with the alcalde, chatting of this and that, and returned home. On reaching the neighborhood of his estate, he was greatly surprised that the dog did not come out to welcome him, the dog that on other occasions, as if aware of his movements, would meet him half way down the road. – He whistles – no response! He enters the outer gates. Not a servant! “What the deuce is the meaning of this?” he exclaims disquieted, and proceeds to the house.
Arrived, he enters the court. The first sight that meets his eyes is the dog stretched in a pool of blood at the stable door. A few pieces of cloth scattered over the ground, some threads still hanging from his jaws, covered with crimson foam, witness that he made a good defence and that in the defence he had received the wounds so thick upon him.
Andrés calls him by his name; the dying dog half opens his eyes, tries in vain to get upon his feet, feebly wags his tail, licks the hand that caresses him, and dies.
“My horse! where is my horse?” then exclaimed Andrés with a voice hoarse and stifled by emotion, as he saw the stall empty and the halter broken.
He dashes thence like a madman; he calls his wife, – no answer; his servants, – nothing. Beside himself, he rushes over the whole house, – vacant, abandoned. Again he goes out to the street, sees the hoof-marks of his horse, his own, – no doubt of it, – for he knows, or thinks he knows, even the tracks of his cherished animal.
“I understand it all,” he says, as if illumined by a sudden idea. “The robbers have taken advantage of my absence to accomplish their design, and they are carrying off my wife to exact of me for her ransom a great sum of money. Money! my blood, my soul’s salvation, would I give for her. – My poor dog!” he exclaims, returning to look at him, and then he starts forth running like a man out of his wits, following the direction of the hoof-prints.
And he ran, he ran without resting for an instant after those tracks; one hour, two, three.
“Have you seen,” he asked of everybody, “a man on horseback with a woman on the crupper?”
“Yes,” they answered.
“Which way did they go?”
“That way.”
And Andrés would gather fresh force and keep on running.
The night commenced to fall. To the same question he had ever the same reply; and he ran, and he ran, until at last he discerned a village, and near the entrance, at the foot of a cross which marked the point where the road divided into two, he saw a group of people, laborers, old men, boys, who were regarding with curiosity something that he could not distinguish.
He arrives, puts the same question as ever, and one of the group says:
“Yes, we have had sight of that pair; look! for a clearer trace see the horse that carried them, who fell here ruptured with running.”
Andrés turns his eyes in the direction they indicated, and indeed sees his horse, his beloved horse, which some men of the place were preparing to flay for the sake of its hide. He could scarcely resist his grief, but recovering himself, he turned again to the thought of his wife.
“And tell me,” he exclaimed impetuously; “how you failed to render aid to that woman in distress.”
“And didn’t we aid her!” said another of the circle. “Didn’t I sell them another saddle-horse so that they might press on their way with all the speed that seemed so important to them!”
“But,” interrupted Andrés, “that woman was stolen away by force; that man is a bandit, who, regardless of her tears and her laments, drags her I know not whither.”
The sly rustics exchanged glances and compassionate smiles.
“Not so, señorito! what tales are you telling us?” slowly continued the man with whom he was talking. “Stolen away by force! But how if it were she herself who said with the greatest earnestness: ‘Quick, quick, let us flee from this district! I shall not be at rest until it is out of my sight forever.’ ”
Andrés comprehended all; a cloud of blood passed before his eyes – eyes which shed no tear, and he fell to the earth prone as the dead.
He went mad; in a few days, he died.
There was an autopsy; no organic trouble was found. Ah! if it were possible to dissect the soul, how many deaths similar to this would be explained!
“And did he actually die of that?” exclaimed the youth, who was still playing with the charms that hung from his watch chain, as I finished my story.
I glanced at him as if to say: “Does it seem to you so little?” He continued with a certain air of profundity: “Strange! I know what it is to suffer; when in the last races my Herminia stumbled, killed the jockey and broke a leg, the misfortune of that animal vexed me horribly; but, frankly, not so much as that – not so much as that.”
I was still regarding him with astonishment, when I heard a melodious and slightly veiled voice, the voice of the girl with the azure eyes.
“Strange, indeed! I love my Medoro dearly,” she said, dropping a kiss on the snout of the sluggish and blear-eyed lap-dog, who gave a little grunt, “but if he should die, or somebody should kill him, I do not believe that I would go mad nor anything like it.”
My astonishment was passing into stupefaction; these people had not understood me, nor wished to understand me.
Finally I turned to the gentleman who was taking tea, for at his years he might be expected to be somewhat more reasonable.
“And you? how does it seem to you?” I asked.
“I will tell you,” he replied. “I am married; I loved my wife; I have, it seems to me, a regard for her still; there came up between us a domestic unpleasantness, that by its publicity forced me to demand satisfaction; a duel followed; I had the good luck to wound my adversary, an excellent fellow, as full of jest and wit as any man alive, with whom I am still in the habit of taking coffee occasionally in the Iberia. Since then I have ceased to live with my wife, and have devoted myself to travel. – When I am in Madrid, I stay with her as a friend visiting a friend; and all this has taken place without any violent passions, without any great emotions, without any extraordinary sufferings. After this slight sketch of my character and of my life, what shall I say to you about these phenomenal explosions of feeling except that all this seems to me strange, very strange?”
When he had finished speaking, the blonde girl and the young man who was making love to her looked over together an album of Gabarni’s caricatures. In those few moments the elder gentleman treated himself with exquisite enjoyment to his third cup of tea.
When I called to mind that on hearing the outcome of my story they all had said —Strange!– I for my part exclaimed to myself —Natural!