CHAPTER X
STEIN had inhabited his peaceful retreat during three years. He had adopted the customs of the country in which he had found himself; he lived, day after day, or, in other terms, according to the counsels of his good hostess Maria, who said that the morrow should not so disquiet us as to lose the present day, and that we should occupy us with but one thing, viz., that to-day should not make us lose to-morrow.
During those three years, the young doctor had been in correspondence with his family. His parents had died while he was with the army of Navarre; his sister Charlotte was married to a farmer in easy circumstances, who had made of his wife’s two brothers cultivators – not much instructed, but handy and assiduous at their work. Stein, therefore, believed himself free and sole arbiter of his fate.
He devoted himself to the education of the young invalid, who owed her life to him, and although he cultivated a soil ungrateful and sterile, he succeeded, by patience, to ingraft on her mind the elements of a preliminary education. But what surpassed his expectations was the development of the musical faculties, really extraordinary, with which nature had endowed the fisherman’s daughter. Her voice was incomparable, and Stein, who was a good musician, could easily and surely direct her, as one trains the branches of the vine, which are at once flexible and vigorous, strong and elastic.
But the master had a heart soft and tender, and a craving for confidence which turned to blindness. He was devoted to his scholar, stimulated by the exalted love of the fisherman for his daughter, and by the admiration of the good Maria for Marisalada. Stein and his scholar possessed a certain powerful communicative sympathy, which could exercise its influence upon a soul frank and open, candid and good-humored as that of the young German. He then persuaded Pedro Santalo that his daughter was an angel, and Maria, that she was a prodigy. Stein was one of those men who could assist at a masked ball without convincing himself that under these absurd masks, under these caricatures of painted cardboard, there were other physiognomies and other faces – the work of nature, in one word. And if impassioned affection blinded Santalo, if extreme goodness of soul blinded Maria, both succeeded in putting a bandage over the eyes of the good doctor.
But that which bewitched, above all, our hero, was the pure, sweet, expressive, and eloquent voice of his scholar.
“It must be,” he said to himself, “that she who expresses in a manner so admirable, sentiments the most sublime, must be gifted with a soul full of elevation and tenderness.”
Like as the grain of corn, in the fruitful soil, germinates and takes root before the stem sprouts above the ground, so this love, so calm and true, took root in the heart of Stein: love which he felt without having yet defined it.
Marisalada, on her part, was equally attached to Stein, not because she was grateful to him for his attentions, but that she appreciated his excellent qualities, and because she comprehended his great superiority of soul and intelligence: nor yet even because she obeyed an attractive charm which imparted love to the person who inspired it; but because that the musician, the master who had initiated her in the art, felt, himself, all these sentiments of gratitude and admiration. The isolation in which she lived tended to put far away any other object that could excite her preference.
Don Modesto was not of an age to figure in this tournament of love. Momo was not only disqualified by his extreme ugliness, but he preserved all his hatred for Marisalada, never ceasing to call her Gaviota, and she had for him the greatest contempt. Certainly gallants were not wanting in the village; to commence with the barber, who was obstinate in his sighs after Marisalada; but no one would oppose Stein.
This tranquil state of things had continued three springs and three winters, which had glided by like three days and three nights, when that came to pass which we will now relate.
An intrigue (who could have predicted it?) dawned on the peaceful village of Villamar.
The promoter and the chief (who would have thought it?) was the good Maria. The confidant (who will not be astonished?) was Don Modesto!
Although it was an indiscretion, or, the better to express it, a baseness to watch, listening to the conspirators hidden behind that orange-tree, whose trunk is still solid, while the flowers are withering and the leaves falling – image of the resignation which rests in the heart when joy is fled, when hopes are vanished; listening to a conversation, which, in reconcilable secrecy, held the two accomplices, while brother Gabriel, who is a thousand miles off and all near to the speakers, was busy in binding up the lettuces to make them white and tender.
“It is not an idea that I have, Don Modesto,” said the instigatress, “it is a reality. Not to see it, is to have no eyes. Don Frederico loves Marisalada, who regards the doctor no more than a bundle of straw.”
“Good Maria, who thinks of love?” replied Don Modesto, who, all his life, calm and tranquil, had not seemed to realize the eternal, classic, and invariable axiom of the inseparable alliance of Mars and Cupid. “Who thinks of love?” repeated Don Modesto, in the same tone as if he had said —
“Who thinks of shearing a tambourine?”
“The young people, Don Modesto, the young people; and if it were not so, the world would come to an end. But the case is thus: we must give a spur to these young folks; they get on too slowly. For two years our man has loved his nightingale, as he calls her; that is evident in his looks, and as for me, I see it clearly. You who are a considerable personage, and whom Don Frederico loves so much, you ought to brisk up a little this affair, giving him good advice for their good and ours.”
“Dispense with me, Maria,” replied Don Modesto. “Ramon Perez is an obstacle; we are friends, and I would not counteract his projects. He shaves me for my good appearances, and to thwart his interests, Maria, would be, on my part, a bad action. He sees with much pain that Marisalada does not love him, and he has become so thin and yellow that he is frightful. The other day he said that if he cannot marry Marisalada he will break his guitar, and that, no longer able to become a monk, he will become a rebel. You see, good Maria, that in every way I will compromise myself if I mix in this affair.”
“Señor,” said Maria, “do you take for cash in hand what lovers sing? Ramon Perez, the poor little thing! is not capable of killing a sparrow, and you believe he will attack Christians? But take this into consideration: if Don Frederico marries he will remain with us always. What a happy chance will it not be for everybody? I assure you that when he talks of leaving us I feel all over goose-flesh. And the young girl, what a magnificent position for her! For you must know that Don Frederico gains a great deal of money. When he attended the son of the alcalde, Don Perfecto, he gave him a hundred reals, which shone like a hundred stars. What a beautiful couple they will make, my commandant!”
“I do not say nay, Maria,” replied Don Modesto; “but do not force me to play a part in this affair, and leave me to preserve a strict neutrality. I have not two faces, I have only that one over which the barber passes his razor – it is my only one.”
At this moment Marisalada entered the garden. She was certainly no longer the young girl we had known, dishevelled and badly clothed. She came every morning to the convent, coiffured with great care, and neatly dressed. Neither affection for those who inhabited it, nor the gratitude she owed, attracted her to this place. It was but the desire to hear music, and to receive her lessons from Stein. Beyond this, ennui drove her from her cabin, where she had for society only her father who did not much divert her.
“And Don Frederico?” she said on entering.
“He has not yet returned from visiting his patients,” answered Maria. “To-day he has a dozen children to vaccinate. What an extraordinary thing, Don Modesto! He draws the pus, as you call it, from the teat of a cow: the cows have a counter-poison to oppose the small-pox! and it must be so, since Don Frederico has said it.”
“Nothing is more true,” continued Don Modesto, “than that it was a Swiss who discovered it. When I was at Gaëte I have seen the Swiss who constituted the Pope’s guard, but neither of them could tell me who was the author of the discovery.”
“If I were his Holiness,” pursued Maria, “I would reward the inventor by a plenary indulgence. Seat yourself, my dear, I am dying with desire to see you.”
“No! I am going.”
“Where do you wish to go? – no one loves you better than we do here.”
“What am I to do when people love me? What can I do since Don Frederico is not here?”
“What is that? You only come here then for Don Frederico, little ingrate?”
“Why not? why should I come? to find myself with Momo?”
“Then you love Don Frederico much?” hazarded the good old woman.
“I love him; and if it were not for him I would never put foot inside these doors, for fear of encountering that demon Momo, whose tongue resembles the sting of a wasp.”
“And Ramon Perez?” mischievously demanded Maria, as if she would convince Don Modesto that his protégé might give up his hopes.
Marisalada burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.
“If this Raton (he-mouse) Perez – Momo had given the young barber this sobriquet– happens to fall into the porridge-pot, I will not be the ant who will sing or weep over him: less still will I be she who will listen to his singing; for his singing attacks my nervous system, as Don Frederico expresses it, which he assures me is now more stretched than the strings of a guitar. You shall see how this Raton Perez sings.”
Marisalada rapidly took a leaf of aloe, which lay on the ground among those which served brother Gabriel as screens to protect, in their first growth, the tomato plants against the attacks of the north wind. She placed this leaf between her arms in the manner of a guitar, and began to imitate with a grotesque air the gestures of Ramon Perez, with a talent most perfect for imitation; then she sang this couplet with strong trills:
“Young meagre Minstrel without gladness,
What have you there? why this distress, why these deep sighs?
Is it the cause of this dire sadness,
That on too high a castle you have cast your eyes?”
“Yes,” said Modesto, who remembered the serenades at the door of Rosita, “this Ramon has always had grand pretensions.”
The events could not persuade Modesto that these serenades were not designed for Rosita. From thence but one idea entered the head of this man; it was, that if she fell into a love snare, he himself could not extricate her. The calibre of his intelligence was so straitened, and so invariably fixed, that as soon as an idea penetrated his brain it became set, and remained there for life.
“I go,” said Marisalada, throwing the leaf of aloe in such way that it fell with force against brother Gabriel, who, on his knees, and with his back turned, attached his hundred and twenty-fifth knot.
“Jesus!” cried out brother Gabriel, turning around frightened. Then, without uttering another word, he again set to work to tie up his lettuces.
“What aiming!” said Marisalada, laughing. “Don Modesto, take me for artilleryman when you obtain cannon for your fort.”
“Such things are not gracious; they are in bad taste, which, you must know, please me in no way,” replied Maria a little coldly. “Say to me what you like, but as to brother Gabriel, trouble not his peace, it is the only good left to him.”
“Do not get angry,” replied the Gaviota, “you well know that brother Gabriel is not made of glass.” Then, said she, making a courteous reverence, “My commandant, say to Rosa Mistica that she transfer her school to your fort, when it has some 24-pounders, that she may be well defended against the snares of the demon. I must go, because Don Frederico does not come; I am disposed to believe that he is vaccinating all the village, including Rosa Mistica, the schoolmaster, and the alcalde.”
But the good old woman, who was accustomed to the rather free manners of Marisalada, – which, however, did not wound, – called the young girl and told her to sit down near her.
Don Modesto, warned by this that Maria was about to open her batteries, – faithful to the neutrality he had promised, – took leave of the old woman, made a turn to the right and beat a retreat, not, however, without having received from the monk a couple of lettuces and a bunch of turnips.
“My daughter,” said Maria, when they were alone, “what will you not be if Don Frederico marries you? You will be with this man, who is a St. Louis de Gonzague, who knows every thing, who is a good musician, and who gains plenty of money; you will be the doctor’s wife, the happiest of women. You will be dressed like a dove, nurtured like a duchess; and you could then, above all, help your poor father, who is growing old; and it pains our hearts that he is obliged to be on the sea despite rain and wind, so that his child may want for nothing. Thus would Don Frederico remain among us, like an angel of the good God, consoling and taking care of all who suffer.”
Marisalada listened attentively to the old woman, affecting great distraction. When Maria had ceased to speak, the young girl was silent for an instant, and then, with an air of indifference, said —
“I do not wish to marry.”
“Listen then!” exclaimed the good woman. “It is, perchance, you wish to be a nun?”
“Not at all,” replied the Gaviota.
“What then?” demanded Maria, really angry. “You do not wish to be either flesh or fish! One thing only I know – woman belongs to God or to man; if not, she does not accomplish her mission, either towards God or towards society.”
“What would you, Maria?” replied Marisalada; “I feel that neither marriage nor the convent is my vocation.”
“Then, little girl,” replied the old woman, “thy vocation is that of the mule. Nothing pleases me which is out of the regular order; above all, in that which we other women regard.
“She who does not do what we all do, I would flee from, if I were a man, as one flees from an infuriated bull. In a word – my hand on my heart – you act wrong. But you are yet but a child,” she added, with her habitual goodness, “there is much for you yet to learn. Time is a great teacher.”
Marisalada arose and departed.
“Yes,” thought she, covering her head with her handkerchief, “he loves me, I have known it for a long time – but – I love him as old Maria loves brother Gabriel, as the aged love. He would receive a shower under my window without fearing to take cold. Now – if he marries me, he will render my life happy I am sure; he will let me do as I like: he will give me music whenever I ask him, and purchase for me every thing I may desire. If I were his wife, I would have a neckerchief of crape, like Quela, the daughter of old Juan Lopez; and a mantle, blonde of Almagro, like that of the Alcaldesa.
“They would both die with rage; but it seems to me that Don Frederico, agitated as he is when he listens to my singing, thinks as much of marrying me as Don Modesto thinks of taking for his wife his dear Rosa – chief of all the devils.”
During the whole of this beautiful mental dialogue, Marisalada had not one thought, not one recollection of her father, whose well-being and whose solace had been the chief motives adduced by Maria.
CHAPTER XI
CONVINCED that she could neither be aided nor supported by the influential man who would not join her in these matrimonial projects, Maria determined to act by herself, with the certainty of overcoming the objections of the Gaviota, and those which Stein would oppose. Nothing stopped her, neither the boldness of Marisalada, nor the stolidity of Stein, because love is persevering as a sister of charity, and intrepid as a hero; and love was the grand spring of all this good old woman did. It was thus she said to Stein, and to the point:
“Do you know, Don Frederico, several days ago Marisalada was here, and she explained to us very clearly, and with a grace altogether natural, that she came here only on your account?”
“How do you find this frankness? I say that, if it be true, it was an ingratitude that my pretty nightingale was not capable of; she was no doubt jesting.”
“Don Frederico, the old are more experienced than the young, and the first impulses are the best. Does it cause you much grief to learn that you are beloved?”
“No – certainly. We are agreed upon this axiom which you repeat so often: ‘Love does not speak enough.’ But, good Maria, make of love constancy: I would sooner give than receive.”
“They do not talk thus to me,” cried the brave woman, with impatience.
“It is still true, my dear and good mother,” answered Stein, taking and pressing the hands of old Maria, “we have a running account of affection, we two, but the balance is against me. God grant that I may some day be able to furnish the proof of my attachment and my gratitude!”
“It is very easy, Don Frederico, and I am about to demand it.”
“At once, my good Maria; and what is this proof? say quickly.”
“Remain with us; and to that end get married, Don Frederico. You inspire us with continual uneasiness in this living in the idea of your departure, and you would then realize the proverb, ‘Which is your country? That of my wife.’ ”
Stein smiled.
“Whom shall I marry? with whom, my good mother, with whom shall it be? With your linnet?”
Maria replied: “With her, who is in your heart an eternal spring. She is so beautiful and so graceful: she is so moulded to your habits that she could not live without you! And what would you do without her? You love each other like two turtles – this is seen in your eyes.”
“I am too old for her, Maria,” replied Stein, sighing and blushing in a manner to prove that, as to him at least, the old woman had spoken truly; “I am too old,” he repeated, “for a girl of sixteen years. My heart is an invalid, to whom I desire to accord a sweet and tranquil existence; I would not expose it to new wounds.”
“Old!” exclaimed Maria, “what nonsense! you have scarcely attained to thirty years. Come – you reason like the leg of a table, Don Frederico.”
“What could I desire more,” replied Stein, “than to taste with an innocent young girl the sweet and holy felicity of domestic life, which is the only true, the only perfect, the only real, because it is that which God has taught us. But, good Maria, she cannot love me.”
“That is too strong; she has a very delicate taste, by my faith, she who would be ashamed of you! Say not to the contrary; you have the air of joking. Yes, the wife that you love will be the happiest in the whole world.”
“Do you believe so, Maria?”
“I believe it as I believe my salvation; and she who, in such a case, does not esteem herself happy, should be crucified alive.”
The following day, when Marisalada came, she met, on entering the court, face to face with Momo, who was seated on a stone of the mill, breakfasting on bread and sardines.
“You here already, Gaviota!” this was the sweet salutation Momo gave her; “if this continues, we will find you one day in our soup. You have then nothing to do at home?”
“I abandon all,” replied Marisalada, “to come and contemplate your face, which enchants me, and thine ears, which excite the envy of Golondrina, thine ass.”
In so saying she took hold of Momo’s ears, and pulled them.
The young girl had the chance at the first roar which Momo made with all the strength of his big lungs, for a mouthful of bread and sardines had stuck in his throat, and occasioned such a fit of coughing, that the Gaviota, light as a fawn, escaped the talons of the vulture.
“Good-day, my linnet,” said Stein, who, on hearing Marisalada, entered the court.
“She is beautiful, this linnet!” growled Momo, in his fit of coughing; “she is the most hoarse magpie which has sung this summer.”
“Come, Maria,” continued Stein, “come write, and read the verses I translated yesterday.”
“I do not remember them,” replied the young girl. “Were they not of that country where grow the oranges? These trees do not grow here; or they have withered: brother Gabriel’s tears are not sufficient to nourish their vitality. Let the verses go, Don Frederico, and play me the nocturn of Weber which these are the words of: ‘Listen, listen, my beloved! the chant of the nightingale is heard; on each branch flourishes a flower; before the nightingale ceases to sing, before the flowers wither, sing, sing, my best beloved.’ ”
“What ugly words,” murmured Momo, “this Gaviota remembers, and which are to her like bon-bons to a clove of garlic.”
“After that you have read, I will play thee the serenade of Carl Weber,” replied Stein, who by this single recompense could compel Marisalada to learn that which he would instruct her in. The young girl took, with an irritated gesture, the paper which Stein presented to her, and read it fluently, although with a bad grace.
“Mariquita,” said Stein, when the young girl had finished reading, “you who do not know the world, you cannot appreciate what grand and profound truth, what philosophy there is in these verses. Do you remember that I explained to you what philosophy is?”
“I recollect,” replied the Gaviota, “it is the science of happiness. But in that, señor, there are neither rules nor science which can constitute it: each one is happy after his own manner. Don Modesto places his happiness in possessing cannons in the fort as ruined as himself; brother Gabriel, to see return to the convent the holy Prior and the bells; the good Maria, that you do not quit her; my father, to take a corbina; and Momo, to do all the evil he can.”
Stein laughed, and placing affectionately his hand on Mariquita’s shoulder, “And you,” said he to her, “in what do you make happiness to consist?”
Mariquita hesitated an instant before finding a reply, raised her large black eyes, and looked at Stein; then her eyelids fell, and her glance rested on Momo; the young girl smiled to herself at the appearance of those ears which were redder than tomatoes.
“And you, Don Frederico,” she at last replied, “in what would you make it to consist? To return to your country?”
“No,” sighed Stein.
“In what then?” repeated Marisalada.
“I will tell thee, my linnet; but beforehand tell me in what thou makest thine to consist.”
“To always hear you play the flute,” she replied with sincerity.
At this moment Maria came from the kitchen with the good intention to terminate the affair; but she occasioned that which happens to a great many: excess of zeal spoiled all.
“Do you not see, Don Frederico, how pretty Marisalada is, and what a beautifully formed woman?”
“Yes, yes,” continued Stein to Maria, “she is handsome, and her eyes are the type of Arabian eyes so celebrated.”
“They say of the hedgehogs, each looks at a thorn,” growled Momo.
“And this mouth so pretty, which sings like a seraphim,” pursued the old woman, caressing the chin of her protégé.
“See there, a mouth like a basket, which knows how to speak wrong and contrary.”
“And thy mouth,” said the Gaviota to Momo, with a fury which this time she could not control, “and thy horrible mouth, which cannot extend from one ear to the other because that thy face is so large it is fatigued when half way over.”
Momo, for his only reply, sang in three different tones —
“Gaviota! Gaviota! Gaviota!”
“Romo! Romo! Romo!” sang Marisalada in her magnificent voice.
“Is it possible,” said Stein to his linnet, “that you notice what Momo says expressly to enrage you. These witticisms are stupid and gross, but without wickedness.”
“It must seem to you, Don Frederico, that this must be very stupid,” replied the Gaviota; “and to inform you that I have no desire to support this lout harder than a stone, I go.”
Upon this, the Gaviota went away; Stein followed her.
“You are a profligate,” said Maria to her grandson; “you have more spleen in your heart than good blood in your veins. You owe respect to women, villain gosling! there is not in the village one more wicked or more detested than thou.”
“You are in your turn tainted,” replied Momo, “with the beauty of this sea-magpie, who have put my ears in the condition you see! All others, according to your ideas, are gross people. This agua mala (polypus) bewitches you. See then a gaviota (sea-gull) which reads and writes! Has any one ever seen that? She does not employ herself all day but to grumble as water hisses on the fire; she does not cook for her father, who is obliged to prepare his own meals; she does not take care of his linen, and it is on you falls the work. You nourish a serpent.”
Stein having rejoined Marisalada, said to her —
“Of what avails it, Mariquita, that I have endeavored to tone down your spirit, if you have not learned at least to acquire the little superiority necessary to place yourself above these miseries, which are in themselves so trifling and unimportant?”
“Listen, Don Frederico,” replied Marisalada: “I comprehend that this superiority ought to serve to place me above others, but not below them.”
“God help me, Mariquita! is it thus you change things? Superiority teaches us not to be proud of our qualities, and not to revolt against injustices opposed to us. But,” added he smiling, “these are the faults of your youth, and of the vivacity of your southern blood. You will know all that when you have gray hairs, as I have. Have you remarked, Mariquita, that I have gray hairs?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“See then, I am very young, but sufferings have made my head like that of an aged man. My heart has remained pure, Mariquita, and I offer you the flowers of spring, if you do not believe you will be alarmed at the symbols of winter which circle my forehead.”
“It is true,” replied the Gaviota, who could not restrain the natural ejaculation, “that a lover with gray hairs would not please me.”
“I have thought it would be thus,” said Stein with sadness. “My heart is loyal, and the good Maria, when she assured me that my happiness was still possible, instilled in my heart some hope, but which is as the flowers of the air without roots, and as the breath of the breeze.”
Mariquita, who saw that she had wounded, with her accustomed rudeness, a soul too delicate to insist, and a man so modest as to persuade himself that this sole objection annulled the other advantages, immediately said —
“If a lover with gray hairs pleases me not, a husband with such hair would not frighten me.”
Stein was taken by surprise at this brusque remark of Mariquita, and above all at the decision and impassibility with which she had enunciated it. Soon he smiled at Marisalada, and said to her —
“And then you will marry me, beautiful child of nature?”
“Why not?”
“Mariquita, she who accepts a man for a husband, and unites herself to him to pass her life, or, the better to express it, to make of two existences one only, as in a torch two lights blended make but one flame, such a person, I say, accords to this man a greater favor than she who accepts him for a lover.”
“And of what use,” replied the young girl with a mixture of innocence and indifference, “of what use are the guitarists, who sing badly and play badly, if not to frighten away the cats?”
They had arrived at the beach, and Stein begged Mariquita to sit beside him on a rock. On the part of both there was a long silence. Stein was profoundly agitated. The young girl with stoical indifference had taken a stick, and traced figures on the sand.
“How nature speaks in the heart of a man!” at last exclaimed Stein. “What sympathy reigns in all that God has created! A pure life is like a serene day; a life of unloosed passions resembles a tempestuous day. See those sombre clouds which slowly approach to interpose between the earth and the sun, they are such as should interpose between a heart and an illicit love, and let fall on the heart their cold but pure emanations. Happy the land on which they fall not! But our felicity will be unalterable like the sky in May, because you will always love me. Is it not so, Mariquita?”
This girl, whose rude and untutored soul comprehended neither the poetry nor the elevated sentiments of Stein, did not care to answer; but as she could not withdraw herself from this obligation, she wrote upon the sand the word siempre (always) with the stick which distracted her idleness.
Stein, whose emotion increased, mistook ennui for modesty.
“Look,” pursued he, “look at the sea! Listen to the murmur of the waves, murmurs so full of charms and of terrors! ’Tis said they confine grave secrets in an unknown language. The waves, Mariquita, are those dangerous and perfidious sirens, personified by the flowery and fantastic imagination of the Greeks; creatures of a rare beauty, but without hearts, as seductive as terrible, and whose sweet voices attract men to their perdition. But thy sweet voice, Mariquita, seduces not to deceive; you attract like the siren, you will not be perfidious like her. Is it not true, Mariquita, you will never be ungrateful?”
Nunca (never), wrote Mariquita on the sand. And the rising waves amused themselves in effacing the word the young girl had written, as if they would parody the waves of time, which flowing on efface in the heart what is sworn to endure thereon forever.
“Why does not thy voice reply to me, Mariquita?”
“What would you, Don Frederico? I cannot say to a man that I love him. I am unfeeling and unnatural, Maria says, who, however, does not the less love me. I am, like my father, economical in words.”
“If you were like him, I could desire nothing more, because the good Pedro – I say my father, Mariquita – has a heart the most loving that has ever beaten in the breast of a man; such hearts belong to angels, and to a few chosen men!”
“My father a superior man!” thought Mariquita, repressing with difficulty a mocking laugh. “So be it! so much the better, if he has the air of one.”