"I would throw myself into the pond first!"

"How unnatural you are! For they are all very fond of you. Well, so that nothing may be wanting, there comes the constable too. He is coming to serve a summons on you."

"To crucify me."

All the individuals named were now entering the parlor one by one.

"Good-by, Pepe; amuse yourself," said Dona Perfecta.

"Earth, open and swallow me!" exclaimed the young man desperately.

"Senor Don Jose."

"My dear Don Jose."

"Esteemed Don Jose."

"My dearest Don Jose."

"My respected friend, Don Jose."

Hearing these honeyed and insinuating preliminaries, Pepe Rey exhaled a deep sigh and gave himself up. He gave himself up, soul and body, to the executioners, who brandished horrible leaves of stamped paper while the victim, raising his eyes to heaven with a look of Christian meekness, murmured:

"Father, why hast thou forsaken me?"

CHAPTER XII

HERE WAS TROY

Love, friendship, a wholesome moral atmosphere, spiritual light, sympathy, an easy interchange of ideas and feelings, these were what Pepe Rey's nature imperatively demanded. Deprived of them, the darkness that shrouded his soul grew deeper, and his inward gloom imparted a tinge of bitterness and discontent to his manner. On the day following the scenes described in the last chapter, what vexed him more than any thing was the already prolonged and mysterious seclusion of his cousin, accounted for at first by a trifling indisposition and then by caprices and nervous feelings difficult of explanation.

Rey was surprised by conduct so contrary to the idea which he had formed of Rosarito. Four days had pa.s.sed during which he had not seen her; and certainly it was not because he did not desire to be at her side; and his situation threatened soon to become humiliating and ridiculous, if, by boldly taking the initiative, he did not at once put an end to it.

"Shall I not see my cousin to-day, either?" he said to his aunt, with manifest ill-humor, when they had finished dining.

"No, not to-day, either. Heaven knows how sorry I am for it. I gave her a good talking to this morning. This afternoon we will see what can be done."

The suspicion that in this unreasonable seclusion his adorable cousin was rather the helpless victim than the free and willing agent, induced him to control himself and to wait. Had it not been for this suspicion he would have left Orbajosa that very day. He had no doubt whatever that Rosario loved him, but it was evident that some unknown influence was at work to separate them, and it seemed to him to be the part of an honorable man to discover whence that malign influence proceeded and to oppose it, as far as it was in his power to do so.

"I hope that Rosarito's obstinacy will not continue long," he said to Dona Perfecta, disguising his real sentiments.

On this day he received a letter from his father in which the latter complained of having received none from Orbajosa, a circ.u.mstance which increased the engineer's disquietude, perplexing him still further.

Finally, after wandering about alone in the garden for a long time, he left the house and went to the Casino. He entered it with the desperate air of a man about to throw himself into the sea.

In the princ.i.p.al rooms he found various people talking and discussing different subjects. In one group they were solving with subtle logic difficult problems relating to bulls; in another, they were discussing the relative merits of different breeds of donkeys of Orbajosa and Villahorrenda. Bored to the last degree, Pepe Rey turned away from these discussions and directed his steps toward the reading-room, where he looked through various reviews without finding any distraction in the reading, and a little later, pa.s.sing from room to room, he stopped, without knowing why, at the gaming-table. For nearly two hours he remained in the clutches of the horrible yellow demon, whose shining eyes of gold at once torture and charm. But not even the excitement of play had power to lighten the gloom of his soul, and the same tedium which had impelled him toward the green cloth sent him away from it. Shunning the noise, he found himself in an apartment used as an a.s.sembly-room, in which at the time there was not a living soul, and here he seated himself wearily at a window overlooking the street.

This was very narrow, with more corners and salient angles than houses, and was overshaded throughout its whole extent by the imposing ma.s.s of the cathedral that lifted its dark and time-corroded walls at one end of it. Pepe Rey looked up and down and in every direction; no sign of life--not a footstep, not a voice, not a glance, disturbed the stillness, peaceful as that of a tomb, that reigned everywhere. Suddenly strange sounds, like the whispering of feminine voices, fell on his ear, and then the rustling of curtains that were being drawn, a few words, and finally the humming of a song, the bark of a lap-dog, and other signs of social life, which seemed very strange in such a place.

Observing attentively, Pepe Rey perceived that these noises proceeded from an enormous balcony with blinds which displayed its corpulent bulk in front of the window at which he was sitting. Before he had concluded his observations, a member of the Casino suddenly appeared beside him, and accosted him laughingly in this manner:

"Ah, Senor Don Pepe! what a rogue you are! So you have shut yourself in here to ogle the girls, eh?"

The speaker was Don Juan Tafetan, a very amiable man, and one of the few members of the Casino who had manifested for Pepe Rey cordial friendship and genuine admiration. With his red cheeks, his little dyed mustache, his restless laughing eyes, his insignificant figure, his hair carefully combed to hide his baldness, Don Juan Tafetan was far from being an Antinous in appearance, but he was very witty and very agreeable and he had a happy gift for telling a good story. He was much given to laughter, and when he laughed his face, from his forehead to his chin, became one ma.s.s of grotesque wrinkles. In spite of these qualities, and of the applause which might have stimulated his taste for spicy jokes, he was not a scandal-monger. Every one liked him, and Pepe Rey spent with him many pleasant hours. Poor Tafetan, formerly an employe in the civil department of the government of the capital of the province, now lived modestly on his salary as a clerk in the bureau of charities; eking out his income by gallantly playing the clarionet in the processions, in the solemnities of the cathedral, and in the theatre, whenever some desperate company of players made their appearance in those parts with the perfidious design of giving representations in Orbajosa.

But the most curious thing about Don Juan Tafetan was his liking for pretty girls. He himself, in the days when he did not hide his baldness with half a dozen hairs plastered down with pomade, when he did not dye his mustache, when, in the freedom from care of youthful years, he walked with shoulders unstooped and head erect, had been a formidable _Tenorio_. To hear him recount his conquests was something to make one die laughing; for there are _Tenorios_ and _Tenorios_, and he was one of the most original.

"What girls? I don't see any girls," responded Pepe Rey.

"Yes, play the anchorite!"

One of the blinds of the balcony was opened, giving a glimpse of a youthful face, lovely and smiling, that disappeared instantly, like a light extinguished by the wind.

"Yes, I see now."

"Don't you know them?"

"On my life I do not."

"They are the Troyas--the Troya girls. Then you don't know something good. Three lovely girls, the daughters of a colonel of staff, who died in the streets of Madrid in '54."

The blind opened again, and two faces appeared.

"They are laughing at me," said Tafetan, making a friendly sign to the girls.

"Do you know them?"

"Why, of course I know them. The poor things are in the greatest want.

I don't know how they manage to live. When Don Francisco Troya died a subscription was raised for them, but that did not last very long."

"Poor girls! I imagine they are not models of virtue."

"And why not? I do not believe what they say in the town about them."

Once more the blinds opened.

"Good-afternoon, girls!" cried Don Juan Tafetan to the three girls, who appeared, artistically grouped, at the window. "This gentleman says that good things ought not to hide themselves, and that you should throw open the blinds."

But the blind was closed and a joyous concert of laughter diffused a strange gayety through the gloomy street. One might have fancied that a flock of birds was pa.s.sing.

"Shall we go there?" said Tafetan suddenly.

His eyes sparkled and a roguish smile played on his discolored lips.

"But what sort of people are they, then?"

"Don't be afraid, Senor de Rey. The poor things are honest. Bah! Why, they live upon air, like the chameleons. Tell me, can any one who doesn't eat sin? The poor girls are virtuous enough. And even if they did sin, they fast enough to make up for it."