"Windbags!" he cried, as he wielded his stick, and Don Benigno's enormous hat flew twenty paces off.

Don Segis advanced with the purpose of aiming his stick at the head of the officer, but before he could do so a blow caught him at the back of the head, leaving him badly hurt.

"It might have been expected. Caramba! only nocturnal birds are capable of treacherously lying in wait for a defenseless man, making a street brawl and disturbing the neighbors' rest. We must have done with these bloodsuckers who sap the life of the town and try to keep it in a state of barbarism. Call these the ministers of G.o.d! The apostles of charity!

The eternal disturbers of social peace!"

Even in this critical moment the officer could not drop the anticlerical rhetoric and pompous style that he always adopted. Every phrase was accompanied with a blow. The priests being powerless to withstand his furious attack, tried to take to their heels. The curate soon got out of reach of the stick, but poor Don Segis, with the extraordinary weight of his left leg, was left behind, and had to endure the blows from Pena's weapon for some time. Alvaro's voice could be heard in the distance, crying out in mocking rebuke:

"Hypocrites! Whited sepulchres! Is this conformity with the spirit of the Gospel, you brawlers? You preach peace and love to mankind, and you are the first to disgrace the sacred doctrine! When shall we shake off your yoke and emanc.i.p.ate ourselves from the slavery in which you have kept us for so long!"

Any one would have thought to hear him that he was making a speech in some democratic club instead of administering corporal punishment.

Thus ended that encounter.

The next morning the harbor-master received a visit from the rector of Sarrio, who came to implore him not to make mention of the unfortunate incident in the newspaper, and offering all kinds of apologies to both him and Sinforoso on behalf of the curate and Don Segis.

Pena declined to accede to this request, for it was an admirable opportunity to open an attack upon the enemies of liberty and progress; and, in fact, the next number of "The Light" contained a circ.u.mstantial account, written in a humorous style, of all that had taken place, which greatly exercised the minds of the clergy and the timorous people in the town.

CHAPTER XV

GONZALO MARRIES

The weighty and serious matters on Don Rosendo's mind prevented his giving the painful incident that had disturbed the even tenor of his house the especial attention that he would have accorded it at any other time. Nevertheless he was much upset when he learned of Gonzalo's treachery and his younger daughter's misconduct, and he held long conversations with his wife on the subject--irrefutable proof that great men may be full of exalted, grand ideas, and yet not blind to the things of this world, as is usually supposed. His first impulse was to send off Gonzalo and shut his daughter up in a convent, but the entreaties of Dona Paula and his own clear-minded conclusions led him to change his purpose.

At the expiration of some days of indecision (the burden of the other cares caused their number to be few) he granted the ill-conducted young people permission to marry; but not without first having an interview with Cecilia, and hearing from her lips that she willingly forgave her sister, and wished the marriage to take place as soon as possible.

The consent being given, Gonzalo presented himself one afternoon at Belinchon's house. It was a fortnight since he had been there, and his heart sank at the prospect in spite of his wishes having been so fully and promptly realized. He dreaded the first interview, and not without reason. Dona Paula received him with marked coldness, and even the servants' manners were tinged with a hostility which hurt him.

Then the idea of seeing Cecilia made him tremble. But when Venturita came into the room all his fear and all his depression vanished. Her sprightly chatter, the bright sparkle of her eyes, and her graceful, mocking coquetry quickly raised his spirits and transported him into the seventh heaven. The enchanting enthraldom of her voice and manners had lulled him into an indifference to all else by the time Cecilia entered the room.

The sight of his victim exercised a strange and sudden effect upon him; he automatically rose from his seat, and his face changed color.

"How do you do, Gonzalo?"

This was said by Cecilia, as if she had seen him the preceding day and nothing particular had happened, only she was a shade paler than usual.

But the young man was so overwhelmed with confusion that he could not reply to this simple question without stuttering. The clear and tranquil glance of Cecilia affected him like an electric current, and he turned to Dona Paula, whose face was overshadowed with a severe and melancholy expression, while Venturita looked out of the window with a.s.sumed indifference. At last he resumed his seat, trembling violently, and Cecilia, who had come to ask her mother for the keys of the cupboards, gave him a quiet smile of farewell as she left the room.

The preparations for the marriage began. Dona Paula had the delicacy, rare in a low-born woman, not to allow a single article of wearing apparel made for Cecilia to serve for her sister.

So a fresh trousseau was quickly put in hand. To the great surprise of the needlewomen, Cecilia joined in the work. Some attributed this concession to kindness, others to want of feeling. It is true that, although a little thin, her face expressed the same quiet cheerfulness as ever, and her fingers worked at her sister's initials with the same dexterity as when she embroidered her own. But the cutting of the scissors and the sewing of the needles seemed to say horrible things, ah! very horrible things, instead of those pretty ones which used to make her tremble with joy.

They remained buried in her heart, however, and the keenest observer would have read nothing in those large, liquid, beautiful eyes but the usual quiet smile.

"Didn't I tell you so, girl?" whispered Teresa in Valentina's ear as she looked at our young friend.

"Yes, Senorita Cecilia is incapable of loving anybody."

Gonzalo avoided the workroom, and when perchance he appeared he was so abashed and confused that the embroideresses winked at each other and smiled. Seeing him so embarra.s.sed, and Cecilia so calm and indifferent, you would have thought that the parts played by both in the sad love affair had been reversed.

In the meantime tongues wagged on the subject in the shops, in the houses, in the streets, and at the Promenade--there was no end to it.

The event caused a great sensation in the town. While preparations for Cecilia's marriage had been going on, it had been the general opinion that Gonzalo showed a deplorable want of taste, that he was throwing himself away on the poor girl, who was represented as little less than a monster of ugliness; and they all wondered why he had not chosen her sister, who was so lovely and so graceful. Directly they learned of the change their opinions suddenly veered round.

"What a scandal! What a disgraceful proceeding! What parents to consent to such infamy! Where was the shame of some people? Poor girl, so beautiful, so slender, with such lovely eyes! Well, I consider her prettier than her sister."

"So do I."

We must not miss the opportunity of saying that this eternal discontent of people with regard to the actions of their fellow-creatures, much as it upsets us, does not argue intentional unkindness, malignity, or envy, as we are apt to think when we are the object of their remarks; it is nothing but an evident tribute to the imperfection of our planetary existence and the love of the ideal that every one bears within himself without ever seeing it realized. After having thus shown ourselves both philosophical and optimistic, we will proceed with our story.

The day of the marriage arrived. It was solemnized early in the morning at Belinchon's house, in the presence of a few relations and friends; and after taking chocolate the bride and bridegroom left for Tejada.

This was an estate about four miles from the town, where Don Rosendo's genius, aided by money, had had full scope to produce great effects.

When he bought the place it consisted of several fields and a wood, where cows pastured, and the notes of thrushes, linnets, and blackbirds filled the air. Don Rosendo began by doing away with this indigenous colony, and subst.i.tuting a foreign one for it. The breed of cattle of the country was proscribed and replaced by one from Switzerland. The same ruthlessness was shown in robbing the trees of their native songsters, and hanging them with cages full of rare, exotic birds that croaked dolefully all the year round at sunset. The energetic reformatory spirit of Don Rosendo did not stop at the animal kingdom, for it was brought with equal relentlessness to bear upon the vegetable one, and the character of the place was thus completely transformed. By degrees the great shady chestnut trees, with their gnarled trunks; the gigantic oaks, which had renewed their scalloped foliage more than three hundred times; the walnut trees, that looked like enormous thistles; the luxuriant orchard trees, bowed to the ground with the weight of the luscious fruit, and many other trees pertaining to a good landed property in the country, all gradually succ.u.mbed to the saw and the ax.

Washingtonians, araucarias, excelsas, and many other trees of foreign extraction, chiefly of the coniferae family, were planted in their stead, which made the place look something like a cemetery in the eyes of the vulgar.

However, when any such remark was made to Don Rosendo he merely replied that coniferae had the advantage of foliage during the winter, and the vulgar would return that that very fact made it look like a cemetery in the winter, and in the summer too. But Don Rosendo did not deign to reply to such a silly remark, and in this he was right.

As everything that is worth much costs much, the foreigners of both kingdoms absorbed a good deal of Belinchon's income. The birds of the country had fed themselves and dressed their feathers without any extraneous a.s.sistance, but those from abroad, shut up in cages and enormous aviaries made for the purpose, required several attendants to feed them and to keep their places clean. Then homesickness caused great blanks among them which could only be filled by sending expensive orders to Paris and London. The same thing happened with the vegetable kingdom, only of every plant that succeeded by dint of great care and cultivation thirty or forty died, and the constant attention of the gardeners could not prevent this mortality.

The house was also neither Spanish nor European in style. It was built in Chinese style, with little paG.o.das rising upon every side. I do not know what connection these little towers had with Babel, the scene of the confusion of tongues, but I must tell you that in the neighborhood the fantastic building went by the name of "Don Rosendo's Babel."

It was magnificently furnished, and wanting in none of the comforts and refinements afforded by modern civilization to the rich. It had a splendid room, decorated in Persian style, a bathroom, a large dining-room, fairly well frescoed, and several beautiful little airy apartments, where the light penetrated through colored windows.

So Gonzalo and Venturita repaired to this nest two hours after their union had been solemnized. On their way thither they had talked without embarra.s.sment on different subjects. The young man had imprinted several kisses on the cheeks of the girl, as when they were betrothed; but on arriving at the "Babel," and finding themselves alone in the Persian chamber, he was overwhelmed with confusion and awkwardness.

He tried to find subjects of conversation, but he failed in the attempt.

Venturita scarcely answered him, but she looked at him with an expression of mingled pa.s.sion and coquetry.

"Look here, stop--stop talking that nonsense. Leave off and give me a kiss," she added laughing, and patting his mouth with her primrose hand.

Then Gonzalo colored deeply, and kissed her pa.s.sionately.

His pa.s.sion of these first days bordered on madness. Venturita, with her singular beauty, the languid, voluptuous expression of her eyes, and her invincible tendency to recline, was a perfect odalisque. But unlike one in being merely a beautiful animal, she was full of a mischievous spirit that bubbled forth at every moment in rather equivocal jokes and meaning puns, so that Gonzalo was always roaring with merriment, in ignorance of the danger of that mood between husband and wife. The life they led was very sedentary, for Ventura did not like going out; the sun gave her headache and the cold hurt her throat. She spent much time in the adornment of her person, and changed her dresses as often as if she were in Madrid, so that the greater part of the day was spent in her dressing-room. This did not displease Gonzalo; for, on the contrary, when he saw her appear looking lovely and graceful, exhaling a penetrating perfume like a tropical flower, he was transported with delight, and a tremor of pa.s.sion shook his whole being as he thought that that exquisite work of nature was his--entirely his.

Nevertheless, everything was not quite like what he had imagined it would be. Sometimes the young bride, half in earnest, half in joke, shut herself up in her room and there spent three or four hours without permitting him to enter, in spite of his affectionate entreaties through the keyhole.

"I rob you of the sight of me for some time," she would say afterward, laughing, "to increase your wish to be with me."

And, in fact, these coquetries augmented the young man's pa.s.sion to such an extent that it became quite a madness. When the beauty felt inclined, they walked in the grounds, but they did not go far. On arriving at one of the few shady, cool retreats which had escaped the reforming hand of Don Rosendo, the girl liked to sit down--but neither upon the gra.s.s nor the rustic seats, so Gonzalo had to run and fetch an armchair for her from the house.

"Now sit here at my feet."

The young man then prostrated himself at her side and pa.s.sionately kissed the hands that his beautiful wife gave him.

"Samson and Delilah!" she laughingly exclaimed, putting her snowdrop hands through the ruddy curly beard of her husband.