"Then, well then, I'll take it--n.o.body can refuse you anything," he replied, taking the cup.

That gallant reply had a painful effect on Cecilia, and to avoid it being noticed she quickly left the room.

The Duke of Tornos lay for two or three days between life and death. But finally the fever left him, and the danger was over, although the recovery was very long, because he had two ribs and a jawbone fractured, besides terrible contusions in various parts of his body.

At the end of a month he was able to be moved to Madrid.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

THE FINAL TRAGEDY

Gonzalo did not leave his father-in-law's house; and at the end of five or six days after the duel, Don Rosendo returned from taking Ventura to the Ocana Convent. But his life was sad and depressed. He declined Pablo's persuasions to go shooting or walking, and the thousand pretexts made by his father-in-law and his friends, who came to see him at Tejada, to induce him to get out, proved fruitless.

Although Gonzalo did not openly refuse to accompany his friends, he managed to elude them and remained at home, where he sat alone.

His uncle, Don Melchor, came to see him, and advised him to travel for a time; Gonzalo did not reject the idea, but he always postponed it on the pretext of want of health.

Don Rosendo, upon the advice of Las Cuevas and other friends, decided to move to Sarrio to see if the society of acquaintances might not cheer the young man up a little. But all attempts to rouse him proved failures. Gonzalo let himself be taken to town without offering any objection, but he continued just as anxious to be alone, and to live retired from social life.

He only went out early in the morning and took a few turns at the end of the landing-stage, where he contemplated the sea with far-away eyes, sometimes so full of sadness that they would have alarmed any onlooker.

As soon as the place became frequented, and the town awoke from its sleep, he hastily returned home.

Why did he not leave Sarrio, the scene of his troubles, and go for a time to Madrid, Paris, or London? This was the question asked by all the people of the town, without receiving any satisfactory answer, nor was it easy for one to be found. There are very few competent to explain the secret origin, the final cause of human actions, because very few study psychology, deeming it useless, and those who are endowed with an understanding, both subtle and perspicacious, devote it solely to the study of self-interest, so that hardly anybody sounds this magic casket of feelings, desires, hopes, and contradictions called the human heart.

How ashamed Gonzalo would have been if any one had told him that he did not leave Sarrio because he did not wish to quit the place a.s.sociated with his wife, whom he still adored in secret, while feigning to hate her before the world! And nevertheless it was certainly so. As long as he remained in that house, all the bonds uniting him to her did not seem to be broken. The people about him were of her flesh and blood; they loved her still, culpable as she was and they did not abuse her in his presence.

Ventura seemed to have left part of herself in the rooms and in the furniture; the bottles of essences and pots of pomades still stood half-used on the dressing-table; some of her cloaks and hats were still hanging on the pegs, and it seemed as if her fair, sunny head might appear at any moment from behind the curtains, while the air was still sweet with her favorite perfume. The husband, who had been disgracefully outraged, inhaled with delight this atmosphere of his wife, and lived in the shadow of her life, unwilling as he would have been to acknowledge it; and he lived, moreover, in the hope of one day pardoning her. This n.o.body knew--he had probably not formulated it to himself--n.o.body knew it but Cecilia, whose eyes, sharpened by love, divined her brother-in-law's most secret thoughts; and he evinced such an affectionate, enthusiastic, venerating feeling for her that it might easily have been confounded with love. Everybody's companionship, even that of his uncle, bored him more than hers.

However cast down he was with sad thoughts, which made scalding tears flow down his cheeks, the appearance of Cecilia in his room had a calming, soothing effect upon his grief.

He followed her counsels with respect, and let himself be guided and coaxed by her like a sick child. When she delayed coming to him he grew impatient and made tender complaints about it, as if he had been a devoted lover.

When she was in the room his eyes never left her for an instant, so great was the influence of the charm or fascination she exercised on him; those eyes expressed deep affection, admiration, respect, enthusiasm; expressed, indeed, everything but love.

Cecilia read it all, but she could not see it without feeling the old pain and bitterness. Her gentle spirit was occasionally momentarily disturbed, and she seemed at times cold, irritable, and enigmatical, to the great surprise and sorrow of Gonzalo, who tried to cheer her up, and that with success. For the sad thought had had the same effect upon her mind as the fall of a stone on the peaceful waters of a lake, but, like the lake, her mind soon regained its purity and tranquillity.

One day, on suddenly entering the room of her brother-in-law, she found him examining a revolver.

When he saw her he turned red, and tried to hide it in the table drawer, which was open.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing; looking for some papers in this drawer, I came across this revolver, which I did not know I had, and so I am looking at it."

Cecilia did not believe what he said, and the anxiety caused her by the incident made her keep a stricter watch on him.

Two months went by. Although the young man still persisted in his isolated, gloomy sort of life, there were a few faint signs of improvement. Once or twice he went out on horseback, and he talked to his father-in-law of going to Italy, as he had never been there.

The fresh impulse given to his depressed being was due to a pleasant thought, as pleasant as it was deceptive, and which he carefully kept from everybody.

Nevertheless, one night, on taking an affectionate leave of his sister-in-law, when retiring to rest, after much circ.u.mlocution and turning crimson, he asked after Ventura.

"What news is there of her?"

Cecilia gave him a chilly answer in as few words as possible.

Poor Gonzalo! If he had known that the treacherous wife, after whom he was asking, far from repenting, was furious against her family, covering them all with opprobrium, and threatening to go off with the first man at hand as soon as she came out of retreat, and shocking the Superior of the Convent with her language and pride.

From that day Gonzalo lost his aversion of referring to his wife, asking sometimes after her, and liking to mention her in conversation, but Cecilia still maintained the cold tone of her replies, quickly changing the subject.

What Don Rosendo had feared from the letters from Ocana at last happened.

The Superior of the Convent informed him one day that Ventura had escaped from the retreat, and, according to all reports, it was with the Duke of Tornos.

"The great humanitarian" (as he was termed by "The Light," on a certain occasion) received the news with stoical fort.i.tude. In fact, what did any purely individual sorrow signify in comparison with universal sorrow in the slow and sure march of humanity to its destiny? He had recently read a celebrated pamphlet called, "The March of the World," from the pen of a French writer, and, with his brain refreshed and illuminated with its grand historical synthesis, he found strength to bear the blow.

Nevertheless, he tried to keep the news from his son-in-law, as he had not the same confidence in the loftiness of his spirit and the width of his views. It was therefore kept secret for some days, but suddenly it became current news in the town, without any one knowing who started it.

Gonzalo, who always went early in the morning to the Club, read it in a paragraph in "The Youth of Sarrio," which was as infamous as it was hypocritical.

"It is said in the town," it ran, "that a lady, the heroine of a certain romantic drama, enacted not long ago, has fled with her lover from the asylum in which her family had secluded her. We shall be sorry if this report be true, as it will affect certain persons who are well known and much esteemed in Sarriensan society."

Gonzalo felt that his heart was broken--the last ray of hope was gone.

He let the paper fall, and with a nervous smile, and in a strange, sharp voice, said to old Feliciano Gomez, who was the only person present:

"Do you know that my brute of a wife has gone off with her lover?"

Don Feliciano looked at him in surprise, for, although little versed in smiles, he was taken aback at seeing the young man smile like that, and he replied sadly:

"Yes, Gonzalin; yes, I knew that it wasn't all over so soon--But, really, after what happened, this final blow ought not to cause you surprise. Once the rein is broken you can always imagine what will be the end."

"And what for me. What--?" exclaimed the unhappy man, with the same smile, which expressed the ill-restrained excitement of body. "Let her go--Very well! let her go with G.o.d's blessing. I have nothing against it--Ah! if the law only permitted me to marry! A month would not elapse without my doing so--And why not? we will see, and why can I not do so?

Anyhow, if I can't marry for good, I can take up with somebody. I will carry on with some pretty girl, eh, Don Feliciano? And the devil take the rest!--for if she be bad by profession, my wife is so from choice."

While making these ugly remarks, he walked up and down the room, threw off his hat, shrugged his shoulders, and gesticulated wildly.

Finally he roared with laughter.

"Look here, Gonzalin," said Don Feliciano; "you have just weathered a storm; better weather is in store. There is always good after bad. The things of the world have to be taken easily, my dear. What is the good of putting one's self out, and upsetting one's digestion? Look at me.

Last month I lost a ship. Everybody came to condole with me, thinking I must be in despair, and I said to them:

"'It is true I lost the "Juanita," but if I had lost the "Carmen,"

wouldn't it be much worse? for it might have been the one as much as the other, as both were afloat.' You have had a great blow--but keep up.

Would it not be much worse if you were ill? You must think of that, my boy. Health is the first thing--you eat well, drink well, and those are the first things; the rest will all come right."