CHAPTER VI.ON TRIAL.
AT about four in the afternoon Sebastião went again to Luiza’s. He found the same gentleman with her as before. He went away thoughtful, without seeing her. No doubt the visitor had come on some business of Jorge’s; for Sebastião could not comprehend that Luiza should think, speak, or feel, except with reference to the interests of the household, and with Jorge’s happiness in view. But the business must be a serious one to be the occasion of so many visits. Could anything of importance affect their interests and he not know of it? This seemed to him a piece of ingratitude on their part, and a diminution of their friendship for him.
Aunt Joanna noticed that something was the matter with him.
“A headache,” he said, in answer to her inquiries. That night he slept badly. Next day he learned that the gentleman was her Cousin Bazilio,—Bazilio de Brito. His uncertainty was at an end, but a more definite fear took possession of him.
Sebastião did not know Bazilio personally, but he knew the story of his youthful days. It is true that in this there was neither any exceptional scandal nor any piquant history. Bazilio had been simply aviveur, and as such had passed methodically through all thetraditional episodes of Lisbon life,—parties ofmontelasting till daylight, in the companionship of the wealthybourgeoisof Alemtejo; a carriage dashed to pieces on a Saturday at the bull-fights; dinners with some Lola or Carmen, followed by a lobster salad; a bull caught by the horns, applauses in the circus of Salvaterra or in Alhandra; nights spent in the taverns with guitar-players, eating codfish and drinking Collares; and a shower of flour eggs, thrown in the face of one of the municipal authorities during the Carnival. The only women who appeared in this story, with the exception of the Lolas and the Carmens, were la Pistelli, a German dancer with the legs of an athlete, and the little Countess of Alvini, a feather-head, and a great Amazon, who had separated from her husband after having given him a beating, and who once dressed in male attire to drive a coach from Rocio to Dá Fundo. All this was enough to make Sebastião regard him as a rake, as one who had already gone to destruction. He had heard that he was obliged to fly to Brazil from his creditors, and that he became rich by chance through a speculation in Paraguay; that not even when his fortunes were at their lowest ebb, in Bahia, would he devote himself persistently to work; and he took it for granted that the possession of a fortune would be the means of developing his vices. And this man came every day to see Luiza, staying with her for hours, accompanying her to the Passeio, with what purpose it was only too evident.
He was going down the street, oppressed by the weight of thesethoughts, when he heard a hoarse voice saying in respectful tones,—
“Senhor Sebastião!”
It was Paula the furniture-dealer.
“I hope you are well, Senhor João.”
Paula spat on the pavement, and with his hands crossed behind him under the long skirts of his coat, said gravely,—
“Senhor Sebastião, is there any one sick in the house of the Senhor Engineer?”
“No,” returned Sebastião, in a tone of surprise. “Why?”
Paula coughed, spat again, and said,—
“Because I have observed a gentleman entering the house every day, and I thought it might be the doctor,—one of those new homœopaths.”
Sebastião turned scarlet.
“No,” he responded; “it is the cousin of Donna Luiza.”
“Ah!” said Paula. “I thought— Excuse me, Senhor Sebastião.”
And he bowed respectfully.
“They begin to gossip already,” thought Sebastião, as he continued on his way.
He returned home ill at ease. He lived in an old-fashioned house with a garden, belonging to himself. Sebastião lived alone. He possessed a small fortune in bonds, arable land, and his villa in Almada called the Rozegal. His two servants had been with him for many years; the cook was a negress from St. Thomas who had been in the service of the family since before his mother’s death; Joanna the housekeeper hadserved in the house for thirty-five years, and still called Sebastião thelittle one. She had now all the caprices of a child, but she was treated with the respect that might be shown to a grandmother. She was from Oporto,—Poarto, as she called it, for she had not lost her native accent. The friends of Sebastião called heruma velha de comedia. She was short and stout, with a round and jovial face, a smile full of kindness, hair white as flax, gathered in a knot on the top of her head, and fastened by an antique tortoiseshell comb; and she always wore a large white kerchief, freshly ironed, around her shoulders. She went about the house from morning till night, shuffling her feet and jingling her keys, repeating proverbs and taking pinches of snuff from a round box, on the lid of which was a picture of the hanging bridge of Oporto.
There was something in the aspect of the whole house that called an involuntary smile to the lips. The immense sofa and the easy-chairs reminded one of the days of José I., and the damask covering, of a faded red, recalled the pomp of a decrepit court; on the walls of the dining-room hung engravings of Napoleon’s battles, in all of which was to be seen the white horse standing on a height, towards which a hussar of high rank galloped furiously, brandishing his sabre.
Sebastião slept seven hours of tranquil sleep every night, in an antique bed of bent-wood, in a small dark bedroom. On a bureau with brass scutcheons, a St. Sebastian, pierced with arrows, had for many years past writhed—in the light of a little lamp kept carefullyburning by Joanna—within the cords that bound him to the trunk of a tree. All the clothes put away in the drawers were perfumed by lavender-flowers.
The house resembled its master. Sebastião had old-fashioned ideas; he was shy, and he loved solitude. Years ago, in the Latin class, they had called him thebear; his comrades pinned rags on his back for sport, and unblushingly robbed him of his luncheon. To the strength of an athlete Sebastião joined the patience of a martyr.
He was always rejected in the first examinations at college. He was intelligent, but a question put to him, the glitter of the spectacles of a professor, the sight of the large black table, petrified him, and deprived him of the power of speech, leaving him with his face crimson, his knees trembling, his glance wandering.
His mother, who had come to Lisbon from a little village where she had kept a baker’s shop, who was very proud of her rents, her villa, her furniture, and who was always dressed in silks and weighed down with jewelry, would say,—
“Has he not enough to provide him with food and drink? Why trouble the boy with studies? Let him alone! Let him alone!”
Sebastião’s great passion was the piano. Following the advice of Jorge’s mother, who was her neighbor and her intimate friend, his mother provided a master for him. From the very first lessons, at which, in a red velvet gown, and covered with trinkets, she assisted, the old professor Achilles Bentes, who had a face and eyes like thoseof an owl, declared, in his nasal voice,—
“Dear lady, your son is a genius. Yes, he is a genius! He will be a Rossini! We must push him forward!”
But this was precisely what she did not wish to do,—to push forward the little one. Therefore he did not become a Rossini, which did not prevent old Bentes from continuing to say,—
“He will be a Rossini!”
Only that instead of proclaiming it aloud, brandishing his roll of music, he now murmured it softly under his breath, rubbing his knotty hands together.
At this epoch the two youthful neighbors, Jorge and Sebastião, became intimate. Jorge, the more active and enterprising of the two, ruled his comrade. In their sports in the garden Sebastião, if they played coach, was always the horse; if they played soldiers, he was always the defeated party. He carried the heavy things; he allowed Jorge to jump over his back, at leap-frog; in their feasts he contented himself with the bread and left the fruits to Jorge. This friendship, uninterrupted and unclouded, was to remain, throughout Sebastião’s life, an essential and permanent element in it.
When Jorge’s mother died, they thought for a time of living together in the house of Sebastião, which was larger than Jorge’s, and which had a garden. Jorge had some intention of buying a horse; but solitude inspired him with sentimental ideas of marriage. He saw Luiza in the Passeio, and for two months passed entire days in the street of the Magdalena.
Thus all that smiling plan which they had called laughingly the Society of Jorge and Sebastião fell to the ground like a house of cards. Sebastião felt for a long time a keen sensation of regret. Afterwards it was he who provided the bouquets of roses which Jorge carried Luiza, stripping them carefully of their thorns, and wrapping them in tissue-paper. He it was who made ready the nest; he looked for the upholsterer, discussed the prices of the stuffs, superintended the workmen who were putting down the carpets, and arranged the necessary documents for the marriage.
At night, no matter how fatigued he might be from all these labors, he was obliged to listen, with a smiling countenance, to Jorge, who, very much in love, would walk up and down the room in his shirt-sleeves till two o’clock in the morning, dilating on his happiness and smoking his pipe.
After the wedding, Sebastião found himself very lonely. He went to Portel to see his uncle, an eccentric old man, with the look of an imbecile, who spent his days inventing new graftings in his garden, and reading and re-reading the “Eurico.”
A month later, when Jorge came home, he said to Sebastião with a radiant countenance,—
“I need not tell you that this house is yours. You are to live with us.”
But he could never succeed in making Sebastião feel himself quite at home in his house. He rang the door-bell with timidity. He grew red in Luiza’s presence. The oldbearof the Latin class reappeared. Jorge endeavored to make him feel at his ease with Luiza, to obligehim to smoke his pipe before her, and to prevent him from saying at every moment, “Senhora.”
He never came to dine with them without a previous invitation. When Jorge was not at home his visits were silent and short. He thought himself so stupid that he was afraid of being tiresome.
To-night, when he entered the dining-room, Joanna asked him for Luiza. She adored Luiza; she called her an angel,—a white lily.
“How is she? Have you seen her?” she asked.
Sebastião did not want to answer, as he had done yesterday, that he did not go in because there were visitors; and, leaning forward, he began to play with the ears of Trajan, his old hunting-dog, saying,—
“She is well, Joanna; she is well. How should she be? She could not be better.”
At this time Luiza received a letter from Jorge, dated in Portel, full of complaints of the heat, and the bad inns, of stories about Sebastião’s eccentric relative, of remembrances and kisses for herself. This sheet of paper, covered with minute characters that brought Jorge vividly before her mind, took Luiza by surprise. The recollection of his face, his voice, his love for her, caused her a sensation that was almost painful. All the shame of her cowardice and weakness in regard to Bazilio presented itself forcibly to her imagination. How horrible to allow herself to be kissed and embraced by him while he devoured her with his glances! She recalled everything,—his attitude, the ardor of his hands, the sweetness of his voice. Insensibly and by degrees theserecollections faded away, and Luiza, dropping her arms by her side, let her thoughts drift idly, abandoning herself to the lassitude which they produced in her. But the thought of Jorge presented itself to her again, hurting her like the sudden stroke of a whip. She rose nervously and began to walk up and down the room; she felt a vague desire to weep, to cry out, to break something—
“Ah, no! this is shameful,” she said at last, bursting into bitter tears. “It must be ended at once!”
She came to the determination, at last, to refuse to see Bazilio again; she would write, entreating him to go away, and not to seek to see her again. She repeated to herself the words she would make use of,—serious, cold, dry. She would not address him as “My dear Cousin Bazilio,” but simply, “Cousin Bazilio.” What would he say when he received her letter? Doubtless he would shed tears, poor boy! She pictured him to herself, alone in his room at the hotel, pale and unhappy; and then, carried away by her feelings, she recalled the emotion revealed in his subjugating glance, the persuasive sound of his voice, and her memory lingered over these recollections with a sensation of pleasure, like that produced by the contact of the hand with the soft plumage of some rare bird. She shook her head with impatience, as if these thoughts were the stings of importunate insects. She wanted to think only of Jorge; but other thoughts assailed her, and she said to herself that she was very unhappy. She desired, without knowing why, to be with Jorge, to ask counsel of Leopoldina, to fly far away, wherever chance might lead her. Alas! how unfortunateshe was! From the depths of her indolent nature arose an undefined anger against Jorge, against Bazilio, against feeling, against duty, against every one and everything that caused her thus to suffer and distress herself. Good Heavens! why could they not leave her in peace?
After dinner she seated herself again at the window, to read anew Jorge’s letter, recalling, as she did so, the beauties of his mind and person. She found arguments, some based on her happiness, others sentimental, for loving and esteeming him. All this had happened because he was absent. If he had only been at her side! But he was so far away from her, and he had been away so long! Notwithstanding all these reflections, the fact of his absence gave her a sensation of liberty; the thought of being able to do as she wished filled her heart at times with an intense happiness, as if she were intoxicated by a sudden breath of freedom. But of what use was it to her to be free and alone? All that she might do, feel, possess, appeared before her in distant perspective, then vanished suddenly. It was like a door opened and shut quickly, giving her a glimpse, as by a lightning-flash, of something marvellous and undefined, that moved and fascinated her. Oh, she must be mad!
Night fell. She went out to the balcony and opened the window. The night was warm and dark, and the atmosphere, charged with electricity, announced a coming storm. Luiza drew her breath with difficulty, as she sat gazing at the horizon, forming plans and cherishing desires, without knowing clearly what they were. The young man at the baker’s shop was playing the “Fado;” its sounds, softened by distance, filledher soul with a sweetness resembling that of a warm breeze, and a melancholy like that of a sigh. She leaned her weary head upon her hand. A thousand thoughts rushed through her mind, like tongues of flame running over the paper they consume. She thought of her mother, of the new hat Madame François had sent her, of the kind of weather it was now in Cintra, of long summer evenings passed under the shade of the trees.
She closed the window and remained sitting in her room motionless, thinking of Jorge, resolving to write to him and ask him to come home. But these remorseful feelings disappeared, little by little, like a veil torn down the middle, behind which appeared with luminous intensity the image of her cousin Bazilio. His travels had improved his appearance; the pangs of absence had silvered his hair. He had suffered so much on her account, he had said. And after all, what harm was there in it? He had sworn that his love should be a pure one, locked up forever in the inmost recesses of his breast. Why should she not see him again,—the poor fellow who had come from Paris only to be near her for a week or a fortnight, at least so he had told her? Was it indeed necessary that she should say to him, “Go away, and come back no more”?
“When does the senhora want her tea?” asked Juliana, opening the door.
Luiza exhaled a profound sigh, and saying she would not take tea, told Juliana to prepare the night-lamp.
Ten o’clock struck. Juliana, according to her custom, was taking her tea in the kitchen. The fire was going out, and the copper saucepans gleamed in the light of the kerosene lamp.
“To-day there is certainly something the matter with her, Joanna,” said Juliana, seating herself; “she is angry; she sighs. There is something serious.”
The eyes of Joanna, who sat at the opposite side of the table, her arms resting upon it, her face in her hands, were closing with sleep.
“You are always disposed to see evil in everything,” she said.
“One must be a fool not to see it where it is, Senhora Joanna!”
She was silent, and began to suck a lump of sugar. This was one of her favorite dainties; she liked it white, refined. Brown sugar, that gave the coffee, as she said, a taste of ants, was one of her vexations.
“It is even worse than it was last month,” she would complain with bitterness. “But, of course, for a poor creature like me anything is good enough. Yes, one must be crazy not to see it,” she repeated, returning to her former idea.
“Every one for himself,” said the cook, carelessly.
“And God for us all,” sighed Juliana.
At this moment Luiza rang the bell.
“What does she want now?” said Juliana, her mouth full of sugar. “Some new caprice!”
She soon returned, an expression of anger on her countenance, carrying an empty jug.
“She wants more water! What a fancy—to duck herself at midnight!”
She stamped her foot impatiently upon the brick floor. Putting the jug under the faucet she continued, while the water fell noisily into the sink, “She says she wants fried ham for breakfast,—something salt. She wants an appetizer.”
At midnight every one in the house was asleep. All the lights were extinguished. Without, the sky grew darker, at every moment a flash of lightning illuminated the darkness, followed by a clap of thunder.
Luiza awoke terrified. Large drops of rain began to fall heavily; the tempest sounded from afar; sleep had fled, and with her gaze fixed on the dim light of the night-lamp, a species of vision appeared before her, which resolved itself by degrees into the features of Bazilio.
Sebastião also had slept badly. At six he rose, and descended to the garden in his slippers. A glass door opened from the dining-room into a small corridor, in which were three painted iron chairs and some pots of carnations. From thence four stone steps led down to a small garden, containing several flower-beds, a piece of well-watered turf, some climbing rose-bushes, a well, a fountain under a grape-vine, and a few trees. At the farther end of the garden was another corridor shaded by a lime-tree, with a balcony looking out on a deserted street. In front it was shut in by the whitewashed wall of another garden. In this retired spot, quiet as a village, Sebastião was accustomed to smoke his morning cigar.
Six o’clock had not yet struck. The air was transparent, the sky was of the blue color of certain antique porcelains, with little white cloudssoftly floating here and there; the trees were of a fresh green, the water of the fountain was clear as crystal, the birds sang joyously as they flew from branch to branch.
Sebastião was looking out into the street, when the sound of a cane striking against the ground, and of steps slowly approaching, broke the silence. It was Cunha Rosado, a neighbor of Jorge; he walked slowly, and with a stooping gait, as if in pain, and was enveloped in a comforter and a chocolate-colored great-coat; his face was seamed with wrinkles, and his gray beard was long and neglected-looking.
“Up already, neighbor?” said Sebastião.
Cunha paused, and raising his head slowly, said, in a voice expressive of fatigue,—
“Ah, is that you, Sebastião? I am taking my pains out to give them an airing, my friend.”
“On foot?”
“Formerly I used to ride on a donkey as far as the city walls; but they say now that a short walk will do me good.” And he shrugged his shoulders with a gesture expressive of mingled doubt, sadness, and anger. He suffered from a disease of the intestines.
“And how do you get on?” Sebastião asked him, leaning forward with an air of interest.
Cunha smiled disconsolately, letting these words fall from his pallid lips,—
“I get on so fast that I shall soon be out of this.”
Sebastião coughed, unable to think of a single word of consolation.
The sick man stood still, resting both his hands on the head of hiscane; suddenly his doll gaze brightened with interest.
“Tell me, Sebastião,” he said, “that good-looking young man that I see go into Jorge’s every day,—is he not Bazilio de Brito, the cousin of Jorge’s wife, the son of João de Brito?”
“Yes; why?”
“I was right! I was right! And that obstinate creature would persist in saying it was not so.”
He then proceeded to explain himself.
“My room looks out on the street, and as I am almost always sitting at the window, in order to divert my thoughts, I noticed this young man, dressed like a foreigner, entering there—every day. I said, ‘It is Bazilio de Brito.’ My wife insisted it was not. What the deuce! I was almost certain. I know him as well as I know anything. He looks just the same as when he was going to marry Donna Luiza. Oh, I have all that history at my fingers’ ends. She lived then in the street of the Magdalena.”
“Yes, it is Brito,” repeated Sebastião.
“I was right.” He remained an instant motionless, with his eyes fixed on the ground. Then, speaking in his former querulous tones, he said, “Well, I must drag myself home.” He sighed and looked up. “Ah, if I only had your health, Sebastião!” he said. And waving him a farewell with a hand encased in a dark woollen glove, he continued on his way, bending forward, and supporting himself by the wall as he went along.
Sebastião remained preoccupied. Every one began to notice that a man young and elegant called at Luiza’s house every day in a carriage, andremained there two or three hours. The neighbors lived in such close proximity, and they were so malicious! In the afternoon he went out. He wanted to see Luiza; but he felt, without knowing why, a sense of oppression, as if he feared to find her changed in some way. He was going slowly up the street under his umbrella, wrapt in thought, when he saw a coupé coming towards him at a trot. In another moment it had stopped at Luiza’s door. A gentleman descended hastily from it, threw away his cigar, and went into the house. He was tall, wore a mustache with the ends turning up, and had a flower in his buttonhole. Sebastião comprehended at once that this must be Cousin Bazilio. The coachman wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and crossing his legs, began to roll a cigarette.
At the noise of the carriage Senhor Paula came out to his doorstep, with his cap awry, his hands in his pockets, and looking askance. The coal-vender opposite, dirty and disfigured by obesity, also showed her greasy countenance at her door. The servant of the professor opened her window hastily. Paula crossed the sunny street quickly, and entered the shop in front. A few moments afterwards he reappeared in the doorway, accompanied by the shopkeeper, who had all the air of the inconsolable widow. They whispered together, their malicious glances fixed alternately on the windows of Luiza’s house and on the coupé. Paula, shuffling along in his carpet slippers, went to whisper with the coal-vender, eliciting from her, by his words, a laugh that shook her ample chest, and then took up his post in his own doorway, between alikeness of Dom João VI., on the one side, and two antique choir-chairs on the other, watching Luiza’s door with a jubilant expression of countenance. Through the silence resounded the notes of the “Virgin’s Prayer,” which some one in the neighborhood was practising on the piano.
Sebastião looked up mechanically, as he passed, at the windows of Luiza’s house.
“What a warm day, Sebastião!” said Paula, with an inclination of the head. “It is a pleasure to be in the shade.”