As the time occupied in the gathering of the grapes and the elaboration of the wine in the spacious cellar of Mendez was so prolonged, and as in that part of the country everyone has his own crop, however small, to gather in, part of the guests went away, desirous of attending to their own vineyards. Señorito de Limioso needed to see for himself how, between oïdium, the blackbirds, the neighbors, and the wasps, not a single bunch of grapes had been left him; the Señoritas de Molende had to hang up with their own hands the grapes of their famous Tostado, renowned throughout the country; and for similar reasons Saturnino Agonde, the arch-priest, and the curate of Naya took their leave one by one, the court of Las Vides being reduced to Carmen Agonde, maid of honor, Clodio Genday, Aulic councilor, Tropiezo, court physician, and Segundo, who might well be the page or the troubadour charged to divert the châtelaine with his ditties.
Segundo was consumed with a feverish impatience hitherto unknown to him. Since the day of the interviewin the lemon tree Nieves had shunned every occasion of being alone with him; and the feverish dream that haunted his sleep, the intolerable anguish which consumed him, was that he had advanced no further than the fugitiveyes, which he sometimes even doubted he had heard. He could not endure this slow torture, this ceaseless martyrdom; he would have been less unhappy if instead of encouraging him Nieves had requited his love with open scorn. It was not the brutal desire for positive victories which thus tormented him; all he wished was to convince himself that he was really loved, and that under that steely corset a tender heart throbbed. And so mad was his passion that when he found it impossible to approach Nieves, he was seized by an almost irresistible impulse to cry out, "Nieves, tell me again that you love me!" Always, always obstacles between the two; the child was always at her mother's side. Of what avail was it to be rid of Elvira Molende who, since the memorable night on which she had kept guard in the gallery, had looked at the poet with an expression that was half satirical, half mournful? The departure of the poetess removed an obstacle, indeed, but it did not put an end to his difficulties.
Segundo suffered in his vanity, wounded by thesystematic reserve of Nieves, as well as in his love, his ardent longing for the impossible. It was already October; the ex-Minister spoke of taking his departure immediately, and although Segundo counted on establishing himself in Madrid later on through his influence, and meeting Nieves again, an infallible instinct told him that between Nieves and himself there existed no other bond of union than their temporary sojourn in Las Vides, the poetic influences of the season, the accident of living under the same roof, and that if this dream did not take shape before their separation it would be as ephemeral as the vine leaves that were now falling around them, withered and sapless.
Autumn was parting with its glories; the wrinkled and knotted vine stalks, the dry and shrunken vine branches, lay bare to view, and the wind moaned sadly, stripping their leaves from the boughs of the fruit trees. One day Victorina asked Segundo:
"When are we going to the pine grove to hear it sing?"
"Whenever you like, child. This afternoon if your mother wishes it."
The child conveyed the proposition to Nieves. For some time past Victorina had been more than usually demonstrative toward her mother, leaningher head upon Nieves' breast, hiding her cheek in her neck, passing her hands over her hair and her shoulders while she would repeat softly, in a voice that seemed to ask for a caress:
"Mamma! mamma!"
But the eyes of the miniature woman, half-veiled by their long lashes, were fixed with loving, longing glance, not on her mother, but on the poet, whose words the child drank in eagerly, turning very red if he chanced to make some jesting remark to her or gave any other indication of being aware of her presence.
Nieves objected a little at first, not wishing to appear credulous or superstitious.
"But what has put such an idea into your head?"
"Mamma, when Segundo says that the pines sing, they sing, mamma, there is not a doubt of it."
"But you don't know," said Nieves, bestowing on the poet a smile in which there was more sugar than salt—"that Segundo writes poetry, and that people who write poetry are permitted to—to invent—a little?"
"No, Señora," cried Segundo. "Do not teach your child what is not true. Do not deceive her. In society it often happens that we utter with the lips sentiments that are far from the heart, but inpoetry we lay bare the feelings of the inmost soul, feelings which in the world we are obliged to hide in our own breasts, through respect—or through prudence. Believe me."
"Say, mamma, are we going there to-day?"
"Where?"
"To the pine grove."
"If you are very anxious to go. What an obstinate child! But indeed I too am curious to hear this orchestra."
Only Nieves, Victorina, Carmen, Segundo, and Tropiezo took part in the expedition. The elders remained behind smoking and looking on at the important operation of covering and closing some of the vats which contained the must, now fermented. As Mendez saw the party about to start, he called out in a tone of paternal warning:
"Take care with the descent. The pine needles in this hot weather are as slippery as if they had been rubbed with soap. The ladies must be helped down. You, Victorina, don't be crazy; don't go rushing about there."
The famous pine grove was distant some quarter of a league, but they spent fully three-quarters of an hour in making the ascent, along a path as steep, narrow, and rugged as the ascent to heaven is said tobe, and which long before reaching the wood was carpeted with the polished, smooth, dry pine needles, which, if they rendered the descent more easy than was agreeable, compensated for it by making the ascent extremely difficult, causing the foot to slip, and fatiguing the ankles and the knees. Nieves stopped from time to time to take breath, and was at last fain to avail herself of the support of the plump arm of Carmen Agonde.
"Caramba, this is like practicing gymnastics! Whoever escapes being killed when we are going back will be very lucky."
"Lean well on me, lean well on me," said the sturdy country girl. "Many a limb has been broken here already, no doubt. This ascent is terrible!"
They reached the summit at last. The prospect was beautiful, with that species of beauty that borders on sublimity. The pine wood seemed to hang over an abyss. Between the trunks of the trees could be caught glimpses of the mountains, of an ashen blue blending into violet in the distance; on the other side of the pine wood, that which overlooked the river, the ground fell abruptly in a steep, almost perpendicular descent, while far below flowed the Avieiro, not winding peacefully along, but noisy and foaming, roused into rage by the barrier opposedto its progress by some sharp black rocks and separating into numerous currents that curled around the bowlders like angry green snakes covered with silver scales. To the roaring and sobbing of the river the pine wood kept accompaniment with its perpetual plaint intoned by the summits of the trees, which swayed and vibrated to the kisses of the breeze, dolorous kisses that drew from them an incessant moan.
The excursionists, impressed by the tragic aspect of the scene, remained mute. Only the child broke the silence, speaking in tones as hushed as if she were in a church.
"Well, it is true, mamma! The pines sing. Do you hear them? It sounds like the chorus of bishops in 'L'Africaine.' They even seem to speak—listen—in bass voices—like that passage in the 'Huguenots——'"
Nieves agreed that the murmur of the pines was in truth musical and solemn. Segundo, leaning against a tree, looked down at the river foaming below; Victorina approached him, but he stopped her and made her go back.
"No, my child," he said; "don't come near; it is a little dangerous; if you should lose your footing and roll down that declivity——Go back, go back."
As nothing further occurred to them to say about the pines, the excursionists began to think of returning home; Nieves was a little uneasy about the descent, and she wished to undertake it before the sun should set.
"Now, indeed, we shall break some of our bones, Don Fermin," she said to the doctor. "Now, indeed, you may begin to get your bandages and splints ready."
"There is another road," said Segundo, emerging from his abstraction. "And one which is much less toilsome and much more level than this."
"Yes, talk to us now about the other road," cried Tropiezo, true to his habit of voting with the opposition. "It is even worse than the one by which we came."
"How should it be worse, man? It is a little longer, but as it is not so steep it is the best in the end. It skirts the pine wood."
"Do you want to tell me which is the best road—me who know the whole country as well as I know my own house? You cannot go by that road; I know what I am saying."
"And I say that you can, and I will prove it to you. For once in your life don't be stubborn. I came by it not many days ago. Do you remember,Nieves, the night we played hide-and-seek in the garden, the night they barred me out and I got over the wall?"
Had it not been for the thick shade cast by the pine trees and the fading daylight, it would have been seen that Nieves blushed.
"Let us take whichever road is easiest and most level," she said, evading an answer. "I am very awkward about walking over rough roads."
Segundo offered his arm, saying jestingly:
"That blessed Tropiezo knows as much about roads as he does about the art of healing. Come, and you shall see that we will be the gainers by it."
Tropiezo, on his side, was saying to Carmen Agonde, shaking his head obstinately:
"Well, we will please ourselves and go by the cut, and arrive before they do, safe and sound, with the help of God."
Victorina, according to her custom, was going to her mother's side, when the doctor called out to her:
"Here, take hold of the end of my stick or you will slip. Your mamma will have enough to do to keep herself from falling. And God save us from atrip," he added, laughing loudly at his jest.
The voices and footsteps receded in the distance, and Segundo and Nieves continued on their way insilence. The precipitous character of the path along which they walked inspired Nieves with something like fear. It was a little path cut on the slope of the pine wood, on the very edge of the precipice, almost overhanging the river. Although Segundo gave Nieves the least dangerous side, that next the wood, leaving himself scarcely a foothold, so that he was obliged to place one foot horizontally before the other, in walking, this did not set her fears at rest or make the adventure seem any the less dangerous to her. Her terror was increased a hundredfold when she saw that they were alone.
"Are they not coming?" she asked anxiously.
"We will overtake them in less than ten minutes. They are going by the other road," answered Segundo, without adding a single word of endearment, or even pressing the arm which trembled with terror within his.
"Let us go on, then," said Nieves, in tones of urgent entreaty. "I am anxious to be home."
"Why?" asked the poet, suddenly standing still.
"I am tired—out of breath——"
"Well, you shall rest and take a drink of water if you desire it."
And with rash hardihood Segundo, without waiting for an answer, drew Nieves down the slope and,skirting the rock, stopped on a narrow ledge which projected over the river. By the fading sunset light they discried a crystal thread of water trickling down the black front of the rock.
"Drink, if you wish—in the palm of your hand, for we have no glass," said Segundo.
Nieves mechanically released Segundo's arm, scarcely conscious of what she was doing, and took a step toward the stream; but the ground at the base of the rock, kept moist by the dripping of the water, was overgrown with humid vegetation as slippery as sea-weed, and as she set her foot upon it she slipped and lost her balance. In her vertigo, she saw the river roaring menacingly below, the sharp rocks waiting to receive her and mangle her flesh, and she already felt the chill air of the abyss. A hand clutched her by her gown, by her flesh, perhaps; held her up and drew her back to safety. She dropped her head on Segundo's shoulder and the latter, for the first time, felt Nieves' heart beat under his hand. And how quickly it beat! It beat with fear. The poet bent over her, and on her very lips breathed this question:
"Do you love me? tell me, do you love me?"
The answer was inaudible, for even if the wordshad been formed in her throat her sealed lips were unable to articulate them. During this short space of time, which was for them an eternity, there flashed across Segundo's brain a thought potent and destructive as the electric spark. The poet stood fronting the precipice, Nieves with her back toward it, kept from falling over its edge only by the arm of her savior. A movement forward, a stronger pressure of his lips to hers, would be sufficient to make them both lose their balance and precipitate them into the abyss. It would be a beautiful ending—worthy of the ambitious soul of a poet. Thinking of it Segundo found it alluring and desirable, and yet the instinct of self-preservation, an animal impulse, but one more powerful than the romantic idea, placed between the thought and the action an insuperable barrier. He pleased himself, in imagination, with the picture of the two bodies clasped in each other's arms, borne along by the current of the river. He even saw in fancy the scene of the discovery of the corpses, the exclamations; the profound impression that such an event would cause in the district; andsomething, some poetic feeling that stirred and thrilled in his youthful soul, urged him to take the leap; but at the same time a cold fearcongealed his blood, obliging him to proceed slowly, not toward the abyss, but in an opposite direction, toward the path.
All this, short enough in the telling, was instantaneous in the thinking. Segundo felt a cold chill strike through him, putting to flight thoughts of love as well as of death. It was the chill communicated to him by the lips of Nieves, who had fainted in his arms.
He dipped his handkerchief in the spring and applied it to her temples and wrists. She half opened her eyes. They could hear Tropiezo talking, Carmen laughing; they were coming doubtless in search of them, to triumph over them. Nieves, when she came back to consciousness and found herself still alone, did not make the slightest effort to free herself from the poet's embrace.
As if by tacit agreement the hero and heroine of the adventure made light of the danger they had run, to their companions in the excursion in the first place, and afterward to the elders at Las Vides. Segundo observed a certain reticence regarding the particulars of the occurrence. Nieves, on the contrary, was more talkative than usual, speaking with nervous loquacity, going over the most insignificant details a hundred times. She had slipped; García had reached out his hand to her; she had caught it, and as she was—well—timid, she had been a little frightened, although there was not the slightest occasion for being so. But the obstinate Tropiezo, with mild scorn, contradicted her. Good Heavens, how mistaken she was! No danger? Why, it was only by a miracle that Nieves was not now floating in the Avieiro. The ground there was as slippery as soap, and the stones below were as sharp as razors, and the current was so strong that——Nieves denied the danger, making an effort to laugh; but the terror of the accident had left unmistakable tracesupon her countenance, changing its warm healthy pallor to a sickly hue, producing dark circles under her eyes, and making her features twitch convulsively.
Segundo longed to say a few words to her, to ask her to grant him an interview; he comprehended that he must avail himself of these first moments, while her soul was still under the softening influence of gratitude and fright which made her cold heart palpitate beneath the whalebone of her stays. In the brief scene of the precipice the arrival of Tropiezo had allowed Nieves no time to respond explicitly to the poet's ardor, and Segundo wished to come to some agreement with her, to devise some means of seeing each other and talking to each other alone, to establish the fact at once that all these anxieties, these vigils, these intrigues, were love and requited love—a mutual passion, in short. When and how should he find the desired opportunity of establishing an understanding with Nieves?
It may be said that in the history of every love affair there exists a first period in which obstacles accumulate and difficulties, seemingly insurmountable, arise, driving to despair the lover who has made up his mind to conquer them, and that there comes, too, a second period in which the mysterious force of desire and the power of the will sweep awaythese obstacles, and circumstances, for the moment favorable, aid the lovers. So it happened on the night of this memorable day. As Victorina had been somewhat frightened, hearing of the danger her mother had been in, she had been sent to bed early, and Carmen Agonde had remained with her to put her asleep by telling her stories. The principal witnesses being thus removed and the elders plunged in one of their interminable viticultural, agricultural, and sociological discussions, Nieves, who had gone out on the balcony for air—for she felt as if she had a lump in her throat which prevented her from breathing—had an opportunity to chat for ten minutes with Segundo, who was standing near the window, not far from the rocking-chairs.
Occasionally they would raise their voices and speak on indifferent subjects—the afternoon's accident, the strange singing of the pines. And low, very low, the diplomatic negotiation of the poet followed its course. An interview, a conversation with some degree of freedom. Why, of course it could be! Why could it not take place in the gallery that very night? No one was going to think of going there to spy out what was passing. He could let himself down easily into the garden——He could not? She was very timid——It would be wrong?Why?—She was tired and not very well——Yes, he understood. She would prefer the daytime, perhaps. Well, the other would be better, but——Without fail? At the hour of the siesta? In the parlor? No; nobody ever went there; everyone was asleep. On her word of honor?—Thanks. Yes, it was necessary to dissemble so as not to attract attention.
Meantime the gentlemen at the tresillo table talked of the vintage and its consequences. The poor country girls earned a good deal of money at the work. Apropos of which Don Victoriano gave expression to some of his favorite ideas, referring to English legislature, and eulogizing the wisdom of that great nation whose laws regulating labor give evidence of a careful study of the problems it involves, and of some regard for the welfare of women and children. With these serious disquisitions the evening ended, every owl retiring to his olive tree.
Nieves, seated at her toilet table, her open dressing-case and a small silver-framed mirror before her, was taking out, one by one, the tortoise-shell hair-pins which fastened her hair. Mademoiselle gathered them together and arranged them neatly in a box and braided Nieves' hair, after which the latterthrew herself back in her seat and drew a deep breath; suddenly she looked up.
"If you could make me a cup of lime tea," she said, "in your own room, without troubling anybody?"
The Frenchwoman left the room and Nieves leaned her elbow thoughtfully on the table, resting her cheek in the palm of her hand, without moving her eyes from the mirror. Her face was deathly pale. No, this life could not continue; if it did it would carry her to her grave. She was very nervous—what terrors! What anxiety, what moments of anguish she had suffered! She had seen death face to face, and had had more frights, more fears, more misery in a single day than in all the previous years of her existence put together. If this were love in truth there was little that was pleasing in it; such agitations were not suited to her. It was one thing to like to be pretty, and to be told so, and even to have a passionate adorer, and another to suffer these incessant anxieties, these surprises that bring one's heart to one's mouth and expose one to the risk of disgrace and destroy one's health. And the poets say that this is happiness. It may be so for them—as for the poor women——And why had she not the courage to tell Segundo that there must be an endto this, to say to him: "I can endure these alarms no longer. I am afraid. I am miserable!" Ah, she was afraid of him, too. He was capable of killing her; his handsome black eyes sent forth at times electric sparks and phosphoric gleams. And then he always took the lead, he dominated her, he mastered her. Through him she had been on the point of falling into the river, of being dashed to pieces on the rocks. Holy Virgin! Why, only half an hour ago did he not almost force her to agree to a meeting in the gallery? Which would be a great piece of madness, since it would be impossible for her to go to that part of the house without her absence being noticed by Mademoiselle, or someone else, and its cause being discovered. Good Heavens! All this was terrible, terrible! And to-morrow she must go to the parlor at the hour of the siesta. Well, then, she would take a bold resolution. She would go, yes, but she would go to clear up this misunderstanding, to give Segundo some plain talk that would make him place some restraint upon himself; that he should love her, very good; she had no objection to that, that was well enough; but to compromise her in this way, that was a thing unheard of; she would entreat him to return to Vilamorta; they would soon go to Madrid. Ah, howlong that blessed Mademoiselle delayed with the lime tea.
The door opened to admit, not Mademoiselle, but Don Victoriano. There was nothing to surprise her in his appearance; he slept in a sort of cabinet near his wife's room and separated from it by a passageway, and every night before retiring he gave a kiss to the child, whose bed was beside her mother's; nevertheless Nieves felt a chill creep over her, and she instinctively turned her back to the light, coughing to hide her agitation.
The truth was that Don Victoriano looked very serious, even stern. He had not indeed been very cheerful or communicative ever since his illness had assumed a serious character; but in addition to his air of dejection there was an indefinable something, a darker gloom on his face than usual, a cloud pregnant with storm. Nieves, observing that he did not approach the child's bed, cast down her eyes and affected to be occupied in smoothing her hair with the ivory comb.
"How do you feel, child? Have you recovered from your fright?" asked her husband.
"No; I am still a little——I have asked for some lime tea."
"You did well. See, Nieves——"
"Well—well?"
"See, Nieves, we must go to Madrid at once."
"Whenever you wish. You know that I——"
"No, the thing is that it is necessary, indispensable. I must put myself seriously under treatment, child; for if things continue as they are now it will soon be all over with me. I had the weakness to put myself in the hands of that ass, Don Fermin. God forgive me for it! and I fear," he added, smiling bitterly, "that I have made a fatal mistake. Let us see if Sanchez del Abrojo will get me out of the scrape—I doubt it greatly."
"Heavens, how apprehensive you are!" exclaimed Nieves, breathing freely once more and availing herself of the resource offered to her by Don Victoriano's illness. "Anyone would think you had an incurable disease. When you are once in Madrid and Sanchez has you under his care—in a couple of months you will not even remember this trifling indisposition."
"Bravo! child, bravo! I don't wish to hurt your feelings or to seem unkind, but what you say proves that you neither look at me, nor care a straw about my health, nor pay any attention to me whatever, which—forgive me—is not creditable to you. My disease is a serious, a very serious one—it is a diseasethat carries people off in fine style. I am being converted into sugar, my sight is failing, my head aches, I have no blood left, and you, serene and gay, sporting about like a child. A wife who loved her husband would not act in this way. You have troubled yourself neither about the state of my body nor the state of my mind. You are enjoying yourself, having a fine time, and as for the rest—a great deal it matters to you!"
Nieves rose to her feet, tremulous, almost weeping.
"What are you saying? I—I——"
"Don't distress yourself, child; don't cry. You are young and well; I am wasted and sickly. So much the worse for me. But listen to me. Although I seem to you dry and serious, I loved you tenderly, Nieves, I love you still, as much as I love that child who is sleeping there, I swear it to you before God! And you might—you might love me a little—like a daughter—and take some interest in me. The trouble would not be for long now—I feel so sick."
Nieves drew near him with an affectionate movement and he touched her forehead with his parched lips, pressing her to him at the same time. Then he added:
"I have still another observation to make, another sermon to preach to you, child."
"What is it?" murmured his wife smiling, but terrified.
"That boy García—don't be alarmed, child, there is no need for that—that boy looks at you sometimes in a very curious way, as if he were making love to you. No, I am not doubting you. You are and you have always been an irreproachable wife—I am not accusing you, nor do I attach any importance to such folly. But, although you may not believe it, the young men here are very daring; they are shyer in appearance than those of the capital, but they are bolder in reality. I spent my youthful years here, and I know them. I am only putting you on your guard so that you may keep that jackanapes within bounds. For the rest of the time we are to remain in this place, avoid those long walks and all those other rusticities which they indulge in here. A lady like you among these people is a sort of queen, and it is not proper that they should take the same liberties with you as with the Señoritas de Molende or others like them—but I have already told you that such a thought has not even crossed my mind. It is one thing that this village Swan should have fallen in love with you, and have given you his hand to help you over the rocks, and another that I should insult you, child!"
Shortly afterward Mademoiselle entered with the steaming cup of tea. And greatly Nieves needed it. Her nerves were in a state of the utmost tension. She was on the verge of a hysterical attack. She even felt nausea when she took the first few spoonfuls. Mademoiselle offered her some anti-hysterical drops. Nieves drank the remedy, and with a few yawns and two or three tears the attack passed off. She thought she would go to bed, and went into her bedroom. There she saw something which renewed her uneasiness—Victorina, instead of being asleep, lay with eyes wide open. She had probably heard every word of the conversation.
She had in fact heard it all, from beginning to end. And the words of the conjugal dialogue were whirling around in her brain, mingling confusedly together, stamping themselves in characters of fire on her virgin memory. She repeated them to herself, she tried to understand their meaning, she weighed them, she drew conclusions from them.
No one can tell which is the precise moment that divides day from night, sleeping from waking, youth from maturity, and innocence from knowledge. Who can fix the moment in which the child, passing into adolescence, observes in herself that undefinable something which may perhaps be called consciousness of sex, in which vague presentiment is changed into swift intuition, in which, without an exact notion of the realities of life, she divines all that experience will corroborate and accentuate later on, in which she understands the importance of a sign, the significance of an act, the character of a relationship, the value of a glance, and the meaning of a reticence. The moment in which her eyes, hithertoopen only to external life, acquire power to scrutinize the inner life also, and losing their superficial brilliancy, the clear reflection of her ingenuous purity, acquire the concentrated and undefinable expression which constitutes theglance of a grown person.
This moment arrived for Victorina at the age of eleven, on the night we have mentioned, overhearing a dialogue between her father and mother. Motionless, with bated breath, her feet cold, her head burning, the child heard everything, and afterward, in the dim light of the bedroom, united broken links, remembering certain incidents, and at last understood without attaching much importance to what she understood, reasoning, however, with singular precocity, owing, perhaps, to the painful activity with which imagination works in the silence of night and the repose of the bed.
It is certain that the child slept badly, tossing about restlessly in her monastic little bed. Two ideas, especially, seemed to pierce her brain like nails. Her father was ill, very ill, and he was annoyed and displeased, besides, because Segundo had fallen in love with her mamma. With her mamma. Not with her! With her who preserved all the flowers he had given her like relics.
The sorrows of childhood know neither limit nor consolation. When we are older and more storms have passed over us, and we have seen with astonishment that man can survive griefs which we had thought unsurvivable, and that the heavens do not fall because we have lost what we love, it may almost be said that absolute despair, which is the heritage of childhood, does not exist. It was evident to Victorina that her father was dying and that her mother was wicked, and Segundo a villain, and that the world had come to an end—and that she too, she too, desired to die. If it were possible for the hair to turn white at eleven, Victorina would have become white on the night in which suffering changed her from a bashful, timid, blushing child to a moral being, capable of the greatest heroism.
Nor did Nieves enjoy the balmy sweets of slumber. Her husband's words had made her thoughtful. Was Don Victoriano's illness a fatal one? It might be so! He looked greatly altered, poor fellow. And Nieves felt a touch of grief and apprehension. Why, who could doubt that she loved her husband, or that she should regret his death? She did not feel for him any passionate love, such as is described in novels—but affection—yes. Heaven grant the malady might be a trifling one. And if itwere not? And if she were to be left a wi—— She did not dare to complete the word even in her thoughts. To think of such a thing seemed like indulging in wicked desires. No, but the fact was that women, when their husbands die, were—Holy Virgin! It must be a terrible grief. Well, butif it happened? Segundo—Heavens, what folly! Most assuredly such an absurdity had never entered his head. The Garcías—nobodies. And here a vivid picture of all Segundo's relations and their manner of living presented itself to her mind.
She would willingly have absented herself from the rendezvous on the following day, because her husband had begun to suspect something and the situation was a compromising one, although in the place designated for the interview the meeting between them might always be attributed to chance. On the other hand if she failed to meet him, Segundo, who was so enamored, was fully capable of creating a scandal, of going to look for her in her room, of forcing an entrance into it through the window.
After all, thinking well over the matter, she judged it most prudent to comply with her promise and to entreat Segundo to—forget her—or at leastnot to compromise her. That was the best course to pursue.
Nieves passed the morning in a state of complete prostration; she scarcely tasted a morsel at breakfast and during the meal she kept her eyes turned away from Segundo, fearing lest her husband should surprise some furtive glance of intelligence between them. To make matters worse, Segundo, desirous of reminding her with his eyes of her promise, looked at her on this day oftener than usual. Fortunately Don Victoriano's attention seemed to be all given to satisfying his voracious appetite for eating and drinking. The meal being finished everyone retired as usual to take the siesta. Nieves went to her room. She found Victorina there, lying on the bed. For greater precaution she asked her:
"Are you going to sleep the siesta, my pet?"
"To sleep, no. But I am comfortable here."
Nieves looked at herself in the glass and saw that she was pale. She washed her teeth, and after satisfying herself by a rapid glance that her husband was resting in the other room, she stole softly into the parlor. She was trembling. This atmosphere of storm and danger, grateful to the sea-fowl, was fatal to the domestic bird. It was no life to be alwaysshuddering with fear, her blood curdled by fright. It was not to live. It was not to breathe. She would end by becoming crazy. Had she not fancied just now that she heard steps behind her, as if someone were following her? Two or three times she had stopped and leaned, fainting, against the wall of the corridor, vowing in her own mind that she would never put herself in such a dilemma again.
When she reached the parlor she stopped, half startled. It was so silent and drowsy in the semi-obscurity, with the half-closed shutters through which entered a single sunbeam full of dancing golden motes, with its sleepy mirrors that were too lazy to reflect anything from their turbid surfaces, its drowsy asthmatic clock, whose face looked like a human countenance watching her and coughing disapprovingly. Suddenly she heard quick, youthful foot-steps and Segundo, audacious, impassioned, threw himself at her feet and clasped his arms around her. She tried to restrain him, to advise him, to explain to him. The poet refused to heed her, he continued pouring forth exclamations of gratitude and love and then, rising to his feet, he drew her toward him with the irresistible force of a passion which does not stop to consider consequences.
When Don Victoriano saw the child enter hisroom, white as wax, livid, almost, darting fire from her eyes, in one of those horror-inspired attitudes which can neither be feigned nor imitated, he sprang from the bed where he had been lying awake smoking a cigar. The child said to him, in a choking voice:
"Come, papa! come, papa!"
What were the thoughts that passed through her father's mind? It was never known why he followed his daughter without putting to her a single question. On the threshold of the parlor father and child paused. Nieves uttered a shrill scream and Segundo, with an impassioned and manly gesture, placed himself before her to shield her with his body. An unnecessary defense. In the figure of the man standing on the threshold there was nothing of menace; what there was in it to inspire terror was precisely its air of stupor and helplessness; it seemed a corpse, a specter overwhelmed with impotent despair—the face, green rather than sallow, the eyes opened, dull and fixed, the hands and feet trembling. The man was making fruitless efforts to speak; paralysis had begun with the tongue; he tried in vain to move it in his mouth, to form sounds. Horrible conflict! The words struggled for utterance but remained unuttered; his face changed fromlivid to red, the blood becoming congested in it, and the child, clasping her father around the waist, seeing this combat between the spirit and the body, cried:
"Help! help! Papa is dying!"
Nieves, not daring to approach her husband, but comprehending that something very serious was the matter, screamed too for help. And at the various doors appeared one after another Primo Genday and Tropiezo in their shirt-sleeves, and Mendez with a cotton handkerchief tied over his ears.
Segundo stood silent in the middle of the room, uncertain what course to pursue. To leave the room would be cowardly, to remain——Tropiezo shook him.
"Go, flying, to Vilamorta, boy!" he said. "Tell Doroteo, the cabman, to go to Orense and bring back a doctor with him—the best he can find. I don't want to make a trip this time," he added with a wink. "Run, hurry off!"
The Swan approached Nieves, who had thrown herself on the sofa and was weeping, her face covered with her dainty handkerchief.
"They want me to go for a doctor, Nieves. What shall I do?"
"Go!"
"Shall I return?"
"No—for God's sake leave me. Go bring the doctor! go bring the doctor!" And she sobbed more violently than before.
In spite of all Segundo's haste, the physician did not arrive in Las Vides until early on the morning of the following day. He did not think the case an unusual one. This disease often terminated in this way, in paralysis; it was one of the most frequent complications of the terrible malady. He added that it would be well to remove the patient to Orense, taking suitable precautions. The removal was effected without much difficulty, and Don Victoriano lived for a few days longer. Twenty-four hours after the interment Nieves and Victorina, attired in the deepest mourning, departed for the capital.
The black pall of winter has fallen over Vilamorta. It is raining, and in the wet and muddy main street and plaza no one is to be seen but occasionally some countryman, riding enveloped in his grass cloth cloak, his horse's hoofs clattering on the stone pavement, raising showers of mud. There are now no fruit-venders for the simple reason that there is no fruit; all is deserted, damp, muddy, and gloomy; Cansin, in listing slippers, a comforter around his neck, walks up and down unceasingly before his door, to prevent chilblains; the Alcalde avails himself of a very narrow arch in front of his house to pass away the afternoon, walking ten steps up and ten steps down, stamping energetically to keep his feet warm—an exercise which he affirms to be indispensable to his digestion.
Now indeed the little town seems lifeless! There are neither visitors to the springs nor strangers from the surrounding country, neither fairs nor vintages. Everywhere reigns the stillness and solitude of the tomb, and a moisture so persistent that it coverswith a minute green vegetation the stones of the houses in course of construction. These little towns in winter are enough to make the most cheerful person low-spirited; they are the very acme of tedium, the quintessence of dullness—the disinclination to arrange one's hair, to change one's dress, the interminable evenings, the persistent rain, the gloomy cold, the ashen atmosphere, the leaden sky!
In the midst of this species of lethargy in which Vilamorta is plunged there are, however, some happy beings, beings who are now at the summit of felicity, although soon destined to end their existence in the most tragic manner; beings who, by their natural instinct alone, have divined the philosophy of Epicurus and practice it, and eat, drink, and make merry, and neither fear death nor think of the unexplored region which opens its gates to the dying, beings who receive the rain on their smooth skins with rejoicing, beings for whom the mud is a luxurious bath in which they roll and wallow with delight, abandoning the discomfort and narrowness of their lairs and sties. They are the indisputable lords and masters of Vilamorta at this season of the year; they who with their pomps and exploits supply the reunions at the apothecary's with food for conversation, and entertainment for familiar gatherings inwhich their respective sizes are discussed and they are studied from the point of view of their personal qualities, heated discussions taking place as to whether the short or the long ear, the curly tail, the hoof more or less curved upward, and the snout more or less pointed, augur the more succulent flesh and the more abundant fat. Comparisons are made. Pellejo's hog is superb as far as size is concerned, but its flesh, of an erysipelatous rosy hue, and its immense flabby belly, betray the hog of relaxed muscle, nourished on bakehouse refuse; a magnificent swine, that of the Alcalde, which has been fed on chestnuts, not so large as the other, but what hams it will make! What hams! And what bacon! And what a back, broad enough to ride upon! This will be the swine of the season. There are not wanting those who affirm, however, that the queen of the swine of Vilamorta is the pig of Aunt Gáspara, García's pig. The haunches of this magnificent animal look like a highroad; it once came near being suffocated by its own fat; its teats touch its hoofs and kiss the mud of the road. Who can calculate how many pounds of lard it will yield, and the black puddings it will fill with its blood, and the sausages that its intestines will make?
It stops raining for a week; the cold grows moreintense, frost falls, whitening the grass of the paths and hardening the ground. This is the signal for the hecatomb, for which the auspices are now favorable, for, in addition to the cold, the moon is in her last quarter; if she were on the wane the flesh would spoil. The hour has come for wielding the knife. And through the long nights of Vilamorta resound at the most unexpected moments desperate grunts—first grunts of fury, that express the impotent rage of the victim at finding himself bound to the bench, and reveal in the degenerate domestic pig the descendant of the wild mountain boar; then of pain, when the knife penetrates the flesh, an almost human cry when its blade pierces the heart, and at last a series of despairing groans which grow fainter and fainter as life and strength escape with the warm stream of blood.
This bloodcurdling drama was being enacted in the house of the lawyer García at eleven o'clock on a clear frosty December night. The girls, wild with delight, and dying with curiosity, crowded around the expiring pig, in whose heart and throat the butcher, with rolled up sleeves and bare arms, was about to plunge the knife. Segundo, shut up in his bedroom, had before him some sheets of paper, more or less covered with scrawls. He was writing verses.But as the sounds of the tragedy reached him, he dropped his pen with dismay. He had inherited from his mother a profound horror of the spectacle of the killing; it usually cost his mother ten or twelve days of suffering, during which she was unable to eat food, sickened by the sight of the blood, the intestines and the viscera, so like human intestines and human viscera, the greasy flitches of bacon hanging from the roof, and the strong and stimulating odor of the black pudding and spices. Segundo abhorred even the name of pig, and in the morbid condition of his mind, in the nervous excitement which consumed him, it was an indescribable martyrdom to be unable to set his foot outside the door without stumbling against and entangling himself among the accursed and repulsive animals, or seeing, through the half-open doors, portions of their bodies hanging on hooks. All Vilamorta smelled of pig-killing, of warm entrails; Segundo did not know at last where to hide himself, and intrenched himself in his own room, closing the doors and windows tightly, secluding himself from the external world in order to live with his dreams and fancies in a realm where there were no hogs, and where only pine groves, blue flowers and precipices existed. Insufficient precaution to free himself from the torture of that brutalepoch of the year, since here in his own house he was besieged by the drama of gluttony and realism. The poet seized his hat and hurried out of the room. He must flee where these grunts could not penetrate, where those smells should not surround him. He walked along the hall, closing his eyes in order not to see, by the light of the candle which one of the children was holding, Aunt Gáspara with her skeleton-like arm, bare to the elbow, stirring a red and frothing liquid in a large earthern pan. When they saw Segundo leaving the house the sisters burst into shouts of laughter, and called to him, offering him grotesque delicacies, ignoble spoils of the dying.
Leocadia had not retired; she felt ill and she was dozing in a chair, wrapped in a shawl and shivering with cold; she opened the door quickly to Segundo, asking him in alarm if anything had happened. Nothing, indeed. They were killing the pig at home—a Toledan night; they would not let him sleep. Besides, the night was so cold—he felt somewhat indisposed—as if he had a chill. Would she make him a cup of coffee, or better still, a rum punch?
"Both, my heart, this very instant!"
Leocadia recovered her spirits and her energy as if by enchantment. Soon there rose from the punch-bowl the sapphire flame of the punch. In its glarethe schoolmistress's face seemed very thin. It had lost its former healthy color, a warm brown like that of the crust of a well-baked loaf. The pangs of disappointed love were revealed in the pallor of her cheeks, in the feverish brightness of her eyes, the purplish hue of her lips. Grief had given her prosaic features an almost poetic stamp; as she had grown thinner her eyes looked larger; she was not now the robust woman, with firm flesh and fresh-colored lips, who, pitted though she was by the smallpox, could still draw a coarse compliment from the tavern-keeper; the fire of an imperious, uncontrollable, and exacting passion was consuming her inwardly—the love which comes late in life, that devouring love which reason cannot conquer, nor time uproot, nor circumstances change, which fixes its talons in the vitals and releases its prey only when it has destroyed it.
And this love was of so singular a nature that,—insatiable, volcanic, desperate, as it was,—far from dictating acts of violence to Leocadia and drawing from her furious reproaches, it inspired her with a self-abnegation and a generosity without limits, banishing from her mind every thought of self.
The summer, the vintage season, the whole periodduring which she had scarcely seen Segundo, when she knew he had not given her a passing thought, that he was devoting himself to another woman, had been horrible for her; and yet not a jealous word, not a complaint had crossed her lips, nor did she once regret having given Segundo the money; and when she saw the poet, her joy was so genuine, so profound, that it effaced, as if by magic, the remembrance of her sufferings and repaid her for them a hundredfold.
Now there was an additional reason why she should lavish her affection upon the poet. He too was suffering, he was ill. What was the matter with him? He himself did not know: hypochondria, the grief of separation, spleen, the impatient disgust produced by the contrast of his mean surroundings with the dreams that filled his imagination. A constant inappetency, depression of spirits, an uneasy sensation in the stomach, nerves on the stretch, like the strings of a guitar. And his love for Nieves was not like Leocadia's love, one of those passions that absorb the whole being, affect the heart, attenuate the flesh, and subjugate the soul. Nieves lived only in his imagination, in his vanity, in his lyrics, in his romantic reveries, those eternal inspirers of love.Nieves was the visible incarnation, in beautiful and alluring form, of his longings for fame, his literary ambition.
Leocadia had served the punch and was pouring out the coffee when, her hand trembling with pleasure and emotion, she spilled some of the hot liquid, scalding herself slightly; she took no notice of the burn, however, but went on, with the same solicitude as always, to minister to Segundo's comfort. Thinking to please and interest the poet she asked him for news of the volume of poems which he had in hand, and which was to spread his fame far beyond Vilamorta, so soon as it should be published in Orense. Segundo did not show much enthusiasm at this prospect.
"In Orense," he said, "in Orense——Do you know that I have changed my mind? Either I shall publish it in Madrid or I shall not publish it at all. The loss to Spanish literature would not be so very great."
"And why don't you want to publish it now in Orense?"
"I will tell you. Roberto Blanquez is right in the advice he gives me in a letter he has just written me from Madrid. You know that Roberto is in a situation there. He says that no one reads books publishedin the provinces; that he has noticed the contempt with which books that do not bear the imprint of some publishing house of the capital are looked upon there. And besides, that they delay a century here in printing a volume, and when it is printed it is full of errors, and unattractive in appearance—in short, that they do not take. And therefore——"
"Well, then, let the book be published in Madrid. How much would it cost?"
"Child, the prices Roberto tells me are enough to frighten one. It seems that the affair would cost a fortune. No publisher will buy verses or even share with the author the expense of publishing them."
Leocadia answered only by a smile. The little parlor had a look of homelike comfort. Although winter had despoiled the balcony of its charms, turning the sweet basil yellow and withering the carnations, within, the hissing of the coffee-pot, the alcoholic vapor of the punch, the quietude, the solicitous affection of the schoolmistress, all seemed to temper and soften the atmosphere. Segundo felt a pleasant drowsiness stealing over him.
"Will you give me a blanket from your bed?" he said to the schoolmistress. "There is not a spot athome where I could rest to-night. I might sleep a little on the sofa here."
"You will be cold."
"I shall be in heaven. Go."
Leocadia left the room, and returned dragging in with her an unwieldy bulk—a mattress; then she brought a blanket; then, pillows. Total, a complete bed. For all that was wanting—only the sheets—she brought them also.
Leocadia did not vacillate on the following day. She knew the way and she went straight to the lawyer's house. The latter received her with a frowning brow. Did people think he was coining money? Leocadia had now no land to sell; what she brought was of trifling value. If she made up her mind to mortgage the house he would speak to his brother-in-law Clodio, who had some money saved, and who would like to have some such piece of property. Leocadia breathed a sigh of regret, it was not with her as with the peasantry—she had no attachment to land, but the house! So neat, so pretty, so comfortable, arranged according to her own taste!
"Pshaw, by paying the amount of the mortgage you can have it back the moment you wish."
So it was settled. Clodio handed out the money, tempted by the hope of obtaining, at half its value, so cozy a nest in which to end his bachelor existence. In the evening Leocadia asked Segundo to show her the manuscript of his poems and to readsome of them to her. Frequent mention was made in them, with reticences and transparent allusions, of certain blue flowers, of the murmur of a pine wood, of a precipice, and of various other things which Leocadia knew well were not inventions, but had their explanation in past, and to her unknown, events. The schoolmistress divined a love story whose heroine could be no one but Nieves Mendez. But what she could not understand, what she could not explain, was how Señora de Comba, now a widow, and free to reward Segundo's love, did not do so immediately. The verses breathed profound despondency, ardent passion, and intense bitterness. Now Leocadia understood Segundo's sadness, his dejection, his mental anguish. How much he must suffer in secret! Poets, by their nature, must suffer more and crueler tortures than the rest of humanity. There was not a doubt of it—this separation, these memories were killing Segundo slowly. Leocadia hesitated how to begin the conversation.
"See, listen. Those verses are beautiful and deserve to be printed in letters of gold. It just happens, child, that I received some money a few days ago from Orense. Do you know what I was thinking of the other night while you were asleep in the little bed I arranged for you? That it would bebetter for you to go yourself to publish them—yonder—to Madrid."
To her great surprise she saw that Segundo's face clouded. To go to Madrid now! Impossible; he must first learn something of Nieves. The last tragic scene of his love affair, the dénouement of her sudden widowhood, raised between them a barrier difficult to pass. Nieves was rich, and if Segundo should go to her now and throw himself at her feet, he would not be the lover asking her to requite his love, but the suitor to her hand, alleging anterior rights and basing on them his aspirations to replace her defunct husband. And Segundo, who had accepted money from Leocadia, felt his pride rebel at the thought that Nieves might take him for a fortune-hunter, or might scorn him for his obscurity and his poverty. But did not Nieves love him? Had she not told him so? Why, then, did she not send him some message. True, he had made no attempt to communicate with the beautiful widow, or to refresh her memory. He feared to do it awkwardly, inopportunely, and so reopen the wound caused by the death of her husband.
The volume of verses—an excellent idea! The volume of verses was the one means of recovering his place in Nieves' recollection worthily, borne onthe wings of popular applause. If this volume were read, admired, praised, it would win fame for its author; the difference between his own and Nieves' social position, which might now make his pretensions appear ridiculous, would disappear. "To marry!" said Segundo to himself. Marriage seemed to him a secondary matter. Let Nieves only love him. It was love he asked, not marriage. Sitting at Leocadia's very table he wrote to Blanquez, giving him instructions, and prepared the manuscript to post it, and made out the index and the title-page with the impatient joy of one who, expecting to win a fortune, buys a ticket in the lottery. When he was gone Leocadia remained sunk in thought. Segundo had no desire to go to Madrid. Then the gleam of happiness that flashed across her mind at the thought that Segundo should establish himself in Vilamorta was quenched by two considerations—one was that Segundo would die of tedium here; the other that she could not long continue to supply his wants. In mortgaging the house she had burned her last cartridge. What should she mortgage now—herself? And she smiled sadly. In the hall resounded the steps of the neglected little cripple, on his way to bed, where Flores would soon lull him to sleep with her solecisms and barbarous litanies. The mothersighed. And this being, this being who had no support but her—what should he live on? When ruin had overtaken her, and she could no longer give him food or shelter, what a mute and continual reproach would the presence of the unhappy child be to her! And how could she set him to work?
To work! This word brought to her mind the plans she had matured in those hours of sleeplessness and despair in which all the past is retraced in thought and new plans are formed for the future and every possible course of action is deliberated upon. It was plain that Minguitos was unfitted for the material labor of cultivating the ground, or for making shoes, or grinding chocolate, like that good-looking Ramon; but he knew how to read and write and in arithmetic, with a little help from Leocadia, he would be a prodigy. To sit behind a counter kills nobody; to attend to a customer, to answer his questions, take the money, enter down what is sold, are rather entertaining occupations that cheer the mind than fatiguing labors. In this way the little hunchback would be amused and would lose a little of his terror of strangers, his morbid fear of being laughed at.
A few years before if anyone had proposed to Leocadia to separate her from her child, to deprive himof the shelter of her loving arms, she would have insulted him. Now it seemed to her so easy and natural a solution of the question to make him a clerk in a shop. Something, nevertheless, still thrilled in the depths of her mother's heart, some fibers still closely attached to the soul, that bled, that hurt. She must tear them away quickly. It was all for the good of the child, to make a man of him, so that to-day or to-morrow——
Leocadia held two or three consultations with Cansin, who had a cousin in Orense, the proprietor of a cloth shop; and Cansin, dilating upon his influence with him, and the importance of the favor, gave the schoolmistress a warm letter of recommendation to him. Leocadia went to the city, saw the shopkeeper, and the conditions on which he agreed to receive Minguitos were agreed upon. The boy would be fed and lodged, his clothes washed, and he would receive an occasional suit, made from the remnants of cloth left over in the shop. As to pay, he would be paid nothing until he should have acquired a thorough knowledge of the business—for a couple of years or so. And was he very much deformed? Because that would not be very pleasant for the customers. And was he honest? Hehad never taken any money out of his mother's drawer, had he?
Leocadia returned home with her soul steeped in gall. How should she tell Minguitos and Flores? Especially Flores! Impossible, impossible—she would create a scandal that would alarm the neighborhood. And she had promised to take Minguitos without fail on the following Monday! A stratagem occurred to her. She said that a relative of hers lived in Orense and that she wished to take the child there to make his acquaintance. She depicted the journey in glowing colors, so that Minguitos might think he was going on a pleasure trip. Did he not want to see Orense again? It was a magnificent town. She would show him the hot springs, the Cathedral. The child, with an instinctive horror of public places, of coming in contact with strangers, sorrowfully shook his head; and as for the old servant, as if she divined what was going on, she raged and stormed all the week. When Sunday came and mother and son were about to take their departure in the stage-coach Flores threw her arms around the neck of the boy as he was mounting the step, and embraced him with the tremulous and doting fondness of a grandmother, covering his face with kisses,and moistening it with the saliva on her withered lips. She spent the rest of the day sitting in the doorway, muttering words of rage, or of tender pity, her forehead pressed between her hands in an attitude of despair.
Leocadia, once they were in the diligence, tried to convince the boy that the change was for his good; describing to him the pleasant life that awaited him in that fine shop situated in the most central part of Orense, which was so lively, where he would have very little to do, and where he had the hope of earning, if not to-day, to-morrow, a little money for himself. At her first words the boy fixed on his mother his astonished eyes, in which a look of intelligence gradually began to dawn. Minguitos was quick of comprehension. He drew up close to his mother, and laid his head down on her lap without speaking.
As he continued silent, Leocadia said to him:
"What is the matter with you? Does your head ache?"
"No; let me sleep so—for a little—until we reach Orense."
And thus he remained, quiet and silent, lulled to sleep, apparently, by the creaking of the diligence and the deafening noise of the windows rattling intheir sashes. When they reached the city Leocadia touched him on the shoulder, saying:
"We have arrived."
They alighted from the stagecoach and then only did Leocadia observe that her lap was moist and that, on the spot where the boy had rested his forehead, sparkled two or three crystal drops. But on finding himself among strangers, in the gloomy shop crowded with rolls of dark cloth, the hunchback's attitude ceased to be resigned; he caught hold of his mother's skirt with a despairing impulse, uttering a single cry in which were concentrated all his reproaches, all his affection:
"M-a-a-a-m-m-a—m-a-a-a-m-m-a!"
This cry still resounded through Leocadia's heart when, on her arrival at Vilamorta, she saw Flores lying in wait for her in the doorway. Lying in wait is the exact expression, for Flores threw herself upon her, the moment she appeared, like a bulldog, like a wild animal asking for and demanding her young. And as a man in a fit of rage throws at his adversary whatever he finds nearest his hand so Flores heaped on Leocadia every species of insult, all sorts of injurious and opprobrious epithets, crying, in a voice that trembled with rage and hatred:
"Thief, thief, wretch! What have you done with your child, thief? Go, drunkard, vagabond, go drink your liqueurs—and your child, perhaps, dying of hunger! Reprobate, wolf, traitress, where is the child? Where is the little angel? Where have you hidden him, schemer? In such a hurry you were to get rid of him so as to be left alone with your trumpery young gentleman! Wolf, wolf—if I had a gun, as sure as I am standing here, I would send a charge of shot into you!"
Leocadia, her face pale, her eyes red with weeping, put out her hand to stop the mouth of the frenzied old woman; but the latter caught her fingers between her toothless gums, biting them and slavering them with the foam of her fury, and when the schoolmistress went upstairs, the old woman followed her, crying after her in hoarse and sinister accents:
"You will never have the grace of God, wolf—God and the Holy Virgin will punish you! Go, go, rejoice now because you have carried out your evil designs! May you be forever accursed, accursed, accursed!"
The malediction made Leocadia shudder. The house, with Minguitos away, seemed like a tomb.Flores had neither made the dinner nor lighted the lamp. Leocadia, too sick at heart to do either, threw herself on the bed, dressed as she was, and, later on, undressed herself and went to bed without tasting a morsel of food.