If he was offended and kept silence, she was the one who talked of love, of eternal passions between two beings of lofty minds, based on the harmony of their thoughts; and she did not cease this dangerous conversation until the master, with a sudden renewal of confidence, came forward offering his love, only to be received with that kindly and still ironical smile that seemed to look on him as a child whose judgment was faulty.
And so the master lived, fluctuating between hope and despair, now favored, now repelled, but always incapable of escaping from her influence, as if a crime were haunting him. He sought opportunities to see her alone with the ingenuity of a college boy, he invented pretexts for going to her house at unusual hours, when there were no callers present, and his courage failed him when he ran into the pretty doctor and felt around himself that sensation of uneasiness which always seizes an unwelcome guest.
The vague hope of meeting the countess at Moncloa, of walking with her a whole afternoon, unmolested by that circle of insufferable people who surrounded her with their drooling worship, kept him excited all night and the next morning, as if a real rendezvous were awaiting him. Would she go? Was not her promise a mere whim that she had immediately forgotten? He sent a note to an ex-minister of State, whose portrait he was painting, to ask him not to come to the studio that afternoon, and after luncheon he got into a cab, telling the cabby to beat the horse, to go full speed, for fear of being late.
He knew that it would be hours before she came, if she did come; but a mad, unreasonable impatience filled him. He thought without knowing why that, by arriving ahead of time, he would hasten the countess's coming.
He got out in the square in front of the little palace of Moncloa. The cab disappeared in the direction of Madrid, up hill along an avenue that was lost in the distance behind an arch of dry branches.
Renovales walked up and down, alone in the littlesquare. The sun was shining in a patch of blue sky, among the heavy clouds. In the places which its rays did not reach, it was cold. The water ran down from the foot of the trees, after dripping from the branches and trickling down the trunks; it was melting rapidly. The wood seemed to weep with joy under the caress of the sun, that destroyed the last traces of the white shroud.
The majestic silence of Nature, abandoned to its own power, surrounded the artist. The pines were swinging with the long gusts of wind, filling space with a murmur, like the sound of distant harps. The square was hidden in the icy shadow of the trees. Up above in the front of the palace some pigeons, seeking the sun above the tops of the pines, swept around the old flagpole and the classic busts blackened by the weather. Then, tired of flying, they settled down on the rusty iron balconies, adding to the old building a white fluttering decoration, a rustling garland of feathers. In the middle of the square a marble swan, with its neck violently stretched toward the sky, threw out a jet, whose murmur seemed to heighten the impression of icy cold which he felt in the shadow.
Renovales began to walk, crushing the frozen crust that cracked under his feet in the shady places. He leaned over the circular iron rail that surrounds a part of the square. Through the curtain of black branches, where the first buds were beginning to open, he saw the ridge that bounds the horizon; the mountains of Guadarrama, phantoms of snow that were mingled with the masses of clouds. Nearer, the mountains of Pardo stood out with their dark peaks, black with pines, and to the left stretched out the slopes of the hills of the Casa de Campo, where the first yellow touches of spring were beginning to show.
At his feet lay the fields of Moncloa, the antique littlegardens, the grove of Viveros, bordering the stream. Carriages were moving in the roads below, their varnished tops flashing in the sun like fiery mortar boards. The meadows, the foliage of the woods, everything seemed clean and bright after the recent storm. The all-pervading green tone, with its infinite variations from black to yellow, smiled at the touch of the sun after the chill of the snow. In the distance sounded the constant reports of shotguns that seemed to tear the air with the intensity that is common in still afternoons. They were hunting in the Casa de Campo. Between the colonnades of trees and the green sheets of the meadows, the water flashed in the sun, bits of ponds, glimpses of canals, pools of melted snow, like bright trembling edges of huge swords, lost in the grass.
Renovales hardly looked at the landscape; it had no message for him that afternoon. He was preoccupied with other things. He saw a smart coupé come down the avenue, and he left the belvedere to go to meet it. She was coming! But the coupé passed by him, slowly and majestically without stopping and he saw through the window an old lady wrapped in furs, with sunken eyes and distorted mouth, trembling with old age, her head bobbing with the movement of the carriage. It disappeared in the direction of the little church beside the palace and the painter was alone again.
No! She would not come! His heart began to tell him that there was no use waiting.
Some little girls, with battered shoes, and straight greasy hair that floated around their necks, began to run about the square. Renovales did not see where they came from. Perhaps they were the children of the guardian of the palace.
A guard came down the avenue with his gun hanging from his shoulder, and his horn at his side. Beyondapproached a man in black, who looked like a servant, escorted by two huge dogs, two majestic bluish-gray Danes, that walked with a dignified bearing, prudent and moderate but proud of their terrifying appearance. Not a carriage could be seen. Curses!
Seated on one of the stone benches, the master finally took out the little notebook that he always carried with him. He sketched the figures of the children as they ran around the fountain. That was one way to kill time. One after the other he sketched all the girls, then he caught them in several groups, but at last they disappeared behind the palace, going down toward the Caño Gordo. Renovales, having nothing to distract him, left his seat and walked about, stamping noisily. His feet were like ice, this waiting in the cold was putting him in a terrible mood. Then he went and sat down on another bench near the servant in black, who had the two dogs at his knees. They were sitting on their hind paws, resting with as much dignity as real people, watching that gentleman with their gray eyes that winked intelligently, as he looked at them attentively and then moved his pencil on the book that rested on his knee. The painter sketched the two dogs in different postures, giving himself up to the work with such interest that he quite forgot his purpose in coming there. Oh, what splendid creatures! Renovales loved animals in which beauty was united with strength. If he had lived alone and could have consulted his own tastes, he would have converted his house into a menagerie.
The servant went away with his dogs and the artist once more was left alone. Several couples passed slowly, arm in arm, and disappeared behind the palace toward the gardens below. Then a group of school boys that left behind them, as their cassocks fluttered, that odor ofhealthy, dirty flesh that is peculiar to barracks and convents. And still the countess did not come!
The painter went again to rest his elbows on the balustrade of the belvedere. He would only wait a half an hour longer. The afternoon was wearing away; the sun was still high, but from time to time the landscape was darkened. The clouds that had been confined on the horizon had been let loose and they were rolling through the field of the sky like a flock of sheep, assuming fantastic shapes, rushing eagerly in tumultuous confusion as if they wished to swallow the ball of fire that was slipping slowly over a bit of clear blue sky.
Suddenly, Renovales felt a sort of shock near his heart. No one had touched him; it was a warning of his nerves that for some time had been especially irritable. She was near, was coming he was sure. And turning around, he saw her, still a long way off, coming down the avenue, in black with a fur coat, her hands in a little muff and a veil over her eyes. Her tall, graceful silhouette was outlined against the yellow ground as she passed the trees. Her carriage was returning up the hill, perhaps to wait for her at the top near the School of Agriculture.
As she met him in the center of the square she held out her gloved hand, warm from the muff, and they turned toward the belvedere, chatting.
"I'm in a furious mood, disgusted to death. I didn't expect to come; I forgot all about it, upon my word. But as I was coming out of the President's house I thought of you. I was sure I would find you here. And so I have come to have you drive away my ill humor."
Through the veil, Renovales saw her eyes that flashed hostilely and her dainty lips angrily tightened.
She spoke quickly, eager to vent the wrath that was swelling her heart, without paying any attention to whatwas around her, as if she were in her own drawing room where everything was familiar.
She had been to see the Prime-Minister to recommend her "affair" to his attention; a desire of the count's on the fulfillment of which his happiness depended. Poor Paco (her husband) dreamed of the Golden Fleece. That was the only thing that was lacking to crown the tower of crosses, keys and ribbons that he was raising about his person, from his belly to his neck, till not an inch of his body was without this glorious covering. The Golden Fleece and then death! Why should they not do this favor for Paco, such a good man, who would not hurt a fly? What would it cost them to grant him this toy and make him happy?
"There aren't any friends any longer, Mariano," said the countess bitterly. "The Prime-Minister is a fool who forgets his old friendships now that he is head of the government. I who have seen him sighing around me like a comic opera tenor, making love to me (yes, I tell the truth to you) and ready to commit suicide because I scorned his vulgarity and foolishness! This afternoon, the same old story; lots of holding my hand, lots of making eyes, 'dear Concha,' 'sweet Concha' and other sugary expressions, just such as he sings in Congress like an old canary. Sum total, the Fleece is impossible, he is very sorry, but at Court they are unwilling."
And the countess, as if she saw for the first time where she was, turned her eyes angrily toward the dark hills of the Casa de Campo, where shots could still be heard.
"And they wonder that people think this way or that! I am an anarchist, do you hear, Mariano? Every day I feel more revolutionary. Don't laugh, for it is no jest. Poor Paco, who is a lamb of God, is horrified to hearme. 'Woman, think what we are! We must be on good terms with the royal house.' But I rise in rebellion; I know them; a crowd of reprobates. Why shouldn't my Paco have the Fleece, if the poor man needs it. I tell you, master, this cowardly, meek country makes me raging mad. We ought to have what France had in '93. If I were alone, without all these trifles of name and position, I would do to-day something that would stir people. I'd throw a bomb, no, not a bomb; I'd get a revolver and——"
"Fire!" shouted the painter, bursting into a laugh.
Concha drew back indignantly.
"Don't joke, master. I'll go away. I'll slap you. This is more serious than you think. This afternoon is no time for jokes."
But her fickle nature contradicted the seriousness that she pretended to give her words, for she smiled slightly, as if pleased at some memory.
"It wasn't wholly a failure," she said after a long pause. "My hands aren't empty. The prime-minister didn't want to make me his enemy and so he offered me a compensation, since the 'Lamb' affair was impossible. A deputy's chair at the next election."
Renovales' eyes opened in astonishment. "For whom do you want that? To whom is that going to be given?"
"To whom?" mimicked Concha with mock astonishment. "To whom! To whom do you suppose, you simpleton! Not for you, you don't know anything about that or anything else, except your brushes. For Monteverde, for the doctor, who will do great things."
The artist's noisy laugh resounded in the silence of the square.
"Darwin a deputy of the majority! Darwin saying 'Aye' and 'No.'"
And after these exclamations his laugh of mock astonishment continued.
"Laugh, you old bear! Open that mouth wider; wag your apostolic beard! How funny you are! And what's strange about that? But don't laugh any longer; you make me nervous. I'll go away, if you keep on like this."
They remained silent for a long while. The countess was not long in forgetting her troubles; her bird-like brain never retained any one impression for long. She looked around her with disdainful eyes, eager to mortify the painter. Was that what Renovales raved over so? Was there nothing more?
They began to walk slowly, going down to the terraced gardens behind the palace. They descended the moss-covered slopes that were streaked with the black flint of the flights of stairs.
The silence was deathlike. The water murmured as it flowed from the trunks of the trees, forming little streams that trickled down hill, almost invisible in the grass. In some shady spots there still remained piles of snow, like bundles of white wool. The shrill cries of the birds sounded like the scratching of a diamond on glass. At the edge of the stairways, the pedestals of black, crumbling stone recalled the statues and urns they had once supported. The little gardens, cut in geometric figures, stretched out the Greek square of their carpet of foliage on each level of the terrace. In the squares, the fountains spurted in pools surrounded by rusted railings, or flowed down triple layers with a ceaseless murmur. Water everywhere,—in the air, in the ground, whispering, icy, adding to the cold impression of the landscape, where the sun seemed a red blotch of color devoid of heat.
They passed under arches of vines, between hugedying trees covered to the top with winding rings of ivy that clung to the venerable trunks, veneered with a green and yellow crust. The paths were bounded on one side by the slope of the hill, from the top of which came the invisible tinkling of a bell, and where from time to time there appeared on the blue background of the sky the massive outline of a slowly moving cow. On the other, a rustic railing of branches painted white bounded the path and, beyond it, in the valley, lay the dark flower beds with their melancholy solitude and their fountains that wept day and night in an atmosphere of old age and abandon. The closely matted brambles stretched from tree to tree along the slopes. The slender cypresses, the tall pines with their straight trunks, formed a thick colonnade, a lattice through which the sunlight flitted, a false unearthly light, that striped the ground with bands of gold and bars of shadow.
The painter praised the spot enthusiastically. It was the only corner for artists that could be found in Madrid. It was there that the great Don Francisco had worked. It seemed as though at some turn in the path they would run into Goya, sitting before his easel, scowling ill-naturedly at some dainty duchess who was serving as his model.
Modern clothes seemed out of keeping with this background. Renovales declared that the correct apparel for such a landscape was a bright coat, a powdered wig, silk stockings, walking beside a Directoire gown.
The countess smiled as she listened to the painter. She looked about with great curiosity; that was not a bad walk; she guessed it was the first time she ever saw it. Very pretty! But she was not fond of the country.
To her mind the best landscape was the silks of a drawing room and, as for trees, she preferred the scenery at the Opera to the accompaniment of music.
"The country bores me, master. It makes me so sad. If you leave Nature alone to itself it is very commonplace."
They entered a little square in the center of which was a pool, on the level of the ground, with stone posts that marked where there had once been a railing. The water, swollen by the melting snow, was overflowing the stone curb, and reached out in a thin sheet as it started down hill. The countess stopped, afraid of wetting her feet. The painter went ahead, putting his feet in the driest places, taking her hand to guide her, and she followed him, laughing at the obstacle and picking up her skirts.
As they continued their way down another path, Renovales kept that soft little hand in his, feeling its warmth through the glove. She let him hold it, as if she did not notice his touch, but still with a faint expression of mischievousness on her lips and in her eyes. The master seemed undecided, embarrassed, as if he did not know how to begin.
"Always the same?" he asked weakly. "Haven't you a little charity for me to-day?"
The countess broke out in a merry laugh.
"There it comes. I was expecting it; that's why I hesitated to come. In the carriage I said to myself several times: 'My dear, you're making a mistake in going to Moncloa; you will be bored to death; you may expect declaration number one thousand.'"
Then she assumed a tone of mock indignation.
"But, master, can't you talk about anything else? Are we women condemned to be unable to talk with a man without his feeling obliged to pour out a proposal?"
Renovales protested. She might say that to other men, but not to him, for he was in love with her. He swore it; he would say it on his knees, to make her believe it. Madly in love with her! But she mimicked him grotesquely, raising one hand to her breast and laughing cruelly.
"Yes, I know, the old story. There's no use in your repeating it; I know it by heart. A volcano in my breast, impossible to live without you—if you do not love me, I will kill myself. They all say the same thing. I never saw such a lack of originality. Master, for goodness sake, do not be so commonplace! A man like you saying such things!"
Renovales was crushed by her mocking mimicry. But Concha, as if she took pity on him, hastened to add, in an affectionate tone:
"Why should you have to be in love with me? Do you think I shall esteem you less if I relieve you from an obligation that all men who surround me feel under? I like you, master; I need to see you; I should be very sorry if we quarreled. I like you as a friend; the best of all, the first. I like you because you are good; a great big boy; a bearded baby who doesn't know even the least bit about the world, but who is very,verytalented. I've wanted for a long time to see you alone, to talk with you quite freely, to tell you this. I like you as I like no one else. When I am with you, I feel a confidence such as no other man inspires in me. Good friends, brother and sister, if you will. But don't put on such a gloomy face! Look pleasant, please! Give one of your laughs that cheer my soul, master!"
But the master remained sullen, looking at the ground, running the fingers of his hand through his thick beard.
"All that's a lie, Concha," he said rudely. "The truth is that you are in love, you're mad over that worthless Monteverde."
The countess smiled, as if the rudeness of these words flattered her.
"Well, yes, Mariano. We like each other; I believe Ilove him as I never loved any man. I have never told anyone; you are the first one to hear it from me, because you are my friend, because somehow or other I tell you everything. We like each other or, rather, I like him much more than he does me. There is something like gratitude in my love. I don't deceive myself, Mariano! Thirty-six years! I venture to confess my age to you. However, I am still presentable; I keep my youth well, but he is much younger. Years younger and I could almost be his mother."
She was silent for a moment, almost frightened at this difference between her lover's age and hers, but then she added with a sudden confidence:
"He likes me, too, I know. I am his adviser, his inspiration; he says that with me he feels a new strength for work, that he will be a great man, thanks to me. But I like him more, much more than he does me; there is almost as great a difference in our affections as there is in our ages."
"And why do you not love me?" said the master tearfully. "I worship you, the tables would be turned. I would be the one to surround you with constant idolatry, and you would let me worship you, caress you, as I would an idol, my head bowed at its feet."
Concha laughed again, mocking the artist's hoarse voice, his passionate expression, and his eager eyes.
"Why don't I love you? Master, don't be childish. There's no use in asking such things, you cannot dictate to Love. I do not like you as you want me to, because it is impossible. Be satisfied to be my best friend. You know I show a confidence in you that I do not show to Monteverde. Yes, I tell you things I would never tell him."
"But the other part!" exclaimed the painter violently."What I need, what I am hungry for,—you, your beauty, real love!"
"Master, contain yourself," she said with affected modesty. "How well I know you! You're going to say some of those horrid things that men always say when they rave over a woman. I'm going away so as not to hear you."
Then she added with maternal seriousness, as if she wanted to reprimand his violence:
"I am not so crazy as people think. I consider the consequences of my actions carefully. Mariano, look at yourself, think of your position. A wife, a daughter who will marry one of these days, the prospect of being a grandfather. And you still think of such follies! I could not accede to your proposal even if I loved you. How terrible! To deceive Josephina, the friend of my school-days! Poor thing, so gentle, so kind,—always ill. No, Mariano, never. A man cannot enter such compromising affairs, unless he is free. I could never feel like loving you. Friends, nothing more than friends!"
"Well, we will not be that," exclaimed Renovales impetuously. "I will leave your house forever. I will not see you any longer. I will do anything to forget you. It is an intolerable torment. My life will be calmer if I do not see you."
"You will not go away," said Concha quietly, certain of her power. "You will remain beside me just as you always have, if you really like me, and I shall have in you my best friend. Don't be a baby, master, you will see that there is something charming about our friendship that you do not understand now. I shall give you something that the rest do not know,—intimacy, confidence."
And as she said this, she put one hand on the painter'sarm and drew closer to him, searching him with her eyes in which there was a strange, mysterious light.
A horn sounded near them; there was swift rush of heavy wheels. An automobile shot past them at full speed, following the highroad. Renovales tried to make out the figures in the car, hardly larger than dolls in the distance. Perhaps it was López de Sosa, who was driving, perhaps his wife and daughter were those two little figures, wrapped in veils, who occupied the seats.
The possibility of Josephina's having passed through the background of the landscape without seeing him, without noticing that he was there, forgetful of everything, an imploring lover, overcame him with the sense of remorse.
They remained motionless for a long while in silence, leaning on the rough wooden railing, watching through the colonnade of the trees the bright, cherry-red sun, as it sank, lighting up the horizon with a blaze of fire. The leaden clouds, seeing it on the point of death, assailed it with treacherous greed.
Concha watched the sunset with the interest that a sight but seldom seen arouses.
"Look at that huge cloud, master. How black it is! It looks like a dragon; no, a hippopotamus; see its round paws, like towers. How it runs! It's going to eat the sun. It's eating it! It has swallowed it now!"
The landscape grew dark. The sun had disappeared inside of that monster that filled the horizon. Its waving back was edged with silver, and as if it could not hold the burning star; it broke below, pouring out a rain of pale rays. Then, burned by this digestion, it vanished in smoke, was torn into black tufts, and once more the red disc appeared, bathing sky and earth with gold, peopling the water of the pools with restless fiery fishes.
Renovales, leaning on the railing with one elbow beside the countess, breathed her subtle fragrance, felt the warm touch of her firm body.
"Let's go back, master," she said with a suggestion of uneasiness in her voice. "I feel cold. Besides, with a companion like you, it's impossible to stay still."
And she hastened her step, realizing from her experience with men the danger of remaining alone with Renovales. His pale, excited face warned her that he was likely to make some reckless, impetuous advance.
In the square of Caño Gordo they passed a couple going slowly down the hill, very close together, not yet daring to walk arm in arm, but ready to put their arms around each other's waists as soon as they disappeared in the next path. The young man carried his cloak under his arm, as proudly as a gallant in the old comedies; she, small and pale, without any beauty except that of youth, was wrapped in a poor cloak and walked with her simple eyes fixed on her companion's.
"Some student with his girl," said Renovales. "They are happier than we are, Concha."
"We are getting old, master," she said with feigned sadness, excluding herself from old age, loading the whole burden of years on her companion.
Renovales turned toward her in a final outburst of protest.
"Why should I not be as happy as that boy? Haven't I a right to it? Concha, you do not know who I am; you forget it, accustomed as you are to treat me like a child. I am Renovales, the painter, the famous master. I am known all over the world."
And he spoke of his fame with brutal indelicacy, growing more and more irritated at her coldness, displaying his renown like a mantle of light that should blind women and make them fall at his feet. And a man like him hadto submit to being put off for that simpleton of a doctor?
The countess smiled with pity. Her eyes, too, revealed a sort of compassion. The fool! The child! How absurd men of talent were!
"Yes, you are a great man, master. That is why I am proud of your friendship. I even admit that it gives me some importance. I like you. I feel admiration for you."
"No, not admiration, Concha, love! To belong to each other! Complete love."
She continued to laugh.
"Oh, my boy; Love!"
Her eyes seemed to speak to him ironically. Love does not distinguish talents; it is ignorant and therefore boasts of its blindness. It only perceives the fragrance of youth, of life in its flower.
"We shall be friends, Mariano, friends and nothing more. You will grow accustomed to it and find our affection dear. Don't be material; it doesn't seem as if you were an artist. Idealism, master, that is what you need."
And she continued to talk to him from the heights of her pity, until they parted near the place where her carriage was waiting for her.
"Friends, Mariano, nothing more than friends, but true friends."
When Concha had gone, Renovales walked in the shadows of the twilight, gesticulating and clenching his fists, until he left Moncloa. Finding himself alone, he was again filled with wrath and insulted the countess mentally, now that he was free from the loving subjection that he suffered in her presence. How she amused herself with him! How his friends would laugh to see him helplessly submissive to that woman who had belonged to somany! His pride made him insist on conquering her, at any cost, even of humiliation and brutality. It was an affair of honor to make her his, even if it were only once, and then to take revenge by repelling her, throwing her at his feet, and saying with a sovereign air, "That is what I do to people who resist me."
But then he realized his weakness. He would always be beaten by that woman who looked at him coldly, who never lost her calm and considered him an inferior being. His dejection made him think of his family, of his sick wife, and the duties that bound him to her, and he felt the bitter joy of the man who sacrifices himself, taking up his cross.
His mind was made up. He would flee from the woman. He would not see her again.
And he did not see her; he did not see her for two days. But on the third there came a letter in a long blue envelope scented with a perfume that made him tremble.
The countess complained of his absence in affectionate terms. She needed to see him, she had many things to tell him. A real love-letter which the artist hastened to hide, for fear that if any one read it, he would suspect what was not yet true.
Renovales was indignant.
"I will go to see her," he said to himself, walking up and down the studio. "But it will be only to give her a piece of my mind, and have done with her once and for all. If she thinks she is going to play with me, she is mistaken; she doesn't know that, when I want to be, I am like stone."
Poor master! While in one corner of his mind he was formulating this cruel determination to be a man of stone, in the other a sweet voice was murmuring seductively:
"Go quickly, take advantage of the opportunity. Perhaps she has repented. She is waiting for you; she is going to be yours."
And the artist hastened to the countess's anxiously. Nothing. She complained of his absence with affected sadness. She liked him so much! She needed to see him, she could not have any peace as long as she felt that he was offended with her on account of the other afternoon. And they spent nearly two hours together in the private room she used as an office, until at the end of the afternoon the serious friends of the countess began toarrive, her coterie of mute worshipers and last of all Monteverde with the calm of a man who has nothing to fear.
The painter left the house. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened except that he had twice kissed the countess's hand; the conventional caress and nothing more. Whenever he tried to go farther, moving his lips along her arm, she checked him imperiously.
"I shall be angry, master, and not receive you any more alone! You are not keeping the agreement!"
Renovales protested. They had not made any agreement; but Concha managed to calm him instantly by asking about Milita, praising her beauty, inquiring for poor Josephina, so good, so lovable, showing great concern for her health and promising to call on her soon. And the master was restrained, tormented by remorse, not daring to make any new advances, until his discomfort had disappeared.
He continued to visit the countess, as before. He felt that he must see her; he had grown accustomed to her enthusiastic praise of his artistic merits.
Sometimes the impetuous nature of his youthful days awakened and he longed to rid himself of this shameful chain. The woman had bewitched him; she sent for him without any reason, she seemed to delight in making him suffer, she needed him for a plaything. She spoke of Monteverde and their love with quiet cynicism, as if the doctor were her husband. She had to confide the secrets of her life to some one, with that imperious naïveté that forces the guilty to confess. Little by little she let the master into the secret of her passion, telling him unblushingly of the most intimate details of their meetings, which were often in her own house. They took advantage of the blindness of the count, who seemed almost stunned by hisfailure to receive the Fleece; they took a morbid delight in the danger of being surprised.
"I tell you this, Mariano, I don't know why it is I feel as I do toward you; I like you as a brother. No, not as a brother, rather as a confidential woman friend."
When Renovales was alone, he despised Concha's frankness. It was just as people believed; she was very attractive, very pretty, but absolutely lacking in scruples. As for himself, he heaped insults on himself in the slang of his Bohemian days, comparing himself with all the horned animals he could think of.
"I won't go there again. It's disgraceful. A pretty part you are playing, master!"
But he had hardly been absent two days when Marie, the Countess's French maid, appeared with the scented letter, or it arrived in the mail, where it stood out scandalously among the other envelopes of the master's correspondence.
"Curse that woman!" exclaimed Renovales, hastening to hide the showy note. "What a lack of prudence. One of these fine days, Josephina will discover these letters."
Cotoner, in his blind devotion to his idol whom he considered irresistible, supposed that the Alberca woman was madly in love with the master and shook his head sadly.
"This will have a bad end, Mariano. You ought to break with her. The peace of your home! You are piling up trouble for yourself."
The letters were always alike; endless complaints at his short absences. "Cher maître, I could not sleep last night, thinking of you," and she ended with "Your admirer and good friend, Coquillerosse," anom de guerreshe had adopted for her correspondence with the artist.
She wrote in a disordered style, at unusual hours, justas her fancy and her abnormal nervous system prompted. Sometimes she dated her letter at three in the morning, she could not sleep, got out of bed and to pass the sleepless hours filled four sheets of paper (with the facility of despair) in her fine hand, addressed to her good friend, talking to him of the count, of what her acquaintances said, telling him the latest gossip about the Court, lamenting the doctor's coldness. At other times, there were only four brief, desperate lines. "Come at once, dear Mariano. A very urgent matter."
And the master, leaving his tasks early in the morning, ran to the countess' house, where she received him still in bed in her fragrant chamber which the gentleman with honorary crosses had not entered for many years.
The painter came in in great anxiety, disturbed at the possibility of some terrible event, and Concha, tossing about between the embroidered sheets, tucking in the golden wisps of hair that escaped from her lace cap, talked and talked, as incoherently as a bird sings, as if the silence of the night had hopelessly confused her ideas. A great idea had occurred to her; during her sleep she had thought out an absolutely original scientific theory that would delight Monteverde. And she explained it earnestly to the master, who nodded his approval without understanding a word, thinking it was a pity to see such an attractive mouth uttering such follies.
At other times she would talk to him about the speech she was preparing for a fair of the Woman's Association, themagnum opusof her presidency; and drawing her ivory arms from under the sheet with a calmness that dazed Renovales, she would pick up from the nearby table some sheets of paper scribbled with pencil, and ask her friend to tell her who was the greatest painter in the world, for she had left a blank to fill in with this name.
After an hour of incessant chatter while the artist watched her silently with greedy eyes, he finally came to the urgent matter, the desperate summons that had made the master leave his work. It was always an affair of life or death, compromises in which her honor was at stake. Sometimes she wanted him to paint some little thing on the fan of a foreign lady who was eager to take away from Spain some souvenir of the great master. The person in question had asked her at a diplomatic soirée the night before, knowing her friendship with Renovales. Or she had sent for him to ask him for some little sketch, a daub, any one of the little things that lay in the corner of his studio for a bazaar of the Association for the Benefit of Fallen Women, whom the countess and her friends were very eager to rescue.
"Don't put on such a wry face, master, don't be stingy. You must expect to sacrifice something for friendship. Everybody thinks that I have great power over the famous artist, and they ask me favors and are constantly getting me into difficulty. They don't know you, they don't realize how perverse, how rebellious you are, you horrid man!"
And she let him kiss her hand, smiling condescendingly. But as she felt the touch of his lips and his beard on her arm she struggled to free herself, half-laughing, half-trembling.
"Let me go, Mariano! I'll scream! I'll call Marie! I won't receive you again in my bedroom. You aren't worthy of being trusted. Quiet, master, or I'll tell Josephina everything."
Sometimes when Renovales came, full of alarm at her summons, he found her pale, with dark circles under her eyes, as if she had spent the night weeping. When she saw the master her tears began to flow again. It waspique, deep pain at Monteverde's coldness. He passed whole days without seeing her; he even went so far as to say that women are a hindrance to serious study. Oh, these scholars! And she, madly devoted to him, submissive as a slave, putting up with his whimsical moods, worshiping him with that ardent passion of a woman who is older than her lover and appreciates her own inferiority!
"Oh, Renovales. Never fall in love. It is hell. You do not know the happiness you enjoy in not understanding these things."
But the master, indifferent to her tears, enraged by her confidences, walked up and down gesticulating, just as if he were in his studio, and he spoke to the countess with brutal frankness, as he would to a woman who had revealed all her secrets and weaknesses. What difference did all that make to him? Had she sent for him to tell him such stuff? She grieved with childish sighs from the bed. She was alone in the world, she was very unhappy. The master was her only friend; he was her father, her brother. To whom could she tell her troubles if not to him? And taking courage at the painter's silence who finally was moved by her tears, she recovered her boldness and expressed her wish. He must go to Monteverde, give him a good, heart-to-heart lecture, so that he would be good and not make her suffer. The doctor respected him highly; he was one of his greatest admirers; she was certain that a few words of the master would be enough to bring him back like a lamb. He must show him that she was not alone, that she had some one to defend her, that no one could make sport of her with impunity.
But before she finished her request, the painter was walking around the bed waving his arms, cursing in the violence of his excitement.
"That's the last straw! One of these days you'll be asking me to shine his boots. Are you mad, woman? What are you thinking of? You have enough accommodating people already in the count. Don't drag me into it!"
But she rolled over in bed, weeping disconsolately. She had no friends left! The master was like the others; if he would not accede to her requests, their friendship was over. All talk, oaths, and then not the least sacrifice!
Suddenly she sat up, frowning angrily with the coldness of an offended queen. She knew him at last, she had made a mistake in counting on him. And as Renovales, confused at her anger, tried to offer excuse, she interrupted him haughtily.
"Will you, or will you not? One, two——"
Yes, he would do what she wanted; he had sunk so low that it did not matter if he went a little farther. He would lecture the doctor, throwing in his face his stupidity in scorning such happiness,—he said this with all his heart, his voice trembling with envy. What else did his fair despot want? She might ask without fear. If it was necessary he would challenge the count, with all his decorations, to single combat and would kill him so that she might be free to join her little doctor.
"You joker," cried Concha, smiling at her triumph. "You are as nice as can be but you are very perverse. Come here, you horrid man."
And lifting a lock of his heavy hair with her hand, she kissed him on the forehead, laughing at the start the painter gave at her caress. He felt his legs trembling, then his arms strove to embrace the warm, scented body, that seemed to slip from him in its delicate covering.
"It was on the forehead," cried Concha in protest."A sister's caress, Mariano. Stop! You're hurting me! I'll call!"
And she called, realizing her weakness, seeing that she was on the point of being overcome in his fierce, masterly grasp. The electric bell sounded out of the maze of corridors and rooms and the door opened. Marie entered in a black dress with a white apron and a lace cap, discreet and silent. Her pale, smiling face, accustomed to see everything, to guess everything, did not reveal the slightest impression.
The countess stretched out her hand to Renovales, calmly and affectionately, as if the entrance of the maid had found her saying good-by. She was sorry that he must go so soon, she would see him in the evening at the Opera.
When the painter breathed the air of the street and jostled against the people, he felt as if he were awakening from a nightmare. He loathed himself. "You're showing off finely, master." His weakness that made him give in to all of the countess's demands, his base acquiescence in serving as an intermediary between her and her lover was sickening now. But he still felt the touch of her kiss on his forehead; he still breathed the atmosphere of the bedroom, heavy with perfume. Optimism overcame him. The affair was not going badly. However disagreeable the path was, it would lead to the realization of his desire.
Many evenings Renovales went to the Opera, in obedience to Concha, who wanted to see him, and spent whole acts in the back of her box, conversing with her. Milita laughed at this change in the habits of her father, who used to go to bed early, so as to be able to work early in the morning. She was the one who, charged with the household affairs on account of her mother's constant illness, helped him to put on his dress-coat, andamid caresses and laughter combed his hair and adjusted his tie.
"Papa, dear. I shouldn't know you, you're getting dissipated. When are you going to take me with you?"
The artist excused himself seriously. It was a duty of his profession; artists must go into society. And as for taking her with him—some other time. He had to go alone this time, he had to talk to a great many people at the theater.
Another change took place in him that provoked joyful comments on the part of Milita. Papa was getting young.
Under irreverent trimmings, every week his hair became shorter, his beard diminished until only a light remnant remained of that tangled growth that gave him such a ferocious appearance. He did not want to look like other men, he must preserve the exterior that stamped him as an artist, so that people might not pass by the great Renovales without recognizing him. But he managed, while keeping within this desire, to approach and mingle with the fashionably dressed young men who frequented the countess's house.
Other people too noticed this change. Students in the School of Fine Arts pointed him out from the gallery of the Opera-house or stopped on the sidewalk when they saw him at night, with a shining silk hat on his carefully trimmed hair and the expanse of shirt-front showing in his unbuttoned overcoat. The boys in their simple admiration imagined the great master thundering before his easel, as savage, fierce and intractable as Michael Angelo in his studio. And so when they saw him looking so differently, their eyes followed him enviously. "What a good time the master is having!" And they fancied the great ladies disputing over him, believingin perfect faith that no woman could resist a man who painted so well.
His enemies, established artists but who were inferior to him, growled in their conversations. "Four-flusher, prig! He wasn't satisfied with making so much money and now he's playing the sport among the aristocracy, to pick up more portraits, to get all he can out of his signature."
Cotoner, who sometimes stayed at the house in the evenings, to keep the ladies company, smiled sadly as he saw him leave, shaking his head. "It's bad. Mariano married too soon. Now that he is almost an old man, he's doing what he didn't do in his youth in his fever for work and glory." Many people were laughing at him already, divining his passion for the Alberca woman, that love without practical results, that made him live with her and Monteverde, acting as a good-natured mediator, a tolerant kindly father. When the famous master took off his mask of fierceness, he was a poor fellow about whom people talked with pity: they compared him with Hercules, dressed as a woman and spinning at the feet of his fair seducer.
He had contracted a close friendship with Monteverde as a result of meeting him so often at the countess's. He no longer seemed foolish and unattractive. Renovales found in him something of the woman he loved and therefore his company was pleasing. He experienced that calm attraction, free from jealousy, that the husband of a mistress inspires in some men. They sat together at the theater, went to walk, conversing amiably, and the doctor frequently visited the artist's studio in the afternoon. This intimacy quite disconcerted people, for they could no longer tell with certainty which one was the Alberca woman's master and which the aspirant,even going so far as to believe that by a mutual agreement they all three lived in an ideal world.
Monteverde admired the master and the latter, from his years and the superiority of his fame, assumed a paternal authority over him. He chided him when the countess complained of him.
"Women!" the doctor would say with a bored expression. "You don't know what they are, master. They are only a hindrance to obstruct a man's career. You have been successful because you haven't let them dominate you because you are strong."
And the poor strong man looked at Monteverde narrowly suspecting that he was making sport of him. He felt tempted to knock him down at the thought that the doctor scorned what he craved so keenly.
Concha was more communicative with the master. She confessed to him what she had never dared to tell the doctor.
"I tell you everything, Mariano. I cannot live without seeing you. Do you know what I think? The doctor is a sort of husband to me and you are the lover of my heart. Don't get excited; don't move or I'll call. I have spoken from my heart. I like you too much to think of the coarse things you want."
Sometimes Renovales found her excited, nervous, speaking hoarsely, working her delicate fingers as if she wanted to scratch the air. They were terrible days that stirred up the whole house. Marie ran from room to room with her silent step, pursued by the ringing of the bells; the count slipped out of doors, like a frightened school-boy. Concha was bored, felt tired of everything, hated her life. When the painter appeared she would almost throw herself in his arms.
"Take me out of here, Mariano; I'm tired of it, I'm dying. This life is killing me. My husband! He doesn'tcount. My friends! Fools that flay me as soon as I leave them. The doctor! as untrustworthy as a weathercock. All those men in my coterie, idiots. Master, have pity on me. Take me far away from here. You must know some other world; artists know everything."
If she only was not such a familiar figure and if people only did not know the master in Madrid! In her nervous excitement she formed the wildest projects. She wanted to go out at night arm in arm with Renovales. She in a shawl and a kerchief over her head and he in a cape and a slouch hat. She would be his grisette; she would imitate the carriage and stride of a woman of the streets and they would go to the lowest districts like two night-hawks, and they would drink, would get into a brawl; he would defend her and they would go and spend the night in the police station.
The painter looked shocked. What nonsense! But she insisted on her wish.
"Laugh, master, open that great mouth of yours, you ugly thing. What is strange about what I said? You, with all your artist's hair and soft hats, are humdrum, a peaceful soul that is incapable of doing anything original in order to amuse yourself."
When she thought of the couple they had seen one afternoon at Moncloa, she grew melancholy and sentimental. She, too, thought it would be fun to play the grisette, to walk arm in arm with the master as if she were a poor dressmaker and he a clerk, to end the trip in a picnic park, and he would give her a ride in the green swing, while she screamed with pleasure, as she went up and down with her skirts whirling around her feet. That was not foolishness. Just the simplest, most rustic pleasure!
What a pity that they were both so well known. But what they would do, at least, was to disguise themselvessome morning and go house-hunting in some low quarter, like the Rastro, as if they were a newly married couple. No one would recognize them in that part of Madrid. Agreed, master?
And the master approved of everything. But the next day, Concha received him with confusion, biting her lips, until at last she broke out into hearty laughter at the recollection of the follies she had proposed.
"How you must laugh at me! Some days I am perfectly crazy."
Renovales did not conceal his assent. Yes, she was a trifle crazy. But with all her absurdities that made him alternate between hope and despair, she was more attractive, with her merry nonsense, and her transitory fits of anger, than the woman at home, implacable, silent, shunning him with ceaseless repugnance, but following him everywhere with her weeping, uncanny eyes, that became as cutting as steel, as soon as, out of sympathy or remorse, he gave the least evidence of familiarity.
Oh, what a heavy, intolerable comedy! Before his daughter and his friends they had to talk to each other, and he, looking away, so that their eyes might not meet, scolded her gently, for not following the advice of the doctors. At first they had said it was neurasthenia, now it was diabetes, that was increasing the invalid's weakness. The master lamented the passive resistance she opposed to all their curative methods. She would follow them for a few days and then give them up with calm obstinacy. Her health was better than they thought: doctors could not cure her trouble.
At night, when they entered the bed-chamber, a deathly silence fell on them; a leaden wall seemed to rise between their bodies. Here they no longer had to dissemble; they looked at each other face to face with silent hostility. Their life at night was sheer torment,but neither of them dared to change their mode of living. Their bodies could not leave the common bed; they found in it the places they had occupied for years. The habit of their wills subjected them to this room and its furnishings, with all its memories of the happy days of their youth.
Renovales would fall into the deep sleep of a healthy man, tired out with work. His last thoughts were of the countess. He saw her in that vague mist that shrouds the portal of unconsciousness; he went to sleep, thinking of what he would say to her the next day. And his dreams were in keeping with his desires, for he saw her standing on a pedestal, in all the majesty of her nakedness, surpassing the marble of the most famous statues with the life of her flesh. When he awakened suddenly and stretched out his arms, he touched the body of his companion, small, stiff, burning with the fire of fever or icy with deathly cold. He divined that she was not asleep. She spent the nights without closing her eyes, but she did not move, as if all her strength was concentrated on something that she watched in the darkness with a hypnotic stare. She was like a corpse. There was the obstacle, the leaden weight, the phantom that checked the other woman when sometimes in a moment of hesitation, she leaned toward him, on the point of falling. And the terrible longing, the hideous thought came forth again in all its ugliness, announcing that it was not dead, that it had only hidden in the den of his brain, to rise more cruelly, more insolently.
"Why not?" argued the rejected spirit, scattering in his fancy the golden dust of dreams.
Love, fame, joy, a new artistic life, the rejuvenation of Doctor Faustus; he might expect everything, if kindly death would but come to help him, breaking the chain that bound him to sadness and sickness.
But straightway a protest would arise within him. Though he lived like an infidel, he still had a religious soul that in the trying moments of his life led him to call on all the superhuman and miraculous powers as if they were under an inevitable obligation to come to his aid. "Lord, take this horrible thought from me. Take away this temptation. Don't let her die. Let her live, even if I perish."
And the following day, filled with remorse, he would go to some doctors, friends of his, to consult with them minutely. He would stir up the house, organizing the cure according to a vast plan, distributing the medicines by hours. Then he would calmly return to his work, to his artistic prejudices, to his passionate longing, forgetting his determinations, thinking his wife's life was already saved.
One afternoon after luncheon, she came into the studio and as the master looked at her, a sense of anxiety crept over him. It was a long time since Josephina had entered the room while he was working.
She would not sit down; standing beside the easel she spoke slowly and meekly to her husband, without looking at him. Renovales was frightened at this simplicity.
"Mariano, I have come to talk to you about our daughter."
She wanted her to be married: it must come some day and the sooner, the better. She would die before long and she wanted to leave the world with the assurance that her daughter was well settled.
Renovales felt forced to protest loudly with all the vehemence of a man who is not very sure of what he is saying. Shucks! Die! Why should she die? Her health was better now than it had ever been. The only thing she needed was to heed what the doctors told her.
"I shall die before long," she repeated coldly; "I shall die and you will be left in peace. You know it."
The painter tried to protest with a greater show of righteous indignation but his eyes met his wife's cold look. Then he contented himself with shrugging his shoulders in a resigned way. He did not want to argue; he must keep calm. He had to paint; he must go out that afternoon as usual on important business.
"Very well, go ahead. Milita is going to be married. And to whom?"
Led by his desire to maintain his authority, to take the lead, and because of his long-standing affection for his pupil, he hastened to speak of him. Was Soldevilla the suitor? A good boy with a future ahead of him. He worshiped Milita; his dejection when she treated him ill was pitiful. He would make an excellent husband.
Josephina cut short her husband's chatter in a cold, contemptuous tone.
"I don't want any painters for my daughter; you know it. Her mother has had enough of them."
Milita was going to marry López de Sosa. The matter was already settled as far as she was concerned. The boy had spoken to her and, assured of her approval, would ask the father.
"But does she love him? Do you think, Josephina, that these things can be arranged to suit you?"
"Yes, she loves him; she is suited and wants to be married. Besides she is your daughter; she would accept the other man just as readily. What she wants is freedom, to get away from her mother, not to live in the unhappy atmosphere of my ill health. She doesn't say so, she doesn't even know that she thinks it, but I see through her."
And as if, while she spoke of her daughter, she could not maintain the coldness she had toward her husband,she raised her hand to her eyes, to wipe away the silent tears.
Renovales had recourse to rudeness in order to get out of the difficulty. It was all nonsense; an invention of her diseased mind. She ought to think of getting well and nothing else. What was she crying for! Did she want to marry her daughter to that automobile enthusiast? Well, get him. She did not want to? Well, let the girl stay at home.
She was the one who had charge; no one was hindering her. Have the marriage as soon as possible? He was a mere cipher, and there was no reason for asking his advice. But steady, shucks! He had to work; he had to go out. And when he saw Josephina leaving the studio to weep somewhere else, he gave a snort of satisfaction, glad to have escaped from this difficult scene so successfully.
López de Sosa was all right. An excellent boy! Or anyone else. He did not have time to give to such matters. Other things occupied his attention.
He accepted his future son-in-law, and for several evenings he stayed at home to lend a sort of patriarchal air to the family parties. Milita and her betrothed talked at one end of the drawing-room. Cotoner, in the full bliss of digestion, strove with his jests to bring a faint smile to the face of the master's wife, but she stayed in the corner, shivering with cold. Renovales, in a smoking jacket, read the papers, soothed by the charming atmosphere of his quiet home. If the countess could only see him!
One night the Alberca woman's name was mentioned in the drawing-room. Milita was running over from memory the list of friends of the family,—prominent ladies who would not fail to honor her approaching marriage with some magnificent present.
"Concha won't come," said the girl. "It's a long time since she has been here."
There was a painful silence, as if the countess's name chilled the atmosphere. Cotoner hummed a tune, pretending to be thinking of something else; López de Sosa began to look for a piece of music on the piano, talking about it to change the subject. He too seemed to be aware of the matter.
"She doesn't come because she doesn't have to come," said Josephina from her corner. "Your father manages to see her every day, so that she won't forget us."
Renovales raised his eyes in protest, as if he were awakening from a calm sleep. Josephina's gaze was fixed on him, not angry, but mocking and cruel. It reflected the same scorn with which she had wounded him on that unhappy night. She no longer said anything, but the master read in those eyes:
"It is useless, my good man. You are mad over her, you pursue her, but she belongs to other men. I know her of old. I know all about it. Oh, how people laugh at you! How I laugh! How I scorn you!"