money without having money.—Do you hear what I say?—All these things and many others make it necessary to look out for something besides virtue in our future brides.”
“What?”
Cimarra shook his hands as if he were clinking coin.
“Cash,” he said, “hard cash and ready.” Cimarra talked the mongrel language of a man of fashion, mixing the style of an orator with the slang of a gambler, and quotations in foreign languages with the low blasphemies of a street boy, which shall not be recorded here.
“Life,” he went on, “is getting more difficult every day. It is all very well for rich folks like you to send moral platitudes flying about the world, and never to feel a base desire or harbour a thought that is not the quintessence of the purest ether. However, we need not exaggerate, as Fúcar is so fond of saying. I maintain that what sanctimonious fools call filthy lucre may be a potent element of morality. I, for example....”
“You! And what are you an example of pray?”
“I was going to say that I, if I found myself the possessor of a fortune, should be a model gentleman, and might even be known to posterity as the Illustrious Cimarra. For is it not a matter of course, a phrase ready coined?—Tom, Dick and Harry are Illustrious nowadays.”
“Though you may try to conceal it, I see some remains of shame in you,” said Roch. “Your laxity of morals is not as great as you try to make the world believe.”
“Everything is relative, as my friend Fontán always says in jest,” replied Federico shrugging his shoulders. “You cannot judge off-hand, in that light and easy way, of a man like me who lives with the rich and is poor himself. Get that well into your head. I talk to you with perfect frankness. My projects after all are as yet merely visions—sketches, my dear fellow. We shall see—I flatter myself I have made a good beginning. Time will show. Some day perhaps when you have quite forgotten me, lost in the bliss of pedagogic matrimony, you may hear that that reprobate Cimarra has found a wife. We all have to come to it—sooner or later. Even a poor devil like me has his schemes and his philosophy. We are all tortoises together, but some have more shell to cover them than I have.—Do not take it into your head that I am indifferent to the moral graces of my wife—nor that I propose to marry a monster. I shall have a virtuous wife, my learned friend, thoroughly respectable, take my word for it, and a fine family of children and grand-children.”
“Then you have made your choice.”
“I have.—But I must warn you that I make no great point of personal beauty. I am not like you; I have a soul above being caught by a pair of fine eyes and a mouth that time can only spoil. Beauty is only skin deep. It lasts, as the poet says ‘l’espace d’un matin.’ But she has a pleasant and attractive expression, distingué manners, a quantum of dignity, a quantum of liveliness, wit and even chic—Education? Well nothing much to speak of, but we do not intend to set up for Professors. She has a great deal of good in her with a spice of the devil too; she has wild ways occasionally, freaks of temper, habits of extravagance....”
Leon turned pale and fixed a gloomy eye on his companion.
“What do I care if she smashes a lot of rubbishy plates, or cuts a Murillo into strips, or makes mince-meat of her lace? There are some things in which no husband should interfere.”
Leon sat staring dully at the green cloth of the table on which he had propped his elbows.
“Mercy, how the time goes, man!” he exclaimed rising abruptly and throwing open the window. “It is day!”
The white dawn fell into the room and its light fell on two pale and haggard faces. The dying lamp still burnt forlorn and dingy; a long sooty flame flared up the chimney, smelling detestably.
“What a life—by way of recovering one’s health!” said Leon.
Outside, the sky was gray and rainy, a dismal background to the gloomy faces of the two men who had been up all night. Leon stood a few minutes, lost in that vague meditation which leaves no mark on the mind in moments of extreme fatigue, a state half-way between dreaming and suffering, when it is hard to be sure whether we are sleeping or only enduring. Federico gazed at his friend who stood the living image of melancholy; everything about him was black—his dress, his hair and his beard; his handsome features, and clear olive skin were marked with dark lines for want of sleep. His fine forehead, dignified though charged with painful doubts, might suggest a lowering and threatening sky where the light of day was hidden behind a shroud of clouds.
Suddenly he turned to Cimarra and said:
“Well, I wish you luck!”
“I wish I could get a little rest,” said Federico. “I am simply dying for want of sleep; but I must start at once with Fúcar.”
“You are going too?”
“Did I not tell you?—Yes, they made a point of my going with them. We are getting on you see—like a house on fire!”
Cimarra emphasised his words with a cunning smile.
“Bon voyage!” said Leon turning his back on him.
At this juncture they heard the rumble of the Fúcars’ carriage coming up to convey the travellers to the station of Iparraicea. Federico rushed up to his room to prepare to start, and for a short time the hotel was full of the bustle that always accompanies the arrival or departure of guests—the dragging of luggage, the chatter of boys and the calling of servants. Leon did not stir from the card-room, and even when he heard the voices of Fúcar and his daughter at breakfast in the dining-room, he did not care to go out and bid them farewell. In half an hour an omnibus was sent off, packed with servants and baggage, and the travelling-carriage followed with the Fúcars and Cimarra. Leon saw the first vehicle pass close by the window and before the second could come past he turned away, put his hands into his pockets and walked to the opposite corner of the room.
“What need I care?” he muttered to himself. “It is no fault of mine.”
Then he went out into the hall, where the most inveterate bathers were beginning to put in an appearance, in motley deshabille. The bath servants, with their aprons tucked up, went into the dens where yawned the marble vats; through the doors came the noise of the bubbling mineral water and the swish of the brooms in the baths, with a strong whiff of sulphur. He loitered down to the avenue and seeing in the distance the two carriages slowly mounting the hill of Arcaitzac, he could not help saying to himself with a sigh: “Alas, for those who have no control over their imagination!”
For a couple of hours he lay down to sleep, and at nine o’clock took a place in the coach that was starting for Ugoibea. His whole appearance was altered; he looked the happiest man on earth.
CHAPTER VIII.
MARÍA EGYPTIACA.
Several months had passed since that spring season by the sea; Leon Roch—on the appointed day, at the appointed hour, and in the appointed church—had been duly married, without any hindrance to the fulfilment of the plan he had made. His soul was full of the calm satisfaction which steals over it softly and silently like the breath of spring; a peace which brings refreshment and not intoxication, and
