Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish
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Various >> Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish
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"'Wait a little longer, Gabriel. Do not yet pronounce judgment in this
case, where my life and soul are concerned. Listen to me two minutes
longer.
"'When I entered my house I met Colonel Falcon, who had just come to tell
me that my Joaquina, my betrothed, all my hope and happiness and joy on
earth, had died the day before in Santa Agueda. The unfortunate father had
telegraphed Falcon to tell me--me, who should have divined it an hour
before, when I met the evil spirit of my life! Don't you understand, now,
that I must kill that born enemy of my happiness, that vile old hag, who
is the living mockery of my destiny?
"'But why do I say kill? Is she a woman? Is she a human being? Why have I
had a presentiment of her ever since I was born? Why did she recognize me
when she first saw me? Why do I never see her except when some great
calamity has befallen me? Is she Satan? Is she Death? Is she Life? Is she
Antichrist? Who is she? What is she?'"
V.
"I will spare you, my dear friends," continued Gabriel, "the arguments and
remarks which I used to see if I could not calm Telesforo, for they are
the same, precisely the same, which you are preparing now to advance to
prove that there is nothing supernatural or superhuman in my story. You
will even go further; you will say that my friend was half crazy; that he
always was so; that, at least, he suffered from that moral disease which
some call 'panic terror,' and others 'emotional insanity'; that, even
granting the truth of what I have related about the tall woman, it must
all be referred to chance coincidences of dates and events; and, finally,
that the poor old creature could also have been crazy, or a thief, or a
beggar, or a procuress--as the hero of my story said to himself in a lucid
interval."
"A very proper supposition," exclaimed Gabriel's comrades; "that is just
what we were going to say."
"Well, listen a few minutes longer, and you will see that I was mistaken
at the time, as you are mistaken now. The one who unfortunately made no
mistake was Telesforo. It is much easier to speak the word 'insanity' than
to find an explanation for some things that happen on the earth."
"Speak, speak!"
"I am going to; and this time, as it is the last, I will pick up the
thread of my story without first drinking a glass of wine."
VI.
"A few days after that conversation with Telesforo I was sent to the
province of Albacete in my capacity as engineer of the mountain corps.
Not many weeks had passed before I learned, from a contractor for public
works, that my unhappy friend had been attacked by a dreadful form of
jaundice; it had turned him entirely green, and he reclined in an
arm-chair without working or wishing to see anybody, weeping night and day
in the most inconsolable and bitter grief. The doctors had given up hope
of his getting well.
"This made me understand why he had not answered my letters. I had to
resort to Colonel Falcon as a source of news of him, and all the while
the reports kept getting more unfavorable and gloomy.
"After an absence of five months I returned to Madrid the same day
that the telegraph brought the news of the battle of Tetuan. I remember
it as if it were yesterday. That night I bought the indispensable
Correspondencia de Espana, and the first thing I read in it was the notice
of Telesforo's death. His friends were invited to the funeral the
following morning.
"You will be sure that I was present. As we arrived at the San Luis
cemetery, whither I rode in one of the carriages nearest the hearse, my
attention was called to a peasant woman. She was old and very tall. She
was laughing sacrilegiously as she saw them taking out the coffin. Then
she placed herself in front of the pall-bearers in a triumphant attitude
and pointed out to them with a very small fan the passage-way they were to
take to reach the open and waiting grave.
"At the first glance I perceived, with amazement and alarm, that she
was Telesforo's implacable enemy. She was just as he had described her to
me--with her enormous nose, her devilish eyes, her awful mouth, her
percale handkerchief, and that diminutive fan which seemed in her hands
the sceptre of indecency and mockery.
"She immediately observed that I was looking at her, and fixed her gaze
upon me in a peculiar manner, as if recognizing me, as if letting me know
that she recognized me, as if acquainted with the fact that the dead man
had told me about the scenes in Jardines Street and Lobo Street, as if
defying me, as if declaring me the inheritor of the hate which she had
cherished for my unfortunate friend.
"I confess that at the time my fright was greater than my wonder at those
new COINCIDENCES and ACCIDENTS. It seemed evident to me that some
supernatural relation, antecedent to earthly life, had existed between the
mysterious old woman and Telesforo. But for the time being my sole concern
was about my own life, my own soul, my own happiness--all of which would
be exposed to the greatest peril if I should really inherit such a curse.
"The tall woman began to laugh. She pointed at me contemptuously with the
fan, as if she had read my thoughts and were publicly exposing my
cowardice. I had to lean on a friend's arm to keep myself from falling.
Then she made a pitying or disdainful gesture, turned on her heels, and
went into the cemetery. Her head was turned towards me. She fanned herself
and nodded to me at the same time. She sidled along among the graves with
an indescribable, infernal coquetry, until at last she disappeared for
ever in that labyrinth of tombs.
"I say for ever, since fifteen years have passed and I have never seen her
again. If she was a human being she must have died before this; if she was
not, I rest in the conviction that she despised me too much to meddle with
me.
"Now, then, bring on your theories! Give me your opinion about these
strange events. Do you still regard them as entirely natural?"
THE WHITE BUTTERFLY
By Jose Selgas
Translated by Mary J. Serrano.
THE WHITE BUTTERFLY
Berta has just completed her seventeenth year. Blissful age in which Love
first whispers his tender secrets to a maiden's heart! But cruel Love, who
for every secret he reveals draws forth a sigh! But here is Berta, and
beside her is a mirror, toward which she turns her eyes; she looks at
herself in it for a moment and sighs, and then she smiles. And good reason
she has to smile, for the mirror reveals to her the loveliest face
imaginable; whatever disquiet Love may have awakened in her heart, the
image which she sees in the mirror is enchanting enough to dispel it.
And why should it not? Let us see. "What has her heart told her?" "It has
told her that it is sad." "Sad! and why?" "Oh, for a very simple reason!
Because it thrills in response to a new, strange feeling, never known
before. It fancies--curious caprice!--that it has changed owners." "And
why is that?" "The fact is, that it has learned, it knows not where, that
men are ungrateful and inconstant, and this is the reason why Berta
sighs." "Ah! And what does the mirror tell her to console her?" "Why, the
mirror tells her that she is beautiful." "Yes?" "Yes; that her eyes are
dark and lustrous, her eyebrows magnificent, her cheeks fresh and rosy."
"And what then?" "It is plain; her heart is filled with hope, and
therefore it is that Berta smiles."
This is the condition of mind in which we find her. Up to the present she
has passed her life without thinking of anything more serious than the
innocent pranks of childhood; she was a child up to the age of seventeen,
but a boisterous, gay, restless, daring, mischievous child; she turned the
house upside down, and in the same way she would have been capable of
turning the world upside down; she had neither fears nor duties; she
played like a crazy thing and slept like a fool. For her mother had died
before Berta was old enough to know her; and although her mother's
portrait hung at the head of her bed, this image, at once sweet and
serious, was not sufficient to restrain the thoughtless impetuosity of the
girl. She was, besides, an only daughter, and her father, of whom we shall
give some account later, adored her. In addition to all this, her nurse,
who acted as housekeeper in the house, was at the same time the accomplice
and the apologist of her pranks, for the truth is she loved her like the
apple of her eye.
Less than this might have sufficed to turn an angel into an imp, and
indeed much less would have sufficed in Berta's case, for the natural
vivacity of her disposition inclined her to all kinds of pranks.
Opposition irritated her to such a degree as to set her crying. But what
tears! Suddenly, in the midst of her sobs, she would burst out laughing,
for her soul was all gayety, spontaneous, contagious gayety, the gayety of
the birds when day is breaking.
But this gayety could not last for ever; and, willing or unwilling, the
moment had to come some time when Berta would quiet down; for it was not
natural that she should remain all her life a madcap; and this moment at
last arrived; and all at once the girl's boisterous gayety began to calm
down, to cloud over, like a storm that is gathering, like a sky that is
darkening.
The nurse is the first to observe this change in Berta, and although the
girl's pranks had driven her to her wits' end, seeing her silent,
thoughtful, pensive, that is to say, quiet, she is overjoyed. The girl is
now a woman. Profound mystery! She has left off the giddiness of childhood
to take on the sedateness of youth. Poor woman! she does not know that a
young girl is a thousand times more crazy than a child. But the fact is
that Berta does not seem the same girl. And the change has taken place of
a sudden, from one day to another, in the twinkling of an eye, so to say.
And sedateness becomes her well, very well. She seems taller, more--more
everything; nothing better could be asked of her; but since she has
become sensible the house is silent. The songs, the tumult, all the
boisterousness of the past have disappeared. The good nurse, who is
enchanted to see her so quiet, so silent, so sedate, yet misses the noisy
gayety that formerly filled the house; and if the choice had been given
to her, she would hardly have known which to prefer.
In this way the days pass calm and tranquil. Berta, who had always been
so early a riser, does not now rise very early. Does she sleep more?
That is what no one knows, but if she sleeps more she certainly eats less;
and not only this, but from time to time, and without any apparent cause,
heart-breaking sighs escape her.
The nurse, who idolizes her, and who would do anything in the world to
please or to serve her, observes it all but says nothing. She says
nothing, but she thinks the more. That is to say, that at every sigh she
hears she draws down her mouth, screws up her eye, and says to herself:
"Hm! there it is again."
Of course she would not remain silent for long; for she was not a woman to
hold her tongue easily. Besides, Berta's sedateness was now getting to be
a fixed fact, and the nurse was at the end of her patience; for as she was
accustomed to say, "A loaf that is put into the oven twisted will not come
out of it straight."
And if she succeeded in keeping silence for a few days, it was only
because she was waiting for Berta herself to speak and tell her what was
on her mind; but Berta gave no sign that she understood her; her heart
remained closed to the nurse, notwithstanding all her efforts to open it.
The key had been lost, and none of those that hung at the housekeeper's
girdle fitted it. It would be necessary to force the lock.
One day the nurse left off temporizing and took the bull by the horns. She
entered Berta's room, where she found her engaged in fastening a flaming
red carnation in her dark hair.
"There! that's what I like to see," she said. "That's right, now. What a
beautiful pink! It is as red as fire. And pinks of that color don't grow
in your flower-beds!"
Berta cast down her eyes.
"You think I can't see what is going on before my eyes," she continued,
"when you know that nothing can escape me. Yes, yes. I should like to see
the girl that could hoodwink me! But why don't you say something? Have you
lost your tongue?"
Berta turned as red as a poppy.
"Bah!" cried the nurse. "That pink must have flown over from the terrace
in front of your windows. I can see the plant from here; there were four
pinks on it yesterday, and to-day there are only three. The neighbor, eh?
What folly! There is neither sense nor reason in that."
This time Berta turned pale, and looked fixedly at her nurse, as if she
had not taken in the sense of her words.
"I don't mean," resumed the nurse, "that you ought to take the veil, or
that the neighbor is a man to be looked down upon either; but you are
worthy of a king, and there is no sort of sense in this. A few signals
from window to window; a few sidelong glances, and then--what? Nothing.
You will forget each other. It will be out of sight out of mind with both
of you."
Berta shook her head.
"You say it will not be so?" asked the nurse.
"I say it will not," answered Berta.
"And why not? Let us hear why not? What security have you--"
Berta did not allow her to finish.
"Our vows," she said.
"Vows!" cried the nurse, crossing herself. "Is that where we are!--Vows!"
she repeated, scornfully; "pretty things they are--words that the wind
carries away."
Some memory of her own youth must have come to her mind at this moment,
for she sighed and then went on:
"And would they by chance be the first vows in the world to be broken?
To-day it is all very well; there is no one else for you to see but the
neighbor; but to-morrow?"
"Never," replied Berta.
"Worse and worse," returned the nurse; "for in that case he will be the
first to tire of you, and then hold him if you can. To-day he may be as
sweet as honey to you, but to-morrow it will be another story. What are
you going to say? That he is young, and handsome? Silly, silly girl. Is he
any the less a man for that? Do you want to know what men are?"
Berta, going up to her nurse, put her hand over her mouth and answered
quickly:
"No, I don't want to know."
The nurse left Berta's room, holding her hands to her head and saying to
herself:
"Mad, stark, staring mad!"
We know already that Berta has a father, and now we are going to learn
that this father, without being in any way an extraordinary being, is yet
no common man. To look at him, one would take him to be over sixty; but
appearances are in this case deceitful, for he is not yet forty-nine.
In the same city in which he dwells live some who were companions of his
childhood, and they are still young; but Berta's father became a widower
shortly after his marriage, and the loss of his wife put an end to his
youth. He settled his affairs, gave up his business, realized a part of
his property and retired from the world. That is to say, that he devoted
himself to the care of his daughter, in whom he beheld the living image of
the wife he had lost. Why should he wish to be young any longer? He grew
aged then long before he had grown old.
Berta--Berta. In this name all his thoughts were centred, and in his
thoughts there was much of sweetness and much of bitterness, for there is
not in the circle of human happiness a cup of honey that has not its drop
of gall.
To see him now walking up and down his room, looking now at the ceiling,
now at the floor, biting his nails and striking his forehead, one would
think the heavens were about to fall down and crush him or the earth to
open up under his feet.
Suddenly he struck his forehead with his open palm, and crossing over to
the door of the room, he raised the curtain, put out his head, and opened
his lips to say something; but the words remained unuttered, and he stood
with his mouth wide open, gazing with amazement at the nurse who, without
observing the movement of the curtain, was approaching the door,
gesticulating violently; it was evident that she had something
extraordinary on her mind.
Berta's father drew aside; the nurse entered the room, and the two
remained face to face, looking at each other as if they had never seen
each other before."
"What is the matter, Nurse Juana?" asked Berta's father. "I never saw you
look like that before."
"Well, you look no better youself. Any one would say, to see you, that you
had just risen from the grave."
Berta's father slowly arched his eyebrows, heaved a profound sigh, and
sinking into a chair, as if weighed down by the burden of existence, he
asked again:
"What is the matter?"
"The matter is," answered the nurse, "that the devil has got into this
house."
"It is possible," he answered; "and if you add that it is not an hour
since he left this room, you will not be far wrong."
"The Lord have mercy on us!" exclaimed the nurse: "the devil here!"
"Yes, Nurse Juana, the devil in person."
"And you saw him?"
"I saw him."
"What a horrible visitor!" exclaimed Juana, crossing herself.
"No," said Berta's father, "he is not horrible; he took the appearance of
a handsome young man who has all the air of a terrible rake."
"And how did this demon come in?"
"By the door, Juana, by the door."
"What a man!" cried the nurse in dismay.
Berta's father was very kind-hearted, and he had a very good opinion of
mankind; thus it was that he shook his head despondently as he replied:
"A man!--A man would not be so cruel to me. To take Berta from me is to
take my life. It is to assassinate me without allowing me a chance to
defend myself; and that is the most horrible part of it--they will be
married, and Berta will be united for life to the murderer of her father."
The nurse folded her arms and there was a moment of sorrowful silence.
Suddenly she said:
"Ah!--Berta will refuse."
A bitter smile crossed the lips of the unhappy father.
"You think she will not?" said the nurse. "Now, we shall see."
And she turned to go for Berta, but at the same moment the curtain was
raised and Berta entered the room.
The red carnation glowed in her black hair like fire in the darkness; her
eyes shone with a strange light, and in the fearless expression of her
countenance was to be divined the strength of an unalterable resolution.
She looked alternately at her father and at her nurse, and then in a
trembling voice she said:
"I know all. It may be to my life-long happiness; it may be to my eternal
misery; but that man is the master of my heart."
She smiled first at her father and then at her nurse; and left the room
with the same tranquillity with which she had entered it.
The nurse and the father remained standing where she left them,
motionless, dumb, astounded.
The devil then had succeeded in gaining an entrance into Berta's house in
the manner in which we have seen; and not only had he gained an entrance
into it, but he had taken possession of it as if it had always been his
own. He was hardly out of it before he was back again. He spent in it
several of his mornings, many of his afternoons, and all his evenings; and
there was no way of escaping his assiduous visits, for Berta was always
there to receive him. And it was not easy to be angry with him, either;
for he possessed the charm of an irresistible gayety, and one had not only
to be resigned but to show pleasure at his constant presence. Besides,
neither Berta's father nor the housekeeper dared to treat him coldly; they
felt compelled, by what irresistible spell they knew not, to receive him
with all honor and with a smiling countenance.
This is the case when they are under the influence of his presence: but
when he is absent, the father and the nurse treat him without any ceremony
whatever. The two get together in secret and in whispers revenge
themselves upon him by picking him to pieces. In these secret backbitings
they give vent to the aversion with which he inspires them; and the father
and the nurse between them leave him without a single good quality.
And it is not without reason that they berate him, for since he took the
house by storm nothing is done in it but what pleases him; he it is who
rules it, he it is who orders everything. For Berta thinks that all he
does is right, and there is no help for it but to bow in silence to her
will.
But they are not satisfied with berating him; they also conspire against
him. What means shall they take to overthrow the power of this unlawful
ruler?--for in the eyes of the housekeeper he is a usurper, and in those
of Berta's father, a tyrant;--turn him out of the house? This is the one
thought of the conspirators. But how? This is the difficulty which
confronts them.
Two means entirely opposed to each other occur to them--to fly from him or
to make a stand against him. To fly is the plan of Berta's father; it is
the resource which is most consistent with his pacific character. To fly
far from him, far away, to the ends of the earth.
But to this the housekeeper answers:
"Fly from him! What nonsense! Where could we go, that he would not follow
us? No; such folly is not to be thought of. What we ought to do is to take
a firm stand and defend ourselves against him."
"Defend ourselves against him!" exclaimed Berta's father. "With what
weapons? With what strength?"
"Neither strength nor weapons are required," replied the nurse. "Some day
you bar the door against him, and then he may knock in vain. Satan turns
away from closed doors."
"Nurse Juana, that is folly," replied Berta's father; "if he does not come
in by the door he will come in by the window, or down the chimney."
Juana bit her lips reflectively, for what she had never been able to
explain satisfactorily to herself was how he had succeeded in entering the
house for the first time, for the door was always kept closed; it was
necessary to knock to have it opened; and it was never opened unless under
the inspection of the housekeeper; she always wanted to know who came in
and who went out, and in this she was very particular. How then had he
been able to come in without being seen or heard?
Her first inquiries on this mysterious point were addressed to Berta--and
Berta answered simply that he had entered without knocking because the
door was open. This the nurse found impossible to believe.
She remained thoughtful, then, for this demon of a man, it seemed, could
in truth enter the house even if the door were barred.
The conspirators did not get beyond these two courses of action: to fly or
to defend themselves. To fly was impossible, and to defend themselves was
impracticable. Berta's father and the housekeeper discussed these two
points daily without seeing light on any side. And must they resign
themselves to living under the diabolical yoke of that man? Both found
themselves in a situation that would be difficult to describe. They lived
in constant trepidation, fearing they knew not what.
And who, then, is this man who rules them with his presence and who has
made himself master of Berta's heart? His name is Adrian Baker, he lives
alone, and he possesses a large fortune. This is all that is known about
him.
For the rest, he is young, tall, graceful in figure, with hair like gold
and a complexion as fair as snow; ardent and impassioned in speech, and
with steadfast, searching, and melancholy eyes, blue as the blue of deep
waters.
His manners could not be more natural, affectionate, and simple than they
are. He enters the house and runs up the stairs, two steps at a time.
Nothing stops him. If he meets Berta's father, he rushes to him and
embraces him, and the good man trembles from head to foot in the pressure
of those affectionate embraces. If it is the housekeeper who comes to meet
him, he lays his hand affectionately on her shoulder, and he always has
some pleasant remark to make, some cunning flattery which awakens in the
nurse a strange emotion. She feels as if the sap of youth were, of a
sudden, flowing through her veins.
There is no way of escaping the magic of his words, the spell of his
voice, the charm of his presence. Juana has observed that when he looks at
Berta his eyes shine with a light like that which the eyes of cats emit in
the dark; she has observed also that Berta turns pale under the power of
his glance, and that she bows her head under it as if yielding to the
influence of an irresistible will.
She has observed still more: she has observed that this mysterious man at
times sits lost in thought, his chin resting on his hand and a frown on
his brows, as if he saw some dreadful vision before him, and that
presently, as if awakening from a dream, he talks and smiles and laughs as
before. Berta's father has observed, on his side, that he knows something
about everything, understands something of everything, has an explanation
for everything, comprehends and divines everything, as if he possessed the
secret of all things. And these observations they communicate to each
other, filled with wonder and amazement.
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