Part 11 (1/2)
”How easy it is to give advice!” returned Pepita, becoming a little calmer. ”How hard for me to follow it, when there is a fierce and unchained tempest, as it were, raging in my soul! I am afraid I shall go mad.”
”The advice I give you is for your own good. Let Don Luis depart.
Absence is a great remedy for the malady of love. In giving himself up to his studies, and consecrating himself to the service of the altar, he will be cured of his pa.s.sion. When he is far away, you will recover your serenity by degrees, and will preserve in your memory only a grateful and melancholy recollection of him that will do you no harm. It will be like a beautiful poem whose music will harmonize your existence. Even if all your desires could be fulfilled--earthly love lasts, after all, but a short time. The delight the imagination antic.i.p.ates in its enjoyment--what is it in comparison with the bitter dregs that remain behind, when the cup has been drained to the bottom? How much better is it that your love, hardly yet contaminated, hardly despoiled of its purity, should be dissipated, and exhale itself now, rising up to heaven like a cloud of incense, than that, after it is once satisfied, it should perish through satiety! Have the courage to put away from your lips the cup while you have hardly tasted of its contents. Make of them a libation and an offering to the Divine Redeemer. He will give you, in exchange, the draught he offered to the Samaritan--a draught that does not satiate, that quenches the thirst, and that produces eternal life.”
”How good you are, father! Your holy words lend me courage. I will control myself; I will conquer myself. It would be shameful--would it not?--that Don Luis should be able to control and conquer himself, and that I should not be able to do so? Let him depart. He is going away the day after to-morrow; let him go with G.o.d's blessing. See his card. He was here with his father to take leave of me, and I would not receive him. I do not even want to preserve the poetical remembrance of him of which you speak. This love has been a nightmare; I will cast it away from me.”
”Good! very good! It is thus that I want to see you--energetic, courageous.”
”Ah, father, G.o.d has cast down my pride with this blow. I was insolent in my arrogance, and the scorn of this man was necessary to my self-abas.e.m.e.nt. Could I be more humbled or more resigned than I am now?
Don Luis is right: I am not worthy of him. However great the efforts I might make, I could not succeed in elevating myself to him and comprehending him, in putting my spirit into perfect communication with his. I am a rude country girl, unlearned, uncultured; and he--there is no science he does not understand, no secret of which he is ignorant, no region of the intellectual world, however exalted, to which he may not soar. Thither on the wings of his genius does he mount; and me he leaves behind in this lower sphere, poor, ignorant woman that I am, incapable of following him even in my hopes or with my aspirations.”
”But, Pepita, for Heaven's sake don't say such things, or think them!
Don Luis does not scorn you because you are ignorant, or because you are incapable of comprehending him, or for any other of those absurd reasons that you are stringing together. He goes away because he must fulfill his obligation toward G.o.d; and you should rejoice that he is going away, for you will then forget your love for him, and G.o.d will reward you for the sacrifice you make.”
Pepita, who had left off crying, and had dried her tears with her handkerchief, answered quietly:
”Very well, father; I shall be very glad of it; I am almost glad now that he is going away. I long for to-morrow to pa.s.s, and for the time to come when Antonona shall say to me on wakening, 'Don Luis is gone.' You shall see then how peace and serenity will spring up again in my heart.”
”G.o.d grant it may be so!” said the reverend vicar; and, convinced that he had wrought a miracle and almost cured Pepita's malady, he took leave of her and went home, unable to repress a certain feeling of vanity at the thought of the influence he had exercised over the n.o.ble spirit of this charming woman.
Pepita, who had risen as the reverend vicar was about to take his leave, after she had closed the door, stood for a moment immovable in the middle of the room, her gaze fixed on s.p.a.ce, her eyes tearless. A poet or an artist, seeing her thus, would have been reminded of Ariadne, as Catullus describes her, after Theseus has abandoned her on the island of Naxos. All at once, as if she had but just succeeded in untying the knot of a cord that was strangling her, Pepita broke into heart-rending sobs, let loose a torrent of tears, and threw herself down on the tiled floor of her apartment. There, her face buried in her hands, her hair unbound, her dress disordered, she continued to sigh and moan.
She might have remained thus for an indefinite time if Antonona had not come to her. Antonona had heard her sobs from without and hurried to her apartment. When she saw her mistress extended on the floor, Antonona gave way to a thousand extravagant expressions of fury.
”Here's a pretty sight!” she cried; ”that sneak, that blackguard, that old fool, what a way he has to console his friends! I shouldn't wonder if he has committed some piece of barbarity--given a couple of kicks to this poor child, perhaps; and now I suppose he has gone back to the church to get everything ready to sing the funeral chant, and sprinkle her with hyssop, and bury her out of sight without more ado.”
Antonona was about forty, and a hard worker--energetic, and stronger than many a laborer. She often lifted up, with scarcely more than the strength of her hand, a skin of oil or of wine, weighing nearly ninety pounds, and placed it on the back of a mule, or carried a bag of wheat up to the garret where the grain was kept. Although Pepita was not a feather, Antonona now lifted her up in her arms from the floor as if she had been one, and placed her carefully on the sofa, as though she were some delicate and precious piece of porcelain that she feared to break.
”What is the meaning of all this?” asked Antonona. ”I wager anything that drone of a vicar has been preaching you a sermon as bitter as aloes, and has left you now with your heart torn to pieces with grief.”
Pepita continued to weep and sob without answering.
”Come, leave off crying, and tell me what is the matter. What has the vicar said to you?”
”He said nothing that could offend me,” finally answered Pepita.
Then, seeing that Antonona was waiting anxiously to hear her speak, and feeling the need of unburdening herself to some one who could sympathize more fully with her, and, humanly speaking, could better comprehend her than the vicar, Pepita spoke as follows:
”The reverend vicar has admonished me gently to repent of my sins; to allow Don Luis to go away; to rejoice at his departure; to forget him. I have said yes to everything; I have promised him to rejoice at Don Luis's departure; I have tried to forget him, and even to hate him. But look you, Antonona, I can not; it is an undertaking superior to my strength. While the vicar was here, I thought I had strength for everything; but no sooner had he gone than, as if G.o.d had let go his hold of me, I lost my courage, and fell, crushed with sorrow, on the floor. I had dreamed of a happy life at the side of the man I love; I already saw myself elevated to him by the miraculous power of love; my poor mind in perfect communion with his sublime intellect; my will one with his; both thinking the same thought; our hearts beating in unison.
And now G.o.d has taken him away from me, and I am left alone, without hope or consolation. Is not this frightful? The arguments of the reverend vicar are just and full of wisdom; for the time, they convinced me. But he has gone away, and all those arguments now seem to me worthless--a tissue of words, lies, entanglements, and sophistries. I love Don Luis, and this argument is more powerful than all other arguments put together. And if he loves me in return, why does he not leave everything and come to me, break the vows he has taken, and renounce the obligations he has contracted? I did not know what love was; now I know; there is nothing stronger on earth or in heaven. What would I not do for Don Luis? And he--he does nothing for me! Perhaps he does not love me. No; Don Luis does not love me. I have deceived myself; I was blinded by vanity. If Don Luis loved me, he would sacrifice his plans, his vows, his fame, his aspirations to be a saint and a light of the Church, he would sacrifice all to me. G.o.d forgive me, what I am about to say is horrible, but I feel it here in the depths of my heart, it burns here in my fevered brow: for him I would give even the salvation of my soul!”
”Holy Virgin!” exclaimed Antonona.
”It is true; may our blessed Lady of Sorrows pardon me--I am mad--I know not what I say. I blaspheme!”
”Yes, child; you are talking indeed a little naughtily. Heaven help us!