Dona Perfecta

by Benito Pérez Galdós

  CHAPTER III

  PEPE REY

  Before proceeding further, it will be well to tell who Pepe Rey was, andwhat were the affairs which had brought him to Orbajosa.

  When Brigadier Rey died in 1841, his two children, Juan and Perfecta,had just married: the latter the richest land-owner of Orbajosa, theformer a young girl of the same city. The husband of Perfecta wascalled Don Manuel Maria Jose de Polentinos, and the wife of Juan, MariaPolentinos; but although they had the same surname, their relationshipwas somewhat distant and not very easy to make out. Juan Rey was adistinguished jurisconsult who had been graduated in Seville and hadpractised law in that city for thirty years with no less honor thanprofit. In 1845 he was left a widower with a son who was old enoughto play mischievous pranks; he would sometimes amuse himself byconstructing viaducts, mounds, ponds, dikes, and trenches of earth, inthe yard of the house, and then flooding those fragile works with water.His father let him do so, saying, "You will be an engineer."

  Perfecta and Juan had ceased to see each other from the time of theirmarriage, because the sister had gone to Madrid with her husband, thewealthy Polentinos, who was as rich as he was extravagant. Play andwomen had so completely enslaved Manuel Maria Jose that he would havedissipated all his fortune, if death had not been beforehand with himand carried him off before he had had time to squander it. In a night oforgy the life of the rich provincial, who had been sucked so voraciouslyby the leeches of the capital and the insatiable vampire of play, cameto a sudden termination. His sole heir was a daughter a few months old.With the death of Perfecta's husband the terrors of the family wereat an end, but the great struggle began. The house of Polentinos wasruined; the estates were in danger of being seized by the money-lenders;all was in confusion: enormous debts, lamentable management in Orbajosa,discredit and ruin in Madrid.

  Perfecta sent for her brother, who, coming to the distressed widow'sassistance, displayed so much diligence and skill that in a short timethe greater part of the dangers that threatened her had disappeared. Hebegan by obliging his sister to live in Orbajosa, managing herself hervast estates, while he faced the formidable pressure of the creditors inMadrid. Little by little the house freed itself from the enormous burdenof its debts, for the excellent Don Juan Rey, who had the best wayin the world for managing such matters, pleaded in the court, madesettlements with the principal creditors and arranged to pay them byinstalments, the result of this skilful management being that the richpatrimony of Polentinos was saved from ruin and might continue, for manyyears to come, to bestow splendor and glory on that illustrious family.

  Perfecta's gratitude was so profound that in writing to her brother fromOrbajosa, where she determined to reside until her daughter should begrown up, she said to him, among other affectionate things: "You havebeen more than a brother to me, more than a father to my daughter.How can either of us ever repay you for services so great? Ah, my dearbrother? from the moment in which my daughter can reason and pronounce aname I will teach her to bless yours. My gratitude will end only with mylife. Your unworthy sister regrets only that she can find no opportunityof showing you how much she loves you and of recompensing you in amanner suited to the greatness of your soul and the boundless goodnessof your heart."

  At the same time when these words were written Rosarito was two yearsold. Pepe Rey, shut up in a school in Seville, was making lines onpaper, occupied in proving that "the sum of all the interior angles ofany polygon is equal to twice as many right angles, wanting four, as thefigure has sides." These vexatious commonplaces of the school kept himvery busy. Year after year passed. The boy grew up, still continuingto make lines. At last, he made one which is called "From Tarragona toMontblanch." His first serious toy was the bridge, 120 metres in length,over the River Francoli.

  During all this time Dona Perfecta continued to live in Orbajosa. As herbrother never left Seville, several years passed without their seeingeach other. A quarterly letter, as punctually written as it waspunctually answered, kept in communication these two hearts, whoseaffection neither time nor distance could cool. In 1870, when Don JuanRey, satisfied with having fulfilled his mission in society, retiredfrom it and went to live in his fine house in Puerto Real, Pepe, who hadbeen employed for several years in the works of various rich buildingcompanies, set out on a tour through Germany and England, for thepurpose of study. His father's fortune, (as large as it is possible fora fortune which has only an honorable law-office for its source to be inSpain), permitted him to free himself in a short time from the yokeof material labor. A man of exalted ideas and with an ardent love forscience, he found his purest enjoyment in the observation and study ofthe marvels by means of which the genius of the age furthers at the sametime the culture and material comfort and the moral progress of man.

  On returning from his tour his father informed him that he had animportant project to communicate to him. Pepe supposed that it concernedsome bridge, dockyard, or, at the least, the draining of some marsh,but Don Juan soon dispelled his error, disclosing to him his plan in thefollowing words:

  "This is March, and Perfecta's quarterly letter has not failed tocome. Read it, my dear boy, and if you can agree to what that holyand exemplary woman, my dear sister, says in it, you will give me thegreatest happiness I could desire in my old age. If the plan does notplease you, reject it without hesitation, for, although your refusalwould grieve me, there is not in it the shadow of constraint on my part.It would be unworthy of us both that it should be realized through thecoercion of an obstinate father. You are free either to accept or toreject it, and if there is in your mind the slightest repugnance to it,arising either from your inclinations or from any other cause, I do notwish you to do violence to your feelings on my account."

  Pepe laid the letter on the table after he had glanced through it, andsaid quietly:

  "My aunt wishes me to marry Rosario!"

  "She writes accepting joyfully my idea," said his father, with emotion."For the idea was mine. Yes, it is a long time, a very long time sinceit occurred to me; but I did not wish to say anything to you untilI knew what your sister might think about it. As you see, Perfectareceives my plan with joy; she says that she too had thought of it, butthat she did not venture to mention it to me, because you are--you haveseen what she says--because you are a young man of very exceptionalmerit and her daughter is a country girl, without either a brillianteducation or worldly attractions. Those are her words. My poor sister!How good she is! I see that you are not displeased; I see that thisproject of mine, resembling a little the officious prevision of thefathers of former times who married their children without consultingtheir wishes in the matter, and making generally inconsiderate andunwise matches, does not seem absurd to you. God grant that this may be,as it seems to promise, one of the happiest. It is true that you havenever seen your cousin, but we are both aware of her virtue, of herdiscretion, of her modest and noble simplicity. That nothing may bewanting, she is even beautiful. My opinion is," he added gayly, "thatyou should at once start for that out-of-the-way episcopal city, thatUrbs Augusta, and there, in the presence of my sister and her charmingRosarito, decide whether the latter is to be something more to me ornot, than my niece."

  Pepe took up the letter again and read it through carefully. Hiscountenance expressed neither joy nor sorrow. He might have beenexamining some plan for the junction of two railroads.

  "In truth," said Don Juan, "in that remote Orbajosa, where, by the way,you have some land that you might take a look at now, life passes withthe tranquillity and the sweetness of an idyl. What patriarchal customs!What noble simplicity! What rural and Virgilian peace! If, instead ofbeing a mathematician, you were a Latinist, you would repeat, as youenter it, the _ergo tua rura manebunt_. What an admirable place in whichto commune with one's own soul and to prepare one's self for good works.There all is kindness and goodness; there the deceit and hypocrisy ofour great cities are unknown; there the holy inclinations which theturmoil of modern life stifles spring into being again; th
ere dormantfaith reawakens and one feels within the breast an impulse, vague butkeen, like the impatience of youth, that from the depths of the soulcries out: 'I wish to live!'"

  A few days after this conference Pepe left Puerto Real. He had refused,some months before, a commission from the government to survey, in itsmineralogical aspects, the basin of the River Nahara, in the valleyof Orbajosa; but the plans to which the conference above recorded gaverise, caused him to say to himself: "It will be as well to make use ofthe time. Heaven only knows how long this courtship may last, or whathours of weariness it may bring with it." He went, then, to Madrid,solicited the commission to explore the basin of the Nahara, which heobtained without difficulty, although he did not belong officially tothe mining corps, set out shortly afterward, and, after a second changeof trains, the mixed train No. 65 bore him, as we have seen, to theloving arms of Uncle Licurgo.

  The age of our hero was about thirty-four years. He was of a robustconstitution, of athletic build, and so admirably proportioned and of socommanding an appearance that, if he had worn a uniform, he wouldhave presented the most martial air and figure that it is possible toimagine. His hair and beard were blond in color, but in his countenancethere was none of the phlegmatic imperturbability of the Saxon, but, onthe contrary, so much animation that his eyes, although they were notblack, seemed to be so. His figure would have served as a perfect andbeautiful model for a statue, on the pedestal of which the sculptormight engrave the words: "Intellect, strength." If not in visiblecharacters, he bore them vaguely expressed in the brilliancy of hisglance, in the potent attraction with which his person was peculiarlyendowed, and in the sympathy which his cordial manners inspired.

  He was not very talkative--only persons of inconstant ideas and unstablejudgment are prone to verbosity. His profound moral sense made himsparing of words in the disputes in which the men of the day are proneto engage on any and every subject, but in polite conversation hedisplayed an eloquence full of wit and intelligence, emanating alwaysfrom good sense and a temperate and just appreciation of worldlymatters. He had no toleration for those sophistries, and mystifications,and quibbles of the understanding with which persons of intelligence,imbued with affected culture, sometimes amuse themselves; and in defenceof the truth Pepe Rey employed at times, and not always with moderation,the weapon of ridicule. This was almost a defect in the eyes of manypeople who esteemed him, for our hero thus appeared wanting in respectfor a multitude of things commonly accepted and believed. It must beacknowledged, although it may lessen him in the opinion of many, thatRey did not share the mild toleration of the compliant age which hasinvented strange disguises of words and of acts to conceal what to thegeneral eye might be disagreeable.

  Such was the man, whatever slanderous tongues may say to the contrary,whom Uncle Licurgo introduced into Orbajosa just as the cathedral bellswere ringing for high mass. When, looking over the garden wall, they sawthe young girl and the Penitentiary, and then the flight of the formertoward the house, they put spurs to their beasts and entered the CalleReal, where a great many idlers stood still to gaze at the traveller, asif he were a stranger and an intruder in the patriarchal city. Turningpresently to the right and riding in the direction of the cathedral,whose massive bulk dominated the town, they entered the Calle delCondestable, in which, being narrow and paved, the hoofs of the animalsclattered noisily, alarming the people of the neighborhood, who came tothe windows and to the balconies to satisfy their curiosity. Shuttersopened with a grating sound and various faces, almost all feminine,appeared above and below. By the time Pepe Rey had reached the thresholdof the house of Polentinos many and diverse comments had been alreadymade on his person.