Dona Perfecta

by Benito Pérez Galdós

  CHAPTER XIV

  THE DISCORD CONTINUES TO INCREASE

  A fresh attempt to see his cousin that evening failed, and Pepe Rey shuthimself up in his room to write several letters, his mind preoccupiedwith one thought.

  "To-night or to-morrow," he said to himself, "this will end one way oranother."

  When he was called to supper Dona Perfecta, who was already in thedining-room, went up to him and said, without preface:

  "Dear Pepe, don't distress yourself, I will pacify Senor Don Inocencio.I know every thing already. Maria Remedios, who has just left the house,has told me all about it."

  Dona Perfecta's countenance radiated such satisfaction as an artist,proud of his work, might feel.

  "About what?"

  "Set your mind at rest. I will make an excuse for you. You took a fewglasses too much in the Casino, that was it, was it not? There youhave the result of bad company. Don Juan Tafetan, the Troyas! This ishorrible, frightful. Did you consider well?"

  "I considered every thing," responded Pepe, resolved not to enter intodiscussions with his aunt.

  "I shall take good care not to write to your father what you have done."

  "You may write whatever you please to him."

  "You will exculpate yourself by denying the truth of this story, then?"

  "I deny nothing."

  "You confess then that you were in the house of those----"

  "I was."

  "And that you gave them a half ounce; for, according to what MariaRemedios has told me, Florentina went down to the shop of theExtramaduran this afternoon to get a half ounce changed. They couldnot have earned it with their sewing. You were in their house to-day;consequently--"

  "Consequently I gave it to her. You are perfectly right."

  "You do not deny it?"

  "Why should I deny it? I suppose I can do whatever I please with mymoney?"

  "But you will surely deny that you threw stones at the Penitentiary."

  "I do not throw stones."

  "I mean that those girls, in your presence--"

  "That is another matter."

  "And they insulted poor Maria Remedios, too."

  "I do not deny that, either."

  "And how do you excuse your conduct! Pepe in Heaven's name, have younothing to say? That you are sorry, that you deny--"

  "Nothing, absolutely nothing, senora!"

  "You don't even give me any satisfaction."

  "I have done nothing to offend you."

  "Come, the only thing there is left for you to do now is--there, takethat stick and beat me!"

  "I don't beat people."

  "What a want of respect! What, don't you intend to eat any supper?"

  "I intend to take supper."

  For more than a quarter of an hour no one spoke. Don Cayetano, DonaPerfecta, and Pepe Rey ate in silence. This was interrupted when DonInocencio entered the dining-room.

  "How sorry I was for it, my dear Don Jose! Believe me, I was truly sorryfor it," he said, pressing the young man's hand and regarding him with alook of compassion.

  The engineer was so perplexed for a moment that he did not know what toanswer.

  "I refer to the occurrence of this afternoon."

  "Ah, yes!"

  "To your expulsion from the sacred precincts of the cathedral."

  "The bishop should consider well," said Pepe Rey, "before he turns aChristian out of the church."

  "That is very true. I don't know who can have put it into his lordship'shead that you are a man of very bad habits; I don't know who has toldhim that you make a boast of your atheism everywhere; that you ridiculesacred things and persons, and even that you are planning to pull downthe cathedral to build a large tar factory with the stones. I tried mybest to dissuade him, but his lordship is a little obstinate."

  "Thanks for so much kindness."

  "And it is not because the Penitentiary has any reason to show you theseconsiderations. A little more, and they would have left him stretched onthe ground this afternoon."

  "Bah!" said the ecclesiastic, laughing. "But have you heard of thatlittle prank already? I wager Maria Remedios came with the story. And Iforbade her to do it--I forbade her positively. The thing in itself isof no consequence, am I not right, Senor de Rey?"

  "Since you think so----"

  "That is what I think. Young people's pranks! Youth, let the modernssay what they will, is inclined to vice and to vicious actions. Senorde Rey, who is a person of great endowments, could not be altogetherperfect--why should it be wondered at that those pretty girls shouldhave captivated him, and, after getting his money out of him, shouldhave made him the accomplice of their shameless and criminal insults totheir neighbors? My dear friend, for the painful part that I had in thisafternoon's sport," he added, raising his hand to the wounded spot,"I am not offended, nor will I distress you by even referring to sodisagreeable an incident. I am truly sorry to hear that Maria Remedioscame here to tell all about it. My niece is so fond of gossiping! Iwager she told too about the half ounce, and your romping with the girlson the terrace, and your chasing one another about, and the pinches andthe capers of Don Juan Tafetan. Bah! those things ought not to be told."

  Pepe Rey did not know which annoyed him most--his aunt's severity or thehypocritical condescension of the canon.

  "Why should they not be told?" said Dona Perfecta. "He does not seemashamed of his conduct himself. I assure you all that I keep this frommy dear daughter only because, in her nervous condition, a fit of angermight be dangerous to her."

  "Come, it is not so serious as all that, senora," said the Penitentiary."I think the matter should not be again referred to, and when the onewho was stoned says that, the rest may surely be satisfied. And the blowwas no joke, Senor Don Jose. I thought they had split my head open andthat my brains were oozing out."

  "I am truly sorry for the occurrence!" stammered Pepe Rey. "It gives mereal pain, although I had no part in it--"

  "Your visit to those Senoras Troyas will be talked about all overthe town," said the canon. "We are not in Madrid, in that centre ofcorruption, of scandal--"

  "There you can visit the vilest places without any one knowing it," saidDona Perfecta.

  "Here we are very observant of one another," continued Don Inocencio."We take notice of everything our neighbors do, and with such a systemof vigilance public morals are maintained at a proper height. Believeme, my friend, believe me,--and I do not say this to mortify you,--youare the first gentleman of your position who, in the light of day--thefirst, yes, senor--_Trojoe qui primus ab oris_."

  And bursting into a laugh, he clapped the engineer on the back in tokenof amity and good-will.

  "How grateful I ought to be," said the young man, concealing his angerunder the sarcastic words which he thought the most suitable to answerthe covert irony of his interlocutors, "to meet with so much generosityand tolerance, when my criminal conduct would deserve--"

  "What! Is a person of one's own blood, one who bears one's name," saidDona Perfecta, "to be treated like a stranger? You are my nephew, youare the son of the best and the most virtuous of men, of my dear brotherJuan, and that is sufficient. Yesterday afternoon the secretary of thebishop came here to tell me that his lordship is greatly displeasedbecause I have you in my house."

  "And that too?" murmured the canon.

  "And that too. I said that in spite of the respect which I owe thebishop, and the affection and reverence which I bear him, my nephew ismy nephew, and I cannot turn him out of my house."

  "This is another singularity which I find in this place," said Pepe Rey,pale with anger. "Here, apparently, the bishop governs other people'shouses."

  "He is a saint. He is so fond of me that he imagines--he imagines thatyou are going to contaminate us with your atheism, your disregard forpublic opinion, your strange ideas. I have told him repeatedly that, atbottom, you are an excellent young man."

  "Some concession must always be made to superior talent," observed DonInocencio.
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br />   "And this morning, when I was at the Cirujedas'--oh, you cannot imaginein what a state they had my head! Was it true that you had come topull down the cathedral; that you were commissioned by the EnglishProtestants to go preaching heresy throughout Spain; that you spent thewhole night gambling in the Casino; that you were drunk in the streets?'But, senoras,' I said to them, 'would you have me send my nephew tothe hotel?' Besides, they are wrong about the drunkenness, and as forgambling--I have never yet heard that you gambled."

  Pepe Rey found himself in that state of mind in which the calmest man isseized by a sudden rage, by a blind and brutal impulse to strangle someone, to strike some one in the face, to break some one's head, to crushsome one's bones. But Dona Perfecta was a woman and was, besides, hisaunt; and Don Inocencio was an old man and an ecclesiastic. In additionto this, physical violence is in bad taste and unbecoming a person ofeducation and a Christian. There remained the resource of giving ventto his suppressed wrath in dignified and polite language; but this lastresource seemed to him premature, and only to be employed at the momentof his final departure from the house and from Orbajosa. Controlling hisfury, then, he waited.

  Jacinto entered as they were finishing supper.

  "Good-evening, Senor Don Jose," he said, pressing the young man's hand."You and your friends kept me from working this afternoon. I was notable to write a line. And I had so much to do!"

  "I am very sorry for it, Jacinto. But according to what they tell me,you accompany them sometimes in their frolics."

  "I!" exclaimed the boy, turning scarlet. "Why, you know very well thatTafetan never speaks a word of truth. But is it true, Senor de Rey, thatyou are going away?"

  "Is that the report in the town?"

  "Yes. I heard it in the Casino and at Don Lorenzo Ruiz's."

  Rey contemplated in silence for a few moments the fresh face of DonNominative. Then he said:

  "Well, it is not true; my aunt is very well satisfied with me; shedespises the calumnies with which the Orbajosans are favoring me--andshe will not turn me out of her house, even though the bishop himselfshould try to make her do so."

  "As for turning you out of the house--never. What would your fathersay?"

  "Notwithstanding all your kindness, dearest aunt, notwithstanding thecordial friendship of the reverend canon, it is possible that I maymyself decide to go away."

  "To go away!"

  "To go away--you!"

  A strange light shone in Dona Perfecta's eyes. The canon, experiencedthough he was in dissimulation, could not conceal his joy.

  "Yes, and perhaps this very night."

  "Why, man, how impetuous you are; Why don't you at least wait untilmorning? Here--Juan, let some one go for Uncle Licurgo to get the nagready. I suppose you will take some luncheon with you. Nicolasa, thatpiece of veal that is on the sideboard! Librada, the senorito's linen."

  "No, I cannot believe that you would take so rash a resolution,"said Don Cayetano, thinking himself obliged to take some part in thequestion.

  "But you will come back, will you not?" asked the canon.

  "At what time does the morning train pass?" asked Dona Perfecta, inwhose eyes was clearly discernible the feverish impatience of herexaltation.

  "I am going away to-night."

  "But there is no moon."

  In the soul of Dona Perfecta, in the soul of the Penitentiary, in thelittle doctor's youthful soul echoed like a celestial harmony the word,"To-night!"

  "Of course, dear Pepe, you will come back. I wrote to-day to yourfather, your excellent father," exclaimed Dona Perfecta, with all thephysiognomic signs that make their appearance when a tear is about to beshed.

  "I will trouble you with a few commissions," said the savant.

  "A good opportunity to order the volume that is wanting in my copy ofthe Abbe Gaume's work," said the youthful lawyer.

  "You take such sudden notions, Pepe; you are so full of caprices,"murmured Dona Perfecta, smiling, with her eyes fixed on the door ofthe dining-room. "But I forgot to tell you that Caballuco is waiting tospeak to you."