Maximina Part 47

"Pshaw! If you did so, it must have been for some good reason," replied she, kissing the hand which was smoothing her cheek.

On the next day they received a call from Aunt Martina and her daughter Serafina. The worthy lady had grown visibly more feeble. 'Such a life she led with her husband! Don Bernardo kept growing more and more crazy with his foolish jealousies!' As she told what went on at home, she wept aloud.

"After forty years of married life, how could I possibly be unfaithful to your uncle, Miguel? Don't you think that I have proved that I am virtuous? And if I had to fall, moreover, it would not be with a _carcamal_[41] who smells of drugs for a mile! Isn't that so? You understand!..."

Miguel nodded a.s.sent, with difficulty repressing a smile, for it was as good as a play to find his aunt imagining that any young man would flirt with her.

"I am an honest woman.... Serafina, don't come in here; take the baby into the dining-room," she said, interrupting herself on seeing her daughter come into the bedroom with the sweet little thing in her arms.

"I have been all my life long. Never even in thought have I been untrue to my husband. In return for this, he puts me to shame before the servants, treating me little less than if I were a public woman. I cannot longer endure this martyrdom, Miguel. I am dying, dying daily.

The other day he made a perfect scandal because he found the end of a cigar in my room. As neither Vicente nor Carlos smoke, he took it for granted that Hojeda had been there; he even went so far as to insist that it was a cigar such as the apothecary smokes, although he always smokes cigarettes! It made me faint away; they had to call the doctor.

Finally, in the night, a little fifteen-year-old servant boy whom we have, seeing the serious trouble there was in the house, confessed to the maid that it was he who had left the cigar-end there, and he went to tell your Uncle Bernardo. Then, though he instantly dismissed him, he did not remain calm. The servants don't stay with us more than a fortnight; he imagines that they are all the apothecary's pimps.... Day before yesterday the newsboy came along and handed me the paper as I happened to be walking along the corridor. My husband sees it, takes it into his head that this too is an emissary, and dashes out of the window. Simply because Hojeda pa.s.sed by a little while before! I can't tell all that goes on; it is madness, a catastrophe! If it were not for Vicente, I would blow my brains out with a revolver.... I cannot go out without having my daughter with me, and then leaving on a piece of paper where I am going.... He has ordered all the mattresses in the house to be ripped open, so as to find some of the letters which he says that I have hidden.... Finally,--but do you want to hear more? He has sent and had an iron grating put in the fireplace, for he has an idea that Hojeda comes in that way...."

"_Ave Maria!_ How crazy poor uncle must be!" exclaimed Miguel.

"Don't you believe it; he speaks as reasonably as you or I, and his memory is as good as ever."

"Aunt, phrenopathy is not your strong point. Madmen have made progress like every one else in this world. Nowadays, they discuss and talk like all the rest of us. To distinguish an insane person from one in his senses you must depend upon a specialist; consequently, you must not meddle in things that you don't understand; however, my uncle is certainly showing symptoms that seem very suspicious, even to the ordinary intelligence."

"Sane or insane, I want to separate from him, for my life is a h.e.l.l. But when once this subject came up, he became frantic, declaring that I wanted a divorce so as to marry my lover, and that he would empty his six-shooter into me if I did any such thing...."

"Poor aunt!" said Maximina, with tears in her eyes.

"How does my life seem to you?... But it is not this alone. I have still another cause for tribulation. Eulalia's little maid is almost blind!"

"What of?" asked the young mother.

"What do you suppose, child? Of her eyes, of course!"

"No; I meant of what disease!"

"Ah! I don't know what name the doctor gives it. Then, besides, Encarnacion the maid, who you must know has been my hands and feet, got married last Monday. You can't imagine the state of the house since she left us! It is a republic, children! I can't be in half a dozen places at once. For a dozen years I have depended wholly on her.... She had the keys to the linen closet; she kept account of the was.h.i.+ng; she took out the chocolate and the _garbanzos_[42]; she looked out for the wine-closet when the wines were getting low; she ironed Carlos' and Enrique's s.h.i.+rts (for Vicente sends his out to be done up). Finally, I hardly had to trouble myself about what the servants got to eat, she had them so under her control.... Now, whom can I put into the house? Whom could I put in her place, the service being so turned topsy-turvy?

Thursday the lackey came to me saying that Modesta was not willing to mend the sleeve of his livery-coat, which he had torn...."

"And Enrique? How about him?" asked Miguel, fearing that his aunt, in talking about the servants, would never finish, as was her custom.

"That is another thing! Bent on marrying the _chula_! There is no way of getting it out of his head. His father will not hear his name mentioned, and has already declared that, if he continues his relations.h.i.+p with her, he will send him out of the house. Vicente and Eulalia are also just as set against him. The one who 'pays for all the broken gla.s.s in the house' is myself, because I sympathize with him; don't you see?"

"Yes; Enrique has always been your favorite!"

"The whole family have always declared this to be the case, but it is not true; as you see, he is the least favored.... On the other hand, he treats me worse than a shoe!"

The entrance of Serafina with the baby again interrupted the conversation; behind her came all the maids, evincing a lively excitement:

"What is the matter?"

"Why! the baby smiled!" said Serafina.

"Smiled! He smiled, as sure as there is a G.o.d in heaven, senorita," said one of the maids, adding her testimony.

"Go along with you! you are all crazy!" said Dona Martina. "Why, he is only two days old!"

"It cannot be," insisted Maximina, although she flushed with joy at the thought.

"But he did; he did!" exclaimed all the servants.

"This is the way it happened, senorita," said one maid, scarcely able to get her breath. "The Senorita Serafina was this way with the baby; do you see? And I looked and took hold of him by the shoulder, do you see?

and lifted him up, and began to move him up and down, and to say: 'Little chicken![43] rosebud! pink! do you want to be called Miguelito, like your papa?' The baby didn't do anything. 'Do you want to be called Enriquito like your uncle?' He didn't do anything this time either. 'Do you want to be called Serafin after your aunt?' And then he opened his eyes just a wee bit, and made up a little mouth with his lips. Oh, so cunning!"

Maximina smiled as though she had been listening to a revelation from heaven. She, and her aunt also, were instantly convinced, but Miguel still doubted.

"When it comes to the smiling of infants not more than fifty-seven hours old," said Miguel, "I must confess to an unyielding scepticism. I am like Saint Thomas: seeing is believing."

"But he _did_ smile, Miguel. Don't you have any doubt of it; I a.s.sure you he did, ..." said Serafina.

"You do not offer me sufficient guarantees of impartiality."

"Very good! then he is going to do it again; now you shall see for yourself."

Serafina took the child and lifted him above her head, with great decision, at the same time asking him if he wanted to be called Serafin; to which question the child did not find it expedient to reply, perhaps from an excess of diplomacy, because it would not have been strange if the name had seemed absurd to him.

Maximina, meantime, hung on his lips as though the child were pa.s.sing through a college examination.

"You try it, Placida," said she, trying to hide her affliction.

Placida stepped out of the group like one of the "artists" of Price's circus, coming forth to perform his great feat. She lifted the child with surprising skill, swung him from north to south, then from east to west, and with impetuous voice put the sacred questions: "Little chicken, sweetie! rosebud! pink! do you want to be called Miguelito, like your papa? Do you want to be called Enriquito like your uncle? Do you want to be called Serafin after your aunt?"

A lugubrious silence followed these words. All eyes were fastened on the young candidate, who, instead of showing a liking for any of the names proposed, made it very clear, though in an inarticulate way, that he could see no reason why, for a mere question of names, these hypochondriacs should bother him so much.

"Do you see?" said Miguel.

"The reason is, he isn't in humor for laughing," protested Maximina, very much dissatisfied. "_You_ won't laugh either when you are told to!

Besides, he must be hungry by this time. Give him to me! Give him to me!

Joy of my life! Sweetheart mine!"

And the child-mother snuggled her little son under the sheets, and put him to her breast.

On the third day baptism took place. With the melancholy resignation usually manifested by mothers in such circ.u.mstances, Maximina let them carry her baby away.

"He is a Christian already, senorita," said the maid, taking possession of him.

The young mother kissed him fondly, and pressed him to her heart, saying, in a whisper, "Thou shan't be taken from me again, child of my bosom!"

On the fifth day she was sitting up. In a week she was about the house; in a fortnight she was out of doors as usual. Enrique and Julita were the child's G.o.d-parents, and he was named after the former.

The pleasure which Miguel found in all these things was embittered by the serious danger threatening his fortune. All the time this thought haunted him to such a degree that it was a great effort for him to seem happy in his wife's presence.

He wrote to the general, but he replied in such an ambiguous and suspicious manner that it left no room for doubt that in this quarter no help was to be expected. From that time he deliberately made up his mind that his salvation depended on his election to Congress, in gaining influence in the majority and with the ministers, and in making the best of it at a given moment by getting from the reserve funds the money which he had compromised.