The Quest Part 4

Manuel's mother, as always, would be meditating upon heaven and h.e.l.l, giving little heed to the pettiness of this earth, and she could not s.h.i.+eld her son from such edifying spectacles. Petra's educational system consisted only of giving Manuel an occasional blow and of making him read prayer-books.

Petra imagined that she could see the traits of the machinist showing up in the boy, and this troubled her. She wished Manuel to be like her,--humble toward his superiors, respectful toward the priests...; but a fine place this was for learning to respect anything!

One morning, after the solemn ceremony had been celebrated in which all the women of the house issued into the corridor swinging their night service, there burst from Dona Violante's room a clamour of shouts, weeping, stamping and vociferation.

The landlady, the Biscayan and several of the boarders tiptoed into the corridor to pry. Inside the quarrellers must have realized that they were being spied upon, for they opened the door and the fray continued in low tones.

Manuel and the landlady's niece remained in the entry. They could hear Irene's sobbing and the scolding voices of Celia and Dona Violante.

At first they could not make out what was being said; but soon the three women forgot their determination to speak low and their voices rose in anger.

"Go! Go to the House of Mercy and have them rid you of that swelling!

Wretch!" cried Celia.

"Well, what of it?" retorted Irene. "I'm caught, am I? I know it. What of it?"

Dona Violante opened the door to the entry furiously; Manuel and the landlady's niece scampered off, and the old lady came out in a patched flannel s.h.i.+ft and a weed kerchief tied about her ears, and began to pace to and fro, dragging her worn-out shoes from end to end of the corridor.

"The sow! Worse than a sow!" she muttered. "Did any one ever see such a filthy creature!"

Manuel went off to the parlour, where the landlady and the Biscayan were chatting in low tones. The landlady's niece, dying with curiosity, questioned the two women with growing irritation:

"But why are they scolding Irene?"

The landlady and the Biscayan exchanged amicable glances and burst into laughter.

"Tell me," cried the child insistently, clutching at her aunt's kerchief. "What of it if she has that bundle? Who gave her that package?"

The landlady and the Biscayan could no longer restrain their guffaws, while the little girl stared avidly up at them, trying to make out the meaning of what she heard.

"Who gave her that package?" repeated the Biscayan between outbursts.

"My dear little girl, we really don't know who gave her that package."

All the boarders repeated the niece's question with enthusiastic delight, and at every table discussion some wag would be sure to interrupt suddenly with:

"Now I see that you know who gave her that package." The remark would be greeted with uproarious merriment.

Then, after a few days had pa.s.sed, there was rumour of a mysterious consultation held by Dona Violante's daughters with the wife of a barber on Jardines street,--a sort of provider of little angels for limbo; it was said that Irene returned from the conference in a coach, very pale, and that she had to be put at once to bed. Certainly the girl did not leave her room for more than a week and, when she appeared, she looked like a convalescent and the frowns had disappeared completely from the face of her mother and her grandmother.

"She looks like an infanticide," said the priest when he saw her again, "but she's prettier than ever."

Whether any transgression had been committed, none could say with surety; soon everything was forgotten; a patron appeared for the girl, and he was, from all appearances, wealthy. In commemoration of so happy an event the boarders partic.i.p.ated in the treat. After the supper they drank cognac and brandy, the priest played the guitar, Irene danced _sevillanas_ with less grace than a bricklayer, as the landlady said; the Superman sang some _fados_ that he had learned in Portugal, and the Biscayan, not to be outdone, burst forth into some _malaguenas_ that might just as well have been a _cante flamenco_ or the Psalms of David.

Only the blond student with the eyes of steel abstained from the celebration; he was absorbed in his thoughts.

"And you, Roberto," Celia said to him several times,--"don't you sing or do anything?"

"Not I," he replied coldly.

"You haven't any blood in your veins."

The youth looked at her for a moment, shrugged his shoulders indifferently and his pale lips traced a smile of disdainful mockery.

Then, as almost always happened in these boarding-house sprees, some wag turned on the music-box in the corridor and the duet from _La Mascotte_ together with the waltz from _La Diva_ rose in confusion upon the air; the Superman and Celia danced a couple of waltzes and the party wound up with everybody singing a _habanera_, until they wearied and each owl flew off to his nest.

CHAPTER IV

Oh, love, love!--What's Don Telmo Doing?--Who is Don Telmo?--Wherein the Student and Don Telmo a.s.sume Certain Novelesque Proportions.

The Baroness was hardly ever seen in the house, except during the early hours of the morning and the night. She dined and supped outside. If the landlady was to be credited, she was an adventuress whose position varied considerably, for one day she would be moving to a costly apartment and sporting a carriage, while the next she would disappear for several months in the germ-ridden hole of some cheap boarding-house.

The Baroness's daughter, a child of some twelve or fourteen years, never appeared in the dining-room or in the corridor; her mother forbade all communication with the lodgers. Her name was Kate. She was a fair girl, very light-complexioned and exceedingly winsome. Only the student Roberto spoke to her now and then in English.

The youth was enthusiastic over her.

That summer the Baroness's streak of bad luck must have come to an end, for she began to make herself some fine clothes and prepared to move.

For several weeks a modiste and her a.s.sistant came daily, with gowns and hats for the Baroness and Kate.

Manuel, one night, saw the modiste's a.s.sistant go by with a huge box in her hand and was smitten.

He followed her at a distance in great fear lest she see him. As he stole on behind, he wondered what he could say to such a maiden if he were to accompany her. It must be something gallant, exquisite; he even imagined that she was at his side and he racked his brain for beautiful phrases and delicate compliments, yet nothing but commonplaces rewarded his search. In the meantime the a.s.sistant and her box were lost in the crowd and he could not catch sight of them again.

The memory of that maiden was for Manuel as an enchanting music, a fancy upon which were reared still wilder fancies. Often he made up tales in which always he figured as the hero and the a.s.sistant as the heroine. While Manuel bemoaned the harshness of fate, Roberto, the blond student, gave himself up likewise to melancholy, brooding upon the Baroness's daughter. The student was forced to endure jests especially from Celia, who, according to certain evil tongues, was trying to rouse him from his habitual frigidity. But Roberto gave her no heed.

Some days later the house was agog with curiosity.

As the boarders came in from the street, they greeted each other jokingly, repeating in the manner of a pa.s.s-word: "Who is Don Telmo?

What's Don Telmo doing?"

One day the district police-commissioner came and spoke to Don Telmo, and some one heard or invented the report that the two men were discussing the notorious crime on Malasana Street. Upon hearing this news the expectant inquisitiveness of the boarders waxed great, and all, half in jest and half in earnest, arranged to keep a watch upon the mysterious gentleman.

Don Telmo was the name of the cadaverous old fellow who wiped his cups and spoons with his napkin, and his reserved manner seemed to invite observation. Taciturn, indifferent, never joining the conversation, a man of few words who never made any complaints, he attracted attention by the very fact that he seemed intent upon not attracting it.

His only visible occupation was to wind the seven or eight clocks of the house and to regulate them when they got out of order,--an event of common occurrence.

Don Telmo had the features of a very sad man,--one in profound sorrow.

His livid countenance betrayed fathomless dejection. He wore his white beard and his hair short; his brows fell like brushes over his grey eyes.

In the house he went around wrapped in a faded coat, with a Greek bonnet and cloth slippers. When he went out he donned a long frock coat and a very tall silk hat; only on certain summer days would he wear a Havana hat of woven straw.

For more than a month Don Telmo was the topic of conversation in the boarding-house.

In the famous trial of the Malasana Street crime a servant declared that one afternoon she saw Dona Celsa's son in an aqueduct of the Plaza de Oriente, talking with a lame old man. For the guests this man could be none other than Don Telmo. With this suspicion they set about spying upon the old man; he, however, had a sharp scent and sniffed the state of affairs at once; the boarders, seeing how bootless their attempts were proving, tried to ransack his room; they used a number of keys until they got the door open and when they had forced an entrance, discovered nothing more that a closet fastened by a formidable safety-lock.