Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays Part 128

FLORENCIO.

CASALONGA.

ZURITA.

VALDIVIESO.

THE SCENE _is laid in a provincial capital_.

Reprinted from "Plays: First Series," by permission of, and special arrangements with, Mr. John Garrett Underhill and Charles Scribner's Sons. Applications for permission to produce HIS WIDOW'S HUSBAND should be addressed to the Society of Spanish Authors, 20 Na.s.sau Street, New York.

HIS WIDOW'S HUSBAND

A COMEDY BY JACINTO BENEVENTE

[_Carolina is seated as Zurita enters._]

ZURITA. My friend!

CAROLINA. My good Zurita, it is so thoughtful of you to come so promptly! I shall never be able to repay all your kindness.

ZURITA. I am always delighted to be of service to a friend.

CAROLINA. I asked them to look for you everywhere. Pardon the inconvenience, but the emergency was extreme. I am in a terrible position; all the tact in the world can never extricate me from one of those embarra.s.sing predicaments--unless you a.s.sist me by your advice.

ZURITA. Count upon my advice; count upon me in anything. However, I cannot believe that you are really in an embarra.s.sing predicament.

CAROLINA. But I am, my friend; and you are the only one who can advise me. You are a person of taste; your articles and society column are the standard of good form with us. Everybody accepts and respects your decisions.

ZURITA. Not invariably, I am sorry to say--especially now that I have taken up the suppression of the hips, which are fatal to the success of any _toilette_. Society was formerly very select in this city, but it is no longer the same, as you no doubt have occasion to know. Too many fortunes have been improvised, too many aristocratic families have descended in the scale. There has been a great change in society. The _parvenus_ dominate--and money is so insolent! People who have it imagine that other things can be improvised--as education, for example, manners, good taste. Surely you must realize that such things cannot be improvised. Distinction is a hothouse plant. We grow too few gardenias nowadays--like you, my friend. On the other hand, we have an abundance of sow-thistles. Not that I am referring to the Nunez family.... How do you suppose those ladies enliven their Wednesday evenings? With a gramophone, my friend, with a gramophone--just like any vulgar cafe; although I must confess that it is an improvement upon the days when the youngest sang, the middle one recited, and all played together.

Nevertheless it is horrible. You can imagine my distress.

CAROLINA. You know, of course, that I never take part in their Wednesdays. I never call unless I am sure they are not at home.

ZURITA. But that is no longer a protection; they leave the gramophone.

And the maid invites you to wait and entertain yourself with the _Mochuelo_. What is a man to do? It is impossible to resent the records upon the maid. But we are wandering from the subject. You excite my curiosity.

CAROLINA. You know that to-morrow is the day of the unveiling of the statue of my husband, of my previous husband--

ZURITA. A fitting honor to the memory of that great, that ill.u.s.trious man. This province owes him much, and so does all Spain. We who enjoyed the privilege of calling ourselves his friends, should be delighted to see justice done to his deserts at last, here where political jealousies and intrigues have always belittled the achievements of our eminent men.

But Don Patricio Molinete could have no enemies. To-morrow will atone for much of the pettiness of the past.

CAROLINA. No doubt. I feel I ought to be proud and happy, although you understand the delicacy of my position. Now that I have married again, my name is not the same. Yet it is impossible to ignore the fact that once it was mine, especially as everybody knows that we were a model couple. I might perhaps have avoided the situation by leaving town for a few days on account of my health, but then that might have been misinterpreted. People might have thought that I was displeased, or that I declined to partic.i.p.ate.

ZURITA. a.s.suredly. Although your name is no longer the same, owing to circ.u.mstances, the force of which we appreciate, that is no reason why you should be deprived of the honor of having borne it worthily at the time. Your present husband has no right to take offense.

CAROLINA. No, poor Florencio! In fact, he was the first to realize that I ought to take a leading part in the rejoicing. Poor Florencio was always poor Patricio's greatest admirer. Their political ideas were the same; they agreed in everything.

ZURITA. Apparently.

CAROLINA. As I have reason to know. Poor Patricio loved me dearly; perhaps that was what led poor Florencio to imagine that there was something in me to justify the affection of that great-hearted and intellectual man. It was enough for me to know that Florencio was Patricio's most intimate friend in order to form my opinion of him. Of course, I recognize that Florencio's gifts will never enable him to s.h.i.+ne so brilliantly, but that is not to say that he is wanting in ability. He lacks ambition, that is all. All his desires are satisfied at home with me, at his own fireside. And I am as well pleased to have it so. I am not ambitious myself. The seasons which I spent with my husband in Madrid were a source of great uneasiness to me. I pa.s.sed the week during which he was Minister of Agriculture in one continual state of anxiety. Twice he nearly had a duel--over some political question. I did not know which way to turn. If he had ever become Prime Minister, as was actually predicted by a newspaper which he controlled, I should have been obliged to take to my bed for the week.

ZURITA. You are not like our senator's wife, Senora Espinosa, nor the wife of our present mayor. They will never rest, nor allow others to do so, until they see their husbands erected in marble.

CAROLINA. Do you think that either Espinosa or the mayor are of a caliber to deserve statues?

ZURITA. Not publicly, perhaps. In a private chapel, in the cla.s.s of martyrs and husbands, it might not be inappropriate. But I am growing impatient.

CAROLINA. As you say, friend Zurita, it might seem marked for me to leave the city. Yet if I remain I must attend the unveiling of the monument to my poor Patricio; I must be present at the memorial exercises to-night in his honor; I must receive the delegations from Madrid and the other cities, as well as the committees from the rest of the province. But what att.i.tude ought I to a.s.sume? If I seem too sad, n.o.body will believe that my feeling is sincere. On the other hand, it would not be proper to appear altogether reconciled. Then people would think that I had forgotten too quickly. In fact, they think so already.

ZURITA. Oh, no! You were very young when you became a widow. Life was just beginning for you.

CAROLINA. It is a delicate matter, however, to explain to my sisters-in-law. Tell me, what ought I to wear? Anything severe, an attempt at mourning, would be ridiculous, since I am going with my husband; on the other hand, I should not like to suggest a festive spirit. What do you think, friend Zurita? Give me your advice. What would you wear?

ZURITA. It is hard to say; the problem is difficult. Something rich and black, perhaps, relieved by a note of violet. The unveiling of a monument to perpetuate the memory of a great man is not an occasion for mourning. Your husband is partaking already of the joys of immortality, in which no doubt, he antic.i.p.ates you.

CAROLINA. Thank you so much.

ZURITA. Do not thank me. You have done enough. You have been faithful to his memory. You have married again, but you have married a man who was your husband's most intimate friend. You have not acted like other widows of my acquaintance--Senora Benitez, for example. She has been living for two years with the deadliest enemy her husband had in the province, without any pretense at getting married--which in her case would have been preposterous.

CAROLINA. There is no comparison.

ZURITA. No, my friend; everybody sympathizes with your position, as they ought.

CAROLINA. The only ones who worry me are my sisters-in-law. They insist that my position is ridiculous, and that of my husband still more so.

They do not see how we can have the effrontery to present ourselves before the statue.

ZURITA. Senora, I should not hesitate though it were that of the Commander. Your sisters-in-law exaggerate. Your present husband is the only one you have to consider.

CAROLINA. I have no misgivings upon that score. I know that both will appreciate that my feelings are sincere, one in this world, and the other from the next. As for the rest, the rest--

ZURITA. The rest are your friends and your second husband's friends, as we were of the first. We shall all take your part. The others you can afford to neglect.

CAROLINA. Thanks for those words of comfort. I knew that you were a good friend of ours, as you were also of his.

ZURITA. A friend to both, to all three; _si, senora_, to all three. But here is your husband.

[_Don Florencio enters._]

ZURITA. Don Florencio! My friend!

FLORENCIO. My dear Zurita! I am delighted to see you! I wish to thank you for that charming article in memory of our never-to-be-forgotten friend. It was good of you, and I appreciate it. You have certainly proved yourself an excellent friend of his. Thanks, my dear Zurita, thanks! Carolina and I are both indebted to you for your charming article. It brought tears to our eyes. Am I right, Carolina?

CAROLINA. We were tremendously affected by it.

FLORENCIO. Friend Zurita, I am deeply gratified. For the first time in the history of the province, all parties have united to do honor to this region's most eminent son. But have you seen the monument? It is a work of art. The statue is a perfect likeness--it is the man, the man himself! The allegorical features are wonderfully artistic--Commerce, Industry, and Truth taken altogether in the nude. Nothing finer could be wished. You can imagine the trouble, however, we had with the nudes. The conservative element opposed the nudes, but the sculptor declined to proceed if the nudes were suppressed. In the end we won a decisive victory for Art.

CAROLINA. Do you know, I think it would have been just as well not to have had any nudes? What was the use of offending anybody? Several of our friends are going to remain away from the ceremonies upon that account.