Leon Roch

“ His enormous talents find no difficulties in any branch of study; he is as good a botanist as he is a geologist. As I hear, he is familiar with all the latest discoveries in Natural History, besides being a capital astronomer.”
“Oh yes!” exclaimed Cimarra, with the patronising pomposity that ignorance assumes when it is driven to do justice to learning. “Leon Roch is a first-rate fellow. He is one of the few good men we have produced in Spain. We are great friends ”

“ On the evening of the day when the marquis had been to see Leon Roch at Carabanchel his wife was conversing eagerly with a stiff old gentleman, decorated with the ribbon of some military order; a most innocent, harmless creature in spite of his calling, and one of those soldiers whose existence seems intended to prove that the army is a perfectly inoffensive body of men. ”

“ Federico had risen during this harangue and thrown [Pg 52] down the cards: after walking two or three times round and about Leon who had not moved; and now, laying his hand on Roch’s shoulder, he said in a low voice:
“Most worthy and wisest of men, we, the depraved and ignorant, look into the future as well as you; we too lay our plans, not indeed mathematically but perhaps with better hopes of security than you practical men. We are apt indeed to think of the ass as a practical animal. We do not condemn matrimony ”

“ Her eagerness had taken a childish tone.
“You know it.”
“That you will love me always—always.”
“That in fact I loved you when we played together and stained our faces with blackberries,” added Leon, stroking the golden head.
“What days those were!” said Pepa, smiling like a soul in bliss, “we could talk for hours of those recollections, taking the words out of each other’s mouth. Ah! our life then was what life ought to be. Really life; not these horribly short moments and sudden changes. If only we might chatter, laugh, remember, talk nonsense and read each other’s thoughts and wishes!” ”

“ Ah! reality tames us; we live to learn. Good heavens! when I think of what I have gone through for mere appearances!... Indeed Leon, I have suffered cruelly. This palace, which to others is a scene of feasting and amusement, to me is full of sorrows; there is not an object which does not bear the mark, as it were, of my sighs; there is not a spot of which I could not say: ‘Here I cried on such a day; there I thought I should die of grief.’ If I were to try to tell you all I should never come to an end. ”

“ Leon is thoroughly good and he will learn to believe; yes, he will believe. There, do you see he has turned again, but he keeps away.”
[Pg 167]
“He is very sad,” said Luis, gazing at the shadow slowly wandering up and down like a soul in torment. “He looks as if some great misfortune had crushed him; and yet he has health, he is rich, he has this world’s goods in abundance. Look at me—sick, dying, bereft of everything, poor and unknown, and yet I am happy. This evening my soul is full of peace and contentment—it is as though a strong and tender hand were lifting it up to heaven.” ”

“ In the silence of the night and of empty rooms the clocks, with their regular ticking, like breathing, seem to live and watch. Perched on the chimney-shelves, these bronze personages, with faces like masks with twelve eyes, would make us believe that they can hear and understand by the same internal organs which produce that ceaseless and rythmical beat. The clock in María’s boudoir was the only witness to her proceedings; the portrait of Leon even knew nothing about them, for it hung with its face to the wall. ”

“ Leon started like a man who has been struck.
“Such a question is an insult. The very disquietude of my conscience impels me to desire that María should not die.”
“Very good. Then if you wish that María should live,” said Moreno, laying his hand on his friends’ shoulder, “the first indispensable thing is to soothe the irritation produced by her jealousy—which, unfortunately, is but too well-founded; her mind has received a terrible shock, and it must be allowed to recover its balance. Every life has, as it were a rhythm, a beat, of its own, to which it goes on regularly and smoothly. ”

“ The viper fixed on him a gaze of intense anguish, writhing and groaning in his iron grasp, and his frail ribs gave way, cracking like a nutshell.
“Who bid you interfere in the government of another man’s home?” said Leon blind with rage. “Who gave you a right to rob me of what is my own? Who are you? Where did you come from, with your hideous boast and hypocrisy of virtue? Of what avail is it that you should flay yourself alive if you have no true spirit of charity?” and the hapless creature, gasping for breath and helpless with anguish, closed its eyes in death under his crushing embrace. ”

“ Leon’s outward features were a clear olive complexion, expressive eyes, black hair and beard; his moral distinction was his inflexible rectitude and a firm determination never to deceive. His frank gaze captivated most people at first sight, but his uprightness of spirit was not so immediately discernible, since a man’s conscience does not lie on the surface. ”

“ In one word Leon, what would you have?”
“I am going to leave Madrid. That is imperatively necessary.”
“What is the matter?”
“I do not want ... I cannot stay here; I have no comfort, no affection in my own house; I have no one to care for me, since the companion of my life, instead of surrounding me with gentleness and tenderness and fondness, has shut herself up in an icy shroud. She, in the delirium of her exaggerated pietism, and I, in the gloomy solitude of my scepticism, are not, and can never be, a sympathetic and happy pair. ”

“ Leon said; he was evidently speaking for Pepa’s benefit alone. “Our spirits are but a part of the spirit that made those laws; we are so far responsible for their defects that we must accept the consequences. If every one who felt injured by the machine in which we move—the majority in lazy indifference—if the sufferers, I say, were to set to work to alter it and could not repair it, what a world this would become! We must submit to be torn and mangled, secretly bewailing our misery, and only wishing we could live to see new machinery at work. ”

“ Leon found himself gazing into the depths of that vacant mystery, made deeper by the clouds of gauze, and recognised the look he had last seen on her features—a look less of love than of irony.
His brain was busy with all the solemn thoughts that besiege a man in the great crises of life: he reflected on the wide distance that divides us from true happiness—a distance that mind cannot measure, and that man has no means of shortening. ”

“ And she pointed in the direction of Suertebella.
“María” said Leon gravely and turning pale, “I do not like to see you a propagator of base slander. I should find it very difficult to cease to respect you; but if you wish that I should never fail in the consideration which I owe to you, never repeat that question. Be silent ... go ... leave me. You do not want my love since your religion is all in all to you; go, serve your altars, and leave me alone with my conscience.” ”

“ And with the strange but natural revulsion of a dull persistent grief, that relieves itself by delusive flashes of bitter amusement, Leon laughed aloud.
“Indeed,” said María, a little abashed. “Your evenings are a constant vexation. They are very discreditable, for with all your discussions on politics, or music, or some invention, or perhaps on history, our house is a hotbed of atheism.”
“And it would be a hotbed of virtue if we danced and talked gossip?—No, in my drawing-room no one has ever discussed atheism nor anything approaching it. Your pure and childlike conscience may rest easy! ”

“ Still, the frightful fact remains.—I will tell her nothing unless she asks, but if she questions me—and she will, she will!”
“You are right!” exclaimed Leon struck by this solemn appeal. “It is a farce, equally unworthy of her and of me. The truth terrifies me—the lie disgusts me; but the truth is certain death, and the lie possible recovery.—Do not come to Suertebella. I will find a priest—anybody—the vicar of the parish, or the house chaplain.”
He was leaving the room when Paoletti called him back in a conciliatory tone. ”

“ I have discovered the whole truth. You cannot deny it, for the present throws light on the past and your crime of to-day betrays that of yesterday. You have lost all decency; you do not even hide the distant date of your intimacy—and here, in this house, where you have buried yourself to revel in your sin, you pass whole days playing with that child ... with that sniffling little brat!...”
Leon glared at his wife with a terrible expression; his eyes darted arrows of wrath. María drew a deep breath and added in a hoarse voice: “With her child—which is yours.” ”

“ He could not grant a family to an atheist!”
“Your blasphemy appals me,” said Leon, who could endure no more. “Can a sacrament be more utterly annulled, or a bond more effectually cut? Between you and me, María, there is a great gulf—bottomless and infinite; a space of endless desert in which, try as I may, I cannot see a single idea or feeling that we can have in common. Let us part forever; do not try to bring together two distinct worlds which cannot approach each other without tempest and lightnings. If there ever were two irreconcilable beings, we are they. ”

“ By a rapid and inexplicable process of logic she said:
“The calumny is so preposterous, so absurd, that we need not let it distress us.”
“Do you know of any shield against which the arrows of calumny are shattered?” said Leon. “There is but one and that is innocence. Our innocence, Pepa, is not immaculate. The slander that is directed against us is not without foundation; it is mistaken only as to the facts. ”

“ Paoletti had eaten but little; Leon hardly anything. Fixing his expressive eyes on Leon’s face, the Italian said with startling emphasis:
“Señor Don Leon, of all the world you seem to me the most to be pitied. Our poor Doña María is not to be pitied; no, only to be admired. If she dies she will enter the realm of the blest wearing many crowns, and among them the crown of martyrdom; if she lives she will be an example to all women. She is a fair lily, combining the graces of beauty, purity and fragrance.” ”

“ I shall come in to-morrow for a moment.”
“For a moment!” cried Pepa in pathetic reproach. “Think what it is to have given years—long years—as long as centuries, and to be repaid with moments!”
Leon took both her hands firmly in his.
“My dearest,” he said, “one of us must yield to the other. I know, and I tell you, that if I allow myself to be dragged away by you our ruin is complete. Then let yourself be guided—not dragged away—by me and save our souls alive.”
“And then—but I know what you will say: Hope! Every madman has his hobby!” ”

“ Leon understood this. He saw a tear glittering in [Pg 212] each of María’s eyes: the last and only means of expression for the one surviving human feeling of her soul, brought from the unsounded depths to which the world still clung by a slender root of desire. Two half-formed tears, that did not overflow, were all that came to light from that hidden fount. Leon bent down and pressed his lips firmly to her cold forehead; as he did so he heard a sigh of satisfied longing. ”

“ Leon had not had much time for these reflections when a priest stood before him; a singularly small man of middle age, with a tiny, pale, boyish face, and such [Pg 93] large inquisitive, piercing eyes, that, in fact, he seemed all eyes. The deliberateness of his gait contrasted strangely with the smallness of his person; his steps were measured, even stately, with a firm, slow tread such as might result from constantly wearing shoes soled with lead. Paoletti bowed to his visitor with elegant politeness, and Leon, who was in no mood for ceremony, briefly explained his object. ”

“ Paoletti stood lost in thought.
“There is no fundamental and moral bond between us,” Leon went on. “María and I are two separate souls: in my mind I see her and myself as the very idea incarnate of divorce.”
“Yes—a group of statuary—a work of art!” said Paoletti, a lightning shaft of malice flashing across the dark cloud of his austerity.
“Well, yes—a work of art—which did not originate spontaneously, mark you, but was somebody’s doing, somebody’s work. My wife does not love me. ”

“ The woman who was with you was Pepa; and to remove every doubt my father can confirm it, for he met her as he was returning with the lamp in his hand from the cabinet of curiosities he had been inspecting.”
“And is that all?” said Leon calmly. “Has your espionage discovered no more than that? There are creatures who cannot breathe without exhaling slander!”
“Slander! What next? Of course I know that you can give the facts an interpretation favourable to yourself. You are never at a loss for sophistries to defend yourself.” ”

“ He thought he perceived a figure coming in from the portico to the principal corridor, walking stealthily and softly like a thief, listening to every sound and keeping a sharp look-out. The first flash of suspicion followed by a noiseless explosion of hatred, as the shot follows the match, so startled Leon that his immediate impulse was to hide himself, and watch the intruder unseen. ”

“ He went off to Madrid in his carriage, reflecting on the catastrophe in his house, on the bad government of a nation which, the day after issuing one loan, found it necessary to start another.
Leon went back to his wife’s room. The end was at hand. Rafaela, Paoletti, Moreno Rubio and himself gathered round María who, since the last words of confession she had uttered had been rapidly sinking, and looked every moment more like death. Her face, which nature had moulded on a type of ideal beauty, looked even more perfect at this moment, when physical vitality was almost extinct ”