Froth Part 34

Raimundo remained silent for some seconds, at last, stammering and hesitating, he said:

"If you must know then I will tell you. You have heard perhaps of my intimacy with a lady?"

"Yes, I have heard something of a flirtation between you and Osorio's wife."

"Well, that explains the mystery," said the nephew, colouring violently.

"So that, in point of fact, this woman"----said the elder, snapping his thumb and finger.

Raimundo bent his head and said no more, or, to be exact, his silence said everything. The man who had indignantly refused his mistress's bank-notes now confessed himself guilty of this humiliation, though perfectly innocent, simply out of fear.

His uncle was a vulgar mortal enough, who kept a shop in the Calle de Carmen. His nephew's confession, far from rousing his indignation, raised the youth in his esteem.

"Well, my dear fellow! I am glad to see that you have hatched out at last and are beginning to know the ways of the world. Ah, you rogue, how quiet you have kept it!"

But as he still remained in the study, betraying the remains of a suspicion, Raimundo, with the audacity peculiar to women and weak men in critical circ.u.mstances, said firmly enough:

"My capital and my sister's are intact; I can show you the securities this very minute."

He took out the key and was going to fetch the box. His uncle stopped him.

"No need, my boy, no need. What for?"

And thus he escaped as by a miracle from this dreadful predicament, which might so easily have ended in a catastrophe. At the same time, his triumph cost him many moments of bitter reflection, and a collapse of mind and body which made him quite ill for a time. It is impossible to break suddenly with all the traditions and ideas which const.i.tute the back-bone of our character without the acutest pain.

At about this time a gentleman from Chili came to call on him; a naturalist himself, and, like Raimundo, devoted to the study of b.u.t.terflies. He had last come from Germany, and was on his way home to America; he had read some of the young man's scientific papers, and having also heard of his fine collection, he would not pa.s.s through Madrid without visiting it. Raimundo received him with great pleasure, and some little shame; for some months he had scarcely thought of scientific subjects, and had neglected his specimens. The South American nevertheless found it extremely interesting and was full of intelligent sympathy; he told him that he was commissioned by his Government to recruit some young men of talent to fill the professors' chairs lately created at Santiago in Chili. If Alcazar would emigrate one of them was open to him.

In any other circ.u.mstances Raimundo, who had no tie of blood excepting his sister, would certainly have decided on this step. But as it was, enmeshed by the toils of love, the proposal struck him as so absurd that he could but smile with a trace of contempt, and he politely declined it as though he were a millionaire, or a man at the head of Spanish society.

Then to pay for his journey to Biarritz, he was again obliged to sell some shares in the funds. He carried five thousand francs with him, a more than ample sum for his summer in France. But at the end of a few days, led away by the example of his friends, he took to betting at the Casino, on the game of racing with dice, and in two evenings he had lost everything. Not being accustomed to these proceedings, the only thing he could think of to help himself was to return to Madrid at once, sell some more shares, and come back again. His fortune was dwindling from day to day. By the beginning of the winter he had sacrificed several thousand dollars; but this did not check his lavish expenditure.

Aurelia, who from some hints of her uncle, or suspicions of her own, imagined that she knew from whom the money came, was melancholy and distressed. Her eyes, as she looked at her brother, were full of grief and pity, not unmingled with indignation.

So matters went on till the Carnival. The d.u.c.h.ess of Requena's health had been improved by some waters in Germany, to which her husband had taken her in the autumn. No sooner had she made her will in favour of her step-daughter, than he devoted himself to taking care of her, knowing how important her existence was to him. The great speculator's affairs meanwhile were progressing satisfactorily. He had bought the mines at Riosa, as he had proposed, money down. From that moment he had been waging covert war against the rest of the company, selling shares at lower and lower prices, to depreciate their value. This had worked entirely to his satisfaction. In a few months the price had fallen from a hundred and twenty, at which they had stood just after the sale of the property, to eighty-three. Salabert waited on from day to day to produce a panic, by throwing a large number of them into the market, and so bring the quotation down to forty. Then, by means of his agents in Madrid, Paris, and London, he meant to buy up half the shares, _plus_ one, and so to be master of the whole concern.

It was at this time that, in order to serve his political ends, as well as to gratify his native taste for display--in spite of his counter-balancing avarice--he determined to give a fancy dress ball, in his magnificent residence, inviting all the aristocracy, and securing the presence of the royal family. Preparations were begun two months beforehand. Although the palace was splendidly fitted up, he had some rather heavy and over-large pieces of furniture removed from the drawing-rooms, and replaced by others from Paris, of lighter and simpler style. He got rid of some of the hangings, and purchased several decorative works of art, which it must be owned were certainly lacking.

Three weeks before the day fixed for the ball he sent out the invitations. Three weeks, he thought, were not too much to allow his guests to prepare their costumes. Fancy dress was indispensable; gentlemen to wear dominoes at the very least. The newspapers had soon announced the ball to every town in Spain.

As her stepmother took little interest in such things, and from her delicate health was not able to play an active part in the preparations, Clementina was the life and soul of the whole affair. She spent all her days in her father's house, save only a few hours which she bestowed on Raimundo. Osorio at this juncture took it into his head to have their two little girls home from school, one ten and the other eleven years old, to spend a few days with their parents; but the poor little things had to return some days sooner than their father had promised, because Clementina was so busy that she scarcely found time to speak to them.

This made their father so angry that, one day, without allowing them to take leave of their mother, he put them into the carriage, and himself accompanied them back to school. That evening, however, when Clementina returned home, there was a violent quarrel between them on the subject.

Raimundo, too, found himself neglected; still he looked forward with childish delight to this entertainment, at which he meant to appear as a court page. This was an idea suggested by Clementina. The model for his dress was taken from a famous picture in the Senate-house. For herself, she had fallen in love with a portrait of Margaret of Austria, the queen of Philip III., painted by Pantoja. She ordered a black velvet dress, very closely fitting, with pink silk slashings braided with silver; and there can be no doubt that it was a costume singularly well adapted to set off her fine and ample figure and the imposing beauty of her face.

The Duke himself worked hard at the less ornamental details; the erection, for instance, of a gallery for the musicians, which was to be built up against the wall, between the two large drawing-rooms, and embowered in shrubs and flowering plants; the arrangements for hats and wraps, the laying of carpets, the removal of furniture, and so forth.

Salabert was a terribly hard overseer, a real driver of the workmen. He never allowed them to rest, and expected them to be incessantly on the alert. He never gave them a moment's peace, nor was satisfied with what they did.

One day a cabinet of carved ebony had to be moved, from a room where the ladies were to sit to the card-room. The workmen, under the direction of the master carpenter, were carrying it slung, while the Duke followed, bidding them be careful, with an accompaniment of objurgations.

"d.a.m.n it all, be quick. Move a little quicker, can't you, you snub-nosed cur! Now, mind that chandelier!--lower Pepe, lower--lower, I say, you a.s.s! d.a.m.n it, now raise it again."

As they went through the door, the head carpenter, seeing that they might easily hurt themselves, called out: "Mind your fingers!"

"Mind the mouldings! Curse your fingers," exclaimed the Duke. "Do you think I care for your fingers, you louts?"

And one of the men looked him in the face with an indescribable expression of hatred and scorn.

When the cabinet was in its place the Duke saw it fixed, and then went to his room to brush off the dust. Soon after, he went down the grand staircase, and getting into his carriage went out.

At last the great day arrived. The newspapers announced the ball for the last time with a grand flourish of trumpets. The Duke de Requena had spent a million of francs in preparations, they said, and they also gave it to be understood that all the flowers had been sent from Paris. And this was true. The Duke, born in Valencia, the loveliest garden of Europe, ordered flowers from France for his ball to the amount of some thousands of dollars. Camellias strewed the very floors in the ante-room and pa.s.sages; hundreds of exotic plants decorated the hall, the corridors, and the rooms. An army of servants, in knee-breeches and a gaudy livery, stood at every corner where they might be wanted. A detachment of horse-guards was posted at the garden entrance to keep order among the carriages, with the help of the police. The cloak-room, erected for the occasion, was a luxurious apartment, where every arrangement had been made to preserve the ladies' magnificent wraps, or _sorties de bal_, as it is the fashion to call them, from being lost or damaged.

The grand staircase was a blaze of electric light, the hall and dining-room were lighted with gas: the dancing-room with wax candles.

The sitting-rooms and card-room had oil-lamps with wide and elaborate shades, and in these rooms fires were blazing cheerfully.

Clementina received the company in the first drawing-room, close to the ante-room. She took her stepmother's place here because Dona Carmen had not sufficient strength to stand for so long. The d.u.c.h.ess sat in the inner room, surrounded by friends. The Duke and Osorio, at the door between the hall and ante-room, offered an arm to the ladies as they arrived and conducted them to Clementina.

This lady's costume set off her beauty, as she had intended, to the greatest advantage. Her exquisite figure seemed even more finely moulded in this close fitting dress, and her head, with its magnificent coppery hair, rose above the black velvet like a queenly flower. King Phillip III. would gladly have exchanged the real Margaret for such a counterfeit. A rumour was current in the rooms, and made public next day in the papers, that a hairdresser had come from Paris by the express train to dress her head.

The motley crowd soon began to fill the rooms. Every epoch of history, every country of the world had sent representatives to Salabert's ball.

Moors, Jews, Chinese, Venetians, Greeks and Romans--Louis XIV. and the Empire, Queens and slaves, nymphs and gipsies, Amazons and Sibyls, grisettes and vestals, walked arm-in-arm, or stood chatting in groups, and laughing with cavaliers of the last century, Flemings of the fourteenth, pages and necromancers. Most of the men, however, had adopted the Venetian doublet and short cloak. The orchestra had already played two or three waltzes, but as yet no one was dancing. They awaited the arrival of the Royal personages.

Raimundo was wandering about the rooms with the familiarity of an intimate friend, smiling at every one with the modest frankness which made him singularly attractive, though strange to a society where cold, not to say scornful, manners are regarded as the stamp of dignity and rank. The young entomologist had been for some time living in a delicious whirl, a sort of golden dream, such as humble natures are often addicted to. His page's costume, of the date of Isabella the Great, suited him well, and more than one pretty girl turned her head to look at him. Now and then he made his way to where Clementina was on duty, and without speaking they could exchange looks and smiles. On one of these occasions he saw Pepe Castro, in the dress of a cavalier of the Court of Charles I., approach to pay his respects.

"How is this?" he said in her ear. "Are you not yet tired of your cherub?"

"I am never tired of what is good," said she with a smile.

"Thank you," he replied, sarcastically.

"There is nothing to thank me for; are you trying to pick a quarrel?"

And she turned away with a shrug of contempt to speak to the Condesa de Cotorraso, who came in at the moment.

Raimundo had watched this brief colloquy. Its confidential tone was a stab to him. For a moment he did not move; Esperancita pa.s.sed close in front of him, but he did not see her. It was the child's first appearance at a ball. She wore a pretty Venetian dress of a rich red colour, cut low; her mother was magnificent as a Dutch burgomaster's wife, in brown, embroidered with gold and silver, with a lace ruff and necklace of diamonds and pearls. What pangs these costumes must have cost her luckless husband! In the first instance, when this ball was under discussion, he had supposed that some combination of old clothes would answer their purpose, and had made no difficulties. When he saw the dresses and the dressmaker's bill he was breathless. He was ready to cry Thief! Woe befall that miserable Salabert and the hour in which he had thought of this ball, and all the Venetian and Dutch ladies that had ever lived! And what most weighed on his soul was the reflection that these costly garments were to be worn for but one night. Four thousand pesetas thrown into the gutter! as he repeated a hundred times a day.

Esperancita looked at Alcazar, expecting him to bow; but seeing that he was gazing elsewhere, she, too, looked round at the group about Clementina, and immediately understood the situation. A cloud of distress came over her, as over Raimundo. But suddenly her eyes sparkled, and her whole ingenuous and insignificant little face was lighted up, transfigured by an indefinable charm. Pepe Castro was coming towards her.

"Charming, charming!" murmured the Adonis in an absent way, as he bowed affectedly.

The girl blushed with delight.

"Will you honour me with the first waltz?"

At this very moment she found herself the centre of a group of young men, all buzzing round Calderon's money-bags, and eager to compliment his daughter. Among these was Cobo Ramirez. They were all pressing her to give them a dance, each in turn signing the initials of his ill.u.s.trious name on Esperancita's card. Ramoncito, who was standing a few yards off, did not join the little crowd--faithful to the advice given him, now above a year ago, by his friend and adviser Castro; though hitherto these tactics had proved unavailing, for Esperancita remained insensible to his devotion. Still, he would not ascribe this to any fault in the method, but to his lack of courage to follow it out with sufficient vigour, without hesitancy or backsliding. If the girl happened to look kindly at him, or speak to him more gently than usual, farewell diplomacy!

At this moment he was casting grim looks at the crowd which had gathered round her, and vaguely replying to Cotorraso, who had of late taken a most oppressive fancy to him, b.u.t.ton-holing him wherever he met him, to explain his new methods of extracting oil. The young deputy had not gained in dignity from his showy dress and white wig, as a gentleman of the eighteenth century: he looked for all the world like a footman.

Suddenly there was a stir in the ante-room. The Royal party had arrived.

The company collected about the door-ways. The Duke and d.u.c.h.ess, Clementina and Osorio, went to the outside steps to receive them, and the music played the Royal March. The King and Queen came in, walking slowly between the two ranks of guests, stopping now and then when they saw any one known to them to bestow a gracious greeting. The recipient of such honour bowed or curtsied to the ground, kissing the Royal hand with grateful effusiveness. The ladies especially humbled themselves with a rapture they could not conceal, and a gush of loyalty and affection which brought the blood to their cheeks.