Froth Part 49

"The sick nurse, you should say. I never heard that there was a mistress here."

"What! Have you come to insult me in my own house?" exclaimed Amparo, setting her arms akimbo, as if she still were on the market-place.

"No. I have come to turn you out, before the police arrive and do it for me."

Her antagonist made a movement, as though she would fall on her and rend her; but she checked herself, and began to scream as loud as she could: "Pepe, Gregorio, Anselmo! Come here, come all! Turn this insolent creature out of the house! She is insulting me."

Some of the servants came at her call; but they stood confused and motionless, contemplating this strange scene. At the same moment the door of the Duke's room was opened, and Salabert stood before them in a dressing-gown and cap. He had grown terribly old in a few weeks. His eyes were dull, his face colourless, his cheeks pendant and flabby.

"What is all this? What is the matter?" he asked thickly. On seeing his daughter, he staggered back a step.

"This woman," cried Amparo, in a yell of vulgar rage, "after having you declared an idiot, comes here to insult me!"

"Papa, do not heed her," said Clementina, going up to him.

But her father drew back, and holding out his trembling hands he exclaimed: "Go--go away! Do not come near me!"

"Listen to me, papa."

"Do not come near me, wicked, ungrateful child!" repeated the Duke, in a quavering voice, but with melodramatic emphasis.

"Yes, leave this house, shameless creature," added the woman, encouraged by the old man's att.i.tude. "Dare you show your face here, after treating your father so?"

Clementina stood petrified, colourless, staring at them with a look of terror rather than anger. For an instant she was on the point of fainting away; everything seemed to be whirling round her. But her pride enabled her to make a supreme effort; she stood rooted to the spot, and incapable of moving, as white as a marble statue. Then she turned on her heel slowly, for fear of falling, and reached the stairs, down which she went, almost tottering at each step. Her father, spurred by Amparo's cries, followed her to the top of the flight, repeating with increasing fury:

"Go--go. Leave my house!" And he held up a tremulous hand in theatrical menace.

His mistress, meanwhile, poured forth a string of abuse with an accompaniment of gestures, sarcastic laughter and gibes, learnt and remembered from her early experience.

By the time Clementina had reached the garden, her cheeks were tingling.

She leaned against the pedestal of one of the lamps for a minute to recover herself, and then ran like a mad creature to the gate, where her carriage was waiting; she sprang into it and burst into tears. On reaching home she was lifted out in a miserable state, and helped up to her room by two maids. When Osorio came up, it was only in broken and incoherent sentences that she could tell him what had occurred.

She kept her bed for eight or ten days in a state of utter prostration, and she rose from it at last so possessed by the desire for revenge, that she really seemed to have gone mad.

The lawsuit, under the hot breath of her malice, was fanned to an imposing blaze. It was regarded in Madrid as a matter of public interest. The opinions of the most distinguished physicians, Spanish and foreign, were taken on both sides as to the Duke's mental incapacity. On one part he was p.r.o.nounced an idiot, so hopelessly childish that there was nothing to be done with him; on the other it was a.s.serted that he was mending steadily, his mind clearer every day, and his intellect a marvel of ac.u.men and sound sense. And on one point all the authorities concurred--namely, in requiring enormous fees. The press took sides with one or the other party. Clementina subsidised one or two papers. Amparo had bribed others, for the Duke, as a matter of fact, was incompetent to direct the case. And through their columns the two women, more or less disguised, contrived to hurl insolence at one another, reviving, in an allegorical dress, an extensive selection of scandalous tales.

In this warfare the daughter had the worst chance. She could not be so liberal as the mistress, who sowed bank-notes broadcast. On the other hand, Clementina had the support of her husband's creditors, and of her friend Pepa Frias--who was indefatigable in her visits to the doctors, the lawyers, and the newspaper editors--the Condesa de Cotorraso, the Marquesa de Alcudia, her brother-in-law, Calderon, General Patino and Jimenez Arbos; and, more helpful than all these, as in duty bound, her lover _en t.i.tre_, Escosura. He, holding a post of high importance, had no small influence on the course of the lawsuit.

What a life of excitement, anxiety, and misery! Clementina could not eat, she could not sleep. She was always holding conferences with lawyers and judges, always writing letters. Even at her parties and dinners, nothing else was talked about, till at length the more indifferent of her acquaintance rebelled, and ceased to come. To others, however, she communicated some of her own flame; they became her ardent partisans, and brought or carried reports, volunteered advice, broke out in cries of indignation whenever Amparo was even mentioned. And although Clementina's haughty temper prevented her being a favourite in Madrid society, as she stood forth, after all, as the representative of justice and decency, her cause found most supporters. To this her antagonist's folly contributed, for she paraded herself and her splendour everywhere, with the imbecile and degraded old man.

The Duke was in fact perishing before their eyes. After a stage of excitement and violence, when he had behaved like a madman, came a period of nervous prostration; by degrees he became almost idiotic. He lost his wits so completely that he could not even understand business.

Everything was left to Llera. This would have been all right, but that Amparo would interfere and do all kinds of mischief. She took the greatest pains, however, to hide Salabert's condition; on days when he was over excitable or incoherent, she kept him in his room. It was only when he was calm and rational that she ventured to take him out, and then never allowed him to talk to any one. But her efforts were not always successful. Salabert went out by himself on various pretences, and amply betrayed his deranged condition. On one occasion he was found outside the town at four in the morning. Another time he went into a jeweller's shop, and after ordering some trinkets he pocketed some others, believing he had not been observed. The jeweller had seen it, however, but he said nothing, knowing the millionaire. He sent the bill in to Amparo, who hastened to pay it, and went in person to beg that the matter should not be divulged. In short, before long it was established beyond a doubt, in spite of the contending evidence of physicians, that the Duke was absolutely _non compos_; and it was said that the lawsuit would be decided in that sense.

Two days before the decision was made public, Amparo vanished from the Requena palace, after sacking it very completely, and carrying off with her many objects of great value. Her savings already amounted to several thousand dollars, and in antic.i.p.ation of disaster she had drawn the money out of the Bank of Spain and placed it in foreign securities. She was afterwards heard of in France, and a few months later it was reported in Madrid that she had married the crazy Marquis.

On the very day of Amparo's flight--for it may be called a flight--Clementina and her husband took possession of the Requena palace. She found her father in a pitiable state of total imbecility. He spoke as though they had met but the day before and nothing of any importance had occurred, he asked for Amparo, and sometimes mistook his daughter for her. The daughter's heart, it must be owned, was not severely wrung. This catastrophe by no means satisfied the bitterness which possessed her soul when she recalled all the wretchedness she had endured. Her vengeance was incomplete, for Amparo was rich and content.

She longed to prosecute her as a criminal, while Osorio, satisfied with the enormous fortune which had dropped into his hands, did not regard her thefts as worth a thought.

The Duke de Requena, the famous financier who for twenty years had been the wonder and admiration of the banking world in Spain and abroad, the man who had been so much discussed by the public and the press, was ere long, in his own house--now the Osorio palace--a useless and worthless chattel. To avoid comment, or to be more secure as to his condition, or perhaps out of some dim fear lest he should recover, the Osorios did not send him to a lunatic asylum; they had him cared for at home. Salabert was no more than a child. He thought of nothing but his meals. He spoke very little, but sat hour after hour, looking at his nails or rubbing one hand over the other, now and then uttering some strange, inarticulate cry. He was in the charge of an attendant, who, when he was tiresome, would fly in a rage and slap him. But the person he held in most respect, it may be said in real awe, was his daughter. It was enough for Clementina to frown and speak a scolding word; he submitted at once. For his son-in-law, on the other hand, he did not care a pin.

When his attendant found him quiet and went to amuse himself for an hour with the other servants, the crazy old man would wander about the house, more especially to gaze in the mirrors. His princ.i.p.al mania was for picking up pieces of bread and storing them in a corner of his room, where they lay till they were mouldy. When the pile was too large the servants cleared it away in baskets and flung it out on the dust-heap.

Then when he missed it he was furious, and his keeper had to use strong measures to pacify him. One morning, soon after the Osorios'

breakfast--the old man ate alone in his own room--three or four of the servants were together in the great dining-room, cleaning the plate and putting it away in the side-board cupboards. They were in high spirits and playing games, hitting each other with the long loaves they had taken up for sticks, running round the table and laughing loudly. Their mistress was upstairs and could not hear them. Suddenly the old imbecile appeared on the scene, with the tray on which he was wont to carry off the broken pieces as a precious booty to his room. He had on a greasy old shooting coat, and his head was bare. And, in spite of its white hairs, that head was not venerable; the yellow unshaven cheeks, the colourless, loose lips, the stony, expressionless eyes had no trace of the beauty of old age, but only the decrepitude of vice, which is always repulsive, and the stamp of idiotcy which is always terrible.

Seeing so many persons, he paused a moment, but he made up his mind to come in, and went straight to the drawers of the side-board, where he began an eager search, picking up every sc.r.a.p he found there and collecting them on the tray. The servants watched him with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Hunt away, old fellow!" cried one. "When are you going to ask us to try the broth, daddy?"

The old man made no reply, he was much too busy.

"The broth, sir," said another, "you had better ask us to share a ten dollar-note."

"I shall not ask you," mumbled the Duke with some irritation, "I shall only ask Anselmo."

"Oh yes, we know why you ask Anselmo, it is because he keeps the stick!

Never fear, if that is all, you shall ask me too."

The others all shouted with laughter, and the youngest, a boy of about sixteen, seeing him with his tray filled, and about to depart, slipped behind him and, giving him a jerk, upset all the bits, which were scattered on the floor. The Duke's rage was terrific, with yells of rage he went down on his knees to pick them up again, while the servants applauded the joke. As soon as he had collected them all again on his tray, and was shuffling off as fast as he could to escape from their rough fun, the same fellow again came behind him and s.n.a.t.c.hed it away.

The madman's frenzy was indescribable; gnashing his teeth and glaring with fury, he rushed on the lad, but the others seized him. The poor lunatic began to utter cries which were anything rather than human.

At this moment Clementina's voice was heard in high wrath:

"What is the matter? What are you doing to papa?"

The servants let him go, and vanished from the room.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A Pa.s.sION BURNT OUT.

Raimundo's love affairs hung only by a thread. In these latter days Clementina, entirely absorbed by her triumph and thirst for revenge, had hardly given him a thought. They still met frequently, for the young man did not cease to visit her, but their love-pa.s.sages were fewer every day. If he timidly complained of her neglect, the lady excused herself on the score of Escosura's jealousy. It was in vain that she had tried to persuade him that she was "off with the old love." "And you see," she said "if he finds out that I have deceived him, he will have good cause for a furious scene."

Raimundo was so utterly lost that he admitted, or feigned to admit, this reasoning as valid. Through this abject humiliation he still contrived to be happy in the illusion that his idol preferred him, loved him best at the bottom of her heart, that she only flirted with the Minister for the sake of her lawsuit. Clementina fostered this belief by sending him from time to time, when she could forget her vexations, a few lines appointing a meeting, "to-day at four," or "this afternoon in our rooms." And at these interviews she would make him as happy as of old by swearing eternal fidelity.

But all joys are brief in this world; Raimundo's were brief indeed. The very next day, after some such meeting, he would find his mistress as cold as marble, disdainful of him, and, what was worse, absorbed in conversation with Escosura, in a recess of the drawing-room. He had innocently believed that the end of the lawsuit would restore his happiness, that Clementina, no longer needing the great man's help, would again be wholly his. But his hopes were blown to the winds like smoke. The lawsuit was decided in her favour, but far from dismissing her official cavalier, she showed him greater respect and affection.

One morning, two months after the close of the business, he received a note from Clementina, saying:

"Meet me at two this afternoon."

His heart leaped for joy. It was more than a fortnight since Clementina had given him rendezvous at their little _entresol_. By one o'clock he was there to wait for her, and as soon as he saw her from afar he ran to open the door with as much agitation as though she had been a queen, and far more tender devotion. She seemed grateful and affectionate, and accepted his pa.s.sionate caresses with gracious kindness.