Pepita Ximenez Part 6

Before I had any intention of doing so, my dear uncle, my father persuaded me to ride Lucero. Yesterday, at six in the morning, I mounted the beautiful wild creature, as my father calls Lucero, and we set out for the country.

I rode so well, I kept so firm a seat, and looked to such advantage on the superb animal, that my father could not resist the temptation of showing off his pupil; and, about eleven in the morning, after resting at a grange he owns, half a league distant from here, he insisted on our returning to the village and entering it by the most frequented street, which we did, our horses' hoofs clattering loudly against the paving-stones. It is needless to say that we rode by the house of Pepita, who for some time past is to be seen occasionally in her window, and who was then seated at the grating of a lower window, behind the green blind.

Hardly had Pepita heard the noise we made than, lifting up her eyes and seeing us, she rose, laid down the sewing she had in her hands, and set herself to observe us. Lucero, who has the habit, as I learned afterward, of prancing and curveting when he pa.s.ses the house of Pepita, began to show off, and to rear and plunge. I tried to quiet him, but, as there was something unfamiliar to him in the ways of his present rider, as well as in the rider himself, whom, perhaps, he regarded with contempt, he grew more and more unmanageable, and began to neigh and prance, and even to kick; but I remained firm and serene, showing him that I was his master, chastising him with the spur, touching his breast with the whip, and holding him in by the bridle. Lucero, who had almost stood up on his hind-legs, now humbled himself so far as to bend his knees gently and make a reverence.

The crowd of idlers who had gathered around us broke into boisterous applause. My father called out to them:

"A good lesson that for our braggarts and bl.u.s.terers!"

And, observing afterward that Currito--who has no other occupation than to amuse himself--was among the crowd, he addressed him in these words:

"Look at that, you rascal! Look at the theologian now, and see if you don't stare with wonder, instead of laughing at him."

And, in fact, there Currito stood stock-still with amazement, and unable to utter a word.

My triumph was great and a.s.sured, although unsuited to my character. The unfitness of the triumph covered me with confusion. Shame brought the blood to my cheeks. I must have turned as red as scarlet, or redder, when I saw that Pepita was applauding and saluting me graciously, while she smiled and clapped her beautiful hands.

In short, I have been adjudged a man of nerve, and a horseman of the first rank.

My father could not be prouder or more happy than he is; he declares that he is completing my education, that in me you have sent him a book full of wisdom, but unconnected and unbound, which he is now making a fair copy, and putting it between covers.

On two occasions I played _hombre_ with Pepita. Learning _hombre_, if that be a part of the binding and the correcting, is already done with.

The night after my equestrian feat Pepita received me with enthusiasm, and--what she had never ventured nor perhaps desired to do before--she gave me her hand.

Do not suppose that I did not call to mind what so many moralists and ascetics recommend in like cases, but in my inmost thoughts I believed they exaggerated the danger. Those words of the Holy Spirit, that it is as dangerous to touch a woman as a scorpion, seem to me to have been said in another sense. In pious books, no doubt, many phrases and sentences of the Scriptures are, with the best intentions, interpreted harshly. How are we to understand otherwise the saying that the beauty of woman, this perfect work of G.o.d, is always the cause of perdition? Or how are we to understand, in a universal and invariable sense, that woman is more bitter than death? How are we to understand that he who touches a woman, on whatever occasion or with whatsoever thought, shall not be without stain?

In fine, I made answer rapidly within my mind to these and other similar counsels, and took the hand that Pepita kindly extended to me and pressed it in mine. Its softness made me comprehend all the better the delicacy and beauty of the hand that until now I had known only by sight.

According to the usages of the world, the hand, once given, should be given always thereafter on entering a room and on taking leave. I hope that in this ceremony, in this evidence of friendship, in this manifestation of kindness, given and accepted in purity of heart, and without any mixture of levity, you will see nothing either evil or dangerous.

As my father is often obliged of an evening to see the overseer and others of the country-people, and is seldom free until half-past ten or eleven, I take his place beside Pepita at the ombre-table. The reverend vicar and the notary are generally the other partners. We each stake a penny a point, so that not more than a dollar or two changes hands in the game.

As the game possesses thus but little interest, we interrupt it constantly with pleasant conversation, and even with discussions on matters foreign to the game itself, in all which Pepita displays such clearness of understanding, such liveliness of imagination, and a grace of expression so extraordinary, as to astonish me.

I find no sufficient motive to change my opinion with respect to what I have already said in answer to your suspicions that Pepita perhaps feels a certain liking for me. She manifests toward me the affection she would naturally entertain for the son of her suitor, Don Pedro de Vargas, and the timidity and shyness that would be inspired by a man in my position, who, though not yet a priest, is soon to become one.

Nevertheless, as I always speak to you in my letters as if I were kneeling before you in the confessional, I desire, as is my duty, to communicate to you a pa.s.sing impression I have received on two or three occasions. This impression may be but a hallucination or a delusion, but I have none the less received it.

I have already told you in my former letters that the eyes of Pepita, green as those of Circe, are calm and tranquil in their gaze; she does not seem to be conscious of their power, or to know that they serve for any other purpose than to see with. When she looks at one, the soft light of her glance is so clear, so frank, and so untroubled that, instead of giving rise to any evil thoughts, it seems to give birth to pure thoughts, and leaves innocent and chaste souls in untroubled repose, while it destroys every incitement to evil in souls that are not chaste. There is no trace of ardent pa.s.sion, no fire to be discovered in Pepita's eyes. Their light is like the mild ray of the moon.

Well, then, notwithstanding all this, I fancied I detected, on two or three occasions, a sudden brightness, a gleam as of lightning, a swift, devouring flame in her eyes as they rested on me. Can this be the result of a ridiculous vanity, inspired by the arch-fiend himself?

I think so. I believe it is, and I wish to believe it.

The swiftness, the fugitive nature of the impression make me conjecture that it had no external reality, that it was only an illusion.

The serenity of heaven, the coldness of indifference, tempered, indeed, with sweetness and charity--this is what I always discern in Pepita's eyes.

Nevertheless, this illusion, this vision of a strange and ardent glance, torments me.

My father affirms that in affairs of the heart it is the woman, not the man, who takes the first step; and that she takes it without thereby incurring any responsibility, and with the power to disavow or retract it whenever she desires to do so. According to my father, it is the woman who first declares her pa.s.sion through the medium of furtive glances that, later, she disavows to her own conscience if necessary, and of which he to whom they are directed divines, rather than reads, the significance. In this manner, by a species of electric shock, by means of a subtle and inexplicable intuition, he who is loved perceives that he is loved; and when at last he makes up his mind to declare himself, he can do so confidently, and in the full security that his pa.s.sion is returned.

Perhaps it is these theories of my father, to which I have listened because I could not help it, that have heated my fancy and made me imagine what has no existence in reality.

Yet, after all, I say to myself at times, Is the thought so absurd, so incredible, that this illusion should have an existence in reality? And if it had, if I were pleasing in Pepita's eyes otherwise than as a friend, if the woman to whom my father is paying his addresses should fall in love with me, would not my position then be terrible?

But let us cast away these fears, the creation, no doubt, of vanity. Let us not make of Pepita a Phaedra, or of me a Hippolytus.

What in reality begins to surprise me is my father's carelessness and complete consciousness of security. Pardon my pride, ask Heaven to pardon it; for at times this consciousness of security piques and offends me. What! I say to myself, is there something so absurd in the thought that it should not even occur to my father that, notwithstanding my supposed sanct.i.ty, or perhaps because of my supposed sanct.i.ty, I should, without wishing it, inspire Pepita with love?

There is an ingenious method of reasoning by which I explain to myself, without wounding my vanity, my father's carelessness in this important particular. My father, although he has no reason for doing so, begins to regard himself already in the light of Pepita's husband, and to share in that fatal blindness with which Asmodeus, or some other yet more malicious demon, afflicts husbands. Profane and ecclesiastical history is fall of instances of this blindness, which G.o.d permits, no doubt, for providential purposes. The most remarkable example of it, perhaps, is that of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who had for wife a woman so vile as Faustina, and yet so wise a man and so great a philosopher remained in ignorance to the end of his days of what was known to every one else in the Roman Empire; so that in the meditations or memoirs of himself that he composed he gives infinite thanks to the immortal G.o.ds for having bestowed upon him so faithful and so good a wife; thus provoking the smiles of his contemporaries and of future generations.

Every day since then we see examples of great men and men of exalted rank who make those who enjoy the favor of their wives their private secretaries, and bestow honors on them. Thus do I explain to myself my father's indifference and his failure to suspect that, even against my own will, it would be possible for him to find a rival in me.

Would it be a want of respect on my part, should I fall into the fault of presumption or insolence, if I were to warn my father of the danger which he himself does not see? But he gives me no opportunity to say anything to him. Besides, what could I say to him? That once or twice I fancy Pepita has looked at me in a way different from that in which she usually does? May not this be an illusion of mine? No; I have not the least proof that Pepita desires to play the coquette with me.

What, then, could I tell my father? Shall I say to him that it is I who am in love with Pepita; that I covet the treasure he already regards as his own? This is not the truth; and, above all, how could I tell this to my father, even if, to my misfortune and through my fault, it were the truth?

The best course I can adopt is to say nothing; to combat the temptation in silence, if it should indeed a.s.sail me, and to endeavor, as soon as possible, to leave this place and return to you.

_May 19th._

I return thanks to Heaven and to you for the letters and the counsels you have lately sent me. To-day I need them more than ever.

The mystical and learned St. Theresa is right in dwelling upon the suffering of timid souls that allow themselves to be disturbed by temptation; but a thousand times worse than that suffering is the awakening from error of those who, like me, have permitted themselves to indulge in arrogance and self-confidence.

Our bodies are the temples wherein dwells the Holy Spirit; but when fire is set to the walls of the temple, though they do not burn, yet they are blackened.

The first evil thought is the head of the serpent; if we do not crush it with firm and courageous foot, then will the venomous reptile climb up and hide himself in our bosom.

The nectar of earthly joys, however innocent they be, is sweet indeed to the taste; but afterward it is converted into gall, and into the venom of the serpent.

It is true--I can no longer deny it to you--I ought not to have allowed my eyes to rest with so much complacency on this dangerous woman.

I do not deem myself lost; but I feel my soul troubled.

Even as the thirsty hart desires and seeks the water-brooks, so does my soul still seek G.o.d. To G.o.d does it turn that he may give it rest; it longs to drink at the torrent of his delights the gushing forth of which rejoices paradise, and whose clear waves make whiter than snow but deep calleth unto deep, and my feet have stuck fast in the mire that is hidden in their abysses.

Yet have I still breath and voice to cry out with the psalmist: "Arise, my joy! if thou dost take my part, who shall prevail against me?"

I say unto my sinful soul, full of the chimerical imaginations and sinful desires engendered by unlawful thoughts: "O miserable daughter of Babylon! happy shall he be who shall give thee thy reward! Happy shall he be that dasheth thy little ones against the rock!"

Works of penance, fasting, prayer, and penitence, are the weapons wherewith I shall arm myself to combat, and, with the Divine help, to vanquish.

It was not a dream; it was not madness; it was the truth: she lets her eyes rest upon me at times with the ardent glance of which I have told you. There is in her glance an unexplainable magnetic attraction. It draws me on, it seduces me, and I can not withdraw my gaze from her. On such occasions my eyes must burn, like hers, with a fatal flame, as did those of Amnon when he turned them upon Tamar; as did those of the prince of Shechem when they were fixed upon Dinah.

When our glances encounter each other thus, I forget even G.o.d. Her image rises up within my soul, the conqueror of everything. Her beauty outshines all other beauty; the joys of heaven seem to me less desirable than her affection. An eternity of suffering would be little in exchange for one moment of the infinite bliss with which one of those glances that pa.s.s like lightning inundates my soul.