The Grandee Part 28

Amalia, instead of delighting as formerly in her infantile ways, appeared to avoid them, she gave orders she was not to be brought to her bed in the morning as usual. When they met on the stairs, she pa.s.sed by without looking at her. At the most she would go up to her and say in a displeased tone:

"You have not washed yourself yet. Go, see you are put right." Or else, "They tell me you did not know your catechism lesson. You are getting very idle. Take care and be good, because if not I shall lock you in the cellar with the rats."

She had formerly busied herself in teaching her, in putting the needle into her hand, and guiding her little fingers. Now she almost always left this task to the servants. She lived in a state of gloomy preoccupation which did not escape the domestics' notice. Josefina also was conscious that her G.o.dmother was changed, not only with regard to herself, but in her whole manner of life. And so her mind gradually conceived the idea that she was sad, and that she was suffering, and that this was the cause of her bad temper. One day the lady was alone in her room. She had flung herself in an armchair and sat motionless with her head thrown back and her hands hanging down, apparently asleep.

Nevertheless, Josefina, who pa.s.sed by the room, and ventured to look through the crack of the door, noticed that her eyes were open, very open, and that she was frowning dreadfully. Without knowing what she did, with the blind confidence that children have in themselves, she pushed open the door and entered the room. She went silently up to the senora, and throwing herself suddenly on to her lap, and looking at her with timid affection, she said:

"Give me a kiss, G.o.dmother."

The lady was startled.

"How is it you are here? Who gave you permission to come in? Have I not told you not to come up without you are called?" she asked, frowning still more severely.

"I want to give you a kiss," said Josefina in a subdued voice.

"Don't bother me with kisses, and mind you don't come up again without permission."

But the child, overwhelmed with emotion, not knowing to what to attribute this moroseness, and wishing to overcome it at all costs, began to cry, as she threw herself once more upon her lap and tried to reach her face.

"Give me a kiss, G.o.dmother."

"Go! leave me!" replied the lady, preventing her raising herself higher.

The child was obstinate.

"Don't you love me? Give me a kiss."

"Go away, child!" she cried, in a fury. "Go away, at once!"

At the same time she gave her a hard push, and Josefina fell on to the ground where her head came against the leg of a chair.

She got up, raising her hand to where she was hurt, but she did not cry.

A feeling of dignity, often shown by childish hearts, gave her strength to keep from crying, although her eyes were filled with tears. She cast one look of unspeakable sadness on her G.o.dmother, and then ran from the room. When she reached the staircase, she threw herself down on one of the steps and burst into a fit of sobbing.

The thorns of life were indeed piercing the delicate flesh of that child whose path until then had been strewn with flowers. Amalia's spite grew worse every day, and the reserve and timidity of the child increased in proportion. But as she was only a child, this sadness would vanish when under the impulse of a fancy, and it was at such moments that the coldness and spite of the lady were most evident.

"Senora, Josefina does not want to put on her green frock."

"Why?"

"She says it is dirty."

Amalia then rose, repaired to the child's room, took her by the arm, and shaking her roughly, she said:

"What is this pride? Don't you know, silly, that you are only here out of pity? Take care and don't vex me, or one day, when least expected, I will put you in the street where you came from."

The servants heard these words and always bore them in mind. Until now Josefina had been brought up like a child of the senores, now she was treated like an illegitimate child, and afterwards like a little pariah.

The servants now took pleasure in paying off the little attentions they had been formerly obliged to accord her, and the sharp rebukes they had incurred on her account.

Concha in particular, the dwarfish maid, felt an indescribable delight, peculiar to her malignant, spiteful character, every time that the senora evinced in any way her scorn for the adopted child. Josefina had a large, cheerful room looking on to the garden. Although Concha was head maid and dressmaker of the house, she had a duller room that she shared with Maria looking on to the street. Josefina's room had always been an object of envy to her. More than once she had given strong hints on the subject; and now, profiting by her mistress's state of mind, she got permission to sleep in the child's room under the pretext that Paula, who occupied the next bed, snored so loudly. So she installed herself comfortably there, and made use of the little girl's toilet things. A few days later she sent her to sleep with Maria without saying a word to her mistress. When Amalia did know of it, it had been going on for some time, and she heard it without any resentment at not having been told before, and she did nothing to alter what had been done.

Soon after, she thought of another means of degrading the child.

Josefina dined at table with the senores. The pompous old Grandee had not consented to this at first, but he at last conceded to the importunities of his wife. Concha, full of spite like her senora, set to intriguing to deprive the foundling of this privilege. Exaggerating what it gave to do, the mess that it made, and the disturbance of the waiting at table, the little girl was finally removed to, and located at, a little table, which was put in the ironing-room near the kitchen. A few days after Amalia, in a fit of bad temper, said that the double service could not be tolerated, and that she was to dine in the kitchen with the servants. Concha sat her on a stool, pushed her a plate of thick soup and a tin spoon saying: "Eat."

The child raised her head in amazement, but seeing the malignant smile in the girl's eyes, she put it down again, and began to eat without any protest whatever. Concha was not pleased at this, for she wanted to see her rebel and cry.

"What is it? Don't you like your spoon? Then, child, you'll have to eat with it as I do, who am quite as good as you. What do you take yourself for, you little fool? Do you think because you wear a fine hat and a cambric chemise you are a young lady? Young ladies don't come in a basket covered over with dirty rags." And so she went on, bursting into sarcastic, insulting laughter until poor Josefina at last began to cry.

Although the other servants were not so malignant, they were pleased at the child's humiliation. They ended by taking her part, whilst Concha, relentless and colder and harder than marble, went on persecuting her with the greatest cruelty. A few days later, as Josefina was pa.s.sing through the ironing-room to the dining-room, she heard Concha say to Maria:

"I say, girl, have you ironed the foundling's clothes?"

She stopped, not knowing of whom they were speaking, and cast an anxious look from one servant to the other, until a simultaneous shout of laughter from them both made her understand that they were speaking of her.

"Why do you call me a foundling?" cried the innocent child, with difficulty repressing her tears. "I will go and tell my G.o.dmother."

"Go run and tell her," returned Concha pushing her to the door.

And henceforth she went by that name among the servants. Amalia prohibited her being brought into the drawing-room in the evening. The count, whose only chance of seeing his child was on these occasions, asked for an explanation, and the lady replied that as she had to get up early for her lessons, she required more sleep; but he did not feel satisfied. He knew that some harm was brewing, but fearing a worse evil he had the sense to be silent.

Then Amalia thought of a more direct way of wounding the count. The child whom she had not only deprived of her caresses, but of all her position in the house, was in a fair way to be an extra little servant.

In one instant the transformation was completed. The senora gave orders for all her hats and clothes to be put on one side, and for her to be dressed in the poorest, oldest things out of the press; that she was to be treated like the rest of the servants, and perform little offices in the kitchen that were within her power.

The courtship of Fernanda and the count was getting more conspicuous every day. Although they abstained from talking intimately in the house of Quinones before the jealous Valencian, she was not oblivious to what was going on. Her eyes, like two rays of light, seemed to pierce her lover's brain and read what was there: Luis was in love with his old betrothed. The adulterous connection weighed on his mind like a heavy stone. She, the loved and preferred of former days, was now old and faded beside that splendid rose who had just reached perfection. If he had not given her up already, it was through his weakness of character, through the powerful ascendant she had managed to get over him during the seven years of their _liaison_. But he wanted nothing better than to break with her. She read it perfectly in his furtive glances, and in the gloomy abstraction that weighed upon him, in his sudden, unnatural cheerfulness, in his fear and servility which increased every time he came near her. One evening the count asked for a gla.s.s of water. A sudden light came into Amalia's eyes--the longed-for moment had arrived.

She pulled the bell, and said in a peculiar tone to the maid who answered it:

"Paula, send a gla.s.s of water."

A few minutes afterwards Josefina came in, poorly clad, with a little coa.r.s.e linen ap.r.o.n, and shod with rough shoes. Her little hands had difficulty in carrying a tray with water, and sugar, and sugar-tongs.

The guests were astounded, and Luis turned pale. The child advanced to the middle of the room looking timidly at her G.o.dmother, who signed to her to go to the count. The count staggered as if he had had a blow, but seeing the little creature standing before him, he hastened to take the gla.s.s, and raised it with trembling hand to his lips. Amalia's eyes meanwhile looked cold and indifferent, but the imperceptible trembling of her lips betrayed the cruel delight she was feeling. A significant silence pervaded the gathering whilst this scene was being enacted.

Directly Josefina had left, the Senora de Quinones explained this change to her guests with perfect naturalness. Some punishment had been found necessary for the arrogance that the child had taken to showing towards the servants. It would not be for long. Nevertheless, it was a daily struggle with the will of Quinones, who objected to her being brought up with so much indulgence.

"The fact is," she concluded in a tone so natural that it would have reflected credit on an actress--"the fact is, sometimes I am obliged to put her in her place in my house. What good is it to raise her to a position she cannot maintain? Any day we may die, and the poor thing will have to support herself by work, if she does not find a husband before then. And what husband would take a girl with many requirements, and no money?"

The guests were not deceived. She really did not expect that they would be. All that was a pure sop to conventionality, but n.o.body was deceived as to the real facts. The count left soon after, being unable to control his vexation.

"This business of Luis is not going on very well," said Manuel Antonio to a little party going home by the Calle de Altavilla consisting of Maria Josefa, the Pensioner, and his daughter Jovita. "If ever the marriage of Fernanda does come to anything, it will be at the cost of much unpleasantness."

"Do you think so?" asked Maria Josefa, to draw him out.

"_Madre!_ Are you mad, woman? Don't you know Amalia as well as I do?"

"And what has Amalia to do with Luis' marriage?" asked Jovita, to whose maidenhood simplicity seemed befitting in spite of her two-and-thirty years.

"Ay! It is true there is this little girl here," exclaimed the Chatterbox with comic, mocking gestures. "I did not think of that!

Nothing, nothing, little monkey; go on in front, these are matters for grown-up people."

The Pensioner's daughter was p.r.i.c.ked to the quick at this remark and made an insolent retort. Manuel Antonio repaid it with another, and a regular quarrel was started, in which bitter pointed words were banded and it lasted as far as the house of the Pensioner, who had made fruitless efforts to re-establish peace between them. As usual, the Chatterbox got the best of it, for his remarks combined the vigour of a male with the subtle spite of a female.