Chapter XVIII A Passion 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-passages 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 passionate caresses with gracious kindness.
But after they had chatted for about an hour, as they sat side by side on the sofa, she looked at him with a slow, compassionate gaze, and said:
“Do you know, Mundo, that this is the last time we shall ever sit here alone together?”
The youth looked at her in speechless amazement; he did not, he would not, understand.
“Yes, I cannot keep up this mystery any longer. Escosura is very indignant, and with reason. Besides, I am ashamed—it is horrible of me. And, after all, you have nothing to complain of. I have always been nice to you. If I ever loved a man truly, it was you, and the proof of it is that it has lasted so long. But nothing in this world can last for ever, and as matters stand we had better part. You see, Mundo, I am growing old—you are but a boy. If I did not break with you, sooner or later you would throw me over. Such is life. Though you still think me handsome, these are but the last remains of beauty. I must bid farewell to all the follies we have indulged in together, but I shall always look back on them with pleasure. I swear to you that you will always symbolise to me the happiest period of my life. So now, henceforth, we will still be good friends. It will always be a satisfaction to me to be able to serve you, for I owe you many hours of happiness.”
The young man listened to this cruel speech, motionless and stricken. His face was perfectly colourless.
“Do you mean it?” he said at last, in a husky voice.
“Yes, my dear boy, yes. I mean it,” she replied, with the same sad, patronising smile.
“It is impossible! It cannot be!” he exclaimed vehemently, and starting to his feet he looked down on her with a mixture of horror and indignation.
This expression in his eyes roused her pride.
“But you will see that it can be!” she retorted with a touch of irony which was the height of cruelty.
He stood frozen for a moment, gazing at her with intense anguish, then he fell on his knees at her feet, with clasped hand, imploring her:
“For God’s sake, do not kill me! Do not kill me!”
Clementina’s face softened, and her voice broke a little.
“Come, Mundo,” said she, “do not be a baby. Get up. This had to come. You will find other women far more worthy than I.”
But the young man held her knees clasped, kissing them in a frenzy of grief, his whole frame shaken by sobs.
“This is horrible, horrible, horrible!” he kept saying. “Oh! what have I done that you should kill me with misery?”
“Come, come,” she said, gently stroking his hair. “Get up, be reasonable. Do you not see that this is ridiculous?”
“What do I care?” he cried, his face hidden in her silk skirts. “For you I would be ridiculous in the eyes of the whole world.”
Clementina tried to soothe him, but without any emotion or pity. There is no wild beast more cruel than a woman whose love is satiated. She let his grief have its way for a while, and when he grew calmer she rose.
“I am grateful to you for all this feeling, Mundo. I, too, have gone through a terrible struggle before I could make up my mind to part.”
“It is false!” cried Raimundo, still kneeling, with his elbows on the sofa. “If you still loved me, you could not be so cruel, so base.”
Clementina stood silent for a minute, looking at his shoulders in great irritation. At last, touched by pity, she said:
“I forgive you the insult in consideration of the agitation you are in. Though you may abuse me you will still be able to think of me with affection; and even when you have quite forgotten me, the memory of your face and the happy hours we have passed together will remain engraved on my heart. But now we must come to an explanation,” she added, in a sterner tone. “Let us be worthy of each other, Raimundo. You must, please, take a hackney coach to your house and bring me back every line I ever wrote to you, that we may burn them. I have none of yours; you know I always destroyed them immediately.”
Raimundo did not stir. After waiting a few moments she went up behind him, leaned over him, and laid her hands on his cheeks, saying kindly:
“Foolish boy! Am I the only woman in the world?”
He thrilled at the touch of those soft hands, and, turning suddenly, seized them and covered them with kisses, pressed them to his heart, laid them on his brow.
“Yes, Clementina, the only woman; or, if there are others, I do not know them—I do not want to know them. But is it true? Is it true that you do not love me?”
And his tearful eyes looked up at her with such an expression of woe that she could not but lie.
“I never said I did not love you, but only that we can meet no more—like this.”
“It is the same thing.”
“No, it is not the same thing, foolish boy. I may love you, and yet, in consequence of special circumstances, I may not be able—we cannot have everything we wish for in this world.” And she wandered into incoherent argument and specious reasoning, which she knew was false, and could not utter without hesitancy; the same commonplaces, repeated in different words, trying to give them the weight they lacked by emphasis and gesticulation.
But Raimundo was not listening. In a few minutes he rose, dried away his tears, and left the room without a word. Clementina watched him in surprise.
“I will wait for you,” she called after him into the passage.
Twenty minutes later he returned, carrying a parcel.
“Here are your letters,” he said with apparent calm, but his voice was thick and his face deadly pale.
Clementina glanced at him keenly, not without some uneasiness. But she controlled herself, and said simply:
“Thank you very much, Mundo. Now, we will burn them, if you please, in the kitchen.”
He made no reply. They went together to the cold, unfurnished kitchen, which no one ever used, and Clementina, with her own hand, laid the packet on the hearth. But suddenly, just as she was about to strike the match which Raimundo had given her, she paused. Then she said, with a smile:
“Do you know that this is dreadfully prosaic? To burn my love-letters on a kitchen hearth! It seems to me that they might have a more romantic end. Shall we go and burn them in the fields? That will give us a last walk together and a fitter parting.”
“As you please,” he said, in a scarcely audible voice.
“Very well. Fetch a carriage.”
“I kept one.”
“Then come.”
Raimundo took up the packet of letters, and together they quitted the room whither they were never to return.
The hackney-coach carried them along the road to the eastward. It was an afternoon in Spring, misty and fresh. Clementina had closed the blinds for fear of being seen; but when they were outside the Alcalá gate she asked Raimundo to let them down. Unluckily the moment was inopportune, for at that very moment they met an open carriage, in which sat Pepe Castro with Esperancita Calderón, now his wife. She had barely time to lean back in the corner and cover her face with her hand, and even so was not sure that they had not recognised her.
Raimundo, by a great effort, had recovered some self-control, but not completely. Clementina did all she could to divert his mind, talking to him, like a friend, of indifferent matters, of their acquaintances, and taking it for granted that he would continue to visit at her house. When Castro and his wife had gone past she discussed them with much animation.
“You see, I was right, Mundo. They have not been married three months, and Pepe and his father-in-law are squabbling over money matters. No one knows Calderón better than I. If he does not die before long, the poor children will be dreadfully hard up, for they will never get any money out of him.”
Raimundo replied to her remarks, affecting a calm demeanour, but there was a peculiar accent in his voice which the lady could not help noticing. It seemed foggy, as though it had passed through many tears.
At last, in a very deserted spot, they bid the driver stop, and got out.
“Wait for us here; we are going for a little walk,” Raimundo explained.
But then observing a doubtful glance in the man’s eyes, he turned back when he had gone a few steps, and taking out a five-dollar note he handed it to him saying:
“You can give me the change presently.”
They turned off from the high road and wandered away over the dreary deserted fields which stretch away to the east of Madrid. The ground is slightly undulating, but burnt and barren, cutting the horizon with a long level line—not a house, not a tree was in sight. Clementina’s dainty shoes sank in the dust as they walked on in silence. Raimundo had no spirit to talk, and she, too, was oppressed by the sadness of the little drama, to which that of the landscape contributed; she had enough good feeling not to speak a word. Now and then she looked back to assure herself whether they could still be seen from the high road. When she thought they had gone far enough she stopped.
“Why should we go any further?” she said. “Will not this place do?”
Raimundo also stopped, but made no answer. He dropped the parcel on the ground and looked away—far away to the horizon. Clementina untied it, looked with some curiosity at her letters, all carefully preserved in the envelopes; then she made a little heap of them, and after waiting a minute or two for Raimundo to look round, finding that he did not move, she said:
“Give me a match.”
The young man obeyed, and gave it her lighted, in perfect silence. Then he looked away again while Clementina set fire to the papers, and watched them burn one by one. The process took some minutes, and she had to turn the blazing fragments with her gloved hands to prevent their remaining half-burnt. Now and then she cast a half uneasy, half pitying glance at her lover, who stood as motionless and absorbed as a sailor studying the signs of the weather.
When nothing remained but black ashes, Clementina rose from her stooping posture, waited a moment, not liking to intrude on Raimundo’s deep abstraction, and at last, with a cloud of tender pathos on her beautiful face, hastily looked about her, went up to him, and laying her arm on his shoulder, said in a fond tone:
“And now that we are alone for the last time, shall we not bid each other a loving farewell?”
“How ought we to part?” he replied, looking at her and making a great effort to smile.
“So!” she exclaimed, and she threw her arms round his neck, and covered his face with passionate kisses.
Raimundo stood rigid. He let her kiss him many times, like an inert creature, and then his knees failed, and with a heartrending cry:
“Oh Clementina, this is death!” he fell senseless on the ground.
She was terribly frightened. There was no one to help; no water near. She raised his head, resting it on her lap, fanned him with her hat, and held a scent-bottle she had with her under his nose. He presently opened his eyes, and could soon stand up. He was ashamed of his weakness. Clementina was most affectionate and helpful. As soon as she saw that he was in a state to walk, she took his arm and said:
“Let us go.”
And she tried to amuse him by talking of a little dance she meant to give, to which she urgently pressed him to come; he was on no account to fail her.
“And on Saturdays, as usual, you know. You are to be sure not to desert me. In my house you will always be what you have been—my friend; and in my heart, so long as I live, you will fill the dearest place.”
Raimundo’s only answer was a forced smile.
Thus they made their way back to the spot where they had left the coach. As they drove back, still she talked, while he, as they got nearer to the town, turned even paler than before; nor could he even smile.
Seeing him thus, with despair in every feature, Clementina at last ceased talking so lightly, and, moved with pity, she again kissed him tenderly. But he shrank from her touch; he gently pushed her away, saying:
“Leave me alone—leave me. You only hurt me more.”
Two tears rose to his eyes and remained there without falling. At last they dried away, or returned to the hidden fount whence they had sprung.
They reached the Alcalá gate once more. Clementina bid the driver stop at the corner of the Calle de Serrano:
“You had better get out here. You are close to your own house.”
Raimundo, speechless, opened the door.
“Till Saturday, Mundo. Do not fail me. You know I shall look for you.” And she grasped his hand tightly.
He, without looking at her, merely said:
“Good-bye.”
He sprang out. The lady saw him walk up the street, staggering like a drunken man, and he did not once look round.
The End