Dragon's teeth

AFTER Luiza’s funeral Jorge dismissed the servants, and went himself to stay with Sebastião. At about nine o’clock in the evening of the same day the Counsellor Accacio was walking disconsolately by the Moinho de Vento, when he encountered Julião, who had just come from visiting a patient in the Rua da Rosa. They walked on together, conversing about Luiza, the funeral, and Jorge’s grief.

“Poor fellow! It is a terrible blow to him,” said Julião, compassionately.

“She was a model wife!” murmured the counsellor.

He had just come, he said, from Sebastião’s, but he had not been able to see his dear Jorge, who had thrown himself upon the bed and fallen into a profound sleep. And he added,—

“I have been lately reading that intense suffering is apt to be followed by profound sleep. Thus it was with Napoleon, for instance, after Waterloo,—the great disaster of Waterloo.” And after a moment’s silence he continued,—

“The truth is, I went to see Sebastião; I wanted to show him—”

And he interrupted himself to say, dwelling on every word,—

“For I thought it my duty to pay a tribute to the memory of the unhappy lady. It was my duty,—a duty from which nothing could absolve me. And I rejoice to have met you, for I desire to know your conscientious and dispassionate opinion of it.”

Julião coughed, and asked,—

“Is it an obituary?”

“It is an obituary.”

And the counsellor, although he did not consider it altogether proper, on account of his exalted position, to enter a public coffee-house, intimated to Julião that they might rest a little at Tavares’ if there were not many people there, and he would read him his production.

They entered the café. They found no one there, except two old men seated at a table drinking coffee, with their hats on, and leaning on their bamboo canes. The waiter was dozing at the other end of the room. A glaring and intense light filled the narrow apartment.

“There is a propitious silence here,” said the counsellor.

He invited Julião to take some coffee, and drawing from his pocket a sheet of ruled paper, murmured, “Unfortunate lady!” He then bowed to Julião and began:—

OBITUARY.

TO THE MEMORY OF THE SENHORA DONNA LUIZA MENDONÇA DE BRITO CARVALHO.

“Those are the words of the immortal Garrett.” And he continued, in slow and lugubrious accents:

He glanced at Julião as if soliciting his admiration, but seeing him occupied in stirring his coffee, he continued, with a still more lugubrious intonation:—

“A cup of coffee, Antonio!” called out gruffly a stout man in a jacket, who had just entered and seated himself at a table, laying his cane noisily on the marble.

The counsellor gave him a vindictive glance from under his brows, and lowering his voice, continued:

“Has Senhor Guedes been here yet?” asked the gruff voice.

“Not yet, Senhor Dom José,” answered the waiter, wiping the metal cross-bars of the railing with a cloth.

The counsellor continued:—

And the voice of the counsellor, as if symbolizing that paradisiac transit, grew flute-like in its intonations.

“Was Senhor Guedes here last night?” persisted the individual in the jacket, resting his elbows on the table, and smoking like a chimney.

“He was here very late,—at about two o’clock in the morning.”

The counsellor shook the paper he was reading, in mute desperation; from behind his dark spectacles his eyes shot the contemptuous glance of an interrupted author at the offending individual. He continued reading, however:—

He interrupted himself to say,—

“That is in order to inspire our poor Jorge with courage.”

He then continued:—

“Was there any one with Senhor Guedes?” asked the before-mentioned individual, shaking the ashes of his cigar on the marble.

The counsellor paused, pale with anger.

“That man must be a person of very low extraction,” he muttered, with an inflection of hatred in his voice.

The waiter spoke in shrill accents from behind the counter,—

“He was accompanied by a Spanish lady who lives up the street,—a thin lady with curls, and a red mantle.”

“Lola!” said the other, in a satisfied tone, delivering himself up with enjoyment to his recollections of the aforesaid lady.

The counsellor resumed more hastily,—

He ended with this monarchical phrase.

“What do you think of it?” he said. “Frankly, now—”

Julião drank the last drop from the bottom of his cup.

“Is it for publication?” he asked.

“Yes; in the ‘Voz Popular,’ surrounded by a black border.”

Julião scratched his head nervously, and rising, said,—

“It is very good, Counsellor.”

Accacio, taking the money for the waiter from his pocket, replied,—

“I think it is worthy of her and of me.”

They left the coffee-house in silence. The night was dark. A cold northeast wind was blowing, and the ground was still wet from the recent rain. Julião paused suddenly as they reached Loreto, and said:—

“I forgot! Have you heard the news, Counsellor? Donna Felicidade is going to retire to the Encarnação.”

“Ah!”

“So she has just told me. I had been to see her before making my visit in the Rua da Rosa. She has a slight fever,—nothing serious, the agitation, the fright. She herself told me so; to-morrow she enters the Encarnação.”

“I always thought that lady had retrogressive ideas,” said the counsellor. “It is the result of the machinations of the Jesuits, my friend.” And he added in the melancholy tone of a discontented liberal, “The reaction is already beginning to take place.”

Julião took him familiarly by the arm and said, smiling,—

“What reaction are you talking of? Why, it is on your account, ingrate!”

The counsellor stood still.

“What does my worthy friend wish to insinuate?” he said.

“Yes, my dear fellow; I don’t know how the deuce she discovered something very serious about you—”

“What? I assure you—”

“Something that I discovered also,—that a rival has already taken secure possession of the heart she aspired to occupy. She has just told me so!” And laughing heartily he turned down the street of Alecrim, calling out “Good-by, good-by.” The counsellor remained standing with folded arms, petrified with astonishment.

“Unhappy lady! What a fatal passion!” he murmured, caressing his mustache with a satisfied air.

He had still to copy the obituary, and he went home. He seated himself at the table with a rug around his knees, and the cares of the author made him forget before long the anxieties of the man. In the august silence of his sancta sanctorum his pen ran over the paper in the flowing and beautiful characters of his official handwriting until eleven o’clock. He was just finishing, when the door creaked on its hinges, and Adelaide, with a shawl around her shoulders, said,—

“Do you not intend to go to bed to-night?”

“I am going, Adelaide, I am going.”

He began to read over in a low voice what he had written; it seemed to him that the end was not sufficiently affecting; he desired to conclude it with a prolonged exclamation of sorrow. He reflected, his elbows resting on the table, his head between his hands, the fingers of which were spread wide apart. Adelaide approached him slowly and laid her hand upon his head. Her touch seemed to have the effect of making his thought flash out like a spark, for he took the pen and added,—

“Weep! weep! As for me, my sorrow chokes me!”

He rubbed his hands together with a feeling of pride, and repeated aloud in mournful accents,—

“Weep! weep! As for me, my sorrow chokes me!”

And passing his arm around the waist of Adelaide, he exclaimed,—

“That will make a sensation, my Adelaide.”

He stood up; he had brought to its close a well-spent day. He had read in the “Diario do Governo” in the morning that the royal family continued in the enjoyment of good health; he had fulfilled one of the duties of friendship, accompanying Luiza to the cemetery of the Prazeres in a hired carriage; he had assured himself, by an examination of the list of deputies, of the continuance of the peace of his country; he had composed a remarkable piece of writing, and his Adelaide loved him. And his thoughts dwelt with delight on all this happiness which contrasted so strongly with the sepulchral images his pen had described, for Adelaide heard him murmur,—

“Life is an inestimable boon;” adding, like a good citizen, “above all in this era of public prosperity.”

At the same hour two men descended from a carriage at the door of the Central Hotel; the one wore an ulster and the other a fur pelisse. A German waiter, who was chatting with the porter, recognized them, and said, taking off his cap,—

“Senhor Dom Bazilio! Senhor Viscount!”

The Viscount Reynaldo, who was stamping his foot on the ground, growled inside his fur pelisse,—

“Here we are once more in this pig-pen!”

“And at what an hour we have arrived!”

“At what hour would you have us arrive? Only twelve hours delayed; a bagatelle. In Portugal, that is a trifle.”

“Was there an accident?” the servant asked with solicitude, following them upstairs.

“The national accident!” answered Reynaldo, striking his foot nervously against the matting of the corridor. “The cars got off the track! We are here by a miracle. A vile country!”

He vented his anger on the servant as he had done before on the stones of the street, so intense was his disgust.

“For more than a year,” he said, “my sole prayer has been, ‘O my God, send another earthquake!’ I read the telegraphic news every day to see if the earthquake has taken place. Nothing. A minister has fallen, a new baron has been created, but of the earthquake, nothing.” And he smiled, vaguely grateful to a country whose defects provided him with so many subjects of complaint.

When the servant told him, trembling, that there were only a parlor and a double-bedded room on the third story, the rage of Reynaldo knew no bounds.

“Do you expect us to sleep in the same room?” he cried! “The hotel is full? And whom the devil does it occur to, to come to Portugal? Foreigners? Just so; that is the worst part of it.” And he added, shrugging his shoulders, “It is the climate, the national bait, that attracts them! A pestiferous climate! There is no greater disadvantage to a country than to possess a fine climate!” He did not cease to utter his invectives against the country, while the waiter, with a servile smile, placed on a table, plates, cold meats, and a bottle of Burgundy.

Reynaldo had come to Lisbon to dispose of the last remaining portion of his estate, and Bazilio had accompanied him in order to finish the troublesome affair of “that madwoman.”

Reynaldo did not cease to murmur inside his fur pelisse,—

“Here we are again in this pig-pen!”

Bazilio remained silent. From the moment of their arrival at Santa Apolonia, recollections of Luiza, of the romance of the past summer, began to throng upon him, exercising over him a powerful fascination. Leaning against the window he contemplated the scene before him. The moon, cold and pale, pursued her course among the clouds; a luminous network covered the surface of the water at times with shifting lights; then everything was plunged again in obscurity, unbroken save for the indistinct shapes looming up here and there, or the lantern of some vessel shining coldly.

“What is she doing now?” thought Bazilio. “Has she gone to sleep yet?” How little she imagined he was back again in his room in the Central Hotel!

They supped. Bazilio took the bottle of brandy with him to his room, and with his face covered with rice-powder, and the collar of his shirt thrown open, he gave himself up, stretched at full length in bed, and smoking a cigar, to his sensations of luxurious lassitude. Presently he smiled, and his gaze wandered to the ceiling.

“What the deuce!” he said to himself; “she is a lovely girl. It is well worth while!”

He drank a glass of brandy, and was soon sound asleep.

At the same hour Jorge, alone in his room, sitting motionless in his chair, and breaking into sobs from time to time, was also thinking of her. In his room below Sebastião was shedding tears silently. Julião, stretched at full length on a sofa in the hospital, was reading the “Revue des Deux Mondes.” Leopoldina was dancing at a soirée at the Cunhas; every one else was sleeping. And the chill wind that swept the clouds across the face of the heavens, and caused the gas-jets to flicker in their globes, stirred with a melancholy motion the branches of the tree that hung over the grave of Luiza.

Bazilio left his hotel at an early hour in the morning and went to find a decent coupé. Pinteos saw him from a distance, and drove towards him, saying, “Here is Pinteos, Senhor.”

He smiled, charmed to see the Senhor Dom Bazilio again.

“To the Patriarchal, Pinteos.”

“To the senhora’s? We will be there in a flash, Senhor,” he said, mounting into the driver’s seat, and touching the horses with his whip.

When the coupé stopped at Jorge’s door Senhor Paula came out to the sidewalk, the tobacconist came to her door, and the professor’s servant flattened her nose against the window-pane, all straining their eyes to see. Bazilio rang the bell a little nervously; he waited awhile, bit the end of his cigar, and rang the bell again, this time more loudly.

“The windows are closed, Senhor,” said Pinteos. Bazilio went out into the middle of the street and looked up at the house; the green blinds were closed, and the house wore a deserted aspect.

Bazilio directed himself to Paula.

“Are the people out who live here?” he asked.

“They live here no longer,” answered Paula, lugubriously, caressing his mustache.

Bazilio’s attention was aroused by those funereal tones.

“Where do they live, then?” he asked.

Senhor Paula looked mournfully at Bazilio. “Are you a relative?” he said.

“I am,” replied Bazilio, smiling.

“And—you know nothing?”

“But what is it, man, for Heaven’s sake?”

Senhor Paula scratched his head. “Well, I am sorry to have to tell you of it,—the senhora is dead.”

“What senhora?” asked Bazilio, turning very pale.

“The senhora,—Donna Luiza, the wife of Senhor Carvalho the engineer. Senhor Jorge is at the house of Senhor Sebastião, there at the end of the street. If you want to go there—”

“No,” replied Bazilio, with a quick gesture of the hand, and lips that quivered slightly. “But how did it happen?”

“A fever. It carried her off in a couple of days.”

Bazilio went slowly and with bent head back to the coupé. He glanced once more at the house, then shut the carriage door quickly. Pinteos drove quickly toward the city. Senhor Paula went over to the tobacconist’s.

“It didn’t seem to grieve him much,” he said. “Gentlemen! Canaille!” he muttered.

“Well, I am no relation,” said the tobacconist, “and every night I recite two Pater Nosters for her.”

“And I,” said the coal-vender, sighing.

“Much good they’ll do her!” growled Paula, as he left them. His business was bad just now, and the deaths that had recently taken place in the street impressed him with the uncertainty of life. He hated the priests more and more every day; at night he read the Nação, which Azevedo lent him, spitefully turning his eyes away from the devotional articles, which exasperated him and impelled him to atheism, while his disgust at the state of public affairs inclined him to communism. Everything, as he said, was a mass of rottenness.

Going down the street of Alecrim, Bazilio saw the Viscount Reynaldo standing at the door of Street’s Hotel. He told the driver to stop, and getting out of the coupé, said to him,—

“Do you know what has happened?”

“What?”

“My cousin is dead.”

“Poor thing!” murmured Reynaldo, politely.

They walked down the street arm in arm till they reached Aterro. The day was a glorious one; there was an invigorating coolness in the air, the atmosphere was filled with a golden light in which the houses, the trees, the masts of the vessels, took on softer outlines; every sound vibrated with joyous sonorousness; the river shone like molten metal; the boat from Cacilhas sent forth puffs of smoke that floated upward with opaline tints, and a blue haze enveloped the hills, in the midst of which nestled peaceful villas.

As they walked along they talked of Luiza.

The viscount regretted that the poor lady should have died in the midst of such glorious weather. But as a matter of fact he had always thought that affair absurd. For after all, to be frank, what was there in his cousin to attract Bazilio? He wished to speak no ill of the poor lady, who was now lying in that horrible Prazeres, but it could not be denied that she was wanting in chic; she drove in a hired carriage; she had married an employee; she lived in a mean little house; she had no respectable acquaintances; she bought tickets in the lottery; she had no esprit; and she did not know how to dress.

“Still, for a month or two that we are to remain in Lisbon,” murmured Bazilio, with eyes bent on the ground.

“Well, for that perhaps,” responded Reynaldo, disdainfully.

They were silent for a time. Presently they began to laugh simultaneously at a man who passed by, controlling with difficulty a pair of black horses. What a carriage! What style! It was only in Lisbon that such things were to be seen.

When they reached the end of Aterro they turned back, and the Viscount Reynaldo, passing his hand over his whiskers, said to Bazilio,—

“So now you are a widower.”

Bazilio smiled resignedly; and at the suggestion of the viscount they went together into the English café to take a glass of sherry.

THE END.