To this vehement entreaty succeeded a passionate kiss, pressed on the hair and forehead of the poet. The latter raised his eyes, drew back a little and, holding his cigar between his fingers after knocking off the ashes with his nail, proceeded to recite.
The offspring of his muse was a poem in imitation of Becquer. His auditor, who listened to it with religious attention, thought it superior to anything inspired by the muse of the great Gustave. And she asked for another and then another, and then a bit of Espronceda and then a fragment or two of Zorrilla. By this time the cigar had gone out; the poet threw away the stump and lighted a fresh one. Then they resumed their conversation.
"Shall we have supper soon?"
"Directly. What do you think I have for you?"
"I haven't the least idea."
"Think of what you like best. What you like best, better than anything else."
"Bah! You know that so far as I am concerned, provided you don't give me anything smoked or greasy——"
"A French omelet! You couldn't guess, eh? Let me tell you—I found the receipt in a book. As I had heard that it was something good I wanted to try it. I had always made omelets as they make them here, so stiff, that you might throw one against the wall without breaking it. But this—I think it will be to your taste. As for me, I don't like it much, I prefer the old style. I showed Flores how to make it. What was in the one you ate at the inn at Orense? Chopped parsley, eh?"
"No, ham. But what difference does it make what was in it?"
"I'll run and take it out of the pantry! I thought—the book says parsley! Wait, wait."
She overturned her chair in her haste. An instant later the jingling of her keys and the opening and closing of a couple of doors were heard in the distance. A husky voice muttered some unintelligible words in the kitchen. In two minutes she was back again.
"Tell me, and those verses, are you not going to publish them? Am I not going to see them in print?"
"Yes," responded the poet, slowly turning his head to one side and sending a puff of smoke through his lips. "I am going to send them to Vigo, to Roberto Blanquez, to insert them in the Amanecer."
"I am delighted! You will become famous, sweetheart! How many periodicals have spoken of you?"
Segundo laughed ironically and shrugged his shoulders.
"Not many." And with a somewhat preoccupied air he let his gaze wander over the plants and far away over the top of the poplar whose leaves rustled gently in the breeze. The poet pressed his companion's hand mechanically, and the latter returned the pressure with passionate ardor.
"Of course. How do you expect them to speak of you when you don't put your name to your verses?" she said. "They don't know whose they are. They are wondering, likely——"
"What difference does the name make? They could say the same things of the pseudonym I have adopted as of Segundo García. The few people who will trouble themselves to read my verses will call me the Swan of Vilamorta."
II.
Segundo García, the lawyer's son, and Leocadia Otero, the schoolmistress of Vilamorta, had met each other for the first time in the spring at a pilgrimage. Leocadia had gone with some girls to whom she had taught their letters and plain sewing. Before the chorus of nymphs Segundo had recited verses for more than two hours in an oak grove far from the noise of the drum and the bagpipes, where the strains of the music and the voices of the crowd came softened by distance. The audience was as silent as if they were hearing mass, although certain passages of a tender or passionate nature were the occasion, among the children, of nudges, pinches, laughter instantaneously suppressed; but from the black eyes of the schoolmistress, down her cheeks, pitted by the smallpox and pale with emotion, flowed two large, warm tears, followed so quickly and in such abundance by others that she was obliged to take out her handkerchief to wipe them away. And returning by starlight, descending the mountain on whose summit stood the sanctuary, by sylvan footpaths carpeted with grass and bordered with heather and briars, the order of march was as follows: first the children, running, jumping, pushing one another among the heather and greeting every fall with shouts of laughter; Leocadia and Segundo behind, arm-in-arm, pausing from time to time to talk in subdued tones, almost in whispers.
A sad and ugly story was told about Leocadia Otero. Although, without actually saying so, she had given it to be understood that she was a widow, it was whispered that she had never been married; that the puny Dominguito, the little cripple who was always sick, was born while she lived in the house of her uncle and guardian at Orense, after the death of her parents. What was certain was that her uncle had died shortly after the birth of the child, bequeathing to his niece a couple of fields and a house in Vilamorta, and Leocadia, after passing the necessary examinations, had obtained the village school and gone to settle in that town. She had lived in it now for more than thirteen years, observing the most exemplary conduct, watching day and night over Minguitos, and living with the utmost frugality in order to rebuild the dilapidated house, which she had finally succeeded in doing shortly before her meeting with Segundo. Leocadia was a woman of notably industrious habits; in her wardrobe she had always a good supply of linen, in her parlor bamboo furniture with a rug before the sofa, grapes, rice, and ham in her pantry, and carnations and sweet basil in her windows. Minguitos was always as neat as a new pin; she herself, when she raised the skirt of her habit of Dolores, of good merino, displayed underneath voluminous embroidered petticoats, stiff with starch. For all which reasons, notwithstanding her ugliness and her former history, the schoolmistress was not without suitors—a wealthy retired muleteer, and Cansin, the clothier. She rejected the suitors and continued living alone with Minguitos and Flores, her old servant, who now enjoyed in the house all the privileges of a grandmother.
The iniquitous wrong suffered by her in early youth had produced in Leocadia, absorbed as she was in her bitter recollections, a profound horror of marriage and an insatiable thirst for the romantic, the ideal, which is as a refreshing dew to the imagination and which satisfies the emotions. She had the superficial knowledge of a village schoolmistress—rudimentary, but sufficient to introduce exotic tastes into Vilamorta; that is to say, a taste for literature in its most accessible forms—novels and poetry. She devoted to reading the leisure hours of her monotonous and upright life. She read with faith, with enthusiasm, uncritically; she read believing and accepting everything, identifying herself with each one of the heroines, in turn, her heart echoing back the poet's sighs, the troubadour's songs, and the laments of the bard. Reading was her one vice, her secret happiness. When she requested her friends at Orense to renew her subscription to the library for her they laughed at her and nicknamed her the "Authoress." She an authoress! She only wished she were. If she could only give form to what she felt, to the world of fancy she carried in her mind! But this was impossible. Never would her brain succeed in producing, however hard she might squeeze it, even so much as a poor seguidilla. Poetry and sensibility were stored up in the folds and convolutions of her brain, as solar heat is stored up in the coal. What came to the surface was pure prose—housekeeping, economy, stews.
When she met Segundo, chance applied the lighted torch to the formidable train of feelings and dreams shut up in the soul of the schoolmistress. She had at last found a worthy employment for her amorous faculties, an outlet for her affections. Segundo was poetry incarnate. He represented for her all the graces, all the divine attributes of poetry—the flowers, the breeze, the nightingale, the dying light of day, the moon, the dark wood.
The fire burned with astounding rapidity. In its flames were consumed, first her honorable resolution to efface by the blamelessness of her conduct the stigma of the past, then her strong and deep maternal affection. Not for an instant did the thought present itself to Leocadia's mind that