"Excuse me, sir, but are you not a ship captain named Don Ulysses?..."
This started the conversation. The cook, convinced that it was he, continued talking with a mysterious smile. A most beautiful lady was desirous of seeing him.... And she gave him the address of a towered villa situated at the foot of Tibidabo in a recently constructed district. He could make his visit at three in the afternoon.
"Come, sir," she added with a look of sweet promise. "You will never regret the trip."
All questions were useless. The woman would say no more. The only thing that could be gathered from her evasive answers was that the person sending her had left her upon seeing the captain.
When the messenger had gone away he wished to follow her. But the fat old wife shook her head repeatedly. Her astuteness was quite accustomed to eluding pursuit, and without Ferragut"s knowing exactly how, she slipped away, mingling with the groups near the Plaza of Catalunia.
"I shall not go," was the first thing that Ferragut said on finding himself alone.
He knew just what that invitation signified. He recalled an infinite number of former unconfessable friendships that he had had in Barcelona,--women that he had met in other times, between voyages, without any pa.s.sion whatever, but through his vagabond curiosity, anxious for novelty. Perhaps some one of these had seen him in the Rambla, sending this intermediary in order to renew the old relations.
The captain probably enjoyed the fame of a rich man now that everybody was commenting upon the amazingly good business transacted by the proprietors of ships.
"I shall not go," he again told himself energetically. He considered it useless to bother about this interview, to encounter the mercenary smile of a familiar but forgotten acquaintance.
But the insistence of the recollection and the very tenacity with which he kept repeating to himself his promise not to keep the tryst, made Ferragut begin to suspect that it might be just as well to go after all.
After luncheon his will-power weakened. He didn"t know what to do with himself during the afternoon. His only distraction was to visit his cousins in their counting-houses, or to meander through the Rambla. Why not go?... Perhaps he might be mistaken, and the interview might prove an interesting one. At all events, he would have the chance of retiring after a brief conversation about the past.... His curiosity was becoming excited by the mystery.
And at three in the afternoon he took a street car that conducted him to the new districts springing up around the base of Tibidabo.
The commercial bourgeoisie had covered these lands with an architectural efflorescence, legitimate daughter of their dreams.
Shopkeepers and manufacturers had wished to have here a pleasure house, traditionally called a _torre_, in order to rest on Sundays and at the same time make a show of their wealth with these Gothic, Arabic, Greek, and Persian creations. The most patriotic were relying on the inspiration of native architects who had invented a Catalan art with pointed arches, battlements, and ducal coronets. These medieval coronets, which were repeated even on the peaks of the chimney pots, were the everlasting decorative motif of an industrial city little given to dreams and l.u.s.ting for lucre.
Ferragut advanced through the solitary street between two rows of freshly transplanted trees that were just sending forth their first growth. He looked at the facades of the _torres_ made of blocks of cement imitating the stone of the old fortresses, or with tiles which represented fantastic landscapes, absurd flowers, bluish, glazed nymphs.
Upon getting out of the street car he made a resolution. He would look at the outside only of the house. Perhaps that would aid him in discovering the woman! Then he would just continue on his way.
But on reaching the _torre_, whose number he still kept in mind, and pausing a few seconds before its architecture of a feudal castle whose interior was probably like that of the beer gardens, he saw the door opening, and appearing in it the same woman that had talked with him in the flower Rambla.
"Come in, Captain."
And the captain was not able to resist the suggestive smile of the cook.
He found himself in a kind of hall similar to the facade with a Gothic fireplace of alabaster imitating oak, great jars of porcelain, pipes the size of walking-sticks, and old armor adorning the walls. Various wood-cuts reproducing modern pictures of Munich alternated with these decorations. Opposite the fireplace William II was displaying one of his innumerable uniforms, resplendent in gold and a gaudy frame.
The house appeared uninhabited. Heavy soft curtains deadened every sound. The corpulent go-between had disappeared with the lightness of an immaterial being, as though swallowed up by the wall. While scowling at the portrait of the Kaiser, the sailor began to feel disquieted in this silence which appeared to him almost hostile.... And he was not carrying arms.
The smiling woman again presented herself with the same slippery smoothness.
"Come in, Don Ulysses."
She had opened a door, and Ferragut on advancing felt that this door was locked behind him.
The first thing that he could see was a window, broader than it was high, of colored gla.s.s. A Valkyrie was galloping across it, with lance in rest and floating locks, upon a black steed that was expelling fire through its nostrils. In the diffused light of the stained gla.s.s he could distinguish tapestries on the walls and a deep divan with flowered cushions.
A woman arose from the soft depths of this couch, rushing towards Ferragut with outstretched arms. Her impulse was so violent that it made her collide with the captain. Before the feminine embrace could close around him he saw a panting mouth, with avid teeth, eyes tearful with emotion, a smile that was a mixture of love and painful disquietude.
"You!... You!" he stuttered, springing back.
His legs trembled with a shudder of surprise. A cold wave ran down his back.
"Ulysses!" sighed the woman, trying again to fold him in her arms.
"You!... _You_!" again repeated the sailor in a dull voice.
It was Freya.
He did not know positively what mysterious force dictated his action.
It was perhaps the voice of his good counselor, accustomed to speak in his brain in critical instants, which now a.s.serted itself.... He saw instantaneously a ship that was exploding and his son blown to pieces.
"Ah ... _tal_"
He raised his robust arm with his fist clenched like a mace. The voice of prudence kept on giving him orders. "Hard!... No consideration!...
This female is shifty." And he struck as though his enemy were a man, without hesitation, without pity, concentrating all his soul in his fist.
The hatred that he was feeling and the recollection of the aggressive resources of the German woman made him begin a second blow, fearing an attack from her and wishing to repel it before it could be made.... But he stopped with his arm raised.
"_Ay de mi_!..."
The woman had uttered a child-like wail, staggering, swaying upon her feet, with arms drooping, without any attempt at defense whatever....
She reeled from side to side as though she were drunk. Her knees doubled under her, and she fell with the limpness of a bundle of clothes, her head first striking against the cushions of the divan. The rest of her body remained like a rag on the rug.
There was a long silence, interrupted from time to time by groans of pain. Freya was moaning with closed eyes, without coming out of her inertia.
The sailor, scowling with a tragic ugliness, and transported with rage, remained immovable, looking grimly at the fallen creature. He was satisfied with his brutality; it had been an opportune relief; he could breathe better. At the same time he was beginning to feel ashamed of himself. "What have you done, you coward?..." For the first time in his existence he had struck a woman.
He raised his aching right hand to his eyes. One of his fingers was bleeding. Perhaps it had become hooked in her earrings, perhaps a pin at her breast had scratched it. He sucked the blood from the deep scratch, and then forgot the wound in order to gaze again at the body outstretched at his feet.
Little by little he was becoming accustomed to the diffused light of the room. He was already beginning to see objects clearly. His glance rested upon Freya with a look of mingled hatred and remorse.
Her head, sunk in the cushions, presented a pitiful profile. She appeared much older, as though her age had been doubled by her tears.
The brutal blow had made her freshness and her marvelous youth flit away with doleful suddenness. Her half-opened eyes were encircled with temporary wrinkles. Her nose had taken on the livid sharpness of the dead; her great ma.s.s of hair, reddening under the blow, was disheveled in golden, undulating tangles. Something black was winding through it making streaks upon the silk of the cushion. It was the blood that was dribbling between the heraldic flowers of the embroidery,--blood flowing from the hidden forehead, being absorbed by the dryness of the soft material.
Upon making this discovery, Ferragut felt his shame increasing. He took one step over the extended body, seeking the door. Why was he staying there?... All that he had to do was already done; all that he could say was already said.
"Do not go, Ulysses," sighed a plaintive voice. "Listen to me!... It concerns your life."
The fear that he might get away made her pull herself together with dolorous groans and this movement accelerated the flow of blood.... The pillow continued drinking it in like a thirsty meadow.
An irresistible compa.s.sion like that which he might feel for any stranger abandoned in the midst of the street, made the sailor draw back, his eyes fixed on a tall crystal vase which stood upon the floor filled with flowers. With a bang he scattered over the carpet all the springtime bouquet, arranged a little while before by feminine hands with the feverishness of one who counts the minutes and lives on hope.
He moistened his handkerchief in the water of the vase and knelt down beside Freya, raising her head upon the cushion. She let the wound be washed with the abandon of a sick creature, fixing upon her aggressor a pair of imploring eyes, opening now for the first time.
When the blood ceased to flow, forming on the temple a red, coagulated spot, Ferragut tried to raise her up.
"No; leave me so," she murmured. "I prefer to be at your feet. I am your bondslave ... your plaything. Beat me more if it will appease your wrath."