Their Son; The Necklace Part 16

"I'm going to take you home. We'll call a carriage."

"No, I don't want to go home."

"What?"

"Come on! I'm going to give you a treat, to-night."

She looked up at him, smiling in a fascinating, promising way that foreshadowed paradise. In anguish the poor fellow remembered he had hardly ten pesetas left. To escape the jostling and rude staring of the pa.s.sers-by, Alicia took refuge in a doorway. Her feet were stiff with cold. The wetness of the pavement was soaking through the thin soles of her shoes.

"Decide on something, quick," she s.h.i.+vered. "I'm dying of cold!"

Enrique exclaimed, with a resolution he thought very like that of a man of the world:

"If you want to eat, we'll go to Fornos."

The girl made a grimace of horror.

"Never!" she cried. "Everybody knows me there!"

"Well then, let's go to Moran's."

"Worse still! I'd be sure to run into some friend or other."

"How about Vina P?"

"I should say not! I don't dare." Then with cruel frankness she added: "Do you know why I don't dare? The women there look down on girls like me. And if any of my friends--they're all serious men--should see me with you, there, they'd call me flighty. They'd think me mad."

Enrique understood but little. He vaguely felt, however, that all this held some kind of humiliation for him. Suddenly, like one who clutches at a saving idea, Alicia exclaimed:

"What time is it?"

"Quarter past one."

"Well then, see here. Let's go to Las Ventas, or La Bombilla. The same carriage that takes us out can bring us back."

"Well--it----"

He hesitated, knowing not how to confess his absurdity, how to own up to the enormous, unpardonable stupidity of being poor. At last he made up his mind to speak, wounded by the questions of Alicia, who by no means understood his uncertainty.

"You know, I--forgive me, but--I haven't got money enough," said he.

"What a boy you are!" she answered. "Why, you don't need hardly any, at all. Haven't you even got, say, two hundred pesetas?"

"Two hundred pesetas!" stammered Enrique, horror-stricken. "No, no, I haven't."

"Well, a hundred, then?"

"No."

"All right. Come, tell me. How much _have_ you got?"

Enrique would have gladly died. Gnawing his lips with desperation, he answered:

"I've hardly got ten left."

She burst out laughing, one of those frank, bold laughs such as perhaps she had never known since the time when some rich man, setting her feet on the path of sin, had taken from her the gentle happiness of being poor.

"And you were talking about going to Fornos?" she demanded.

Enrique answered, in shame:

"I'm not good enough for you, Alicia! I'm not worthy of you! I'll take you home."

The girl answered, charmed by the bohemian novelty of the adventure:

"Never mind about the money. I want to have something to eat with you.

Take me to some tavern or other, some cheap little dive. It's all right."

He still hesitated. She insisted. The terror of falling from her good graces enfolded him.

"What if the food is bad, and you don't like it?" he asked.

"Fool! I don't want luxury, to-night. I want memories of other times.

Was I always rich, do you think?"

"Well, in that case----"

"Yes, yes, take me along! Show me something of your life!"

Arm in arm they went down the street. Their feet kept time, together.

Feverishly he repeated:

"Alicia! Oh, my Alicia!"

Then, as he buried his white and trembling lips in the hair of the greatly desired one, it seemed to him that all Madrid was filled with perfumes of fresh violets.

III

Some days drifted by, after that unforgettable night, without Darles getting any chance to see Alicia. Several afternoons he went to her house, between half-past two and three, at which hour Don Manuel was never there. But Teodora, the maid, never let him get beyond the parlor.

Sometimes Alicia was out, the maid said; again, she was asleep or had a headache, and could not see him. Teodora spoke drily, disconcertingly.

If there is any way to sound the good or bad opinion any one has of us, it is surely in the att.i.tude of that person's servants. The student would murmur:

"And she didn't leave any word for me?"

"No, sir. Not any."