Froth Part 51

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 a.s.sure 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 pa.s.sionate 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 Sat.u.r.days, 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 Alcala 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 Sat.u.r.day, 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.

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. LONDON AND EDINBURGH

Heinemann's International Library.

EDITOR'S NOTE.

There is nothing in which the Anglo-Saxon world differs more from the world of the Continent of Europe than in its fiction. English readers are accustomed to satisfy their curiosity with English novels, and it is rarely indeed that we turn aside to learn something of the interior life of those other countries the exterior scenery of which is often so familiar to us. We climb the Alps, but are content to know nothing of the pastoral romances of Switzerland. We steam in and out of the picturesque fjords of Norway, but never guess what deep speculation into life and morals is made by the novelists of that spa.r.s.ely peopled but richly endowed nation. We stroll across the courts of the Alhambra, we are listlessly rowed upon Venetian ca.n.a.ls and Lombard lakes, we hasten by night through the roaring factories of Belgium; but we never pause to inquire whether there is now flouris.h.i.+ng a Spanish, an Italian, a Flemish school of fiction. Of Russian novels we have lately been taught to become partly aware, but we do not ask ourselves whether Poland may not possess a Dostoieffsky and Portugal a Tolsto.

Yet, as a matter of fact, there is no European country that has not, within the last half-century, felt the dew of revival on the thres.h.i.+ng-floor of its worn-out schools of romance. Everywhere there has been shown by young men, endowed with a talent for narrative, a vigorous determination to devote themselves to a vivid and sympathetic interpretation of nature and of man. In almost every language, too, this movement has tended to display itself more and more in the direction of what is reported and less of what is created. Fancy has seemed to these young novelists a poorer thing than observation; the world of dreams fainter than the world of men. They have not been occupied mainly with what might be or what should be, but with what is, and, in spite of all their shortcomings, they have combined to produce a series of pictures of existing society in each of their several countries such as cannot fail to form an archive of doc.u.ments invaluable to futurity.

But to us they should be still more valuable. To travel in a foreign country is but to touch its surface. Under the guidance of a novelist of genius we penetrate to the secrets of a nation, and talk the very language of its citizens. We may go to Normandy summer after summer and know less of the manner of life that proceeds under those gnarled orchards of apple-blossom than we learn from one tale of Guy de Maupa.s.sant's. The present series is intended to be a guide to the inner geography of Europe. It offers to our readers a series of spiritual Baedekers and Murrays. It will endeavour to keep pace with every truly characteristic and vigorous expression of the novelist's art in each of the princ.i.p.al European countries, presenting what is quite new if it is also good, side by side with what is old, if it has not hitherto been presented to our public. That will be selected which gives with most freshness and variety the different aspects of continental feeling, the only limits of selection being that a book shall be, on the one hand, amusing, and, on the other, wholesome.

One difficulty which must be frankly faced is that of subject. Life is now treated in fiction by every race but our own with singular candour.

The novelists of the Lutheran North are not more fully emanc.i.p.ated from prejudice in this respect than the novelists of the Catholic South.

Everywhere in Europe a novel is looked upon now as an impersonal work, from which the writer, as a mere observer, stands aloof, neither blaming nor applauding. Continental fiction has learned to exclude, in the main, from among the subjects of its attention, all but those facts which are of common experience, and thus the novelists have determined to disdain nothing and to repudiate nothing which is common to humanity; much is freely discussed, even in the novels of Holland and of Denmark, which our race is apt to treat with a much more gingerly discretion. It is not difficult, however, we believe--it is certainly not impossible--to discard all which may justly give offence, and yet to offer to an English public as many of the masterpieces of European fiction as we can ever hope to see included in this library. It will be the endeavour of the editor to search on all hands and in all languages for such books as combine the greatest literary value with the most curious and amusing qualities of manner and matter.

EDMUND GOSSE.

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