Woman Triumphant (La Maja Desnuda)

"Do you remember her well, Milita? She was very good, wasn't she?"

His daughter felt infected by her father's sadness, but only for a moment. Her strength, health and joy of life soon threw off these sad impressions. Yes, very good. She often thought about her. Perhaps she spoke the truth; but these memories were not deep nor painful. Death seemed to her a thing without meaning, a remote incident without much terror which did not disturb the serene calm of her physical perfection.

"Poor mamma," she added in a forced tone. "It was a relief for her to go. Always sick, always sad! With such a life it is better to die!"

In her words there was a trace of bitterness, the memory of her youth, spent with that touchy invalid, in an atmosphere made the more unpleasant by the hostile chill with which her parents treated each other. Besides, her expression was icy. We all must die. The weak must go first and leave their place to the strong. It was the unconscious, cruel selfishness of health. Renovales suddenly saw his daughter's soul through this rent of frankness. The dead woman had known them both. The daughter was his, wholly his. He, too, possessed that selfishness in his strength which had made him crush weakness and delicacy placed under his protection. Poor Josephina had only him left, repentant and adoring. For the other people, she had not passed through the world; not even his daughter felt any lasting sorrow at her death.

Milita turned her back to the portrait. She forgot her mother and her father's work. An artist's hobby! She had come for something else.

She sat down beside him, almost in the same way that another woman had sat down, a few hours before. She coaxed him with her rich voice, which took on a sort of cat-like purring. Papa,—papa, dear,—she was very unhappy. She came to see him, to tell him her troubles.

"Yes, money," said the master, somewhat annoyed at the indifference with which she had spoken of her mother.

"Money, papa, you've said it; I told you the other day. But that isn't all. Rafael—my husband—I can't stand this sort of life."

And she related all the petty trials of her existence. In order not to feel that she was prematurely a widow, she had to go with her husband in his automobile and show an interest in his trips which once had amused her but now were growing unbearable.

"It's the life of a section-hand, papa, always swallowing dust and counting kilometers. When I love Madrid so much! When I can't live out of it!"

She had sat down on her father's knees, she talked to him, looking into his eyes, smoothing his hair, pulling his mustache, like a mischievous child,—almost as the other had.

"Besides, he's stingy; if he had his way, I'd look like a frump. He thinks everything is too much. Papa, help me out of this difficulty, it's only two thousand pesetas. With that I can get on my feet and then I won't bother you with any more loans. Come, that's a dear papa. I need them right away, because I waited till the last minute, so as not to inconvenience you."

Renovales moved about uneasily under the weight of his daughter, a strapping girl who fell on him like a child. Her filial confidences annoyed him. Her perfume made him think of that other perfume, which disturbed his nights, spreading through the solitude of the rooms. She seemed to have inherited her mother's flesh.

He pushed her away roughly, and she took this movement for a refusal. Her face grew sad, tears came to her eyes, and her father repented his brusqueness. He was surprised at her constant requests for money. What did she want it for? He recalled the wedding-presents, that princely abundance of clothes and jewels which had been on exhibition in this very room. What did she need? But Milita looked at her father in astonishment. More than a year had gone by since then. It was clear enough that her father was ignorant in such matters. Was she going to wear the same gowns, the same hats, the same ornaments for an endless length of time, more than twelve months? Horrible! That was too commonplace. And overcome at the thought of such a monstrosity, she began to shed her tender tears to the great disturbance of the master.

"There, there, Milita, there's no use in crying. What do you want? Money? I'll send you all you need to-morrow. I haven't much at the house. I shall have to get it at the bank—operations you don't understand."

But Milita, encouraged by her victory, insisted on her request with desperate obstinacy. He was deceiving her; he would not remember it the next day; she knew her father. Besides, she needed the money at once,—her honor was at stake (she declared it seriously) if her friends discovered that she was in debt.

"This very minute, papa. Don't be horrid. Don't amuse yourself by making me worry. You must have money, lots of it, perhaps you have it on you. Let's see, you naughty papa, let me search your pockets, let me look at your wallet. Don't say no; you have it with you. You have it with you!"

She plunged her hands in her father's breast, unbuttoning his working jacket, tickling him to get at the inside pocket. Renovales resisted feebly. "You foolish girl. You're wasting your time. Where do you think the wallet is? I never carry it in this suit."

"It's here, you fibber," his daughter cried merrily, persisting in her search. "I feel it! I have it! Look at it!"

She was right. The painter had forgotten that he had picked it up that morning to pay a bill and then had put it absent-mindedly in the pocket of his serge coat.

Milita opened it with a greediness that hurt her father. Oh, those woman's hands, trembling in the search for money! He grew calmer when he thought of the fortune he had amassed, of the different colored papers which he kept in his desk. All would be his daughter's and perhaps this would save her from the danger toward which her longing to live amid the vanities and tinsel of feminine slavery was leading her.

In an instant she had her hands on a number of bills of different denominations, forming a roll which she squeezed tight between her fingers.

Renovales protested.

"Let me have it, Milita, don't be childish. You're leaving me without a cent. I'll send it to you to-morrow; give it up now. It's robbery."

She avoided him; she had stood up; she kept at a distance, raising her hand above her hat to save her booty. She laughed boisterously at her trick. She did not mean to give him back a single one! She did not know how many there were, she would count them at home, she would be out of difficulty for the nonce, and the next day she would ask him for what was lacking.

The master finally began to laugh, finding her merriment contagious. He chased Milita without trying to catch her; he threatened her with mock severity, called her a robber, shouting "help," and so they ran from one studio to another. Before she disappeared, Milita stopped on the last doorsill, raising her gloved finger authoritatively:

"To-morrow, the rest. You mustn't forget. Really, papa, this is very important. Good-by; I shall expect you to-morrow."

And she disappeared, leaving in her father some of the merriment with which they had chased each other.

The twilight was gloomy. Renovales sat in front of his wife's portrait, gazing at that extravagantly beautiful head which seemed to him the most faithful of his portraits. His thoughts were lost in the shadow which rose from the corners and enveloped the canvases. Only on the windows trembled a pale, hazy light, cut across by the black lines of the branches outside.

Alone—alone forever. He had the affection of that big girl who had just gone away, merry, indifferent to everything which did not flatter her youthful vanity, her healthy beauty. He had the devotion of his friend Cotoner, who, like an old dog, could not live without seeing him, but was incapable of wholly devoting his life to him, and shared it between him and other friends, jealous of his Bohemian freedom.

And that was all. Very little.

On the verge of old age, he gazed at a cruel, reddish light which seemed to irritate his eyes; the solitary, monotonous road which awaited him—and at the end, death! No one was ignorant of that; it was the only certainty, and still he had spent the greater part of his life without thinking of it, without seeing it.

It was like one of those epidemics in distant lands which destroy millions of lives. People talk of it as of a definite fact, but without a start of horror, or a tremble of fear. "It is too far away; it will take it a long time to reach us."

He had often named Death, but with his lips; his thoughts had not grasped the meaning of the word, feeling that he was alive, bound to life by his dreams and desires.

Death stood at the end of the road; no one could avoid meeting it, but all are long in seeing it. Ambition, desire, love, the cruel animal needs distracted man in his course toward it; they were like the woods, valleys, blue sky and winding crystal streams which diverted the traveler, hiding the boundary of the landscape, the fatal goal, the black bottomless gorge to which all roads lead.

He was on the last days' march. The path of his life was growing desolate and gloomy; the vegetation was dwindling; the great groves diminished into sparse, miserable lichens. From the murky abyss came an icy breath; he saw it in the distance, he walked without escape toward its gorge. The fields of dreams with their sunlit heights which once bounded the horizon, were left behind and it was impossible to return. In this path no one retraced his steps.

He had wasted half his life, struggling for wealth and fame, hoping sometimes to receive their revenues in the pleasures of love. Die! Who thought of that? Then it was a remote, unmeaning threat. He believed that he was provided with a mission by Providence. Death would take no liberties with him, would not come till his work was finished. He still had many things to do. Well, all was done now; human desires did not exist for him. He had everything. No longer did fanciful towers rise before his steps, for him to assault. On the horizon, free from obstacles, appeared the great forgotten,—Death.

He did not want to see it. There was still a long journey on that road which might grow longer and longer, according to the strength of the traveler, and his legs were still strong.

But, ah, to walk, walk, year after year, with his gaze fixed on that murky abyss, contemplating it always at the edge of the horizon, unable to escape for an instant the certainty that it was there, was a superhuman torture which would force him to hurry his steps, to run in order to reach the end as soon as possible. Oh, for deceitful clouds which might veil the horizon, concealing the reality which embitters our bread, which casts its shadows over our souls and makes us curse the futility of our birth! Oh, for lying, pleasant illusions to make a paradise rise from the desert shadows of the last journey! Oh, for dreams!

And in his mind the poor master enlarged the last fancy of his desire; he connected with the beloved likeness of his dead wife all the flights of his imagination, longing to infuse into it new life with a part of his own. He piled up by handfuls the clay of the past, the mass of memory, to make it greater that it might occupy the whole way, shut off the horizon like a huge hill, hide till the last moment the murky abyss which ended the journey.

V

Renovales' behavior was a source of surprise and even scandal for all his friends.

The Countess of Alberca took especial care to let every one know that her only relation with the painter was a friendship which grew constantly colder and more formal.

"He's crazy," she said. "He's finished. There's nothing left of him but a memory of what he once was."

Cotoner in his unswerving friendship was indignant at hearing such comment on the famous master.

"He isn't drinking. All that people say about him is a lie; the usual legend about a celebrated man."

He had his own ideas about Mariano; he knew his longing for a stirring life, his desire to imitate the habits of youth in the prime of life, with a thirst for all the mysteries which he fancied were hidden in this evil life, of which he had heard without ever daring till then to join in them.

Cotoner accepted the master's new habits indulgently. Poor fellow!

"You are putting into action the pictures of 'The Rake's Progress,'" he said to his friend. "You're going the way of all virtuous men when they cease to be so, on the verge of old age. You are making a fool of yourself, Mariano."

But his loyalty led him to acquiesce in the new life of the master. At last he had given in to his requests and had come to live with him. With his few pieces of luggage he occupied a room in the house and cared for Renovales with almost paternal solicitude. The Bohemian showed great sympathy for him. It was the same old story: "He who does not do it at the beginning does it at the end," and Renovales, after a life of hard work, was rushing into a life of dissipation with the blindness of a youth, admiring vulgar pleasures, clothing them with the most fanciful seductions.