The angular stone

I

Wearied by the unusual prolongation of his consultations on the gray and melancholy March afternoon on which our story opens, Dr. Moragas threw himself back in his armchair, drew a deep breath of relief, smoothed his curly white hair with one hand, and reached the other mechanically toward the latest number of the Revue de Psychiatrie , that lay, with its leaves yet uncut, on the table beside unopened letters and newspapers still in their wrappers.

But before he could slip the ivory paper knife between the first pages of the magazine, the door opposite his writing table opened noisily, and a child, between three and four years old, brimming over with laughter, bounded into the room, clapping her hands joyously, and did not pause in her giddy career until she had clasped her arms round the doctors knee.

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“Nen6,” he cried, taking her up in his arms, “it is not two o’clock yet. Come, you must run away again. Who told you to come here when I am busy?”

The child laughed more merrily than before. Her face was a poem of joy. Her black and sparkling eyes, dancing with bewitching mischievousness, contrasted with the somewhat chlorotic delicacy of her complexion. Between her fresh lips peeped the pink tip of her tongue. Her straight fair hair hung down over her forehead and fell like a mass of spun silk over her shoulders. As the doctor lifted her up she tried to pull his hair and beard, provoking the pretended scolding which always followed similar attempts.

From the moment of the child’s entrance the room, lighted by two windows which admitted the mild light of a Marinedan sun, seemed to lose something of its severe aspect. Nen£ was familiar with every corner of this austere region, and knew well in what direction to turn her glance and point her imperious little forefinger, as children are wont to do when they wish to signify the form their caprice has taken. It was not to the thick curtains, not to the high book-

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case, through whose glass doors could be caught here and there the red gleam of some resplendent binding; still less to the lower shelves of this bookcase where, brilliantly clean and carefully arranged, shone the sets of surgical instruments — trocars, bistouris, forceps, and scissors of mysterious form, in their shagreen and velvet cases.

Nor was the child attracted by the dreadful figures, illustrating the nervous and venous systems, which looked at her with sinister glance from their white eyes, fleshless and destitute of eyelids nor by the curious chair, which could be disjointed and made to take any desired position ; nor by the large basin surrounded with sponges and vessels of phenic acid, nor by the shapelesslooking objects of india rubber or of oilcloth; nor by anything, in short, which, properly speaking, belonged to the healing science. No; the moment she crossed the threshold of the room her glance had darted to a corner to the left of the doctor's chair, where, suspended from 'the wall by silken cords, hung a light basket lined with satin. It was the famous baby-weighing machine, which affords the best method discovered of ascertaining whether the milk of the nurse contains cer-

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tain elements, nourishes the infant or the contrary, and in its padded hollow, as an image or symbol of the living child, was a chromo, a naked pasteboard baby, in the attitude of stooping forward, with its hands resting on the bottom of the basket, its chubby cheeks raised and its enormous blue eyes wi'de open. This chromo was the idol of Nen6, who would stretch her hands up toward it crying: “Child heaven! child heaven!” ‘‘Come, let us hear,” the doctor would say in answer, “what is it you want the child of heaven to bring you to-day?” There would be a few moments of doubt, of hesitation, of struggle between various temptations, all equally powerful. “Tandies, tates, amonds — no, no, bittits — A suck-suck.” The suck-suck would finally gain the day and the doctor, rising quickly, by a dexterous feat of juggling would convey from the pocket of his dressing-gown to the bottom of the basket a piece of pine-nut paste. Then he would lift the child up in his arms, and a series of joyful cries and bursts of laughter on both sides would follow the discovery of the desired dainty.

Some comedy of this kind was no doubt in course of preparation, for Nen6 was already

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directing her steps toward the weighing machine, when a servant-man appeared at a side door which led to the waiting room, but, seeing the doctor with the child in his arms he stopped hesitatingly. Moragas, annoyed at the interruption, frowned and said :

“What do you want?”

“A man who has just come He says if you

would see him he would take it as a great favor; that he came before, but there were so many people ”

The physician raised his eyes and glanced at the clock. It still wanted five minutes to two. A slave to his duty Moragas said resignedly:

“Very well, let him come in. Nene, run and play with your nurse. The child of heaven will give you nothing now. You know that when there are patients ”

Nen6 obeyed very much against her will. Even before he had turned round after closing the door behind the child, the doctor guessed that his tardy patient was at the door. An indefinable sort of gasp, a perceptible difficulty in breathing, betrayed his presence; and the physician, facing about, saw the man standing before him, bending forward and pressing his greasy

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broad-brimmed green hat with both hands against his stomach.

Moragas muttered a “Sit down,” and walked to a chair, settling his gold eyeglasses nervously on his nose, and growing suddenly grave. His eyes fell upon the sick man with the weight of a hammer, and the cords of memory vibrated suddenly and swiftly to the thought : “Where have I seen that face?

The man gave no salutation. Without laying aside the hat he sat down awkwardly in the chair to which the doctor had motioned him. Even after he had seated himself his breathing still continued to produce the same hoarse, broken murmur, like a sort of simmering in the lungs. To the doctor’s first questions — routine questions clearly and directly put — he answered in a confused and reticent manner, dominated, perhaps, by that vague fear and desire to dissimulate, which is characteristic of the lower classes when consulting a physician, while at the same time he expressed himself in choicer language than, from his appearance, one would have expected him to use. Moragas urged his questions, now completely absorbed in his task. “Is it long since you began to have those bilious attacks? Are the

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attacks of sleeplessness frequent? Do you have them every night? or only occasionally? Do you work in an office ; are you obliged to sit for hours at a time?"

“No, Seflor,” answered the patient, in a slow, dull voice. “I do very little work; I lead an easy enough life; I mean, I am not obliged to work every day.” There seemed nothing strange in these words and yet they sounded strangely to Moragas, reawakening his curiosity and his desire to remember where and when he had seen this man. He fixed his eyes again, more searchingly than before, on the patient’s face. In reality his appearance accorded ill with the aristocratic affirmation of leading an easy life which he had just made. His attire was the cheap and somber attire of the humblest rank of the middle class, where it blends into the lowest rank of the people — a soiled and worn felt hat, a suit of dingy black, composed of an ill-fitting shooting-jacket and tight trousers, a cravat of shiny black silk, carelessly knotted, a shirt of three or four days’ wear, a silver watch-chain, calf-skin boots broken and unpolished, and in his hands absolutely nothing — neither umbrella nor cane. Wealthy people for whom, by the Divine favor, manna rains

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down from heaven, do not generally go about clad in this style.

“According to that you take no exercise at all?” said Moragas, fancying he was conducting the medical examination, but in reality following the lead of his excited curiosity.

“As exercise, yes,” responded the man, in a non-committal voice. “I walk a great deal. At times I walk two or three leagues, without feeling tired. I do some work, too, in the house. I am no idler.”

“I have not said that you were an idler,” replied the physician, in a severe voice. “I must know your way of life if I am to tell what is wrong with you inside. Come, lie down there,” he added, pointing to the broad divan standing between the two windows of the office.

The patient obeyed, and Moragas approached him and, unbuttoning the last few buttons of his waistcoat, laid the open palm of his left hand on the region of the hypochondrium. Then, with the knuckles of the right he quickly performed the operation of percussion, for the purpose of ascertaining how far the dull sound peculiar to the liver extended. While he was engaged in this task, his mobile face assumed an earnest

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and intelligent expression, while that of the patient revealed anxiety, anguish, almost. “You can rise now,” Moragas at last said, returning to his chair, humming a tune, a mechanical act with him.

He fixed his glance again on the patient, this time he auscultated and felt, so to say, his physiognomy. Moragas, although he held vitalism in supreme contempt, was not the materialist physician who looks at the outside only. Without paying any attention to that scholastic imp called vital force , no one conceded greater importance than he to the mysterious psycho-physical activities, unexplainable by the merely physiological processes. “In the brain or in the soul (we will not dispute about terms), is the human pendulum,” he would say. In many physical ailments he saw what a learned and sagacious observer must see — the reflex of secret and familiar moral states which are not always considered, because not even he who suffers from them has always the courage to reveal them. At the same time Moragas admitted the converse of this view, and sometimes cured melancholy and anger with aloe pills or doses of bromide. He knew that we form a totality, a harmonious whole, and

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that scarcely any physical or mental ailment exists by itself. In the patient before him his instinct showed him a case in point, a man whose disposition was profoundly affected by the condition of his internal organs.

“Do you drink?’' he asked him, with some severity.

“Sometimes — a drop of rum."

“Only a drop? You have not reflected, my friend. You wish to deceive me, and we are not here to deceive ourselves."

“I am not deceiving you, no, Sefior; for that a man should take a glass or two, or three, even, if the occasion offers seems to me a matter of no account. There are times when one can’t help it, and I defy anyone to say that I take a drink "

“And you ought not to take one," said the physician in a milder voice, for he observed that in the voice of his patient there was a tone of great bitterness. “I forbid you to touch liquor until Christmas, at the very soonest."

But where the deuce had Moragas seen this man? When had this tall, thin, bent figure, this silhouette that had something furtive, something that inspired an undefinable repulsion and suspi-

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.cion, crossed his field of vision? Momently he put together with greater precision the square broad forehead, the gray hair, streaming behind, as if blown back by a gust of wind, the deepset eyes that seemed to look within, the irregular features, the high cheek bones, the marked asymmetry of the face, a frequent sign of a want of equilibrium or of disturbance in the mental faculties, If the physician had had a mirror before him, and could have compared his own countenance with that of the individual he was examining, he could better have understood the feeling of repulsion he experienced, and would have attributed it to the markedness of the contrast between them. Moragas’ attitude was easy, or rather it expressed that petulant frankness that inspires sympathy ; it might be said that he was always ready to advance, his chest expanded, his head erect, the dilated nostrils of his large nose eagerly inhaling the air. The patient, on the contrary, always seemed ready, as if obeying the instinct of certain repulsive insects, to retreat, to withdraw from observation, to hide himself, in some dark corner. Observing the feeling of repugnance with which his patient inspired him, the physician mentally reproved himself, and

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urged by a kindly impulse, while with one hand, he took up a sheet of paper to write down certain directions for the guidance of the sick man, with the other he took a cigar from a mahogany cigar box and held it out to him, saying, “Smoke that.”

At the same instant in which the tips of his fingers came in contact with those of his patient the vague reminiscence which floated in his memory gave a sharp throb and almost took definite shape. Moragas thought he was on the point of remembering, but he did not remember yet. He saw a cloud and struggling through it a ray of pallid light ; but everything vanished at the scratching of the pen on the white paper. While he wrote he noticed, without looking at him, that the patient had not ventured either to light the cigar or to put it into the pocket of his coat. Moragas signed his name with a flourish to the prescription, read it, and handed the paper to the patient.

The latter stood for a moment in embarrassed hesitation, the sheet of paper in his hand, his glance wandering over the carpet. At last he came to a decision, and speaking shyly, calling the physician by his baptismal name, he said :

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“And — excuse me — and how much do I owe you, Don Pelayo?”

“For that?” responded Moragas. “According. If you are really poor, give me the least you can afford — or better still, give me nothing. If you have means — then, two dollars.”

The man put his hand slowly into the pocket of his waistcoat, searched its depths with three fingers and drew out two shining dollars, of the new coinage of the baby king, which he deposited reverentially in a bronze ash-tray.

“Many thanks, then, Serlor de Moragas,” he said, with a certain ease of manner, as if the act of paying had given him rights he did not before possess. “I won’t trouble you any longer. I will come back, with your permission, to tell you what effect the medicines produce.”

“Yes, come back. Follow the directions, and don’t neglect the disease. It is not a fatal one, unless complications should arise, but — it ought to be attended to.”

“If one had no children,” answered the man, encouraged by these few slightly friendly words, “it would be the same thing to die a little sooner as a little later. For in the end one must die, mustn’t one? And a year more or a year less

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matters little. I mean, it appears so to me. But one’s children, that’s what hurts, to leave them in want. Well — your servant, Don Pelayo.”

The portiere had scarcely fallen, the steps of the patient still resounded in the waiting-room when Moragas rose from his chair, nervous and disturbed, saying:

“Yes, I know that fellow, and I know him in connection with something strange; there is not a doubt of it. It is odd, too, that I cannot remember, so many people of all sorts as one comes in contact with here in Marineda. And he is not a stranger, for — no ; he said he would return from time to time to tell me how the prescribed treatment agreed with him. No; of course he is not a stranger. Moraguitas [the doctor was accustomed to apostrophize himself in this fashion], why didn’t you ask that fellow his name? Why didn’t you find out where he lived? Bah! There’s time enough; I’ll ask him when he returns. At all events, it is curious that I cannot make out just what rank of life the man belongs to.”

“Nen6!” he cried, approaching the door by which the child had left the room.

But Nen6 did not show her mischievous little face, and the doctor, obeying another capricious impulse, returned to the table, took up the paper knife and once more began to cut the leaves of the Revue . There was an article there on the morphine habit that must be very fine, deeply interesting. While his hands were employed in mechanically cutting the leaves the silent struggle of memory went on in his absent mind — the effort of the idea to push its way through an infinity of other ideas, deposited, as on a phonographic plate, in that mysterious archive of our consciousness. Doubtless a wave of blood refreshed the corner in which the recollection slept, for suddenly it stood forth, clear and triumphant. Moragas felt the sensation of satisfaction which the mind feels when relieved from obsession by an idea, but no sooner had the rapid impression, almost physical, of freedom and ease vanished, than the physician felt a shudder run through him ; he turned red to the very roots of his silvery hair; his lips trembled, his eyes flashed, his nostrils dilated, and striking the table with his clenched hand, he exclaimed in a loud and resonant voice :

“Now I know — the executioner!” (A furious i6

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and round oath.) “The executioner!” (Another, more angry still.)

On the instant he pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, wrapped it around the tips of his fingers, and then lifting up the two shining coins, opened wide the window, and dropped them on the flags of the street below, where they rebounded with a silvery sound.

At that moment Nene pushed open the door.

She came in babbling, but on seeing her father, who was now closing the shutters and coruscating, so to say, rage and horror, she stood still on the threshold with that instinct peculiar to children, who take in a psychic situation better than anyone else, and murmured in a low voice :

“Papa scold — papa scold !”

II

Telmo, on awakening, dug his fists into his eyes, lamenting his lost dream, which was so lovely. For he had dreamed of reviews, parades, and sham battles, and he had seen himself converted into the Captain General of Marineda, gorgeous in a uniform more magnificent even than his holiday dress, gay with plumes, galloons, cords, and stars, riding a fiery sorrel steed, and carrying a real sword, not of wood, but of shining steel.

The waking could not have been in greater contrast than it was to the dream. The boy saw around him what he saw every day, an ugly and dismal scene — the sordid, untidy, filthy apartment, that exhaled slovenliness and neglect from every pore. What melancholy breathed from the dirty whitewashed walls, the uneven and dusty tiled floor, ill covered by a few worn-out rugs, the clumsy articles of clothing, ill-shaped and of coarse material, soiled rather than worn, hanging from nails, the two iron bedsteads like 17 t prison beds, painted a cold blue, with their dullcolored faded quilts and their sheets full of holes, and long unacquainted with soap and water!

Telmo remembered, as one remembers some beautiful dream, that when he was very small he had had, if not precisely silken coverlets and a palace for a dwelling, at least a clean, orderly, and attractive home ; he imagined it must have been so, for there had remained with him from that shadowy period a sensation of pleasant warmth, as of a nest lined with down, which enfolded and sheltered him. Then his garments were clean and covered his limbs : ; the food was savory and appetizing; in winter a brazier warmed the room, in summer there was an impression of brightness and coolness, as of freshly ironed curtains softening the light that came through the windows. All this the boy did not perceive very clearly, his recollections were confused, and the only object that stood out distinctly in the full light was a woman’s face which, if we were to take Telmo’s judgment in the matter of beauty, we should say was supremely beautiful. Fair or da'rk? Youthful or in early maturity? This Telmo did not know ; all he knew was that she was lovely, and that she diffused comfort and contentment

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around her, mingled with the perfume of lavender flowers. But on the day we speak of he did not see her by his bedside. The figure he saw standing there was that of his father, who was taking his hat down from a nail to put it on his head, without a preliminary brushing or any other the like ceremony. And Telmo received an admonition to which he was already habituated.

“Come, get up. Don’t idle any longer. Your soup is there waiting for you in the kitchen. At two o’clock or so go down by the Calle del Arroyal. I’ll be coming out of the house of Don Pelayo Moragas — you know it, eh? Well, wait for me there, and I’ll take you to Rufino’s.’’

These last words he said just as he was leaving the house, and as he ended the latch of the door fell with a sharp click.

The boy did not pay much heed to the advice not to idle. He knew well that the gain was the same whether he got up then or staid in bed a little longer. Precisely the problem that presented itself daily for his solution was how to pass away a day when one has neither obligation nor diversion of any kind. For him there was neither school, nor college, nor study; nor had he friends with whom he could spend the time in play, for

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that great charm of childhood, the first manifestation of the affectional needs and the first outlet of the social instincts, was unknown to him. The resource remained to him to wander about the streets like a lost soul, seeking some corner where he should not be known.

He remained in bed for some half hour longer, closing his eyes to dream again, if possible, more lovely things, of the same martial nature. As for him, though Satan himself should interfere to prevent it, he would be a soldier. Not a private soldier, no ; an officer, and one of the highest rank. A colonel at the very least ! And with a horse ! What pleasure could there be like that of managing a fine, fiery horse ! That must be heavenly !

He at last summoned up resolution to put one foot out of bed, and, after the foot, his whole body. He drew on his trousers, that, truth to say, had more than one rent and a border of mud around the edges, he fastened them on as well as he could with listing suspenders; put on his best jacket and settled on his head an old brown cap, but it did not occur to him either to .approach the iron basin where he might remedy, to some extent, the filthy condition of his hands and face,

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or to plow with the comb his matted shock of hair. The neglect with which he had been brought up had rooted itself in his youthful nature and, like a true idealist^ he dreamed of brilliant galloons and white plumes while his person, his dwelling, and his garments inspired disgust. With his five fingers he dispatched the pot of cold, lumpy soup, and then he was ready for the street.

When he issued from the hut it could be seen that Telmo was not handsome. But neither could it be denied that he had a certain grace and prettiness, something of that attractiveness that belongs to all street urchins, however dirty and neglected they may be. His turned-up nose had a peculiar charm, as had also his thick red lips, disfigured by the form of the gums, which caused them to project unduly. His rounded forehead receded slightly, and his head was one of those heads, flat on the occiput, that look as if a slice had been cut off with a hatchet — heads indicating vanity, heads of dreamers — this pronounced conformation being, disguised, in some measure, by the fine black hair, curly and thick as a lamb’s fleece, that covered it. The eyes, infinitely expressive, with a bluish, liquid, and

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brilliant cornea, were two mirrors of the boy’s soul ; in them pleasure and pain, haughtiness and humility, enthusiasm and shame were imaged faithfully and instantaneously, reflecting a frank and impetuous nature. Those eyes demanded fellowship, asked for companionship and sympathy. Altogether the boy’s head reminded one of that of a white negro, if the expression be allowable. Not only the shape of the features, but also the ingenuous expression of comical dignity which is seen in the faces of civilized and free negroes, contributed to bear out Telmo’s resemblance to the African type; and his countenance wore at times that fleeting look of sadness and suspicious shyness characteristic of the black race that still bears the stigma of slavery.

As he crossed the threshold Telmo’s first sensation was a familiar one of relief on feeling the outer air blow upon him. He abhorred the confinement of a house, and no captive bird released from its cage, no wild animal escaped from behind iron bars, no gas uncorked from its flask, ever aspired with more energy the free air of heaven. If the tranquil and the beautiful pleased him, the grandiose, the vast, enchanted him.

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2 3

His second sensation was a different one; he observed that the sun, veiled in clouds, was beginning to descend in the heavens, a sign that he, Telmo, had been forgetful and would probably be too late to meet his father at the door of Sefior Moragas’ house. This thought spurred him on. From his father he had acquired the notion, sometimes salutary, sometimes fatal in its results, of blind obedience to the constituted authorities, and he practiced it, he obeyed without reverence or fear, and he regretted committing a fault on account of the fault itself, not on account of its consequences, for his father was not, in reality, severe. He darted off, then; the distance, although regarded as considerable in Marineda, was nothing for the active limbs of the boy. Besides, it was all down-hill and with places where one could run at the top of one’s speed, like the Campo de Belona and the Paramo de Solares, that for many years past has been striving to be the Plaza de Mariperez, the appellation of the popular heroine of the beautiful Marinedan capital.

Precisely on the steep slope that leads from the high terrace on which stands the infantry barracks to the Paramo de Solares, Telmo en-

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countered a temptation which caused him to lose some minutes. At this slope terminates the dingy street where, in a large, rambling house no less dingy, the Institute of Higher Instruction accommodated itself as best it could, and the boys, between classes, would spread themselves in a noisy band over the Campo de Belona, executing, in their manner, military evolutions and fighting sham battles, not always bloodless, in which, for the deadly weapons that we owe to the progress of science, were substituted those with which nature or the quarry furnishes youth. With what envy did Telmo regard that phalanx! How his eyes followed them ! If he were only alloived to join the band and take part in their enterprises, who could doubt but that at the first exchange of hostilities he would win his epaulets or even the laureled cross! His expressive countenance darkened and he had one of those momentary fits of sadness habitual to him, that were like transitory eclipses of all hope in the future. He stood still and listened to the uproarious shouts, the excited cries of those little imps, and at last, making up his mind, like one who says to some coveted dainty: There you stay because I cannot get a bite of you ; he went

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on toward the Paramo de Solares, skirted the new arcade and paused at the Calle de Vergara, known to all Marinedans as the Arroyal. He knew Moragas’ house very well, and he stationed himself before the door to wait until his father should come out. He looked up and down the street, however, and in one of his reconnoitering glances he saw the paternal silhouette disappearing in the distance under the arches which form the vestibule of the theater. His father had already left the house and he had not been there! What would he say? The boy was about to run after him when a noise, a curious occurrence, made him pause. A window in Moragas’ house opened, as if at the impulse of a furious hand, an arm appeared, then a white cuff, then a long bony hand, and two shining silver coins fell with a ringing noise on the flags of the sidewalk. It was all instantaneous. Telmo rushed instinctively to pick them up. It was only when he held them close in the hollow of his hand that certain scruples assailed him.