Henceforth all Manuel’s errands seemed to lead him past the theatre. Late at night he would drift about among the trees beneath her dressing-room window. It was not the first time that Manuel had been fascinated by a woman (both brothers had possessed women, and often, especially during their years at the waterfront; simply, latinly), but it was the first time that his will and imagination had been thus overwhelmed. He had lost that privilege of simple natures, the dissociation of love and pleasure. Pleasure was no longer as simple as eating; it was being complicated by love. Now was beginning that crazy loss of one’s self, that neglect of everything but one’s dramatic thoughts about the beloved, that feverish inner life all turning upon the Perichole and which would so have astonished and disgusted her had she been permitted to divine it. This Manuel had not fallen in love through any imitation of literature. It was not of him, at all events, that the bitterest tongue in France had remarked only fifty years before: that many people would never have fallen in love if they had not heard about it. Manuel read little; he had only been once to the theatre (where above all there reigns the legend that love is a devotion) and the Peruvian tavern-songs that he might have heard, unlike those of Spain, reflected very little of the romantic cult of an idealized woman. When he said over to himself that she was beautiful and rich and fatiguingly witty and the Viceroy’s mistress, none of these attributes that made her less obtainable had the power to quench his curious and tender excitement. So he leaned against the trees in the dark, his knuckles between his teeth, and listened to his loud heartbeats.
But the life that Esteban was leading had been full enough for him. There was no room in his imagination for a new loyalty, not because his heart was less large than Manuel’s, but because it was of a simpler texture. Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other. There may be two equally good, equally gifted, equally beautiful, but there may never be two that love one another equally well. So Esteban sat up in their room by a guttering candle, his knuckles between his teeth, and wondered why Manuel was so changed and why the whole meaning had gone out of their life.
One evening Manuel was stopped on the street by a small boy who announced to him that the Perichole wished him to call upon her at once. Manuel turned in his path and went to the theatre. Straight, sombre and impersonal, he entered the actress’s room and stood waiting. Camila had a service to ask of Manuel and she thought a few preliminary blandishments were necessary, but she scarcely paused in combing a blond wig that was dressed upon the table before her.
“You write letters for people, don’t you? I want you to write a letter for me, please. Please come in.”
He came forward two steps.
“You never pay me the least visit, either of you. That’s not Spanish of you.”—meaning “courteous.” “Which are you—Manuel or Esteban?”
“Manuel.”
“It doesn’t matter. You are both unfriendly. Neither of you ever comes to see me. Here I sit learning stupid lines all day and no one ever comes to see me but a lot of peddlers. It is because I am an actress, no?”
This was not very artful, but for Manuel it was unspeakably complicated. He merely stared at her from the shadows of his long hair and left her to improvise.
“I am going to engage you to write a letter for me, a very secret letter. But now I can see that you don’t like me and that to ask you to write a letter would be as good as reading it aloud in all the wine-shops. What does that look mean, Manuel? Are you my friend?”
“Yes, señora.”
“Go away. Send me Esteban. You do not even say Yes, señora
as a friend would say it.”
Long pause. Presently she raised her head: “Are you still there, Unfriendly?”
“Yes, señora … you can trust me to do anything for you … you can trust …”
“If I ask you to write one letter for me, or two letters, you promise never to mention to a human being what is in them, or even that you wrote them?”
“Yes, señora.”
“What do you promise by?—by the Virgin Mary?”
“Yes, señora.”
“And by the heart of Saint Rose of Lima?”
“Yes, señora.”
“Name of the Name, Manuel, anyone would think you were as stupid as an ox. Manuel, I am very angry with you. You are not stupid. You don’t look stupid. Please don’t say just Yes, señora
again. Don’t be stupid or I’ll send for Esteban. Is anything the matter with you?”
Here Manuel cast himself upon the Spanish language and exclaimed with unnecessary vigor: “I swear by the Virgin Mary and the heart of Saint Rose of Lima that all that has to do with the letter will be secret.”
“Even from Esteban,” prompted the Perichole.
“Even from Esteban.”
“Well, that’s better.” She motioned him to sit down at a table where writing materials were already laid out. As she dictated she strode about the room, frowning, swinging her hips. With
