The brothers met after many years. Away from his “Dolocita, my dearest!” José bore himself with a free joviality becoming a successful merchant who had not quite forgotten his warlike youth. They talked together of old times, of the dead, of the old people, of the sister they had loved much. Before the stern soldier of the Faith the ex-sergeant of colonial troops was like a child: affectionate and respectful—a little awed. Father Ortega asked about the King—the rightful King—who also lived in Paris. Had José seen him? Yes? Good! A better time was coming. With the rightful monarch the fear of God would reign in the land. The time would come! And Father Ortega grew animated, talked loud. The two little girls, standing close together, very quiet, listened open-eyed. As the time for separation approached the priest became tender, very solemn too. “Mind, José,” he said impressively, “I deliver to your care a Christian soul. See that you do your duty. A sacred charge!” Poor José was touched and not a little discomposed. He repeated: “Good! Good! Of course! How else?”—and looked down at his imposing charge. He saw only a bare-legged girl of about twelve with tumbled brown hair and large grey eyes that streamed with tears. The other one was crying too. He felt moved to tears himself. “Brother,” he blubbered out, “I will take … take … both of them … Poor … things. Dolocita won’t mind!” But the priest refused with an air both exalted and austere. Theresa must remain under his influence. That child had dispositions … a sacred spark that must be nursed into a flame. Later on if there was need for a little money to help her into a convent of her choice he would ask his brother. She was different from the younger, Rita. She had a vocation—a sacred spark. As he spoke his sunken eyes glimmered, like a pair of votive candles before a rude altar, in the gloom of a wayside shrine.
The sisters parted in the dust of a narrow road that winds along the bottom of the shallow and rocky valley. The brothers clasped each other in a long embrace, then the younger gave his blessing to the elder man, who stood with bared head before the uplifted hand. José and Rita had to walk some little distance to the village where José’s conveyance awaited him. Father Ortega holding Theresa by the hand turned his back upon the setting sun and stood looking at them as they went on, diminishing in the distance, under the escarpment of the stony cliffs. The priest’s shadow fell slender and long on the white dust of the path as if darting after the departing figures; and the shorter shadow of the child, pressing to his side, mingled with it for a part of its length. The two made as though only one distorted and blank image of a giant hound, pointing with a fantastically elongated finger at the young wanderer going into the unknown. The priest stood silent, the child sobbed gently by his side; and they remained gazing till José and Rita disappeared on a turn of the path behind a big detached bush, crowned aslant, with a solitary pine waving on its summit: a round, grey boulder that lay on the brown flatness of the sward like an enormous and aged head under a sombre and plumed béret.
VI
José loved the child. The girl was affectionate in an independent kind of way and the old man wanted some unchecked outlet for the kindness of his heart. She reminded him also of his sister, who in having left his home early he remembered best as just such another girl. To Dolores her husband’s niece was interesting principally as a costly memorial of an unheard-of concession to conjugal weakness: a concession that must be repaid to her by years of meek obedience. She was a strange product of ignorance and shopkeeping instincts. She was the daughter of a man looked upon in his native town as imbued with western ideas, a man very clever and audacious. In fact the only really enterprising ship-chandler of poetical Seville. She could read, even in French, with assurance—she could write with, not an altogether fatal, hesitation—she could cast up sums, in addition, in her husband’s books with the ease of natural aptitude revelling in a charming occupation. She was prejudiced, unforgiving and knew how best to assert her personality against José. The gentle combatant of the glorious Philippine wars, accustomed to discipline of a sort, was not a very rebellious subject. Still there were points on which he dared to have his will—sometimes, even, his way. But with the arrival of Rita even the shadow of imperfect freedom departed from him. The astute Dolores soon noticed the strength of his affection for the child, and from that time Rita’s comfort, education, her needs, her welfare became in Dolores’s hand so many irresistible instruments serving to grind José into very small dust. To the consideration of the child’s happiness he gave up his tastes, his opinions, his comforts—even his habits; all—but one! Abnegation has limits. To save Rita from unjust scoldings, from unnecessary slappings, from being shut up cruelly in a dark room or unnecessarily deprived of her supper he would give up his plans of business, his yearly journeys (those green oases of his life), would consent to have his opinion on wine or olives impugned, sneered at, overruled; but he would not give up his evening visits to a café where his countrymen used to congregate. Dolores with the prudence of an accomplished tyrant gave way on that point: for a man must not be robbed of every incentive to endure the burden of existence if he is to remain a fit subject for autocratic rule.
Every evening in the festive glare of gaslights, amongst the polish of tall mirrors, the gleam of gildings, the cheerfulness of white marble
