the Señora de Pardiñas laughed in secret, although she pretended to be vexed and would say to the boy:
This
“It is very wrong for you to turn{27} them into ridicule, in that way—those poor gentlemen who are all so fond of you!”
{27}
And they were indeed fond of him. The moment Rogelio appeared it was as if a ray of warm, golden sunlight had entered a closed and darkened room where furniture, hangings, paper, and pictures have all acquired the faded hue imparted by the dust and the damp. All the old men loved the boy; one of them remembered him when he was a child in arms, another had been present at his first communion; this one had brought him toys when he had the scarlet-fever; that other, a professional colleague and the intimate friend of his father, became a child again when he thought of the baptismal sweetmeats. If they had acted according to their feelings, notwithstanding the black fringe that adorned Rogelio’s upper lip, they would have showered kisses on him, and brought him caramels and{28} peanuts. For them he was always the little one, the boy. It was true that by a curious illusion the worthy guests of Señora de Pardiñas were disposed to regard the young as children and those of mature years as young. They would say, for instance; “So Valdivieso is dead! Why, he was in the prime of life, he was only a boy!” And it was necessary for the malicious Asturian, putting his ear-trumpet, or his hand as a substitute, to his ear, to interpose, “A boy indeed! a pretty sort of children you are dreaming of, truly. Valdivieso was past fifty.” “He was not so old as that, not so old as that!” “What do you mean? And the time he was in his nurse’s arms and learning to walk, does that count for nothing?”
{28}
Where Rogelio was concerned, they carried to an extreme this whim of forgetting the passage of time, and turning a deaf ear to the striking of the clock. Every additional year he spent{29} in the study of the law, was for them a fresh wonder; they could not fancy him a lawyer: they would have had him still at school learning to read. Once, on his return from a summer excursion to San Sebastián, Señor de Rojas had said to him with the utmost good faith:
{29}
“What a fine time you must have had, eh? Running about and playing on the beach all day, I suppose?”
And the boy answered without betraying any annoyance, but with a grimace
Prev.
Back
Top