[adapted]

by
Pedro de Alarçon

I

The thing a man most strongly wants when he gets into a stagecoach for a long trip is that his companions are pleasant, that they have the same likes, maybe the same bad habits, that they are well educated, and that they know enough not to be too friendly.

When I opened the door of the coach, I was afraid of meeting an old woman with asthma, an ugly one who could not stand the smell of tobacco smoke, one who gets sick every time she rides in a carriage, and little angels who are all the time yelling and screaming for God knows what.

Sometimes you may have hoped to have a beautiful woman as a travel companion; for example, a widow of twenty or thirty years old (let us say, thirty-six), whose pleasant talk will help you pass the time. But if you ever had this idea, as a reasonable man you would quickly forget it, because you know that such luck does not come to an ordinary person. These thoughts were in my mind when I opened the door of the stagecoach at exactly eleven o’clock on a stormy night in the Autumn of 1844. I had ticket No. 2, and I was wondering who No. 1 was. The ticket agent had told me that No. 3 had not been sold.

It was very dark inside. When I went in I said, “Good evening,” but no one answered. “The devil!” I said to myself. “Is the person traveling with me deaf, unable to speak, or asleep?” Then I said in a louder voice: “Good evening,” but no one answered.

All this time the stagecoach went very fast, pulled by ten horses.

I was confused. Who was my companion? Was it a man? Was it a woman? Who was the silent No. 1, and whoever it was, why did he or she not answer my polite hello? It would have been good to light a match, but I was not smoking then, and I had no matches with me. What should I do? I decided to trust my sense of touch, and I reached out my hand to the place where No. 1 should have been, wondering if I would feel a silk dress or a coat, but there was nothing there. At that moment a flash of lightning, a sign of a storm that was coming fast, lit up the night, and I saw that there was no one in the coach except me. I burst out into loud laughter, and yet a moment later I could not stop wondering what had happened to No. 1.

Half an hour later we came to the first stop, and I was about to ask the guard, who shone his lantern into the compartment, why there was no No. 1, when she came in. In the yellow light I thought it was a vision: a pale, graceful, very beautiful woman, dressed in deep black, in mourning.

Here was my dream now come true, the widow I had hoped for.

I held out my hand to the unknown woman to help her into the coach, and she sat down beside me, saying softly: “Thank you, sir. Good evening,” but her voice was so very sad that it went straight to my heart.

“How unlucky,” I thought. “There are only fifty miles between here and Malaga. I wish to heaven this coach was going to Kamschatka.” The guard shut the door hard, and we were in the dark. I wished the storm would go on, and that we could have a few more flashes of lightning. But the storm did not. It went away, leaving only a few pale stars, whose light was almost nothing. I made a brave effort to start a conversation.

“Do you feel okay?”

“Are you going to Malaga?”

“Did you like the Alhambra?”

“Are you from Granada?”

“Isn’t the night wet?”

To these questions she answered one by one:

“Thank you, very well.”

“Yes.”

“No, sir.”

“Yes!”

“Awful!”

It was very clear that my travel companion did not want to talk. I tried to think of something new to say to her, but nothing came to me, so for a moment I just sat and thought. Why did this woman get on the coach at the first stop and not at Granada? Why was she alone? Was she married? Was she really a widow? Why was she so sad? I knew I had no right to ask her any of these questions, but she still interested me. How I wished the sun would rise. In the daytime we can talk freely, but in the dark night one feels a kind of pressure; it seems like taking an unfair advantage.

My unknown did not sleep at all during the night. I knew this from her breathing and from her sighs. It is not necessary to say that I did not sleep either. One time I asked her: “Do you feel ill?” and she replied: “No, sir, thank you. I am sorry if I have disturbed your sleep.”

“Sleep!” I shouted angrily. “I do not want to sleep. I was afraid you were in pain.”

“Oh, no,” she said, but her voice did not match her words, “I am not in pain.”

At last the sun came up. How beautiful she was! I mean the woman, not the sun. Such deep pain had marked her face and hid deep inside her beautiful eyes!

She was elegantly dressed and it was clear she belonged to a good family. Every move showed good manners. She was the kind of woman you expect to see in the main box at the opera, shining with jewels, with admirers around her.

We had breakfast at Colmenar. After that, my companion spoke more openly, and I said to myself when we got into the coach again: “Philip, you have met your fate. It is now or never.”

II

I was sorry for the very first word I said to her about my feelings. She became cold like ice, and I lost at once all that I could have gained in her good favor. Still she answered me very kindly: “It is not because it is you, sir, who talks to me about love, but love itself is something that I think is horrible.”

“But why, dear lady?” I asked.

“Because my heart is dead. Because I have loved so much that I went crazy, and I have been lied to.”

I felt that I should talk to her in a serious, wise way, and there were many common phrases ready on my tongue, but I did not say them. I knew that she really meant what she said. When we arrived in Malaga, she said to me in a voice I will never forget as long as I live: “I thank you a thousand times for your kind attention during the trip, and I hope you will forgive me if I do not tell you my name and address.”

“Do you mean then that we will not meet again?”

“Never! And you, especially, should not be sorry about it.” And then, with a smile that had no joy at all, she held out her beautiful hand to me and said: “Pray to God for me.”

I held her hand and bowed my head. She got into a fine carriage that was waiting for her, and when it started to go, she bowed to me again.

Two months later, I saw her again.

At two o’clock in the afternoon, I was riding in an old cart on the road that goes to Cordoba. The reason for my trip was to look at some land that I owned in that area and to spend three or four weeks with one of the judges of the Supreme Court, who was a close friend of mine and had been my classmate at the University of Granada.

He welcomed me with open arms. As I went into his beautiful house, I could only notice the perfect taste and the elegant furniture and decorations.

“Ah, Zarco,” I said, “you got married, and you never told me about it. Surely this was not the way to treat a man who loved you as much as I do!”

“I am not married, and also I will never marry,” answered the judge sadly.

“I think that you are not married, dear boy, because you say so, but I cannot understand you saying that you will never marry. You must be joking.”

“I promise that I am telling you the truth,” he replied.

“But what a change!” I exclaimed. “You were always for marriage, and for the last two years you have been writing to me and telling me to get married, to take a life partner. Where does this wonderful change come from, dear friend? Something must have happened to you, something bad, I fear?”

“To me?” the judge answered, a little embarrassed.

“Yes, to you. Something has happened, and you will tell me all about it. You live here alone, and you have almost hidden yourself in this big house. Come, tell me everything.”

The judge pressed my hand. “Yes, yes, you will know everything. No man is more unlucky than I am. But listen, today is the day when all the people who live here go to the cemetery, and I must be there, even if only to follow the custom. Come with me. It is a pleasant afternoon, and the walk will do you good after riding so long in that old cart. The place of the cemetery is a beautiful one, and I am very sure you will enjoy the walk. On our way, I will tell you the event that ruined my life, and you will decide for yourself whether I am right in my hate for women.”

As we walked together along the road with flowers on both sides, my friend told me the following story:

Two years ago, when I was an assistant prosecutor in —, I got permission from my boss to spend one month in Sevilla. In the hotel where I stayed, there was a beautiful young woman who was thought to be a widow, but where she came from, as well as her reasons for staying in that town, were a mystery to everyone. Her rooms, her wealth, her total lack of friends or acquaintances, and the sad look on her face, together with her incomparable beauty, made people form a thousand guesses.

Her rooms were right across from mine, and I often met her in the hall or on the stairs, and I was very happy to have the chance to bow to her. However, she was not easy to talk to, and it was impossible for me to get anyone to introduce me to her. Two weeks later, fate gave me the chance to go into her apartment. That night I had been to the theater, and when I came back to my room I opened the door of her apartment by mistake instead of my own.

The beautiful woman was reading by the light of the lamp, and she jumped when she saw me. I was so embarrassed by my mistake that, for a moment, I could only stammer words that made no sense. My confusion was so clear that she could not doubt for a single moment that I had made a mistake. I turned to the door, wanting to leave and stop bothering her as fast as possible, when she said, very politely: “To show you that I do not doubt your good intentions and that I am not at all offended, I ask you to visit me again, on purpose.”

Three days passed before I had enough courage to accept her invitation. Yes, I was madly in love with her. I am used to thinking about my own feelings, so I knew that my love could only end in the greatest happiness or the deepest pain. However, at the end of the three days I went to her apartment and spent the evening there. She said, “My name is Blanca. I was born in Madrid. I am a widow.” She played and sang for me and asked me a thousand questions about myself, my job, my family, and every word she said made my love for her grow. From that night, my soul was the slave of her soul; yes, and it will be forever.

I visited her again the next night, and after that I was with her every afternoon and every evening. We loved each other, but we had never said anything about love to each other.