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THE TORRENT

(ENTRE NARANJOS)


By VICENTE BLASCO IBAÑEZ


TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH BY

ISAAC GOLDBERG

AND

ARTHUR LIVINGSTON

1921




THE TORRENT




PART ONE

I


"Your friends are waiting for you at the Club. They saw you for a moment
only, this morning; they'll be wanting to hear all your stories about
life in Madrid."

Doña Bernarda fixed upon the young deputy a pair of deep, scrutinizing,
severely maternal eyes that recalled to Rafael all the roguish anxieties
of his childhood.

"Are you going directly to the Club?..." she added. "Andrés will be
starting too, right away."

Rafael, in reply, wished a blunt "good-afternoon" to his mother and don
Andrés, who were still at table sipping their coffee, and strode out of
the dining-room.

Finding himself on the broad, red-marble staircase in the silence of
that ancient mansion, of such princely magnificence, he experienced the
sudden sense of comfort and wellbeing that a traveler feels on plunging
into a bath after a tedious journey.

Ever since he had arrived, with the noisy reception at the station, the
hurrahs, the deafening music, handshakes here, crowding there, the
pushing and elbowing of more than a thousand people who had thronged
the streets of Alcira to get a close look at him, this was the first
moment he had found himself alone, his own master, able to do exactly as
he pleased, without needing to smile automatically in all directions and
welcome with demonstrations of affection persons whose faces he could
scarcely recall.

What a deep breath of relief he drew as he went down the deserted
staircase, which echoed his every footstep! How large and beautiful the
_patio_ was! How broad and lustrous the leaves of the plantains
flourishing in their green boxes! There he had spent the best years of
his childhood. The little boys who in those days used to be hiding
behind the wide portal, waiting for a chance to play with the son of the
powerful don Ramón Brull, were now the grown men, the sinewy orchard
workers, who had been parading from the station to his house, waving
their arms, and shouting _vivas_ for their deputy--Alcira's "favorite
son."

This contrast between the past and present flattered Rafael's conceit,
though, in the background of his thoughts, the suspicion lurked that his
mother had been not a little instrumental in the preparation of his
noisy reception, not to mention don Andrés, and numerous other friends,
ever loyal to anyone connected with the greatness of the Brulls,
_caciques_--political bosses--and leading citizens of the district.

To enjoy these recollections of childhood and the pleasure of finding
himself once more at home, after several months in Madrid, he stood for
some time motionless in the _patio_, looking up at the balconies of the
first story, then at the attic windows--from which in mischievous years
gone by he had many a time withdrawn his head at the sound of his
mother's scolding voice--and lastly, at the veil of luminous blue
above--a patch of sky drenched in that Spanish sunlight which ripens the
oranges to clusters of flaming gold.

He thought he could still see his father--the imposing, solemn don
Ramón--sauntering about the _patio_, his hands behind his back,
answering in a few impressive words the questions flung at him by his
party adherents, who followed him about with idolatrous eyes. If the old
man could only have come back to life that morning to see how his son
had been acclaimed by the entire city!...

A barely perceptible sound like the buzzing of two flies broke the deep
silence of the mansion. The deputy looked toward the only balcony window
that was open, though but slightly. His mother and don Andrés were still
talking in the dining-room--and of him, as usual, without a doubt! And,
lest they should call him, and suddenly deprive him of his keen
enjoyment at being alone, he left the _patio_ and went out into the
street.

It was only the month of March; but at two in the afternoon the air was
almost uncomfortably hot. Accustomed to the cold wind of Madrid and to
the winter rains, Rafael inhaled, with a sense of voluptuous pleasure,
the warm breeze that wafted the perfume of the blossoming orchards
through the narrow lanes of the ancient town.

Once, years before, he had been in Italy on a Catholic pilgrimage,
entrusted by his mother to the care of a priest from Valencia, who would
not think of returning to Spain without paying a visit to don Carlos. A
memory of a Venetian _calle_ now came back to Rafael's mind as he
traversed the streets of old Alcira--shadowy, cramped, sunk deep as
wells between rows of high houses. With all the economy of a city built
on an island, Alcira rears its edifices higher and higher as its
population grows, leaving just enough space free for the bare needs of
traffic.

The streets were deserted. The noisy, orchard workers who had welcomed
Rafael had gone back to the fields again. All the idlers had fled to the
cafés, and as the deputy walked smartly by in front of these, warm waves
of air came out upon him through the windows, with the clatter of poker
chips, the noise of billiard balls, and the uproar of heated argument.

Rafael reached the Suburban Bridge, one of the two means of egress from
the Old City. The Júcar was combing its muddy, reddish waters on the
piles of the ancient structure. A number of row-boats, made fast to the
houses on the shore, were tugging at their moorings. Rafael recognized
among them the fine craft that he had once used for lonely trips on the
river. It lay there quite forgotten, gradually shedding its coat of
white paint out in the weather.

Then he looked at the bridge itself; the Gothic-arched gate, a relic of
the old fortifications; the battlements of yellowish, chipped rock,
which looked as if all the rats of the river had come at night to nibble
at them; then two niches with a collection of mutilated, dust-laden
images--San Bernardo, patron Saint of Alcira, and his estimable sisters.
Dear old San Bernardo, _alias_ Prince Hamete, son of the Moorish king
of Carlet, converted to Christ by the mystic poesy of the Christian
cult,--and still wearing in his mangled forehead the nail of martyrdom!

As Rafael walked past the rude, disfigured statue he thought of all the
stories his mother, an uncompromising clerical and a woman of credulous
faith, had told him of the patron of Alcira, particularly the legend of
the enmity and struggle between San Vicente and San Bernardo, an
ingenuous fancy of popular superstition.

Saint Vincent, who was an eloquent preacher arrived at Alcira on one of
his tours, and stopped at a blacksmith's shop near the bridge to get his
donkey shod. When the work was done the horseshoer asked for the usual
price for his labor; but San Vicente, accustomed to living on the bounty
of the faithful, waxed indignant, and looking at the Júcar, exclaimed,
vindictively:

"Some day folks will say: 'This is where Alcira used to be'."

"Not while Bernardo is here!" the statue of San Bernardo remarked from
its pedestal.

And there the statue of the saint still stood, like an eternal sentinel,
watching over the Júcar to exorcise the curse of the rancorous Saint
Vincent! To be sure the river would rise and overflow its banks every
year, reaching to the very feet of San Bernardo sometimes, and coming
within an ace of pulling the wily saint down from his perch. It is also
true that every five or six years the flood would shake houses loose
from their foundations, destroy good farm land, drown people, and commit
other horrible depredations--all in obedience to the curse of Valencia's
patron; but the saint of Alcira was the better man of the two for all
of that! And, if you didn't believe it, there the city was, still
planted firmly on its feet and quite unscathed, except for a scratch
here and there from times when the rains were exceptionally heavy and
the waters came down from Cuenca in a great roaring torrent!

With a smile and a nod to the powerful saint, as to an old friend of
childhood, Rafael crossed the bridge and entered the _arrabal_, the "New
City," ample, roomy, unobstructed, as if the close-packed houses of the
island, to get elbow-room and a breath of air, had stampeded in a flock
to the other bank of the river, scattering hither and thither in the
hilarious disorder of children let loose from school.

The deputy paused at the head of the street on which his club was
located. Even from there he could hear the talking and laughing of the
many members, who had gathered in much greater number than usual because
of his arrival. What would he be in for down there? A speech, probably!
A speech on local politics! Or, if not a speech, idle talk about the
orange crop, or cock-fighting. He would be expected to tell them what
kind of a man the Premier was--and then spend the afternoon analyzing
the character of every minister! Then don Andrés would be there, that
boresome Mentor who, at the instance of Rafael's mother, would never let
him out of sight for a moment. Bah! The Club could wait! He would have
plenty of time later in the day to stifle in that smoke-filled parlor
where, the moment he showed his face, everybody would be upon him and
pester the life out of him with questions and wire-pulling!

And more and more yielding to the lure of the southern sunshine and to
those perfumes of May floating about him in wintertime, he turned off
into a lane that led to the fields.

As he emerged from the ancient Ghetto and found himself in the open
country, he drew a deep breath, as if to imprison in his lungs all the
life, bloom and color of his native soil.

The orange orchards lined both banks of the stream with straight rows of
green, round tree-tops. The sun glistened off the varnished leaves; the
wheels of irrigating machines sounded from the distance like humming
insects. The moisture rising from the canals, joined the clouds from the
chimneys of the motors, to form a thin veil of mist over the
countryside, that gave a pearly transparency to the golden light of the
afternoon.

To one side rose the hill of San Salvador, its crest topped with the
Hermitage, and the pines, the cypresses, and the prickly pears around
that rough testimonial of popular piety. The sanctuary seemed to be
talking to him like an indiscreet friend, betraying the real motive that
had caused him to evade his appointment with his political friends and
disobey his mother into the bargain.

Something more than the beauty of the fields had enticed him from the
city. When the rays of the rising sun had awakened him that morning on
the train, the first thing he had seen, before opening his eyes even,
was an orange orchard, the bank of the Júcar, and a house painted
blue,--the very one that was now in sight away off there, among the
round tree-tops along the river.

How many times in past months his thoughts had lingered on the memory of
that same scene!

Afternoons, in the Congress, while the Premier on the Blue Bench would
be answering the interpellations of the Opposition in sharp incisive
tones, Rafael's brain would begin to doze, reduced to jelly, as it were,
by the incessant hammering of words, words, words! Before his closed
eyes a dark veil would begin to unroll as if the moist, cellar-like
gloom in which the Chamber is always plunged, had thickened suddenly,
and against this curtain, like a cinema dream, rows of orange-trees
would come into view, and a blue house with open windows; and pouring
through the windows a stream of notes from a soft voice, ever so sweet,
singing _lieder_ and ballads as an accompaniment to the hard, sonorous
paragraphs snapping from the Premier's teeth. Then applause and
disorder! The moment for voting had arrived, and the fading outlines of
the Blue House still hovering before his dreamy eyes, the member for
Alcira would ask his neighbor:

"How do we vote? Yes or no?"

The same it was at night at the Opera, where music served only to remind
him of a familiar voice winding like a thread of gold out across the
orchards through the orange trees; and the same again, after dinner with
his colleagues on committees, when the deputies, their cigars tilted
cockily upwards between their lips, and with all the voluptuous gaiety
inspired by good digestions, would troop off to see the night out in
some trustworthy house of assignation where their dignity as
representatives of the country would not be compromised!

Now that blue house was actually before his eyes! And he was hurrying
toward it,--not without some hesitation; a vague uneasiness he could not
explain. His heart was in his mouth, it seemed, and he found it hard to
breathe.

Orchard workers came along the road, occasionally, stepping aside to
make room for the famous man, though he answered their greeting
absent-mindedly. What a nuisance! They would all be sure to tell where
they had seen him! His mother would know all about it within half an
hour! And, that evening, a scene in the dining-room! As Rafael walked on
toward the Blue House, he thought bitterly of his situation. Why was he
going there anyhow? Why insist on living in a stew all the time? He had
had two or three short but violent scenes with his mother a few months
before. What a fury that stern, pious, and puritanic woman became when
she found out that her son had been calling down at the Blue House and
was on friendly terms with a strange lady, an outsider, whom the
respectable folk of the city would have nothing to do with, and of whom
not a good word was ever heard except from the men at the Club, when
they were sure their wives were not in hearing distance!

Tempestuous scenes they had been! He was running for Congress at the
time. Was he trying--she wanted to know--to dishonor the family and
compromise his political future? Was that what his poor father had lived
for--a life of sacrifice and struggle, of service to "the Party," which,
many a time, had meant shouldering a gun? And a loose woman was to be
allowed to ruin the House of Brull, which for thirty years had been
putting every cent it owned into politics, for the benefit of My Lords
up in Madrid! And just when a Brull was about to reap the reward of so
many sacrifices at last, and become a deputy--the means perhaps of
clearing off the property, which was lousy with attachments and
mortgages!...

Rafael had been no match for that energetic mother, the soul of "the
Party." Meekly he had promised never to return to the Blue House, never
to call again on that "loose woman"--doña Bernarda actually hissed as
she said the word.

However, the upshot of it all had been that Rafael simply discovered how
weak he was. Despite his promise, he returned to the Blue House often,
but by round-about ways and over long detours, skulking from cover to
cover, as he had done in childhood days when stealing oranges from the
orchards. There he was, a man whose name was on the lips of the whole
county, and who at any moment might be invested with authority from the
people, thus realizing the life-long dream of his father! But the sight
of a woman in the fields, a child, a beggar, would make him blanch with
terror! And that was not the worst of it! Whenever he entered the Blue
House now he had to pretend he came openly, without any fear whatever.
And so things had gone on down to the very eve of his departure for
Madrid.

As Rafael reached this point in his reminiscences, he asked himself what
hope had led him to disobey his mother and brook her truly formidable
wrath.

In that blue house he had found only frank, disinterested friendship,--a
somewhat ironic comradeship, the condescending tolerance of a person
compelled by solitude to choose as her comrade the least repulsive among
a host of inferiors. Alas! How clearly he remembered and could again
foresee the sceptical, cold smile with which his words were always
received, though he was sure he had crammed them with burning passion!
What a laugh she had given,--as insolent and as cutting as a lash,--the
day he had dared to declare his love!

"Now the soft-pedal on slush, eh, Rafaelito?... If you want us to go on
being friends, all right, but it's on condition you treat me as a man.
Comrades, eh, and nothing more."

And with a look at him through those green, luminous, devilish eyes of
hers, she had taken her seat at the piano and begun one of her divine
songs, as if she thought the magic of her art might raise a barrier
between them.

On another occasion, she was irritable rather; Rafael's appealing eyes,
his words of amorous adoration, seemed to provoke her, and she had said
with brutal frankness:

"Don't waste your breath, please! I am through with love. I know men too
well! But even if anyone were to upset me again, it would not be you,
Rafaelito dear."

And yet he had persisted, insensible to the irony and the scorn of this
terrible _amigo_ in skirts, and indifferent as well to the conflicts
that his blind passion might provoke at home if his mother knew.

He tried to free himself from his infatuation, but unsuccessfully. With
that in view he fixed his attention on the woman's past; it was said
that despite her beauty, her aristrocratic manners, the brilliancy of
mind with which she had dazzled him--a poor country boy--she was only an
adventuress who had made her way over half the globe from one pair of
arms to another. Well, in that case, it would be a great exploit to win
a woman whom princes and celebrated men had loved! But since that was
impossible, why go on, why continue endangering his career and having
trouble with his mother all the time?

To forget her, he stressed, before his own mind, words and attitudes of
hers that might be judged defects; and he would taste the joy of duty
well done when, after such gymnastics of the will, he could think of her
without great emotion.

At the beginning of his life in Madrid he imagined he had recovered. New
surroundings; continuous and petty satisfactions to vanity; the
kow-towing of doorkeepers in Congress; the flattery of visitors from
here, there and everywhere who came with requests for passes to admit
them to the galleries; the sense of being treated as a comrade by
celebrities, whose names his father had always mentioned with bated
breath; the "honorable" always written before his name; all Alcira
speaking to him with affectionate familiarity; this rubbing elbows, on
the benches of the conservative majority, with a battalion of dukes,
counts and marquises--young men who had become deputies to round out the
distinction conferred by beautiful sweethearts or winning
thoroughbreds,--all this had intoxicated him, filled his mind
completely, crowding out all other thoughts, and persuading him that he
had been completely cured.

But as he grew familiar with his new life, and the novelty of all this
adulation wore off, tenacious recollections rose again in his memory. At
night, when sleep relaxed the will to forget, which his vigilance kept
at painful tension, that blue house, the green, diabolical eyes of its
principal denizen, that pair of fresh lips with their ironic smile that
seemed to quiver between two rows of gleaming white teeth, would become
the inevitable center of all his dreams.

Why resist any longer? He could think of her as much as he
pleased--that, at least, his mother would never learn. And he gave
himself up to the imagination of love, where distance lent an ever
stronger enchantment to that woman.

He felt a vehement longing to return to his city. Absence seemed to do
away with all the obstacles at home. His mother was not so formidable as
he had thought. Who could tell whether, when he went back--changed as he
felt himself to be by his new experiences--it would not be easier to
continue the old relations? After so much isolation and solitude she
might receive him in more cordial fashion!

The Cortes were about to adjourn, so, in obedience to repeated urging
from his fellow-partisans, and from doña Bernarda, to _do
something_--anything at all--to show interest in the home town--he took
the floor one afternoon at the opening of the session, when only the
president, the sergeant-at-arms, and a few reporters asleep in the
press-gallery, were present, and, with his lunch rising in his throat
from emotion, asked the Minister of Internal Affairs to show a little
more despatch in the matter of flood protection at Alcira--a bill still
in its in-fancy, though it had been pending some seventy years.

After this he was free to return with the halo of a "business-like"
deputy shining about his head--"a zealous defender of the region's
interests," the local weekly and party organ called him. And that
morning, as he stepped off the train, the deputy, deaf to the Royal
March and to the _vivas_, stood up on tiptoe, trying to descry through
the waving banners the Blue House nestling in the distance among the
orange-trees.

As he approached the place that afternoon he was almost sick with
nervousness and emotion. For one last time he thought of his mother, so
intent upon maintaining her prestige and so fearful of hostile gossip;
of the demagogues who had thronged the doors of the cafes that morning,
making fun of the demonstration in his honor; but all his scruples
vanished at sight of the hedge of tall rose-bays and prickly hawthorns
and of the two blue pillars supporting a barrier of green wooden bars.
Resolutely he pushed the gate open, and entered the garden.

Orange-trees stretched in rows along broad straight walks of red earth.
On either side of the approach to the house was a tangle of tall
rose-bushes on which the first buds, heralds of an early spring, were
already beginning to appear.

Above the chattering of the sparrows and the rustle of the wind in the
trees, Rafael could hear the sound of a piano--the keys barely touched
by the player's fingers--and a soft, timid voice, as if the song were
meant for the singer alone.

It was she. Rafael knew the music: a _Lied_ by Schubert--the favorite
composer of the day; a master "whose best work was still unknown," as
she said in the cant she had learned from the critics, alluding to the
fact that only the least subtle of the melancholy composer's works had
thus far been popularized.

The young man advanced slowly, cautiously, as if afraid lest the sound
of his footsteps break in upon that melody which seemed to be rocking
the garden lovingly to sleep in the afternoon's golden sunlight.

He reached the open space in front of the house and once more found
there the same murmuring palms, the same rubblework benches with seats
and backs of flowered tile that he knew so well. There, in fact, she had
so often laughed at his feverish protestations.

The door was closed; but through a half-opened window he could see a
patch of silk; a woman's back, bending slightly forward over the music.

As Rafael came up a dog began to bark at the end of the garden. Some
hens that had been scratching about in sand of the drive, scampered off
cackling with fright. The music stopped. A chair scraped as it was
pushed back. The lady was rising to her feet.

At the balcony a flowing gown of blue appeared; but all that Rafael saw
was a pair of eyes--green eyes, that seemed to fill the entire window
with a flood of light.

"Beppa! Beppina!" cried a firm, a warm, a sonorous, soprano voice.
"_Apri la porta_. Open the door."

And with a slight inclination of her splendid head of thick auburn hair
that seemed to crown her with a helmet of old gold, she smiled to him
with a friendly, somewhat mocking, intimacy:

"Welcome, Rafaelito. I don't know why, but I was expecting you this
afternoon. We have heard all about your triumphs; the music and the
tumult reached even to our desert. My congratulations to the Honorable
don Rafael Brull. Come right in, I _su señoría_."




II


From Valencia to Játiva, in all that immense territory covered with
rice-fields and orange groves which Valencians embrace under the general
and rather vague designation of _La Ribera_, there was no one unfamiliar
with the name of Brull and the political power it stood for.

As if national unity had not yet been effected and the country were
still divided into _taifas_ and _waliatos_ as in the days when one
Moorish King reigned over Carlet, another over Denia, and a third over
Játiva, the election system maintained a sort of inviolable rulership in
every district; and when the Administration people came to Alcira in
forecasting their political prospects, they always said the same thing:

"We're all right there. We can rely on Brull."

The Brull dynasty had been bossing the district for thirty years, with
ever-increasing power.

The founder of this sovereign house had been Rafael's grandfather, the
shrewd don Jaime, who had established the family fortune by fifty years
of slow exploitation of ignorance and poverty. He began life as a clerk
in the _Ayuntamiento_ of Alcira; then he became secretary to the
municipal judge, then assistant to the city clerk, then
assistant-registrar of deeds. There was not a subordinate position in
those offices where the poor come in contact with the law that he did
not get his hands on; and from such points of vantage, by selling
justice as a favor and using power or adroitness to subdue the
refractory, he felt his way along, appropriating parcel after parcel of
that fertile soil which he adored with a miser's covetousness.

A brazen charlatan he was, every moment talking of "Article Number
So-and-So" of the law that applied to the case. The poor orchard workers
came to have as much awe for his learning as fear of his malice, and in
all their controversies they sought his advice and paid for it, as if he
were a lawyer.

When he had gotten a small fortune together, he continued holding his
menial posts in the city administration to retain the superstitious
respect which is inspired in peasant-folk by all who are on good terms
with the law; but not content with playing the eternal beggar, dependent
on the humble gratuities of the poor, he took to pulling them out of
their financial difficulties, lending them money on the collateral of
their future harvests.

But six per cent seemed too petty a profit for him. The real plight of
these folk came when a horse died and they had to buy another. Don Jaime
became a dealer in dray horses, buying more or less defective animals
from gypsies in Valencia, praising their virtues to the skies, and
reselling them as thoroughbreds. And no sale on the instalment plan!
Cash down! The horses did not belong to him--as he vowed with his hand
pressed solemnly to his bosom--and their owners wished to realize on
their value at once. The best he could do in the circumstances prompted
by his greatness of heart, which always overflowed at the sight of
poverty was to borrow money for the purchase from a friend of his.

The peasant in his desperate need would fall into the snare, and carry
off the horse after signing all kinds of notes and mortgages to cover
the loan of money he had not seen! For the don Jaime who spoke for the
unknown party in the deal transferred the cash to the same don Jaime who
spoke for the owner of the horse. Result: the rustic bought an animal,
without chaffering, at double its value, having in addition borrowed a
lot of money at cut-throat interest. In every turn-over of this sort don
Jaime doubled his principal. New straits inevitably developed for the
dupe; the interest kept piling up; hence new concessions, still more
ruinous than the first, that don Jaime might be placated and give the
purchaser a month's reprieve.

Every Wednesday, which was market-day in Alcira and brought a great
crowd of orchard-folk to town, the street where don Jaime lived was the
busiest in the city. People came in droves to ask for renewal of their
notes, each leaving a tip of several _pesetas_ usually, not to be
counted against the debt itself. Others, humbly, timidly, as if they had
come to rob the grasping Shylock, would ask for loans; and the strange
thing about it, as the malicious noted, was that all these people, after
leaving everything they owned in don Jaime's hands, went off content,
their faces beaming with satisfaction, as if they had just been rescued
from a danger.

This was don Jaime's chief skill. He had the trick of making usury look
like kindness; he always spoke of _those fellows_, those hidden owners
of the money and the horses--heartless wretches who were "after him,"
holding him responsible for the short-comings of all their debtors. The
burdens he thus supposedly assumed won him a reputation as a
kind-hearted soul, and such confidence was the wily old demon able to
instill in his victims that when mortgages were foreclosed on homes or
fields, many of the unfortunates despoiled, would say, resignedly:

"It's not his fault. What could the poor man do if they forced him to
it? It's those _other fellows_ who are sucking the blood of us poor
folks."

And so, quietly, leisurely, tranquilly, don Jaime got possession of a
field here, then another there, then a third between the two; and in a
few years he had rounded out a beautiful orchard of orange-trees with
virtually no expenditure of capital at all. Thus his property went on
increasing, and, with his radiant smile, his spectacles on his forehead
and his paunch growing fatter and fatter, he could be seen surrounded by
new victims, addressing them with the affectionate _tu_, patting them on
the back, and vowing that this weakness he had for the doing of favors
would some day bring him to dying like a dog in the gutter.

Thus he went on prospering. Nor was all the scoffing of city people of
any avail in shaking the confidence reposed in him by that flock of
rustics, who feared him as they feared the Law itself and believed in
him as they believed in God.

A loan to a spendthrift eldest son made him the proprietor of the fine
city mansion, which came to be known as "the Brull place." From that
date he began to hob-nob with the large real-estate owners of the city,
who, though they despised this upstart, made a small place for him in
their midst with the instinctive solidarity that characterizes the
freemasonry of money. To gain a little more standing for his name, he
became a votary of San Bernardo, contributed to the funds for church
festivals, and danced attendance on the _alcalde_, whoever that "mayor"
might be. In his eyes now, the only people in Alcira were such as
collected thousands of _duros_, whenever harvest time came around. The
rest were rabble, rabble, sir!

Then, at last he resigned the petty offices he had been filling; and
handing his usury business over to those who formerly had served him as
go-betweens, he set himself to the task of marrying off his son and sole
heir, Ramon, an idling ne'er-do-well, who was always getting into
trouble and upsetting the tranquil comfort that surrounded old Brull as
he rested from his plunderings.

The father felt the satisfaction of a bully in having such a tall,
strong, daring and insolent son, a boy who compelled respect in cafes
and clubs more with his fists than with the special privileges conferred
in small towns by wealth. Let anyone dare make fun of the old usurer
when he had such a fire-eater to protect him!

Ramon had wanted to join the Army; but every time he referred to what he
called his vocation, his father would fly into a rage. "Do you think
that is what I've worked for all these years?" He could remember the
time when, as a poor clerk, he had been forced to fawn on his superiors
and listen humbly, cringingly, to their reprimands. He did not want a
boy of his to be shoved about hither and thither like a mere machine.
"Plenty of brass buttons," he exclaimed with the scorn of a man never to
be taken in by external show, "and plenty of gold braid! But after all,
a slave, a slave!"

No, he wanted to see his son free and influential, continuing the
conquest of the city, completing the family greatness of which he had
laid the foundations, getting power over people much as he himself had
gotten power over money. Ramón must become a lawyer, the only career for
a man destined to rule others. It was a passionate ambition the old
pettifogger had, to see his scion enter through the front door and with
head proudly erect, the precincts of the law, into which he had crawled
so cautiously and at the risk, more than once, of being dragged out with
a chain fastened to his ankle.

Ramón spent several years in Valencia without getting beyond the
elementary courses in Common Law. The cursed classes were held in the
morning, you see, and he had to go to bed at dawn--the hour when the
lights in the pool-rooms went out. Besides, in his quarters at the hotel
he had a magnificent shotgun--a present from his father; and
homesickness for the orchards made him pass many an afternoon at the
pigeon traps where he was far better known than at the University.

This fine specimen of masculine youth--tall, muscular, tanned, with a
pair of domineering eyes to which thick eyebrows gave a touch of
harshness--had been born for action, and excitement; Ramón simply
couldn't concentrate on books!

Old Brull, who through niggardliness and prudence had placed his son on
"half rations," as he put it, sent the boy just money enough to keep him
going; but dupe, in turn, of the wiles he had formerly practiced on the
rustics of Alcira, he was compelled to make frequent trips to Valencia,
to come to some understanding with money lenders there, who had
advanced loans to his son on such terms that insolvency might lead Ramón
to a prison cell.

Home to Alcira came rumors of other exploits by the "Prince," as don
Jaime called his boy in view of the latter's ability to run through
money. In parties with friends of the family, don Ramón's doings were
spoken of as scandalous actually--a duel after a quarrel at cards; then
a father and a brother--common workingmen in flannel shirts!--who had
sworn they would kill him if he didn't marry a certain girl he had been
taking to her shop by day and to dance-halls by night.

Old Brull made up his mind to tolerate these escapades of his son no
longer; and he made him give up his studies. Ramón would not be a
lawyer; well, after all, one didn't have to have a degree to be a man of
importance. Besides the father felt he was getting old; it was hard for
him to look after the working of his orchards personally. He could make
good use of that son who seemed to have been born to impose his will
upon everybody around him.

For some time past don Jaime had had his eye on the daughter of a friend
of his. The Brull house showed noticeable lack of a woman's presence.
His wife had died shortly after his retirement from business, and the
old codger stamped in rage at the slovenliness and laziness displayed by
his servants. He would marry Ramón to Bernarda--an ugly, ill-humored,
yellowish, skinny creature--but sole heiress to her father's three
beautiful orchards. Besides, she was conspicuous for her industrious,
economical ways, and a parsimony in her expenditures that came pretty
close to stinginess.

Ramón did as his father bade him. Brought up with all the ideas of a
rural skinflint, he thought no decent person could object to marrying an
ugly bad-tempered woman, so long as she had plenty of money.

The father-in-law and the daughter-in-law understood each other
perfectly. The old man's eyes would water at sight of that stern,
long-faced puritan, who never had much to say in the house, but went
into high dudgeon over the slightest waste on the part of the domestics,
scolding the farmhands for the merest oversight in the orchards,
haggling and wrangling with the orange drummers for a _centime_ more or
less per hundredweight. That new daughter of his was to be the solace of
his old age!

Meantime, the "prince" would be off hunting every morning in the nearby
mountains and lounging every afternoon in the cafe; but he was no longer
content with the admiration of the idlers hanging around a billiard
table, nor was he taking part in the game upstairs. He was frequenting
the circles of "serious" people now, had made friends with the _alcalde_
and was talking all the time of the great need for getting all "decent"
folk together to take the "rabble" in hand!

"Ambition is pecking at him," the old man gleefully remarked to his
daughter-in-law. "Let him alone, woman; he'll get there, he'll get
there... That's the way I like to see him."

Ramón began by winning a seat in the _Ayuntamiento_, and soon was an
outstanding figure there. The least objection to his views he regarded
as a personal insult; he would transfer debates in session out into the
streets and settle them there with threats and fisticuffs. His greatest
glory was to have his enemies say of him:

"Look out for that Ramón ... He's a tough proposition."

Along with all this combativeness, he sought to win friends by a lavish
hand that was his father's torment. He "did favors," assured a living,
that is, to every loafer and bully in town. He was ready to be "touched"
by anyone who could serve, in tavern and café, as advertising agent of
his rising fame.

And he rose rapidly, in fact. The old folks who had pushed him forward
with influence and counsel soon found themselves left far behind. In a
short time he had become _alcalde;_ his prestige outgrew the limits of
the city, spread over the whole district, and eventually reached the
capital of the province itself. He got able-bodied men exempted from
military service; he winked at corruption in the city councils that
backed him, although the perpetrators deserved to go to prison; he saw
to it that the constabulary was not too energetic in running down the
_roders_, the "wanderers," who, for some well-placed shot at election
time, would be forced to flee to the mountains. No one in the whole
country dared make a move without the previous consent of don Ramón,
whom his adherents always respectfully called their _quefe_, their
"chief."

Old Brull lived long enough to see Ramón reach the zenith of his fame.
That scallawag was realizing the old man's dream: the conquest of the
city, ruling over men where his father had gotten only money! And, in
addition don Jaime lived to see the perpetuation of the Brull dynasty
assured by the birth of a grandson, Rafael, the child of a couple who
had never loved each other, but were united only by avarice and
ambition.

Old Brull died like a saint. He departed this life with the consolation
of all the last sacraments. Every cleric in the city helped to waft his
soul heavenward with clouds of incense at the solemn obsequies. And,
though the rabble--the political opponents of the son, that is--recalled
those Wednesdays long before when the flock from the orchards would come
to let itself be fleeced in the old Shylock's office, all safe and sane
people--people who had something in this world to lose--mourned the
death of so worthy and industrious a man, a man who had risen from the
lowest estate and had finally been able to accumulate a fortune by hard
work, honest hard work!

In Rafael's father there still remained much of the wild student who had
caused so many tongues to wag in his youthful days. But his doings with
peasant girls were hushed up now; fear of the _cacique's_ power stifled
all gossip; and since, moreover, affairs with such lowly women cost very
little money, doña Bernarda pretended to know nothing about them. She
did not love her husband much. She was leading that narrow,
self-centered life of the country woman, who feels that all her duties
are fulfilled if she remains faithful to her mate and keeps saving
money.

By a noteworthy anomaly, she, who was so stingy, so thrifty, ready to
start a squabble on the public square in defense of the family money
against day-laborers or middlemen, was tolerance itself toward the
lavish expenditures of her husband in maintaining his political
sovereignty over the region.

Every election opened a new breach in the family fortune. Don Ramón
would receive orders to carry his district for some non-resident, who
might not have lived there more than a day or two. So those who governed
yonder in Madrid had ordered--and orders must be obeyed. In every town
whole muttons would be set turning over the fires. Tavern wine would
flow like water. Debts would be cancelled and fistfulls of _pesetas_
would be distributed among the most recalcitrant, all at don Ramón's
expense of course. And his wife, who wore a calico wrapper to save on
clothes and stinted so much on food that there was hardly anything left
for the servants to eat, would be arrayed in splendor when the day for
the contest came around, ready in her excitement to help her husband
throw the entire house through the window, if need be.

This, however, was all pure speculation on her part. The money that was
being scattered so madly broadcast was a "loan" simply. Some day she
would get it back with interest. Already her piercing eyes were
caressing the tiny, dark-complexioned, restless little creature that lay
across her knees, seeing in him the privileged heir-apparent who would
one day reap the harvest from all such family sacrifices.

Doña Bernarda had taken refuge in religion as in a cool, refreshing
oasis in the desert of vulgarity and monotony in her life. Her heart
would swell with pride every time a priest would say to her in the
church:

"Take good care of don Ramón. Thanks to him the wave of demagogy halts
at the temple door and evil fails to triumph in the District. He is the
bulwark of the Lord against the impious!"

And when, after such a declaration, which flattered her worldly vanity
and assured her of a mansion in Heaven, she would pass through the
streets of Alcira in her calico wrapper and a shawl not over-clean,
greeted affectionately, effusively, by the leading citizens, she would
pardon don Ramón all the infidelities she knew about and consider the
sacrifice of her fortune a good investment.

"If it were not for what we do, what would happen to the District....
The lower scum would conquer--those wild-eyed mechanics and common
laborers who read the Valencian newspapers and talk about equality all
the time. And they would divide up the orchards, and demand that the
product of the harvests--thousands and thousands of _duros_ paid for
oranges by the Englishmen and the French--should belong to all." But to
stave off such a cataclysm, there stood don Ramón, the scourge of the
wicked, the champion of "the cause" which he led to triumph, gun in
hand, at election time; and just as he was able to send any rebellious
trouble-maker off to the penal settlement, so he found it easy to keep
at liberty all those who, despite the various murders that figured in
their biographies, lent themselves to the service of the government in
this support of "law and order!"

The patrimony of the House of Brull went down and down, but its prestige
rose higher and higher. The sacks of money filled by the old man at the
cost of so much roguery were shaken empty over all the District; nor
were several assaults upon the municipal treasury sufficient to bring
them back to normal roundness. Don Ramón contemplated this squandering
impassively, proud that people should be talking of his generosity as
much as of his power.

The whole District worshipped as a sacred flagstaff that bronzed,
muscular, massive figure, which floated a huge, flowing, gray-flecked
mustache from its upper end.

"Don Ramón, you ought to remove that bush," his clerical friends would
say to him with a smile of affectionate banter. "Why, man, you look just
like Victor Emmanuel himself, the Pope's jailer."

But though don Ramón was a fervent Catholic (who never went to mass),
and hated all the infidel turnkeys of the Holy Father, he would grin and
give a satisfied twirl at the offending mouth-piece, quite flattered at
bottom to be likened to a king.

The _patio_ of the Brull mansion was the throne of his sovereignty. His
partisans would find him there, pacing up and down among the green boxes
of plantain trees, his hands clasped behind his broad, strong, but now
somewhat stooping back--a majestic back withal, capable of supporting
hosts and hosts of friends.

There he "administered justice," decided the fate of families, settled
the affairs of towns--all in a few off-hand but short and decisive
words, like one of those ancient Moorish kings who, in that selfsame
territory, centuries before, legislated for their subjects under the
open sky. On market-days the _patio_ would be thronged. Carts would stop
in long lines on either side of the door. All the hitching-posts along
the streets would have horses tied to them, and inside, the house would
be buzzing like a bee-hive with the chatter of that rustic gentry.

Don Ramón would give them all a hearing, frowning gravely meanwhile, his
chin on his bosom and one hand on the head of the little Rafael at his
side--a pose copied from a chromo of the Kaiser petting the Crown
Prince.

On afternoons when the _Ayuntamiento_ was in session, the chief could
never leave his _patio_. Of course not a chair in the city hall could be
dusted without his permission; but he preferred to remain invisible,
like a god, knowing well that his power would seem more terrible if it
spoke only from the pillar of fire or from the whirlwind.

All day long city councilors would go trotting back and forth from the
City Hall to the Brull _patio._ The few enemies don Ramón had in the
Council--meddlers, doña Bernarda called them--idiots who swallowed
everything in print provided it were against the King and
religion--attacked the _cacique_ persistently, censuring everything he
did. Don Ramón's henchmen would tremble with impotent rage. "That charge
must be answered! Let's see now: somebody go and ask the boss!"

And a _regidor_ would be off to don Ramón's like a greyhound; and
arriving at the _patio_ panting, out of breath, he would heave a sigh of
relief and contentment at sight of "the chief" there, pacing up and down
as usual, ready to get his friends out of their difficulties as if the
limitless resources of Providence were at his command. "So-and-So said
this-and-that!" Don Ramón would stop in his tracks, think a moment, and
finally say, in an enigmatic oracular voice: "Very well, tell him to put
this in his pipe and smoke it!" Whereupon the henchman, mouth agape,
would rush back to the session like a racehorse. His companions would
gather about him eager to know the reply that don Ramón's wisdom had
deigned to suggest; and a quarrel would start then, each one anxious to
have the privilege of annihilating the enemy with the magic words--all
talking at the same time like magpies suddenly set chattering by the
dawn of a new light.

If the opposition held its ground, again stupefaction would come over
them. Another mad dash in quest of a new consultation. Thus the sessions
would go by, to the great delight of the barber Cupido--the sharpest and
meanest tongue in the city--who, whenever the Council met, would observe
to his early morning shaves:

"Holiday today: the usual race of councilors bare-back."

When party exigencies forced don Ramón to be out of town, it was his
wife, the energetic doña Bernarda, who attended to the consultations,
issuing statements on party policy, as wise and apt as those of "the
chief" himself.

This collaboration in the upbuilding and the up-holding of the family
influence was the single bond of union between husband and wife. This
cold woman, a complete stranger to tenderness, would flush with pleasure
every time the chief approved her ideas. If only she were "boss" of "the
Party!" ...Don Andrés had often said as much himself!

This don Andrés was her husband's most intimate friend, one of those men
who are born to be second everywhere and in everything. Loyal to the
family to the point of sacrifice, he served, with the couple itself, to
fill out the Holy Trinity of the Brull religion that was the faith of
all the District. Where don Ramón could not go in person, don Andrés
would be present for him, as the chief's _alter ego_. In the towns he
was respected as the supreme vicar of that god whose throne was in the
_patio_ of the plantain trees; and people too shy to lay their
supplications before the god himself, would seek out that jolly
advocate,--a very approachable bachelor, who always had a smile on his
tanned, wrinkled face, and a story under his stiff cigar-stained
mustache.

Don Andrés had no relatives, and spent almost all his time at the
Brull's. He was like a piece of furniture that seems always to be
getting in the way at first; but when all were once accustomed to him,
he became an indispensable fixture in the family. In the days when don
Ramón had been a young subordinate of the _Ayuntamiento_, he had met and
liked the man, and taking him into the ranks of his "heelers," had
promoted him rapidly to be chief of staff. In the opinion of the "boss,"
there wasn't a cleverer, shrewder fellow in the world than don Andrés,
nor one with a better memory for names and faces. Brull was the
strategist who directed the campaign; don Andrés the tactician who
commanded actual operations and cleaned up behind the lines when the
enemy was divided and undone. Don Ramón was given to settling everything
in a violent manner, and drew his gun at the slightest provocation. If
his methods had been followed, "the Party" would have murdered someone
every day. Don Andrés had a smooth tongue and a seraphic smile that
simply wound _alcaldes_ or rebellious electors around his little
finger, and his specialty was the art of letting loose a rain of sealed
documents over the District that started complicated and never-ending
prosecutions against troublesome opponents.

He attended to "the chief's" correspondence, and was tutor and playmate
to the little Rafael, taking the boy on long walks through the orchard
country. To doña Bernarda he was confidential adviser.

That surly, severe woman showed her bare heart to no one in the world
save don Andrés. Whenever he called her his "señora," or his "worthy
mistress," she could not restrain a gesture of satisfaction; and it was
to him that she poured out her complaints against her husband's
misdeeds. Her affection for him was that of a dame of ancient chivalry
for her private squire. Enthusiasm for the glory of the house united
them in such intimacy that the opposition wagged its tongues, asserting
that doña Bernarda was getting even for her husband's waywardness. But
don Andrés, who smiled scornfully when accused of taking advantage of
the chief's influence to drive hard bargains to his own advantage, was
not the man to be trifled with if gossip ventured to smirch his
friendship with the _señora_.

Their Trinity was most closely cemented, however, by their fondness for
Rafael, the little tot destined to bring fame to the name of Brull and
realize the ambitions of both his grandfather and his father.

Rafael was a quiet, morose little boy, whose gentleness of disposition
seemed to irritate the hard-hearted doña Bernarda. He was always hanging
on to her skirts. Every time she raised her eyes she would find the
little fellow's gaze fixed upon her.

"Go out and play in _the patio_," the mother would say.

And the little fellow, moody and resigned, would leave the room, as if
in obedience to a disagreeable command.

Don Andrés alone was successful in amusing the child, with his tales and
his strolls through the orchards, picking flowers for him, making
whistles for him out of reeds. It was don Andrés who took him to school,
also, and who advertised the boy's fondness for study everywhere.

If don Rafael were a serious, melancholy lad, that defect was chargeable
to his interest in books, and at the Casino, the "Party's" Club, he
would say to his fellow-worshippers:

"You'll see something doing when Rafaelito grows up. That kid is going
to be another Canovas."

And before all those rustic minds the vision of a Brull at the head of
the Government would suddenly flash, filling the first page of the
newspapers with speeches six columns long, and a _To Be Continued_ at
the end; and they could see themselves rolling in money and running all
Spain, just as they now ran their District, to their own sweet wills.

Never did a Prince of Wales grow up amid the respect and the adulation
heaped upon little Brull. At school, the children regarded him as a
superior being who had condescended to come down among them for his
education. A well-scribbled sheet, a lesson fluently repeated, were
enough for the teacher, who belonged to "the Party" (just to collect his
wages on time and without trouble,) to declare in prophetic tones:

"Go on working like that, señor de Brull. You are destined to great
things."

At the _tertulias_ his mother attended evenings in his company, it was
enough for him to recite a fable or get off some piece of learning
characteristic of a studious child eager to bring his school work into
the conversation, for the women to rush upon him and smother him with
kisses.

"But how much that child knows!... How brilliant he is!"

And some old woman would add, sententiously:

"Bernarda, take good care of the child; don't let him use his brain so
much. It's bad for him. See how peaked he looks!..."

He finished his preparatory education with the Dominicans, taking the
leading rôle in all the plays given in the tiny theatre of the friars,
and always with a place in the first line on prize days. The Party organ
dedicated an annual article to the scholastic prodigies of the "gifted
son of our distinguished chief don Ramón Brull, the country's hope, who
already merits title as the shining light of the future!"

When Rafael, escorted by his mother and half a dozen women who had
witnessed the exercises, would come home, gleaming with medals and his
arms full of diplomas, he would stoop and kiss his father's hard,
bristly hand; and that claw would caress the boy's head and
absent-mindedly sink into the old man's vest pocket--for don Ramón
expected to pay for all welcome favors.

"Very good," the hoarse voice would murmur. "That's the way I like to
see you do ...Here's a _duro_."

And not till the following year would the boy again know what a caress
from his father meant. On certain occasions, playing in the _patio_, he
had surprised the austere old man gazing at him fixedly, as if trying to
foresee his future.

Don Andrés took charge of settling Rafael in Valencia when he began his
university studies. The dream of old don Jaime, disillusioned in the
son, would be fulfilled in the third generation!

"This one at least will be a lawyer!" said doña Bernarda, who in the old
days had imbibed don Jaime's eagerness for the university degree, which
to her seemed like a title of nobility for the family.

And lest the corruption of the city should lead the son astray as it had
done Ramón in his student days, she would send don Andrés frequently to
the capital, and write letter after letter to her Valencian friends,
particularly to a canon of her intimate acquaintance, asking them not to
lose sight of the boy.

But Rafael was good behavior itself; a model boy, a "serious" young man,
the good canon assured the mother. The distinctions and the prizes that
came to him in Alcira continued to pursue him in Valencia; and besides,
don Ramón and his wife learned from the papers of the triumphs achieved
by their son in the debating society, a nightly gathering of law
students in a university hall, where future Solons wrangled on such
themes as "Resolved: that the French Revolution was more of a good than
an evil," or "Resolved, that Socialism is superior to Christianity."

Some terrible youths, who had to get home before ten o'clock to escape a
whipping, declared themselves rabid socialists and frightened the
beadles with curses on the institution of property--all rights reserved,
of course, to apply, as soon as they got out of college, for some
position under the government as registrar of deeds or secretary of
prefecture! But Rafael, ever sane and a congenital "moderate," was not
of those fire-brands; he sat on "the Right" of the august assembly of
Wranglers, maintaining a "sound" attitude on all questions, thinking
what he thought "with" Saint Thomas and "with" other orthodox sages whom
his clerical Mentor pointed out to him.

These triumphs were announced by telegraph in the Party papers, which,
to garnish the chief's glory and avoid suspicion of "inspiration,"
always began the article with: "According to a despatch printed in the
Metropolitan press ..."

"What a boy!" the priests of Alcira would say to doña Bernarda. "What a
silver tongue! You'll see; he'll be a second Manterola!"

And whenever Rafael came home for the holidays or on vacation, each time
taller than before, dressed like a fashion-plate and with mannerisms
that she took for the height of distinction, the saintly mother would
say to herself with the satisfaction of a woman who knows what it means
to be homely:

"What a handsome chap he's getting to be. All the rich girls in town
will be after him. He'll have his pick of them."

Doña Bernarda felt proud of her Rafael, a tall youth, with delicate yet
powerful hands, large eyes, an aquiline nose, a curly beard and a
certain leisurely, undulating grace of movement that suggested one of
those young Arabs of the white cloak and elegant babooshes, who
constitute the native aristocracy of Spain's African colonies.

Every time the student came home, his father gave him the same silent
caress. In course of time the _duro_ had been replaced by a hundred
_peseta_ note; but the rough claw that grazed his head was falling now
with an energy ever weaker and seemed to grow lighter with the years.

Rafael, from long periods of absence, noted his father's condition
better than the rest. The old man was ill, very ill. As tall as ever, as
austere and imposing, and as little given to words. But he was growing
thinner. His fierce eyes were sinking deeper into their sockets. There
was little left to him now except his massive frame. His neck, once as
sturdy as a bull's, showed the tendons and the arteries under the loose,
wrinkled skin; and his mustache, once so arrogant, but now withering
with each successive day, drooped dispiritedly like the banner of a
defeated army wet with rain.

The boy was surprised at the gestures and tears of anger with which his
mother welcomed expression of his fears.

"Well, I hope he'll die as soon as possible ... Lot's of use he is to
us!... May the Lord be merciful and take him off right now."

Rafael said nothing, not caring to pry into the conjugal drama that was
secretly and silently playing its last act before his eyes.

Don Ramón, that somber libertine of insatiable appetites, prey to a
sinister, mysterious inebriation, was tossing in a last whirlwind of
tempestuous desire, as though the blaze of sunset had set fire to what
remained of his vitality.

With a deliberate, determined lustfulness, he went scouring the
District like a wild satyr, and his brutish assaults, his terrorism and
abuse of authority, were reported back by scurrilous tongues to the
seignorial mansion, where his friend don Andrés was trying in vain to
pacify the wife.

"That man!" doña Bernarda would stammer in her rage. "That man is going
to ruin us! Doesn't he see he's compromising his son's future?"

His most enthusiastic adherents, without losing their traditional
respect for him, would speak smilingly of his "weaknesses"; but at
night, when don Ramón, exhausted by his struggle with the insatiable
demon gnawing at his spirit, would be snoring painfully away, with a
disgusting rattle that made it impossible for people in the house to
sleep, doña Bernarda would sit up in her bed with her thin arms folded
across her bosom, and pray to herself:

"My Lord, My God! May this man die as soon as possible! May all this
come to an end soon, oh Lord!"

And Bernarda's God must have heard her prayer, for her husband got
rapidly worse.

"Take care of yourself, don Ramón," his curate friends would say to him.
They were the only ones who dared allude to his disorderly life. "You're
getting old, and boyish pranks at your age are invitations to Death!"

The _cacique_ would smile, proud, at bottom, that all men should know
that such exploits were possible for a man at his age.

He had enough strength left for one more caress the day when, escorted
by don Andrés, Rafael entered with his degree as a Doctor of Law. He
gave the boy his shotgun--a veritable jewel, the admiration of the
entire District--and a magnificent horse. And as if he had been waiting
around just to see the realization of old Don Jaime's ambition, which he
himself had not been able to fulfill, he passed away.

All the bells of the city tolled mournfully.

The Party weekly came out with a black border a palm wide; and from all
over the District folks came in droves to see whether the powerful don
Ramón Brull, who had been able to rain upon the just and unjust alike on
this earth, could possibly have died the same as any other human being.




III


When doña Bernarda found herself alone, and absolute mistress of her
home, she could not conceal her satisfaction.

Now they would see what a woman could do.

She counted on the advice and experience of don Andrés, who was closer
than ever to her now; and on the prestige of Rafael, the young lawyer,
who bade fair to sustain the reputation of the Brulls.

The power of the family continued unchanged. Don Andrés, who, at the
death of his master, had succeeded to the authority of a second father
in the Brull house, saw to the maintenance of relations with the
authorities at the provincial capital and with the still bigger fish in
Madrid. Petitions were heard in the _patio_ the same as ever. Loyal
party adherents were received as cordially as before and the same favors
were done, nor was there any decline of influence in places that don
Andrés referred to as "the spheres of public administration."

There came an election for Parliament, and as usual, doña Bernarda
secured the triumph of the individual whose nomination had been dictated
from Madrid. Don Ramón had left the party machine in perfect condition;
all it needed was enough "grease" to keep it running smoothly; and there
his widow was besides, ever alert at the slightest suggestion of a creak
in the gearing.

At provincial headquarters they spoke of the District with the usual
confidence:

"It's ours. Brull's son is as powerful as the old man himself."

The truth was that Rafael took little interest in "the Party." He looked
upon it as one of the family properties, the title to which no one could
dispute. He confined his personal activities to obeying his mother. "Go
to Riola with don Andrés. Our friends there will be happy to see you."
And he would go on the trip, to suffer the torment of an interminable
rally, a _paella_, during which his fellow partisans would bore him with
their uncouth merriment and ill-mannered flattery. "You really ought to
give your horse a couple of days' rest. Instead of going out for a ride,
spend your afternoon at the Club! Our fellows are complaining they never
get a sight of you." Whereupon Rafael would give up his rides--his sole
pleasure practically--and plunge into a thick smoke-laden atmosphere of
noise and shouting, where he would have to answer questions of the most
illustrious members of the party. They would sit around, filling their
coffee-saucers with cigar-ash, disputing as to which was the better
orator, Castelar or Canovas, and, in case of a war between France and
Germany, which of the two would win--idle subjects that always provoked
disagreements and led to quarrels.

The only time he entered into voluntary relations with "the Party" was
when he took his pen in hand and manufactured for the Brull weekly a
series of articles on "Law and Morality" and "Liberty and Faith,"--the
rehashings of a faithful, industrious plodder at school, prolix
commonplaces seasoned with what metaphysical terminology he remembered,
and which, from the very reason that nobody understood them, excited
the admiration of his fellow partisans. They would blink at the articles
and say to don Andrés:

"What a pen, eh? Just let anyone dare to argue with him.... Deep, that
noodle, I tell you!"

Nights, when his mother did not oblige him to visit the home of some
influential voter who must be kept content, he would spend reading, no
longer, however, as in Valencia, books lent him by the canon, but works
that he bought himself, following the recommendations of the press, and
that his mother respected with the veneration always inspired in her by
printed paper sewed and bound, an awe comparable only to the scorn she
felt for newspapers, dedicated, every one of them, as she averred, to
the purpose of insulting holy things and stirring up the brutal passions
of "the rabble."

These years of random reading, unrestrained by the scruples and the
fears of a student, gradually and quietly shattered many of Rafael's
firm beliefs. They broke the mould in which the friends of his mother
had cast his mind and made him dream of a broader life than the one
known to those about him. French novels transported him to a Paris that
far outshone the Madrid he had known for a moment in his graduate days.
Love stories awoke in his youthful imagination an ardor for adventure
and involved passions in which there was something of the intense love
of indulgence that had been his father's besetting sin. He came to dwell
more and more in the fictitious world of his readings, where there were
elegant, perfumed, clever women, practicing a certain art in the
refinement of their vices.

The uncouth, sunburned orchard-girls inspired him with revulsion as if
they had been women of another race, creatures of an inferior genus. The
young ladies of the city seemed to him peasants in disguise, with the
narrow, selfish, stingy instincts of their parents. They knew the exact
market price of oranges and just how much land was owned by each
aspirant to their hand; and they adjusted their love to the wealth of
the pretender, believing it the test of quality to appear implacable
toward everything not fashioned to the mould of their petty life of
prejudice and tradition.

For that reason he was deeply bored by his colorless, humdrum existence,
so far removed from that other purely imaginative life which rose from
the pages of his books and enveloped him with an exotic, exciting
perfume.

Some day he would be free, and take flight on his own wings; and that
day of liberation would come when he got to be deputy. He waited for his
coming of age much as an heir-apparent waits for the moment of his
coronation.

From early boyhood he had been taught to look forward to the great event
which would cut his life in two, opening out new pathways for a "forward
march" to fame and fortune.

"When my little boy gets to be deputy," his mother would say in her rare
moments of affectionate expansiveness, "the girls will fight for him
because he is so handsome! And he'll marry a millionairess!"

Meanwhile, in long years of impatient anticipation, his life went on,
with no special circumstance to break its dull monotony--the life of an
aspirant certain of his lot, "killing time" till the call should come
to enter on his heritage. He was like those noble youngsters of bygone
centuries who, graced in their cradles by the rank of colonel from the
monarch, played around with hoop and top till they were old enough to
join their regiments. He had been born a deputy, and a deputy he was
sure to be: for the moment, he was waiting for his cue in the wings of
the theatre of life.

His trip to Italy on a pilgrimage to see the Pope was the one event that
had disturbed the dreary course of his existence. But in that country of
marvels, with a pious canon for a guide, he visited churches rather than
museums. Of theatres he saw only two--larks permitted by his tutor,
whose austerity was somewhat mollified in those changing scenes.
Indifferently they passed the famous artistic works of the Italian
churches, but paused always to venerate some relic with miracles as
famous as absurd. Even so, Rafael managed to catch a confused and
passing glimpse of a world different from the one in which he was
predestined to pass his life. From a distance he sensed something of the
love of pleasure and romance he had drunk in like an intoxicating wine
from his reading. In Milan he admired a gilded, adventurous bohemia of
opera; in Rome, the splendor of a refined, artistic aristocracy in
perpetual rivalry with that of Paris and London; and in Florence, an
English nobility that had come in quest of sunlight and a chance to air
its straw hats, show off the fair hair of its ladies, and chatter its
own language in gardens where once upon a time the somber Dante dreamed
and Boccaccio told his merry tales to drive fear of plague away.

That journey, of impressions as rapid and as fleeting as a reel of
moving-pictures, leaving in Rafael's mind a maze of names, buildings,
paintings and cities, served to give greater breadth to his thinking, as
well as added stimulus to his imagination. Wider still became the gulf
that separated him from the people and ideas he met in his common
everyday life. He felt a longing for the extraordinary, for the
original, for the adventuresomeness of artistic youth; and political
master of a county, heir of a feudal dominion virtually, he nevertheless
would read the name of any writer or painter whatsoever with the
superstitious respect of a rustic churl. "A wretched, ruined lot who
haven't even a bed to die on," his mother viewed such people; but Rafael
nourished a secret envy for all who lived in that ideal world, which he
was certain must be filled with pleasures and exciting things he had
scarcely dared to dream of. What would he not give to be a bohemian like
the personages he met in the books of Murger, member of a merry band of
"intellectuals," leading a life of joy and proud devotion to higher
things in a bourgeois age that knew only thirst for money and prejudice
of class! Talent for saying pretty things, for writing winged verses
that soared like larks to heaven! A garret underneath the roof, off
there in Paris, in the Latin Quarter! A Mimí poor but spiritual, who
would love him, and--between one kiss and another--be able to
discuss--not the price of oranges, like the girls who followed him with
tender eyes at home--but serious "elevated" things! In exchange for all
that he would gladly have given his future deputyship and all the
orchards he had inherited, which, though encumbered by mortgages not to
mention moral debts left by the rascality of his father and
grandfather--still would bring him a tidy annuity for realizing his
bohemian dreams.

Such preoccupations made life as a party leader, tied down to the petty
interests of a constituency, quite unthinkable! At the risk of angering
his mother, he fled the Club, to court the solitude of the hills and
fields. There his imagination could range in greater freedom, peopling
the roads, the meadows, the orange groves with creatures of his fancy,
often conversing aloud with the heroines of some "grand passion,"
carried on along the lines laid down by the latest novel he had read.

One afternoon toward the close of summer Rafael climbed the little
mountain of San Salvador, which lies close to the city. From the
eminence he was fond of looking out over the vast domains of his family.
For all the inhabitants of that fertile plain were--as don Andrés said
whenever he wished to emphasize the party's greatness--like so many
cattle branded with the name of Brull.

As he went up the winding, stony trail, Rafael thought of the mountains
of Assisi, which he had visited with his friend the canon, a great
admirer of the Saint of Umbria. It was a landscape that suggested
asceticism. Crags of bluish or reddish rock lined the roadway on either
side, with pines and cypresses rising from the hollows, and extending
black, winding, snaky roots out over the fallow soil. At intervals,
white shrines with tiny roofs harbored mosaics of glazed tiles depicting
the Stations on the _Via Dolorosa_. The pointed green caps of the
cypresses, as they waved, seemed bent on frightening away the white
butterflies that were fluttering about over the rosemary and the
nettles. The parasol-pines projected patches of shade across the burning
road, where the sun-baked earth crackled and crumbled to dead dust under
every footstep.

Reaching the little square in front of the Hermitage, he rested from the
ascent, stretching out full length on the crescent of rubblework that
formed a bench near the sanctuary. There silence reigned, the silence of
high hill-tops. From below, the noises of the restless life and labor of
the plain came weakened, softened, by the wind, like the murmuring of
waves breaking on a distant shore. Among the prickly-pears that grew in
close thicket behind the bench, insects were buzzing about, shining in
the sun like buds of gold. Some hens, belonging to the Hermitage, were
pecking away in one corner of the square, clucking, and dusting their
feathers in the gravel.

Rafael surrendered to the charm of the exquisite scene. With reason had
it been called "Paradise" by its ancient owners, Moors from the magic
gardens of Bagdad, accustomed to the splendors of _The Thousand and One
Nights_, but who went into ecstacies nevertheless on beholding for the
first time the wondrous _ribera_ of Valencia!

Throughout the great valley, orange groves, extending like shimmering
waves of velvet; hedges and enclosures of lighter green, cutting the
crimson earth into geometric figures; clumps of palms spurting like jets
of verdure upward toward the sky, and falling off again in languorous
swoons; villas blue and rose-colored, nestling in flowering gardens;
white farmhouses half concealed behind green swirls of forest; spindling
smokestacks of irrigation engines, with yellow sooty tops; Alcira, its
houses clustered on the island and overflowing to the opposite bank, all
of whitish, bony hue, pock-marked with tiny windows; beyond, Carcagente,
the rival city, girdled in its belt of leafy orchards; off toward the
sea, sharp, angular mountains, with outlines that from afar suggested
the fantastic castles imagined by Doré; and inland, the towns of the
upper _ribera_ floating in an emerald lake of orchard, the distant
mountains taking on a violet hue from the setting sun that was creeping
like a bristly porcupine of gold into the hot vapors of the horizon.

Behind the Hermitage all the lower _ribera_ stretched, one expanse of
rice-fields drowned under an artificial flood; then, Sueca and Cullera,
their white houses perched on those fecund lagoons like towns in
landscapes of India; then, Albufera, with its lake, a sheet of silver
glistening in the sunlight; then, Valencia, like a cloud of smoke
drifting along the base of a mountain range of hazy blue; and, at last,
in the background, the halo, as it were, of this apotheosis of light and
color, the Mediterranean--the palpitant azure Gulf bounded by the cape
of San Antonio and the peaks of Sagunto and Almenara, that jutted up
against the sky-line like the black fins of giant whales.

As Rafael looked down upon the towers of the crumbling convent of La
Murta, almost hidden in its pine-groves, he thought of all the tragedy
of the Reconquest; and almost mourned the fate of those farmer-warriors
whose white cloaks he could imagine as still floating among the groves
of those magic trees of Asia's paradise. It was the influence of the
Moor in his Spanish ancestry. Christian, clerical even, though he was,
he had inherited a melancholy, dreamy turn of mind from the very Arabs
who had created all that Eden.

He pictured to himself the tiny kingdoms of those old _walis_; vassal
districts very like the one his family ruled. But instead of resting on
influence, bribery, intimidation, and the abuse of law, they lived by
the lances of horsemen as apt at tilling the soil as at capering in
tournaments with an elegance never equalled by any chevaliers of the
North. He could see the court of Valencia, with the romantic gardens of
Ruzafa, where poets sang mournful strophes over the wane of the
Valencian Moor, while beautiful maidens listened from behind the
blossoming rose-bushes. And then the catastrophe came. In a torrent of
steel, barbarians swept down from the arid hills of Aragon to appease
their hunger in the bounty of the plain--the _almogávares_--naked, wild,
bloodthirsty savages, who never washed. And as allies of this horde,
bankrupt Christian noblemen, their worn-out lands mortgaged to the
Israelite, but good cavalrymen, withal, armored, and with dragonwings on
their helmets; and among the Christians, adventurers of various tongues,
soldiers of fortune out for plunder and booty in the name of the Cross
--the "black sheep" of every Christian family. And they seized the great
garden of Valencia, installed themselves in the Moorish palaces, called
themselves counts and marquises, and with their swords held that
privileged country for the King of Aragon, while the conquered Saracens
continued to fertilize it with their toil.

"Valencia, Valencia, Valencia! Thy walls are ruins, thy gardens
grave-yards, thy sons slaves unto the Christian ..." groaned the poet,
covering his eyes with his cloak. And Rafael could see, passing like
phantoms before his eyes, leaning forward on the necks of small, sleek,
sinewy horses, that seemed to fly over the ground, their legs
horizontal, their nostrils belching smoke, the Moors, the real people of
Valencia, conquered, degenerated by the very abundance of their soil,
abandoning their gardens before the onrush of brutal, primitive
invaders, speeding on their way toward the unending night of African
barbarism. At this eternal exile of the first Valencians who left to
oblivion and decay a civilization, the last vestiges of which today
survive in the universities of Fez, Rafael felt the sorrow he would have
experienced had it all been a disaster to his family or his party.

While he was thinking of all these dead things, life in its feverish
agitation surrounded him. A cloud of sparrows was darting about the roof
of the Hermitage. On the mountain side a flock of dark-fleeced sheep was
grazing; and when any of them discovered a blade of grass among the
rocks, they would begin calling to one another with a melancholy
bleating.

Rafael could hear the voices of some women who seemed to be climbing the
road, and from his reclining position he finally made out two parasols
that were gradually rising to view over the edge of his bench. One was
of flaming red silk, skilfully embroidered and suggesting the filigreed
dome of a mosque; the second, of flowered calico, was apparently keeping
at a respectful distance behind the first.

Two women entered the little square, and as Rafael sat up and removed
his hat, the taller, who seemed to be the mistress, acknowledged his
courtesy with a slight bow, went on to the other end of the esplanade,
and stood, with her back turned toward him, looking at the view. The
other sat down some distance off, breathing laboriously from the
exertion of the climb.

Who were those women?... Rafael knew the whole city, and had never seen
them.

The one seated near him was doubtless the servant of the other--her maid
or her companion. She was dressed in black, simply but with a certain
charm, like the French soubrettes he had seen in illustrated novels. But
rustic origin and lack of cultivation were evident from the stains on
the backs of her unshapely hands; from her broad, flat, finger-nails;
and from her large ungainly feet, quite out of harmony with the pair of
stylish boots she was wearing--cast-off articles, doubtless, of the
lady. She was pretty, nevertheless, with a fresh exuberance of youth.
Her large, gray, credulous eyes were those of a stupid but playful lamb;
her hair, straight, and a very light blond, hung loosely here and there
over a freckled face, dark with sunburn. She handled her closed parasol
somewhat awkwardly and kept looking anxiously at the doubled gold chain
that drooped from her neck to her waist, as if to reassure herself that
a gift long-coveted had not been lost.

Rafael's interest drifted to the lady. His eyes rested on the back of a
head of tightly-gathered golden hair, as luminous as a burnished helmet;
on a white neck, plump, rounded; on a pair of broad, lithe shoulders,
hidden under a blue silk blouse, the lines tapering rapidly, gracefully
toward the waist; on a gray skirt, finally, falling in harmonious folds
like the draping of a statue, and under the hem the solid heels of two
shoes of English style encasing feet that must have been as agile and as
strong as they were tiny.

The lady called to her maid in a voice that was sonorous, vibrant,
velvety, though Rafael could catch only the accented syllables of her
words, that seemed to melt together in the melodious silence of the
mountain top. The young man was sure she had not spoken Spanish. A
foreigner, almost certainly!...

She was expressing admiration and enthusiasm for the view, talking
rapidly, pointing out the principal towns that could be seen, calling
them by their names,--the only words that Rafael could make out clearly.
Who was this woman whom he had never seen, who spoke a foreign language
and yet knew the _ribera_ well? Perhaps the wife of one of the French or
English orange-dealers established in the city! Meanwhile his eyes were
devouring that superb, that opulent, that elegant beauty which seemed to
be challenging him with its indifference to his presence.

The keeper of the Hermitage issued cautiously from the house--a peasant
who made his living from visitors to the heights. Attracted by the
promising appearance of the strange lady, the hermit came forward to
greet her, offering to fetch water from the cistern, and to unveil the
image of the miraculous virgin, in her honor.

The woman turned around to answer the man, and that gave Rafael an
opportunity to study her at his leisure. She was tall, ever so tall, as
tall as he perhaps. But the impression her height of stature made was
softened by a grace of figure that revealed strength allied to elegance.
A strong bust, sculpturesque, supporting a head that engaged the young
man's wrapt attention. A hot mist of emotion seemed to cloud his vision
as he looked into her large eyes, so green, so luminous! The golden hair
fell forward upon a forehead of pearly whiteness, veined at the temples
with delicate lines of blue. Viewed in profile her gracefully moulded
nose, quivering with vitality at the nostrils, filled out a beauty that
was distinctly modern, piquantly charming. In those lineaments, Rafael
thought he could recognize any number of famous actresses. He had seen
her before. Where?... He did not know. Perhaps in some illustrated
weekly! Perhaps in some album of stage celebrities! Or maybe on the
cover of some match-box--a common medium of publicity for famous
European belles. Of one thing he was certain: at sight of that wonderful
face he felt as though he were meeting an old friend after a long
absence.

The recluse, in hopes of a perquisite, led the two women toward the door
of the hermitage, where his wife and daughter had appeared, to feast
their eyes on the huge diamonds sparkling at the ears of the strange
lady.

"Enter, _siñorita_" the rustic invited. "I'll show you the Virgin, the
Virgin _del Lluch_, you understand, the only genuine one. She came here
alone all the way from Majorca. People down in Palma claim they have the
real Virgin. But what can they say for themselves? They are jealous
because our Lady chose Alcira; and here we have her, proving that she's
the real one by the miracles she works."

He opened the door of the tiny church, which was as cool and gloomy as a
cellar. At the rear, on a baroque altar of tarnished gold, stood the
little statue with its hollow cloak and its black face.

Rapidly, by rote almost, the good man recited the history of the image.
The Virgin _del Lluch_ was the patroness of Majorca. A hermit had been
compelled to flee from there, for a reason no one had been able to
discover--perhaps to get away from some Saracen girl of those exciting,
war-like days! And to rescue the Virgin from profanation he brought her
to Alcira, and built this sanctuary for her. Later people from Majorca
came to return her to their island. But the celestial lady had taken a
liking to Alcira and its inhabitants. Over the water, and without even
wetting her feet, she came gliding back. Then the Majorcans, to keep
what had happened quiet, counterfeited a new statue that looked just
like the first. All this was gospel truth, and as proof, there lay the
original hermit buried at the foot of the altar; and there was the
Virgin, too, her face blackened by the sun and the salt wind on her
miraculous voyage over the sea.

The beautiful lady smiled slightly, as she listened. The maid was all
ears, not to lose a word of a language she but half understood, her
credulous peasant eyes traveling from the Virgin to the hermit and from
the hermit to the Virgin, plainly expressing the wonder she was feeling
at such a portentous miracle. Rafael had followed the party into the
shrine and taken a position near the fascinating stranger. She, however,
pretended not to see him.

"That is only a legend," he ventured to remark, when the rustic had
finished his story. "You understand, of course, that nobody hereabouts
accepts such tales as true."

"I suppose so," the lady answered coldly.

"Legend or no legend, don Rafael," the recluse grumbled, somewhat
peeved, "that's what my grandfather and all the folk of his day used to
say; and that's what people still believe. If the story has been handed
down so long, there must be something to it."

The patch of sunlight that shone through the doorway upon the flagstones
was darkened by the shadow of a woman. It was a poorly clad orchard
worker, young, it seemed, but with a face pale, and as rough as wrinkled
paper, all the crevices and hollows of her cranium showing, her eyes
sunken and dull, her unkempt hair escaping from beneath her knotted
kerchief. She was barefoot, carrying her shoes in her hand. She stood
with her legs wide apart, as if in an effort to keep her balance. She
seemed to feel intense pain whenever she stepped upon the ground.
Illness and poverty were written on every feature of her person.

The recluse knew her well; and as the unfortunate creature, panting with
the effort of the climb, sank upon a little bench to rest her feet, he
told her story briefly to the visitors.

She was ill, very, very ill. With no faith in doctors, who, according to
her, "treated her with nothing but words"; she believed that the Virgin
_del Lluch_ would ultimately cure her. And, though at home she could
scarcely move from her chair and was always being scolded by her husband
for neglecting the housework, every week she would climb the steep
mountain-side, barefoot, her shoes in her hand.

The hermit approached the sick woman, accepting a copper coin she
offered. A few couplets to the Virgin, as usual, he supposed!

"Visanteta, a few _gochos_!" shouted the rustic, going to the door. And
his daughter came into the chapel--a dirty, dark-skinned creature with
African eyes, who might just have escaped from a gipsy band.

She took a seat upon a bench, turning her back upon the Virgin with the
bored ill-humored expression of a person compelled to do a dull task day
after day; and in a hoarse, harsh, almost frantic voice, which echoed
deafeningly in that small enclosure, she began a drawling chant that
rehearsed the story of the statue and the portentous miracles it had
wrought.

The sick woman, kneeling before the altar without releasing her hold
upon her shoes, the heels of her feet, which were bruised and bleeding
from the stones, showing from under her skirts, repeated a refrain at
the end of each stanza, imploring the protection of the Virgin. Her
voice had a weak and hollow sound, like the wail of a child. Her sunken
eyes, misty with tears, were fixed upon the Virgin with a dolorous
expression of supplication. Her words came more tremulous and more
distant at each couplet.

The beautiful stranger was plainly affected at the pitiful sight. Her
maid had knelt and was following the sing-song rhythm of the chant, with
prayers in a language that Rafael recognized at last. It was Italian.

"What a great thing faith is!" the lady murmured with a sigh.

"Yes, _señora_; a beautiful thing!"

Rafael tried to think of something "brilliant" on the grandeur of faith,
from Saint Thomas, or one of the other "sound" authors he had studied.
But he ransacked his memory in vain. Nothing! That charming woman had
filled his mind with thoughts far other than quotations from the
Fathers!

The couplets to the Virgin came to an end. With the last stanza the wild
singer disappeared; and the sick woman, after several abortive efforts,
rose painfully to her feet. The recluse approached her with the
solicitude of a shopkeeper concerned for the quality of his wares. Were
things going any better? Were the visits to the Virgin doing good?...
The unfortunate woman did not dare to answer, for fear of offending the
miraculous Lady. She did not know!... Yes ... she really must be a
little better ... But that climb!... This offering had not had such good
results as the previous ones, she thought; but she had faith: the Virgin
would be good to her and cure her in the end. At the church door she
collapsed from pain. The recluse placed her on his chair and ran to the
cistern to get a glass of water. The Italian maid, her eyes bulging with
fright, leaned over the poor woman, petting her:

"_Poverina! Poverina!... Coraggio_!" The invalid, rallying from her
swoon, opened her eyes and gazed vacantly at the stranger, not
understanding her words but guessing their kindly intention.

The lady stepped out to the _plazoleta_, deeply moved, it seemed, by
what she had been witnessing. Rafael followed, with affected
absent-mindedness, somewhat ashamed of his insistence, yet at the same
time looking for an opportunity to renew their conversation.

On finding herself once more in the presence of that wonderful panorama,
where the eye ran unobstructed to the very limit of the horizon, the
charming creature seemed to breathe more freely.

"Good God!" she exclaimed, as if speaking to herself. "How sad and yet
how wonderful! This view is ever so beautiful. But that woman!... That
poor woman!"

"She's been that way for years, to my personal knowledge," Rafael
remarked, pretending to have known the invalid for a long time, though
he had scarcely ever deigned to notice her before. "Our peasants are
queer people. They despise doctors, and refuse their help, preferring to
kill themselves with these barbarous prayers and devotions, which they
expect will do them good."

"But they may be right, after all!" the lady replied. "Disease is often
incurable, and science can do for it about as much as faith--sometimes,
even less.... But here we are laughing and enjoying ourselves while
suffering passes us by, rubs elbows with us even, without our
noticing!"...

Rafael was at a loss for reply. What sort of woman was this? What a way
she had of talking! Accustomed as he was to the commonplace chatter of
his mother's friends, and still under the influence of this meeting,
which had so deeply disturbed him, the poor boy imagined himself in the
presence of a sage in skirts--a philosopher under the disguise of
female beauty come from beyond the Pyrenees, from some gloomy German
alehouse perhaps, to upset his peace of mind.

The stranger was silent for a time, her gaze fixed upon the horizon.
Then around her attractive sensuous lips, through which two rows of
shining, dazzling teeth were gleaming, the suggestion of a smile began
to play, a smile of joy at the landscape.

"How beautiful this all is!" she exclaimed, without turning toward her
companion. "How I have longed to see it again!"

At last the opportunity had come to ask the question he had been so
eager to put: and she herself had offered the opportunity!

"Do you come from here?" he asked, in a tremulous voice, fearing lest
his inquisitiveness be scornfully repelled.

"Yes," the lady replied, curtly.

"Well, that's strange. I have never seen you...."

"There's nothing strange about that. I arrived only yesterday."

"Just as I said!... I know everyone in the city. My name is Rafael
Brull. I'm the son of don Ramón, who was mayor of Alcira many times."

At last he had let it out! The poor fellow had been dying to reveal his
name, tell who he was, pronounce that magic word so influential in the
District, certain it would be the "Open Sesame" to that wonderful
stranger's grace! After that, perhaps, she would tell him who she was!
But the lady commented on his declaration with an "Ah!" of cold
indifference. She did not show that his name was even known to her,
though she did sweep him with a rapid, scrutinizing, half-mocking glance
that seemed to betray a hidden thought:

"Not bad-looking, but what a dunce!"

Rafael blushed, feeling he had made a false step in volunteering his
name with the pompousness he would have used toward some bumpkin of the
region.

A painful silence followed. Rafael was anxious to get out of his plight.
That glacial indifference, that disdainful courtesy, which, without a
trace of rudeness, still kept him at a distance, hurt his vanity to the
quick. But since there was no stopping now, he ventured a second
question:

"And are you thinking of remaining in Alcira very long?..."

Rafael thought the ground was giving way beneath his feet. Another
glance from those green eyes! But, alas, this time it was cold and
menacing, a livid flash of lightning refracted from a mirror of ice.

"I don't know ..." she answered, with a deliberateness intended to
accentuate unmistakable scorn. "I usually leave places the moment they
begin to bore me." And looking Rafael squarely in the face she added,
with freezing formality, after a pause:

"Good afternoon, sir."

Rafael was crushed. He saw her turn toward the doorway of the sanctuary
and call her maid. Every step of hers, every movement of her proud
figure, seemed to raise a barrier in front of him. He saw her bend
affectionately over the sick orchard-woman, open a little pink bag that
her maid handed her, and, rummaging about among some sparkling trinkets
and embroidered handkerchiefs, draw out a hand filled with shining
silver coins. She emptied the money into the apron of the astonished
peasant girl, gave something as well to the recluse, who was no less
astounded, and then, opening her red parasol, walked off, followed by
her maid.

As she passed Rafael, she answered the doffing of his hat with a barely
perceptible inclination of her head; and, without looking at him,
started on her way down the stony mountain path.

The young man stood gazing after her through the pines and the cypresses
as her proud athletic figure grew smaller in the distance.

The perfume of her presence seemed to linger about him when she had
gone, obsessing him with the atmosphere of superiority and exotic
elegance that emanated from her whole being.

Rafael noticed finally that the recluse was approaching, unable to
restrain a desire to communicate his admiration to someone.

"What a woman!" the man cried, rolling his eyes to express his full
enthusiasm.

She had given him a _duro_, one of those white discs which, in that
atheistic age, so rarely ascended that mountain trail! And there the
poor invalid sat at the door of the Hermitage, staring into her apron
blankly, hypnotized by the glitter of all that wealth! _Duros, pesetas_,
two-_pesetas_, dimes! All the money the lady had brought! Even a gold
button, which must have come from her glove!

Rafael shared in the general astonishment. But who the devil was that
woman?

"How do I know!" the rustic answered. "But judging from the language of
the maid," he went on with great conviction: "I should say she was some
Frenchwoman ... some Frenchwoman ... with a pile of money!"

Rafael turned once more in the direction of the two parasols that were
slowly winding down the slope. They were barely visible now. The larger
of the two, a mere speck of red, was already blending into the green of
the first orchards on the plain ... At last it had disappeared
completely.

Left alone, Rafael burst into rage! The place where he had made such a
sorry exhibition of himself seemed odious to him now. He fumed with
vexation at the memory of that cold glance, which had checked any
advance toward familiarity, repelled him, crushed him! The thought of
his stupid questions filled him with hot shame.

Without replying to the "good-evening" from the recluse and his family,
he started down the mountain, in hopes of meeting the woman again,
somewhere, some time, he knew not when nor how. The heir of don Ramón,
the hope of the District, strode furiously on, his arms aquiver with a
nervous tremor. And aggressively, menacingly, addressing his own ego as
though it were a henchman cringing terror-stricken in front of him, he
muttered:

"You imbecile!... You lout!... You peasant! You provincial ass! You ...
rube!"




IV


Doña Bernarda did not suspect the reason why her son rose on the
following morning pale, and with dark rings under his eyes, as if he had
spent a bad night. Nor could his political friends guess, that
afternoon, why in such fine weather, Rafael should come and shut himself
up in the stifling atmosphere of the Club.

When he came in, a crowd of noisy henchmen gathered round him to discuss
all over again the great news that had been keeping "the Party" in
feverish excitement for a week past: the Cortes were to be dissolved!
The newspapers had been talking of nothing else. Within two or three
months, before the close of the year at the latest, there would be a new
election, and therewith, as all averred, a landslide for don Rafael
Brull. The intimate friend and lieutenant of the House of Brull was the
best informed. If the elections took place on the date indicated by the
newspapers, Rafael would still be five or six months short of his
twenty-fifth birth-day. But don Andrés had written to Madrid to consult
the Party leaders. The prime minister was agreeable--"there were
precedents!"--and even though Rafael should be a few weeks short of the
legal age, the seat would go to him just the same. They would send no
more "foundlings" from Madrid! Alcira would have no more "unknowns"
foisted upon her! And the whole Tribe of Brull dependents was preparing
for the contest with the enthusiasm of a prize-fighter sure of victory
beforehand.

All this bustling expectation left Rafael cold. For years he had been
looking forward to that election time, when the chance would come for
his free life in Madrid. Now that it was at hand he was completely
indifferent to the whole matter, as if he were the last person in the
world concerned.

He looked impatiently at the table where don Andrés, with three other
leading citizens, was having his daily hand at cards before coming to
sit down at Rafael's side. That was a canny habit of don Andrés. He
liked to be seen in his capacity of Regent, sheltering the heir-apparent
under the wing of his prestige and experienced wisdom.

Well along in the afternoon, when the Club parlor was less crowded with
members, the atmosphere freer of smoke, and the ivory balls less noisy
on the green cloth, don Andrés considered his game at an end, and took a
chair in his disciple's circle, where as usual Rafael was sitting with
the most parasitic and adulatory of his partisans.

The boy pretended to be listening to their conversation, but all the
while he was preparing mentally a question he had decided to put to don
Andrés the day before.

At last he made up his mind.

"You know everybody, don Andrés. Well, yesterday, up on San Salvador, I
met a fine-looking woman who seems to be a foreigner. She says she's
living here. Who is she?"

The old man burst into a loud laugh, and pushed his chair back from the
table, so that his big paunch would have room to shake in.

"So you've seen her, too!" he exclaimed between one guffaw and another.
"Well, sir, what a city this is! That woman got in the day before
yesterday, and everybody's seen her already. She's the talk of the town.
You were the only one who hadn't asked me about her so far. And now
you've bitten!... Ho! Ho! Ho! What a place this is!"

When he had had his laugh out--Rafael, meanwhile, did not see the
joke--he continued in more measured style:

"That 'foreign woman,' as you call her, boy, comes from Alcira. In fact,
she was born about two doors from you. Don't you know doña Pepa, 'the
doctor's woman,' they call her--a little lady who has an orchard close
by the river and lives in the Blue House, that's always under water when
the Júcar floods? She once owned the place you have just beyond where
you live, and she's the one who sold it to your father--the only
property don Ramón ever bought, so far as I know. Don't you remember?"

Rafael thought he did. As he went back in his memory, the picture of an
old wrinkled woman rose before his mind, a woman round-shouldered, bent
with age, but with a kindly face smiling with simple-mindedness and good
nature. He could see her now, with a rosary usually in her hand, a
camp-stool under her arm, and her _mantilla_ drawn down over her face.
As she passed the Brull door on her way to church, she would greet his
mother; and doña Bernarda would remark in a patronizing way: "Doña Pepa
is a very fine woman; one of God's own souls.... The only decent person
in her family."

"Yes; I remember; I remember doña Pepa," said Rafael.

"Well, your 'foreigner,'" don Andrés continued, "is doña Pepa's niece,
daughter of her brother, the doctor. The girl has been all over the
world singing grand opera. You were probably too young to remember
Doctor Moreno, who was the scandal of the province in those days...."

But Rafael certainly did remember Doctor Moreno! That name was one of
the freshest of his childhood recollections, the bugaboo of many nights
of terror and alarm, when he would hide his trembling head under the
clothes. If he cried about going to bed so early, his mother would say
to him in a mysterious voice:

"If you don't keep quiet and go right to sleep I'll send for Doctor
Moreno!"

A weird, a formidable personage, the Doctor! Rafael could see him as
clearly as if he were sitting there in front of him; with that huge,
black, curly beard; those large, burning eyes that always shone with an
inner fire; and that tall, angular figure that seemed taller than ever
as young Brull evoked it from the hazes of his early years. Perhaps the
Doctor had been a good fellow, who knows! At any rate Rafael thought so,
as his mind now reverted to that distant period of his life; but he
could still remember the fright he had felt as a child, when once in a
narrow street he met the terrible Doctor, who had looked at him through
those glowing pupils and caressed his cheeks gently and kindly with a
hand that seemed to the youngster as hot as a live coal! He had fled in
terror, as almost all good boys did when the Doctor petted them.

What a horrible reputation Doctor Moreno had! The curates of the town
spoke of him in terms of hair-raising horror. An infidel! A man cut off
from Mother Church! Nobody knew for certain just what high authority had
excommunicated him, but he was, no doubt, outside the pale of decent,
Christian folks. Proof of that there was, a-plenty. His whole attic was
filled with mysterious books in foreign languages, all containing
horrible doctrines against God and the authority of His representatives
on earth. He defended a certain fellow by the name of Darwin, who
claimed than men were related to monkeys, a view that gave much
amusement to the indignant doña Bernarda, who repeated all the jokes on
the crazy notion her favorite preacher cracked of a Sunday in the
pulpit. And such a sorcerer! Hardly a disease could resist Doctor
Moreno. He worked wonders in the suburbs, among the lower scum; and
those laborers adored him with as much fear as affection. He succeeded
with people who had been given up by the older doctors, wiseacres in
long frocks and with gold-headed canes, who trusted more in God than in
science, as Rafael's mother would say in praise of them. That devil of a
physician used new and unheard-of treatments he learned from atheistic
reviews and suspicious books he imported from abroad. His competitors
grumbled also because the Doctor had a mania for treating poor folk
gratis, actually leaving money, sometimes, into the bargain; and he
often refused to attend wealthy people of "sound principles" who had
been obliged to get their confessor's permission before placing
themselves in his hands.

"Rascal!... Heretic!... Lower scum!..." doña Bernarda would exclaim.

But she said such things in a very low voice and with a certain fear,
for those days were bad ones for the House of Brull. Rafael remembered
how gloomy his father had been about that time, hardly even leaving the
_patio_. Had it not been for the respect his hairy claws and his
frowning eye-brows inspired, the rabble would have eaten him alive.
"Others" were in command, ... "others" ... everybody, in fact, except
the House of Brull.

The monarchy had been treasonably overturned; the men of the Revolution
of September were legislating in Madrid. The petty tradesmen of the
city, ever rebellious against the tyranny of don Ramón, had taken guns
in their hands and formed a little militia, ready to send a fusilade
into the _cacique_ who had formerly trodden them under foot. In the
streets people were singing the _Marseillaise_, waving tricolored
bunting, and hurrahing for the Republic. Candles were being burned
before pictures of Castelar. And meantime that fanatical Doctor, a
Republican, was preaching on the public squares, explaining the "rights
of man" at daytime meetings in the country and at night meetings in
town. Wild with enthusiasm he repeated, in different words, the orations
of the portentous Tribune who in those days was traveling from one end
of Spain to the other, administering to the people the sacrament of
democracy to the music of his eloquence, which raised all the grandeurs
of History from the tomb.

Rafael's mother, shutting all the doors and windows, would lift her
angry eyes toward heaven every time the crowd, returning from a meeting,
would pass through her street with banners flying and halt two doors
away, in front of the Doctor's house, where they would cheer, and cheer.
"How long, oh Lord, how long?" And though nobody insulted her nor asked
her for so much as a pin, she talked of moving to some other country.
Those people demanded a Republic--they belonged, as she said, to the
"Dividing-up" gang. The way things were going, they'd soon be winning;
and then they would plunder the house, and perhaps cut her throat and
strangle the baby!

"Never mind them, never mind them!" the fallen _cacique_ would reply,
with a condescending smile. "They aren't so bad as you imagine. They'll
sing their _Marseillaise_ for a time and shout themselves hoarse. Why
shouldn't they, if they're content with so little? Other days are
coming. The Carlists will see to it that our cause triumphs."

In don Ramón's judgment, the Doctor was a good sort, though his head may
have been a bit turned by books. He knew him very well: they had been
schoolmates together, and Rafael's father had never cared to join the
hue and cry against Doctor Moreno. The one thing that seemed to bother
him was that, as soon as the Republic was proclaimed, the Doctor's
friends were eager to send him as a deputy to the Constituent Assembly
of '73. That lunatic a deputy! Whereas he, the friend and agent of so
many Conservative ministries, had never dared think of the office for
himself, because of the fairly superstitious awe in which he held it!
The end of the world was surely coming!

But the Doctor had refused the nomination. If he were to go to Madrid,
what would become of the poor people who depended on him for health and
protection? Besides, he liked a quiet, sedentary life, with his books
and his studies, where he could satisfy his desires without quarrels and
fighting. His deep convictions impelled him to mingle with the masses,
and speak in public places--where he proved to be a successful agitator,
but he refused to join party organizations; and after a lecture or an
oration, he would spend days and days with his books and magazines,
alone save for his sister--a docile, pious woman who worshipped him,
though she bewailed his irreligion--and for his little daughter, a
blonde girl whom Rafael could scarcely remember, because her father's
unpopularity with the "best people" kept the little child away from
"good society."

The Doctor had one passion--music; and everybody admired his talent for
that art. What didn't the man know, anyhow? According to doña Bernarda
and her friends, that remarkable skill had been acquired through "evil
arts." It was another fruit of his impiety! But that did not prevent
crowds from thronging the streets at night, cautioning pedestrians to
walk more softly as they approached his house; nor from opening their
windows to hear better when that devil of a doctor would be playing his
violoncello. This he did when certain friends of his came up from
Valencia to spend a few days with him--a queer, long-haired crew that
talked a strange language and referred to a fellow called Beethoven
with as much respect as if he were San Bernardo himself.

"Yes, don Andrés," said Rafael. "I remember Doctor Moreno very well."
And his ears seemed to tingle again with the diabolical melodies that
had floated in to the side of his little bed on terrible nights still
fresh in his memory.

"Very well," continued the old man. "That lady is the Doctor's daughter.
What a man he was! How he made your father and me fume in the days of
'73! Now that all that is so far in the past, I'll say he was a fine
fellow. His brain had gone somewhat bad from reading too much, like don
Quixote; and he was crazy over music. Most charming manners he had,
however. He married a beautiful orchard-girl, who happened to be very
poor. He said the marriage was ... for the purpose of perpetuating the
species--those were his very words--of having strong, sound, healthy
children. For that he didn't need to bother about his wife's social
position. What he was looking for was health. So he picked out that
Teresa of his, as strong as an ox, and as fresh as an apple. But little
good it did the poor woman. She had one baby and died a few days
afterward, despite the science and the desperate efforts of her husband.
They had lived together less than a year."

Rafael's companions were listening with as much attention as he; for
morbid curiosity is the characteristic of the people of small places,
where the keenest pleasure available is that of knowing the private
affairs of others intimately.

"And now comes the good part," don Andrés continued. "The mad Doctor
had two saints: Castelar and Beethoven. The pictures of those fellows
were scattered in every room of the house, even in the attic. This
Beethoven (in case you don't know it), was an Italian or an Englishman,
I'm not sure which--one of those fellows who makes music up out of his
head for people to play in theatres or for lunatics like Moreno to amuse
themselves with. Well, when his daughter was born the Doctor wondered
what name to give her. As a tribute to Emilio Castelar, his idol, he
felt he ought to call her Emilia: but he liked the sound of Leonora
better (no, not Lenor, but Leonora!). According to what he told us, that
was the title of the only opera Beethoven ever wrote--an opera he could
read, for that matter, the way I read the paper. Anyhow, the foreigner
won out; and the Doctor packed the child off to church with his sister,
who took a few neighbors of the poorer sort along to see Leonora
baptized.

"You can imagine what the priest said after he had looked in vain
through the catalogue of saints for that name. At the time I was
employed in the municipal offices, and I had to intervene. This was all
before the Revolution; Gonzalez Brabo was boss in those days--and good
old days they were! Let an enemy of law and order or sound religion just
raise his voice and he was off on his way to Fernando Pio in no time.
Well, what a racket the Doctor raised! He sat himself down in that
church--first time he'd ever been in the place--and insisted that his
daughter be labeled as he directed. Later he thought he would take her
home without any baptism at all, saying he had no use for the ceremony
anyhow, and that he put up with it only to please his sister. During
the argument, he called all the curates and acolytes assembled in the
sacristy there, a pack of 'brahmans.'"

"He must have said Brahmins," interrupted Rafael.

"Yes, that's it: and Bonzes, too--just joking, of course--I remember
very well. But finally he compromised and let her be baptized with the
orthodox name of 'Leonor.' Not that he cared what they called her in the
church. As he went out he said to the priest: "She will be 'Leonora' for
reasons that please her father, and which you wouldn't understand even
if I were to explain them to you." What a hubbub followed! Don Ramón and
I had to interfere to calm the good curates; they were for sending him
up for sacrilege, insult to religion, what not! We had to go some to
quiet things down. In those days, boy, a matter of that sort was more
serious than killing a man."

"Which name did she keep?" asked a friend of Rafael.

"Leonora, as her father wished. That girl always took after the old man.
Just as queer as he was. The Doctor all over again! I haven't seen her
yet. They say she's a stunning beauty, like her mother, who was a
blonde, and the handsomest girl in all these parts. When the Doctor had
dressed his wife up like a lady, she wasn't much for manners, but she
certainly was something to look at...."

"And what became of Moreno?" asked another. "Is it true, as they said
years ago, that he shot himself?"

"Oh, some say one thing, some another. Perhaps it's all a lie. Who
knows! It all happened so far away.... After the Republic fell, it was
the turn of decent people again. Poor Moreno took it all harder than he
did the death of his Teresa, and kept himself locked up in his house day
in, day out. Your father was stronger than before and we ran things in a
way that was a sight for sore eyes! Don Antonio up in Madrid gave orders
to the Governors to give us a free hand in cleaning up everything that
was left of the Revolution. The people who before had been cheering for
the Doctor all the time, now kept away from him for fear we should catch
them. Some afternoons he would go for a walk in the suburbs, or a stroll
over to his sister's orchard, near the river--always with Leonora at his
side. She was now about eleven years old. All his affection was centered
on her. Poor Doctor! How things had changed from the days when his mobs
would meet the troops shot for shot in the streets of Alcira, shouting
_vivas_ for the Federal Republic!... In his solitude and in all the
dejection coming from the defeat of his perverted ideas, he took more
than ever to music. He had but one joy left him. Leonora loved music as
much as he. She learned her lessons rapidly; and soon could accompany
her father's violoncello on the piano. They would spend the days playing
together, going through the whole pile of music sheets they kept stored
in the attic along with those accursed medical books. Besides, the
little girl showed she had a voice, and it seemed to grow fuller and
more beautiful every day. 'She will be a singer, a great singer,' her
father proclaimed enthusiastically. And when some tenant of his or one
of his dependents came into the house and could hardly believe his ears
at the sweetness of the little angel's voice, the Doctor would rub his
hands and gleefully exclaim: 'What do you think of the little lady,
eh?... Some day people in Alcira will be proud she was born here.'"

Don Andrés paused to sift his recollections, and after a long silence
added:

"The truth is, I can't tell you any more. At that time, we were in power
again, and I had very little to do with the Doctor. We gradually lost
sight of him, forgot him, practically. The music we heard when going by
the house was all there was to remind us of him. We learned one day,
through his sister, doña Pepa, that he had gone way off with the little
girl somewhere--what was that city you visited, Rafael?--Milan, yes,
Milan, that's it! I've been told that's the market for singers. He
wanted his Leonora to become a prima donna. He never came back, poor
fellow!... Things must have gone badly with them. Every year he would
write home to his sister to sell another piece of land. It is known that
over there they lived in real poverty. In a few years the little fortune
the Doctor got from his parents was gone. Poor doña Pepa, kind old soul,
even disposed of the house--which belonged half to the Doctor and half
to her--sent him every cent of the money, and moved to the orchard. Ever
since then she's been coming in to mass and to Forty Hours in all sorts
of weather. I could learn nothing for certain after that. People lie so,
you see. Some say poor Moreno shot himself because his daughter left him
when she got placed on the stage; others say that he died like a dog in
a poorhouse. The only sure thing is that he died and that his daughter
went on having a great time all over those countries over there. The
way she went it! They even say she had a king or two. As for money! Say,
boys, there are ways and ways of earning it, and ways and ways of
spending it! The fellow who knows all about that side of her is the
barber Cupido. He imagines he's an artist, because he plays the guitar;
and besides he has a Republican grouch, and was a great admirer of her
father's. He's the only one in town who followed all she was up to, in
the papers. They say she doesn't sing under her own name, but uses some
prettier sounding one--foreign, I believe. Cupido is a regular busybody
and you can get all the latest news in his barbershop. Only yesterday he
went to doña Pepa's farmhouse to greet the '_eminent artist_,' as he
calls her. There's no end to what he tells. Trunks in every corner,
enough to pack a house-full of things into, and silk dresses ...
shopfuls of them! Hats, I can't say how many; jewelry-boxes on every
table with diamonds that strike you blind. And she told Cupido to have
the station-agent get a move on and send what was still missing--the
heavier luggage--boxes and boxes that come from way off somewhere--the
other end of the world, and that cost a fortune just to ship.... There
you are!... And why not? The way she earned it!"

Don Andrés winking maliciously and laughing like an old faun, gave a sly
nudge at Rafael, who was listening in deep abstraction to the story.

"But is she going to live on here?" asked the young man. "Accustomed as
she is to flitting about the world, do you think she'll be able to stand
this place?"

"Nobody can tell," don Andrés replied. "Not even Cupido can find that
out. She'll stay until she gets bored, he says. And to be in less danger
of that, she has brought her whole establishment along on her back, like
a snail."

"Well, she'll be bored soon enough," one of Rafael's friends observed.
"I suppose she thinks she's going to be admired and stared at as she was
abroad! Moreno's girl! Did you ever hear of such a family?... Daughter
of that _descamisado_, as my father calls him because he died without a
stitch on his back! And all people say of them! Last night her arrival
was the subject of conversation in every decent home in town, and there
wasn't a man who did not promise to fight shy of her. If she thinks
Alcira is anything like the places where they dance the razzle-dazzle
and there's no shame, she'll be sadly disappointed."

Don Andrés laughed slyly.

"Yes, boys! She'll be disappointed. There's a plenty of morality in this
town, and much wholesome fear of scandal. We're probably as bad as
people in other places, but we don't want anybody to find us out. I'm
afraid this Leonora is going to spend most of her time with her aunt--a
silly old thing, whatever her many virtues may be. They say she's
brought a French maid along.... But she's beginning to cry 'sour grapes'
already. Do you know what she said to Cupido yesterday? That she had
come here with the idea of living all by herself, just to get away from
people; and when the barber spoke to her of society in Alcira, she made
a wry face, as much as to say the place was filled with no-accounts.
That's what the women were talking most about last night. You can see
why! She has always been the favorite of so many big guns!"

An idea seemed to flit across the wrinkled forehead of don Andrés,
tracing a wicked smile around his lips:

"You know what I think, Rafael? You're young and you're handsome, and
you've been abroad. Why don't you make a try for her, if only to prick
the bubble of her conceit and show her there are people here, too. They
say she's mighty good-looking, and, what the deuce! It wouldn't be so
hard. When she finds out who you are!..."

The old man said this with the idea of flattering Rafael, certain that
the prestige of his "prince" was such that no woman could resist him.
But Rafael had lived through the previous afternoon, and the words
seemed very bitter pills. Don Andrés at once grew serious, as if a
frightful vision had suddenly passed before his eyes; and he added in a
respectful tone:

"But no: that was only a jest. Don't pay any attention to what I say.
Your mother would be terribly provoked."

The thought of doña Bernarda, the personification of austere,
uncompromising virtue, chased the mirth from every face in the company.

"The strange thing about all this," said Rafael, who was anxious to turn
the conversation in a different direction, "is that now everybody
remembers the Doctor's daughter. But years and years went by without her
name being mentioned, in my hearing at least."

"Well, it's a question of District matters, you see," the old man
answered. "All I've been telling you boys, happened long before your
day, and your parents, who knew the Doctor and his daughter, have always
been careful not to bring this woman into their conversation; for, as
Rafael's mother says, she's the disgrace of Alcira. From time to time we
got a bit of news; something that Cupido fished out of the newspapers
and spread all over town, or something that that silly doña Pepa would
let drop, while telling inquisitive people about the glories her niece
was winning abroad; anyhow, all a heap of lies that were invented I
don't know where or by whom. They kept all that quiet, banking the fire,
so to speak. If it hadn't got into the girl's head to come back to
Alcira, you would never have heard of her probably. But now she's here,
and they're telling all they know, or think they know, about her life,
digging up tales of things that happened years and years ago. You take
my word for it, boys, I've always considered her a high-flyer myself,
but, just the same, people here do tell awful whoppers ... and swear to
them. She can't be as bad as they say ... If one were to swallow
everything one hears! Wasn't poor don Ramón the greatest man the
District ever produced? Well, what don't they say about him?..."

And the conversation drifted away from Doctor Moreno's daughter. Rafael
had learned all he wished to know. That woman had been born within a few
hundred yards of his own birthplace. They had passed their childhood
years almost side by side; and yet, on meeting for the first time in
their lives, they had felt themselves complete strangers to each other.

This separation would increase with time. She made fun of the city,
lived outside its circle of influence, in the open country; she would
not meet the town halfway, and the town would not go to her.

How get to know her better, then?... Rafael was tempted as he walked
aimlessly about the streets, to look up the barber Cupido in his shop
that very afternoon. That merry rogue was the only person in all Alcira
who entered her house. But Brull did not dare, for fear of gossip. His
dignity as a party leader forbade his entering that barbershop where the
walls were papered with copies of "Revolution" and where a picture of Pi
y Margall reigned in place of the King's. How could he justify his
presence in a place he had never visited before? How explain to Cupido
his interest in that woman, without having the whole city know about it
before sundown?

Twice he walked up and down in front of the striped window-panes of the
barbershop, without mustering the courage to raise the latch. Finally he
sauntered off toward the orchards, following the riverbank slowly along,
with his gaze fixed on that blue house, which had never before attracted
his attention, but which now seemed the most beautiful detail in that
ample paradise of orange-trees.

Through the groves he could see the balcony of the house, and on it a
woman unfolding shining gowns of delicate colors. She was shaking the
prima donna's skirts to straighten out the wrinkles and the folds caused
by the packing in the trunks.

It was the Italian maid--that Beppa of the reddish hair whom he had seen
the previous afternoon with her mistress.

He thought the girl was looking at him, and that she even recognized
him through the foliage, despite the distance. He felt a sudden
timorousness, like a child caught redhanded doing something wrong. He
turned in his tracks and strode rapidly off toward the city.

But later, he felt quite comforted. Merely to have approached the Blue
House seemed like progress toward acquaintance with the beautiful
Leonora.




V


All work had stopped on the rich lands of the _ribera_.

The first winter rains were falling over the entire District. Day after
day the gray sky, heavy with clouds, seemed to reach down and touch the
very tops of the trees. The reddish soil of the fields grew dark under
the continuous downpour; the roads, winding deep between the mudwalls
and the fences of the orchards, were changed to rushing streams. The
weeping orange-trees seemed to shrink and cringe under the deluge, as if
in aggrieved protest at the sudden anger of that kindly, friendly land
of sunshine.

The Júcar was rising. The waters, turned to so much liquid clay, lashed
red and slimy against the buttresses of the bridges. People living along
the banks followed the swelling of the river with anxious eyes, studying
the markers placed along the shores to note how the water was coming up.

_"Munta?"_ ... asked the people from the interior, in their quaint
dialect.

_"Munta!"_ answered the river dwellers.

And the water was indeed slowly rising, already threatening the city
that had so audaciously taken root in the very middle of its bed.

But despite the danger, the townspeople seemed to be feeling nothing
more than uneasy curiosity. No one thought of moving across the bridges
to take refuge on the high land. Nonsense! The Júcar was always
flooding. You had to expect something of the sort every once in a while.
Thank heaven there was something to break the monotony of life in that
sleepy town! Why complain at a week's vacation? It was hard to disturb
the placid complacency of those descendants of the Moors. Floods had
been coming since the days of their fathers, their grandfathers and
their great-grandfathers, and never had the town been carried off. A few
houses at the worst. Why suppose the catastrophe would be due now?...
The Júcar was a sort of husband to Alcira. As happens in any decent
family, there would be a quarrel now and then--a thrashing followed by
kisses and reconciliation. Just imagine--living seven or eight centuries
together! Besides,--and this the lesser people thought--there was Father
San Bernardo, as powerful as God Himself in all that concerned Alcira.
He was able, single-handed, to tame the writhing monster that wound its
coiling way underneath the bridges.

It rained day and night; and yet the city, from its animation, seemed to
be having a holiday. The young ones, sent home from school because of
the bad weather, were all on the bridges throwing branches into the
water to see how swift the current was, or playing along the lanes close
to the river, planting sticks in the banks and waiting for the
ever-broadening torrent to reach them.

Under the shelter of the projecting eaves, whence broken water-spouts
were belching streams as thick as a man's arm, loungers in the cafés
would slip along the streets toward the river-front; and after glancing
at the flood from the scant protection of their umbrellas, would make
their way proudly back, stopping in every drinking place to offer their
opinions on the rise that had taken place since their previous
inspection.

The city from end to end was one seething storm of heated, typically
"Southern" argument and prophecy. Friendships were being made and
broken, over questions as to whether the river had risen four inches the
past hour, or only one, and as to whether this freshet were more
important than the one five years before.

Meantime the sky kept on weeping through its countless eyes; the river,
roaring more wrathful every moment, was now licking at the ends of the
low-lying streets near the bank, creeping up into the gardens on the
shore, stealing in between the orange-trees, opening holes in the hedges
and the mudwalls.

The main concern of the populace was whether it were raining also in the
mountains of Cuenca. If much water came down from there, the flood would
become serious. And experienced eyes studied the color of the waters
carefully. If there was any black in them, it meant they came from the
upper provinces.

The cloud-burst lasted for two whole days. The night of the second day
closed, and the roar of the river sounded forebodingly in the darkness.
On its black surface lights could be seen reflected like restless
flashes of flame--candles from the shore houses and lanterns of watchmen
on guard along the banks.

In the lower streets the water was coming under the doors into the
houses. Women and children were taking refuge in the garrets while the
men, with their trousers rolled up to their knees, were splashing about
in the liquid silt, carrying their farming tools to places of safety, or
tugging at some donkey who would be balking at going too deep into the
water.

All these people of the suburbs, on finding their houses flooded in the
darkness of night, lost the jesting calm which they had so boastfully
displayed during the daytime. Now fear of the supernatural came over
them, and with childish anxiety they sought protection of some Higher
Power to avert the danger. Perhaps this freshet was the final one!
Perhaps they were the victims destined to perish in the final downfall
of the city!... Women began to shriek with terror on seeing their
wretched lanes converted into deep canals.

"_El pare San Bernat!... Que traguen al pare San Bernat_! Father Saint
Bernard!... Let them fetch father Saint Bernard!"

The men looked at each other uneasily. Nobody could handle a matter like
this so well as the glorious patron. It was now high time to have
recourse to him, as had so often been done before, and get him to
perform his miracle.

They ought to go to the City Council, and compel the big guns there, in
spite of their scepticism, to bring the saint out for the consolation of
the poor.

In an hour a veritable army was formed. Mobs issued from the dark lanes,
paddling in the water like frogs, and raising their war-cry: "_San
Bernat! San Bernat_!"; the men, with their sleeves and trousers rolled
up, or even entirely naked save for the sash that is never removed from
the skin of a Valencian peasant; the women, with their skirts raised
over their heads for protection, sinking their tanned, skinny,
over-worked legs into the slime, and all drenched from head to foot, the
wet clothes sticking to their bodies; and at the head, a number of
strong young men with four-wicked tapers lighted, sputtering and
crackling in the rain and casting a weird flickering radiance back over
the clamoring multitude.

"_San Bernat! San Bernat!... Viva el pare San Bernat!_ Father Saint
Bernard, _viva_!"

Under the drizzle pouring from the sky and the streams tumbling from the
eavespouts, the mob rushed along through the streets in a wild riot.
Doors and windows flew open, and new voices were added to the delirious
uproar, while at every crossing recruits would come to swell the
on-rushing avalanche headed for the _Ayuntamiento_. Muskets, ancient
blunderbusses, and horse-pistols as big as guns, could be seen in the
menacing throng, as though those wild forms were to compel the granting
of a petition that might be denied, or to slay the river, perhaps.

The _alcalde_, with all the members of the council, was waiting at the
door of the City Hall. They had come running to the place, marshalling
the _alguacils_ and the patrols, to face and quell the mutiny.

"What do you want?" the Mayor asked the crowd.

What did they want! They wanted the one remedy, the one salvation, for
the city: they wanted to take the omnipotent saint to the bank of the
river that he might awe it with his presence, just as their ancestors
had been doing for centuries and centuries, and thanks to which the city
was still standing!

Some of the city people, whom the peasants regarded as atheists, began
to smile at the strange request. Wouldn't it be better to spend the time
getting all the valuables out of the houses on the bank? A tempest of
protests followed this proposal. "Out with the saint! Out with _San
Bernat!_ We want the miracle! The miracle!" Those simple people were
thinking of the wonders they had learned in their childhood at their
mothers' knees; times in former centuries, when it had been enough for
San Bernardo to appear on a river road, to start the flood down again,
draining off from the orchard lands as water leaks from a broken
pitcher.

The _alcalde_, a liegeman of the Brull dynasty, was in a quandary. He
was afraid of that ugly mob and was anxious to yield, as usual; but it
would be a serious breach of etiquette not to consult "the chief."
Fortunately, just as the huge, dark mass of human beings was beginning
to surge in indignation at his silence, and hisses and shouts of anger
were being raised, Rafael appeared.

Doña Bernarda had sent him out at the first sign of uneasiness in the
populace. It was in circumstances such as these that her husband used to
shine, taking the helm in every crisis, giving orders and settling
questions, though to no avail at all. But when the river returned to its
normal level, and danger was past, the peasant would remember don
Ramón's "sacrifices" and call him the father of the poor. If the
miraculous saint must come out, let Rafael be the one to produce him!
The elections were at hand. The flood could not have come in better
time. There must be no false steps, no frightening opportunity away.
Something rather must be done to get people to talking about him as they
used to talk about his father on similar occasions.

So Rafael, after having the purpose of this demonstration explained to
him by the most ardent of the leaders, gave a magnificent gesture of
consent:

"Granted; have _San Bernat_ brought out!"

With a thunder of applause and _vivas_ for young Brull, the black
avalanche headed rumbling for the church.

They must now persuade the curate to take the saint out, and that good
priest--a fat, kindly, but rather shrewd fellow--always objected to what
he called a bit of old-fashioned mummery. The truth was he looked
forward with little pleasure to a tramp out in the rain at the head of a
procession, trying to keep dry under an umbrella, with his _soutane_
rolled up to his knees, and his shoes coming off at every step in the
mire. Besides, some day, in the very face of San Bernardo, the river
might carry half the city off, and then what a fix, what a fix, religion
would be in, all on account of those disturbers of the peace!

Rafael and his henchmen of the _Ayuntamiento_ tried their hardest to
convince the curate; but his only reply was to ask whether water was
coming down from Cuenca.

"I believe it is," said the _alcalde_. "You can see that makes the
danger worse. It's more than ever necessary to bring out the saint."

"Well, if there's water coming down from Cuenca," the priest answered,
"we'd better let it come, and San Bernardo also had better keep
indoors, at home. Matters concerning saints must be treated with great
discretion, take my word for that.... And, if you don't agree with me,
just remember that freshet when the river got above the bridges. We
brought the saint out, and the river almost carried him off downstream."

The crowd, growing restless at the delay, began to shout against the
priest. The good sense of that canny churchman was powerless in the face
of superstitions instilled by centuries of fanaticism.

"Since you will it so, so let it be," he said gravely. "Let the Saint
come forth, and may the Lord have mercy on us!"

A frenzied acclamation burst from the crowd, which now filled the whole
square in front of the church. The rain continued falling, and above the
serried ranks of heads covered with skirts, cloaks, and an occasional
umbrella, the flames of the tapers flickered, staining the wet faces
red.

The people smiled happily in all their discomfort from the downpour.
Confident of success, they were foretasting gleefully the terror of the
stream at sight of the blessed image entering its waters. What could not
San Bernardo do? His marvelous history, a blend of Moorish and Christian
romance, flamed in all those credulous imaginations. He was a saint
native to that region--the second son of the Moorish king of Carlet.
Through his talent, courtesy and beauty he won such success at court in
Valencia, that he rose to the post of prime minister.

Once when his sovereign had to have some dealings with the king of
Aragon, he sent San Bernardo, who at that time was called Prince Hamete,
to Barcelona. During his journey he drew up one night at the portal of
the monastery of Poblet. The chants of the Cistercians, drifting
mystical and vague through the Gothic arches, moved the Saracen youth to
the bottom of his soul. He felt drawn to the religion of his enemies by
the magic of its poetry. He received baptism, assumed the white habit of
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, and later returned to the kingdom of
Valencia to preach Christianity. There he enjoyed the tolerance Saracen
monarchs always had for new religious doctrines. He converted his two
sisters--beautiful Mooresses they were--and they took the names of
Gracia and Maria, and aflame in turn with pious fervor, they chose to go
with their brother on his tour of preachment.

But the old king of Carlet had died, and his first-born--the arrogant
Almanzor, a brutal, vainglorious Moor--succeeded to the rulership of the
tiny state--a sort of military satrapy. This haughty potentate, offended
in his magnificence to see members of his family traveling over the
roads dressed like vagabonds and preaching a religion of beggars, called
a troop of horse and set out in pursuit of his brother and sisters. He
came upon them near Alcira, hiding on the riverbank. With one slash of
his sword he cut the heads off both his sisters; San Bernardo he
crucified and drove a big nail through his forehead. Thus the sacred
preacher perished, but all the humble continued to adore him; for here
was a handsome prince, who had turned to a poor man, become a wandering
mendicant even--a sacrifice that endeared him to the poorest of his
votaries. Of all this that crowd of peasants was thinking as it shouted
_vivas_ to San Bernardo, now, surely, prime minister of God, as he had
been of the pagan king of Valencia.

The procession was rapidly organized. Along the narrow lanes of the
island where the rain coursed in streams, people kept coming in droves.
They were barefoot for the most part, but some were sinking shoes
indifferently into the water. Most of them had tapers or shotguns. The
women did their best to shelter little ones under the skirts they had
gathered about their heads. The musicians, all barefoot, were in regular
uniform--gold braided jackets and plumed hats--looking for all the world
like Malay chiefs who beautify their nakedness with castoff coats and
three-cornered hats the missionaries give them.

In front of the church the lights of the tapers blended into one great
flare. Through the wide doorway the candles on the altars gleamed like a
distant constellation.

The whole neighborhood, almost, had assembled in the square, despite the
increasing rain. Many had come to scoff. What a farce it all would be!
They did well, however, to wait two days! The rain was almost over. It
would probably stop by the time they got the Saint out!

In double file of tapers the procession began to move between two lines
of tightly jammed spectators.

"_Vitol el pare San Bernat!_ Hurrah for father San Bernardo!" a
multitude of hoarse voices cried.

"_Vitol les chermanetes_! Hurrah for his sisters!" others added, to
correct the lack of gallantry displayed by the most enthusiastic of the
idolators in putting ladies last.

For the sisters, the holy martyrs, Gracia and Maria, also figured in
the procession. San Bernardo never went anywhere alone. As even children
in baby-school knew, not a power on earth, not all the men and horses in
the orchards put together, could lift the saint from his altar unless
his sisters went first. That was one of his miracles long accredited by
tradition. He had very little confidence in women--less pious
commentators said--and not willing to trust his sisters out of sight, he
insisted that they precede him whenever he left his pedestal.

The holy sisters appeared in the church doorway, swaying on their
litters above the heads of the worshippers.

"_Vitol les chermanetes!_"

And the poor _chermanetes_, dripping from every fold of their vestments,
came out into that dark, tempestuous, rain-soaked atmosphere that was
rent by sheaves of crude light from the tapers.

The musicians tuned their instruments, ready to break into the Royal
March! In the brilliantly lighted doorway something shining could be
seen laboriously advancing, swaying this way and that, as if the waves
of an angry sea were rocking it.

The crowd again began to cheer, and the music sounded.

"_Vitol el pare San Bernat!_"

But the music and the acclamations were drowned by a deafening crash, as
if the island had suddenly burst into a thousand pieces, dragging the
city to the depths of the Abyss. The square was shooting a fusillade of
lightning flashes, a veritable cannonade. Those ancient arms,
blunderbusses, muzzle-loaders, pistols, crammed full of powder, could
roar like artillery. All the guns in the neighborhood were saluting the
appearance of the Saint. And the crowd, drunk with the smell of powder,
began to shout and gesticulate in the presence of that bronze image,
whose round, kindly face--that of a healthy well-fed friar--seemed to
quiver with life in the light of the torches.

Eight strong men, almost naked, came forward staggering under the weight
of the metal saint. The crowd surged against them, threatening to upset
the statue. But two bare-breasted strong-armed boys, devotees of the
patron, were marching on either side, and they fought the multitude
back.

The women, shoved hither and thither and almost suffocated in the jam,
burst into tears as their gaze fell upon the miraculous image.

"_Ay_, father San Bernardo! Father San Bernardo! Save us! Save us!"

Others dragged children out from the folds of their skirts, and held
them out above their heads toward the powerful guards.

"Lift him up! Let him kiss the Saint!"

And those muscular peasants would pick the children up like dolls, now
by an arm, now by a leg, now by the nape of the neck, raise them to a
level with the saint, that they might kiss the bronze face, and then
toss them back into the arms of their mothers, working like automatons,
dropping one child to seize another, with the regularity of machines in
action. Many times the impact was too rough; the noses of the children
would flatten against the folds of the metallic garb; but the fervor of
the crowd seemed to infect the little ones. They were the future adorers
of the Moorish monk. Rubbing their bruises with their soft little hands
they would swallow their tears and return to their snug places in their
mothers' skirts.

Behind the glorious saint marched Rafael and the gentlemen of the
_Ayuntamiento_ with long wax tapers; and after them the curate,
grumbling as he heard the first dashes of rain beat on the large red
silk umbrella which the sacristan held over him, and felt the impact of
the crowd of orchard-folk, that was mixed at random with the musicians.
The latter, paying more attention to where they stepped than to their
instruments, played a rather discordant march. Guns, meanwhile,
continued to blaze away. The wild cheering for San Bernardo and his
sisters went on; and, framed in a red nimbus of torch-light, greeted at
every street-corner by a new fusillade, the image sailed along over that
sea of heads, pelted by the rain, which, in the light of the candles,
looked like a maze of transparent crystal threads. Around the saint the
arms of the athletes kept ever moving, lifting children up to bump their
drooling noses on the bronze of father San Bernardo. Balconies and
windows along the way were filled with women, their heads protected by
their skirts.

Sighs, wails, exclamations of entreaty welcomed the passing saint in a
chorus of despair and hope.

"Save us, father San Bernardo!... Save us!..."

The procession reached the river, crossing and recrossing the bridges
that led to the suburbs. The flickering torches were mirrored in the
dark edges of the stream, which was growing momentarily more terrifying
and clamorous. The water had not yet reached the railing, as at other
times. Miracle! San Bernardo was at work already!

Then the procession marched to points where the river had flooded the
lanes near the bank, and turned them to virtual ponds. The more
fanatical of the devotees, lifting their tapers above their heads, went
out fearlessly neck high into the water: for surely the Saint must not
go in alone.

One old man, shaking with malaria, caught in the rice-fields, and hardly
able to hold the taper in his trembling hands, hesitated at the brink of
the stream.

"Go on in, _agüelo_!" the women encouraged affectionately. "Father San
Bernardo will cure you. Don't lose such a chance!"

When the saint was out performing miracles, he might remember the old
man, too. So _agüelo_--"grandaddy"--shivering in his drenched clothes
and his teeth chattering, walked resolutely in.

The statue was making its way very slowly along the inundated streets,
for the feet of the bearers sank deep into the water under their load;
and they could advance at all only with the aid of the faithful, who
gathered about the litter on all sides to help. A writhing mass of bare,
sinewy arms rose from the water like tentacles of a human octopus to
carry the Saint along.

Just behind the image came the curate and the political dignitaries,
riding astride the shoulders of some enthusiasts who, for the greater
pomp of the ceremony, were willing to serve as mounts, though the tapers
of their riders kept getting into their faces.

The curate began to feel the cold water creeping up his back, and
ordered the Saint inshore again. In fact San Bernardo was already at
the end of the lane, and actually in the river itself. His guards of
honor were having a time of it to keep their feet in the face of the
current, but they were still willing to go on, believing that the
farther the statue went into the stream, the sooner the waters would go
down. At last, however, the most foolhardy withdrew. The Saint came
back. Though the procession at once went on to the next road and to the
next, repeating the same performance.

And suddenly it stopped raining.

A wild cheer, a shout of joy and triumph, shook the multitude.

"_Vitol el pare San Bernat_!..." Now would the people of the neighboring
towns dare dispute his immense power?... There was the proof! Two days
of incessant downpour, and then, the moment the Saint showed his face
out of doors--fair weather! Excuse me!

In fervent thanksgiving weeping women rushed upon the saint and began to
kiss whatever part of the image was within reach--the handles of the
litter, the decorations of the pedestal, the bronze body itself. The
tottering structure of wood and metal began to stagger and reel like a
frail bark tossing over a sea of shrieking heads and extended arms that
trembled with exaltation.

The procession marched on for more than an hour still along the river.
Then the priest, who was dripping wet and had exhausted more than a
dozen "horses" under him, forbade it to continue. Leave it to those
peasants, and the nonsense would go on till dawn! So the curate observed
that the Saint had already done what was required of him. Now it was
time to go home!

Rafael handed his taper to one of his henchmen and stopped on the bridge
with a number of experienced observers, who were lamenting the damage
done by the flood. At every moment, no one could say just how, alarming
reports of the destruction wrought by the river were coming in. Now a
mill had been isolated by the waters, and the people there had taken
refuge on the roof, firing their shotguns as signals of distress. Many
orchards had been completely submerged. The few boats available in the
city were doing the best they could in the work of rescue. The valley
had become one vast lake. Rowboats caught in the shifting currents were
in danger of smashing against hidden obstructions; and it was
practically impossible to push a punt upstream with oars.

Yet the people spoke with relative calmness. They were accustomed to
this almost annual visitation, and accepted it resignedly as an
inevitable evil. Besides, they referred hopefully to telegrams received
by the _alcalde_. By dawn help would be coming in. The governor in
Valencia was sending a detachment of marines, and the lagoon would be
filled with navy boats. Everything would be all right in a few hours.
But if the water got much higher meanwhile ...!

They consulted stakes and other water marks along the river, and violent
disputes arose. Rafael, for his part, could see the flood was still
rising, though but slowly.

The peasants refused to believe it. How could the river rise after
Father San Bernardo had gone into it? No, sir! it was _not_ rising. That
was all a lie intended to discredit the patron. And a sturdy youth with
flashing eyes threatened to disembowel with one stroke of his
knife--like that!--a certain scoffer who maintained that the river would
go on rising if only for the pleasure of refuting that charlatan of a
friar.

Rafael approached the brawlers, and by the dim lantern light recognized
Cupido--the barber--a sarcastic fellow, with curly side-whiskers and an
aquiline nose, who took great pleasure in poking fun at the barbarous,
unshakable faith of the illiterate peasants.

Brull knew the barber very well. The man was one of his childhood
favorites. Fear of his mother was the only thing that had kept him from
frequenting Cupido's shop--the rendezvous of the city's gayest set, a
hotbed of gossip and practical jokes, a school of guitar playing and
love songs that kept the whole neighborhood astir. Besides, Cupido was
the freak of the city, the sharp-tongued but irresponsible practical
joker, who was forgiven everything in advance, and could enjoy his
idiosyncrasies and speak his mind about people without starting a riot
against him. He was, for instance, the one person in Alcira who scoffed
at the tyranny of the Brulls without thereby losing entrance to the
Party Club, where the young men admired his wit and his eccentric way of
dressing.

Rafael was still fond of Cupido, though not very intimate with him. In
all the sedate, conservative world around him, the barber seemed the
only person really worth while talking with. Cupido was almost an
artist. In winter he would go to Valencia to hear the operas praised by
the newspapers, and in one corner of his shop he had heaps of novels and
illustrated magazines, much mildewed and softened by the damp, and their
leaves worn through from continual thumbing by customers.

He had very little to do with Rafael, guessing that the youth's mother
would not regard such a friendship with any too much favor; but he
displayed a certain liking for the boy; and addressed him familiarly,
having known him as a child. Of Rafael he said everywhere:

"He's the best one in the family; the only Brull with more brains than
crookedness."

Nothing too small for Cupido to notice ever happened in Alcira. Every
weakness, every foible of the city's celebrities was made public by him
in his barbershop, to the delight of the Opposition, whose members
gathered there to read their party organ. The gentlemen of the
_Ayuntamiento_ feared the barber more than any ten newspapers combined,
and whenever some famous Conservative minister referred in parliament to
a "revolutionary hydra" or a "hotbed of anarchy," they pictured to
themselves a barbershop like that of Cupido, but much larger perhaps,
scattering a poisonous atmosphere of cruel gibe and perverse effrontery
all through the nation.

The barber was inevitably on hand where anything was going on. It might
be at the very end of the suburbs, or away out in the country. In a few
moments Cupido would put in an appearance to learn all about it, give
advice to those who might need it, arbitrate between disputants and
afterward tell the whole story with a thousand embellishments.

He had plenty of time on his hands for leading such a life. Two young
fellows, as crazy as their employer, tended shop. Cupido paid them with
music-lessons and meals--better or worse these latter, according to the
day's receipts, which were divided fraternally among the three. And if
the "boss" sometimes astonished the city by going out for a walk in
midwinter in a suit of white duck, they, not to be outdone, would shave
off their hair and eyebrows and show heads as smooth as billiard-balls
behind the shop windows, to the great commotion of the city, which would
flock _en masse_ to see "Cupido's Chinamen."

A flood was always a great day for the barber. He closed shop and
planted himself out on a bridge, oblivious to wind and rain, haranguing
the crowds of spectators, terrifying the stupid with his exaggerations
and inventions, and announcing hair-raising news which he asserted he
had just received from the Governor by telegraph, and according to
which, in two hours, there would not be a cellar-hole left of the place.
Even the miracle-working San Bernardo would be washed into the sea!

When Rafael found him upon the bridge that night, after the procession,
Cupido was on the point of coming to blows with several rustics, who had
grown indignant at his heresies.

Stepping aside from the crowd, the two began a conversation about the
dangers of the flood. Cupido, as usual, was well-informed. He had been
told a poor old man had been cut off in an orchard and drowned. That was
probably not the only accident that had taken place. Horses and pigs in
large numbers had drifted past under the bridge, early in the afternoon.

The barber talked earnestly and with some sadness, it seemed. Rafael
listened in silence, scanning his face anxiously, as if looking for a
chance to speak of something which he dared not broach.

"And how about the Blue House," he ventured finally, "that farm of doña
Pepa's where you go sometimes? Will anything be wrong down there?"

"It's a good solid place," the barber replied, "and this isn't the first
flood it's been through.... But it's right on the river, and by this
time the garden must be a lake; the water will surely be up to the
second story. I'll bet doña Pepa's poor niece is scared out of her
wits... Just imagine--coming from so far away and from such pretty
places, and running into a mess like this ..."

Rafael seemed to meditate for a moment. Then as if an idea that had been
dancing about in his head all day had just occurred to him, he said:

"Suppose we take a run down there!... What do you say, Cupido?"

"Down there!... And how'll we get there?"

But the proposal, from its very rashness, was bound to appeal to a man
like the barber, who at length began to laugh, as if the adventure were
a highly amusing one.

"You're right! We could get through! It will look funny, all right! Us
two paddling up like a couple of Venetian gondoliers to serenade a
celebrated prima donna in her fright ... I've a good mind to run home
and fetch my guitar along ..."

"What the devil, Cupido! No guitar business! What a josher you are! Our
job is to get those women out of there. They'll get drowned if we
don't."

The barber, insisting on his romantic idea, fixed a pair of shrewd eyes
on Rafael.

"I see! So you're interested in the illustrious _artiste_, too ... You
rascal! You're smitten on her reputation for good looks ... But no ... I
remember ... you've seen her; she told me so herself."

"She!... She spoke to you about me?"

"Oh, nothing important! She told me she saw you one afternoon up at the
Hermitage."

Cupido kept the rest to himself. He did not say that Leonora, on
mentioning Rafael's name, had added that he looked like an "idiot."

Rafael's heart leaped with joy! She had talked of him! She had not
forgotten that meeting which had left such a painful memory in him!...
What was he doing, then, standing like a fool there on that bridge, when
down at the Blue House they might be needing a man's help?

"Listen, Cupido; I have my boat right handy here; you know, the boat
father had made to order in Valencia as a present for me. Steel frame;
hard wood; safe as a warship. You know the river ... I've seen you
handle an oar more than once; and I've got a pair of arms myself ...
What do you say?"

"I say, let's go," the barber answered resolutely.

They asked for a torch, and with the help of several men dragged
Rafael's boat toward a stairway on the riverbank.

Above, through the crowds on the bridge, the news of the expedition
flashed, but exaggerated and much idealized by the curious. The men were
going to save a poor family that had taken refuge on the roof of a
house--poor devils in danger of being swept off at any moment. Rafael
had learned of their plight, and he was starting to save them at the
risk of his own skin. And a wealthy, powerful man like him, with so much
to live for! Damn it, those Brulls were all men, anyhow!... And yet see
how people talked against them! What a heart! And the peasants followed
the blood-red glow of the torch in the boat as it mirrored across the
waters, gazing adoringly at Rafael, who was sitting in the stern. Out of
the dark entreating voices called. Many loyal followers of the Brulls
were eager to go with the chief--drown with him, if need be.

Cupido protested. No; for a job like that, the fewer the better; the
boat had to be light; he would do for the oars and Rafael could steer.

"Let her go! Let her go!" called Rafael.

And the boat, after hesitating a second, shot off on the current.

In the narrow gorge between the Old City and the New, the swollen
torrent swept them along like lightning. The barber used his oars just
to keep the boat away from the shore. Submerged rocks sent great
whirlpools to the surface and pulled the boat this way and that. The
light of the torch cast a dull reddish glow out over the muddy eddies.
Tree trunks, refuse, dead animals, went floating by, shapeless masses
with only a few dark points visible above the surface, as though some
dead man covered with mud were swimming under water. Out on that
swirling current, with the slimy vapors of the river rising to his
nostrils and the eddies sucking and boiling all around, Rafael thought
himself the victim of a weird nightmare and began even to repent of his
rashness. Cries kept coming from houses close to the river; windows were
suddenly lighted up; and from them great shadowy arms like the wings of
a windmill waved in greeting to that red flame which people saw gliding
past along the river, bringing the outlines of the boat and the two men
into distinct view. The news of their expedition had spread throughout
the city and people were on the watch for them as they sped by: "_Viva_
don Rafael! _Viva_ Brull!"

But the hero who was risking his life to save a family of poor folks out
there in the darkness of that sticky, murky, sepulchral night, had in
mind only one thing--a blue house, into which he was to penetrate at
last, in so strange and romantic a fashion.

From time to time a scraping sound or a jolt of the boat would bring him
back to reality.

"Your tiller there!" Cupido would shout, without, however, taking his
eyes from the water ahead. "Look out, Rafaelito, or we'll get smashed!"

The boat was indeed a good one, for any other, would long before have
come to grief in those rapids jammed with rocks and debris.

They were around the city in no time. Few lighted windows were now to be
seen. High, steep banks of slippery mud--quite unscalable--crested with
walls, were slipping past on either hand, with an occasional palisade,
the piles just emerging from the water. Somewhat ahead, the open river,
where the two arms that girt the Old City reunited in what was now a
vast lake!

The two men went on blindly. All normal landmarks were gone. The banks
had disappeared, and in the blackness, beyond the red circle of torch
light, they could make out only water and then more water--an immense
incessantly rolling sheet that was taking them they knew not where. From
time to time a black spot would show above the muddy surface; the crest
of some submerged canebrake; the top of a tree; a strange, fantastic
vegetation that seemed to be writhing in the gloom. The river, free now
from the gorges and shallows around the city, had ceased its roaring. It
seethed and swirled along in absolute silence, effacing all trace of the
land. The two men felt like a couple of shipwrecked sailors adrift on a
shoreless, sunless ocean, alone save for the reddish flame flickering at
the prow, and the submerged treetops that appeared and vanished rapidly.

"Better begin to row, Cupido," said Rafael. "The current is very strong.
We must be still in the river. Let's turn to the right and see if we can
get into the orchards."

The barber bent to the oars, and the boat, slowly, on account of the
current, came around and headed for a line of tree-tops that peered
above the surface of the flood like seaweed floating on the ocean.
Shortly the bottom began to scrape on invisible obstacles. Entanglements
below were clutching at the keel, and it took some effort occasionally
to get free. The lake was still dark and apparently shoreless, but the
current was not so strong and the surface had stopped rolling. The two
men knew they had reached dead water. What looked like dark, gigantic
mushrooms, huge umbrellas, or lustrous domes, caught the reflection of
the torch, at times. Those were orange-trees. The rescuers were in the
orchards. But in which? How find the way in the darkness? Here and there
the branches were too thick to break through and the boat would tip as
if it were going over. They would back water, make a detour, or try
another route.

They were going very slowly for fear of striking something, zig-zagging
meanwhile to avoid snags. As a result they lost direction altogether,
and could no longer say which way the river lay. Darkness and water
everywhere! The submerged orange-trees, all alike, formed complicated
lanes over the inundation, a labyrinth in which they grew momentarily
more confused. They were now rowing about quite aimlessly.

Cupido was perspiring freely, under the hard work. The boat was moving
slower and slower because of the branches catching at the keel.

"This is worse than the river," he murmured. "Rafael, you're facing
forward. Can't you make out any light ahead?"

"Not a one!"

The torch would throw some huge clump of leaves into relief for a
moment. When that was gone, the light would be swallowed up into damp,
thick, empty space.

Thus they wandered about and about the flooded countryside. The barber's
strength had given out and he passed the oars over to Rafael, who was
also nearly exhausted.

How long had they been gone? Were they to stay there forever? And their
minds dulled by fatigue and the sense of being lost, they imagined the
night would never end--that the torch would go out and leave the boat a
black coffin, for their corpses to float in eternally.

Rafael, who was now facing astern suddenly noticed a light on his left.
They were going away from it; perhaps that was the house they had been
so painfully searching for.

"It may be," Cupido agreed. "Perhaps we went by without seeing it, and
now we're downstream, toward the sea.... But even if it is not the Blue
House, what of it? The main thing is to find someone there. That's far
better than wandering around here in the dark. Give me the oars, again
Rafael. If that isn't doña Pepita's place, at least we'll find out where
we are."

He pulled the boat around, and gradually they made their way through the
treetops toward the light. They struck several snags, orchard fences,
perhaps, or submerged walls--but the light kept growing brighter.
Finally it had become a large red square across which dark forms were
moving. Over the waters a golden, shimmering wake of light was
streaming.

The torch from the boat brought out the lines of a broad house with a
low roof that seemed to be floating on the water. It was the upper story
of a building that had been swamped by the inundation. The lower story
was under water. The flood, indeed, was getting closer to the upper
rooms. The balconies and windows looked like landings of a pier in an
immense lake.

"Seems to me as if we'd struck the place," the barber said.

A warm, resonant voice, that of a woman, vibrant, but with a deep,
melodious softness, broke the silence.

"Hey, you in the boat there!... Here, here!"

The voice betrayed no fear. It showed not a trace of emotion.

"Didn't I tell you so I ..." the barber exclaimed. "The very place we
were looking for. Doña Leonora!... It's I! It's I!"

A rippling laugh came out into gloom.

"Why, it's Cupido! It's Cupido!... I can tell him by his voice. Auntie,
auntie! Don't cry any more. Don't be afraid; and stop your praying,
please! Here comes the God of Love in a pearl shallop to rescue us!"

Rafael shrank at the sound of that somewhat mocking voice, which seemed
to people the darkness with brilliantly colored butterflies.

Now in the luminous square of a window he could make out the haughty
profile of a woman among other black forms that were going to and fro
past the light inside, in agreeable surprise at the unexpected visit.

The craft drew up to the balcony. The men rose to their feet and were
able to reach an iron railing. The barber, from the prow, was looking
for something strong where he could make the boat fast.

Leonora was leaning over the balustrade while the light from the torch
lit up the golden helmet of her thick, luxuriant hair. She was trying to
identify that other man down there who had bashfully sat down again in
the stern.

"You're a real friend, Cupido!... Thank you, thank you, ever and ever
so much. This is one of the favors we never forget.... But who has come
along with you?..."

The barber was already fastening the boat to the iron railing.

"It's don Rafael Brull," he answered slowly. "A gentleman you have met
already, I believe. You must thank him for this visit. The boat is his,
and it was he who got me out on this adventure."

"Oh, thank you, Señor Brull," said Leonora, greeting the man with the
wave of a hand that flashed blue and red from the rings on its fingers.
"I must repeat what I said to our friend Cupido. Come right in, and I
hope you'll excuse my introducing you through a second-story window."

Rafael had jumped to his feet and was answering her greeting with an
awkward bow, clasping the iron railing in order not to fall. Cupido
jumped into the house and was followed by the young man, who took pains
to make the climb gracefully and sprightly.

He was not sure how well he succeeded. That had been too much excitement
for a single night: first the wild trip through the gorges near the
city; then those hours of desperate aimless rowing over the winding
lanes of the flooded countryside; and now, all at once, a solid floor
under his feet, a roof over his head, warmth, and the society of that
madly beautiful woman, who seemed to intoxicate him with her perfume,
and whose eyes he did not dare meet with his own for fear of fainting
from embarrassment.

"Come right in, _caballero_," she said to him. "You surely need
something after this escapade of yours. You are sopping wet, both of
you.... Poor boys! Just look at them!... Beppa!... Auntie! But do come
in, sir!"

And she fairly pushed Rafael forward with a sort of maternal
authoritativeness, much as a kindly woman might take her child in hand
after he has done some naughty prank of which she is secretly proud.

The rooms were in disorder. Clothes everywhere and heaps of rustic
furniture that contrasted with the other pieces arranged along the
walls! The household belongings of the gardener had been brought
upstairs as soon as the flood started. An old farmer, his wife--who was
beside herself with fear--and several children, who were slinking in the
corners, had taken refuge in the upper story with the ladies, as soon as
the water began seeping into their humble home.

Rafael entered the dining-room, and there sat doña Pepita, poor old
woman, heaped in an armchair, the wrinkles of her features moistened
with tears and her two hands clutching a rosary. Cupido was trying
vainly to cheer her with jokes about the inundation.

"Look, auntie! This gentleman is the son of your friend, doña Bernarda.
He came over here in a boat to help us out. It was very nice of him,
wasn't it?"

The old woman seemed quite to have lost her mind from terror. She looked
vacantly at the new arrivals, as if they had been there all their lives.
At last she seemed to realize what they were saying.

"Why, it's Rafael!" she exclaimed in surprise. "Rafaelito.... And you
came to see us in such weather! Suppose you get drowned? What will your
mother say?... Lord, how crazy of you! Lord!"

But it was not madness, and even if it were, it was very sweet of him!
That, at least, was what Rafael seemed to read in those clear, luminous
eyes of the golden sparkles that caressed him with their velvety touch
every time he dared to look at them. Leonora was staring at him:
studying him in the lamplight, as if trying to understand the difference
between the man in front of her and the boy she had met on her walk to
the Hermitage.

Doña Pepa's spirits rallied now that men were in the house; and with a
supreme effort of will, the old lady decided to leave her armchair for a
look at the flood, which had stopped rising, if, indeed, it were not
actually receding.

"How much water, oh Lord our God!... How many terrible things we'll
learn of tomorrow! This must be a punishment from Heaven ... a warning
to us to think of our many sins."

Leonora meanwhile was bustling busily about, hurrying the refreshments.
Those gentlemen couldn't be left like that--she kept cautioning to her
maid and the peasant woman. Just imagine, with their clothes wet
through! How tired they must be after that all night struggle! Poor
fellows! It was enough just to look at them! And she set biscuits on the
table, cakes, a bottle of rum--everything, including a box of Russian
cigarettes with gilded tips--to the shocked surprise of the gardener's
wife.

"Let them come here, auntie," she said to the old lady. "Don't make them
talk any more now.... They need to eat and drink a little, and get
warm.... I'm sorry I have so little to offer you. What in the world can
I get for them? Let's see! Let's see!"

And while the two men were being forced, by that somewhat despotic
attentiveness, to take seats at the table, Leonora and her maid went
into the adjoining room, where keys began to rattle and tops of chests
to rise and fall.

Rafael, in his deep emotion, could scarcely manage a few drops of rum;
but the barber chewed away for all he was worth, downing glass after
glass of liquor, and talking on and on through a mouth crammed with food
while his face grew redder and redder.

When Leonora reappeared, her maid was following her with a great bundle
of clothes in her arms.

"You understand, of course, we haven't a stitch of men's clothes in the
house. But in war-time we get along as best we can, eh? We're in what
you might call a state of siege here."

Rafael noted the dimples that a charming smile traced in those wonderful
cheeks! And what perfect teeth--jewels in a casket of red velvet!

"Now, Cupido; off with those wet things of yours; you're not going to
catch pneumonia on my account, and thus deprive the city of its one
bright spot. Here's something to put on while we are drying your
clothes."

And she offered the barber a magnificent gown of blue velvet, with
veritable cascades of lace at the breast and on the sleeves.

Cupido nearly fell off his chair.... Was he going to dress in top style
for once in his life? And with those side-whiskers?... How the people in
Alcira would howl if they could only see him now! And entering at once
into the fun of the situation, he hastened into the next room to don his
gown.

"For you," Leonora said to Rafael with a motherly smile, "I could find
only this fur cloak. Come, now, take off that jacket of yours; it's
dripping wet."

With a blush, the young man refused. No, he was all right! Nothing would
happen to him! He had been wetter than that many times.

Leonora without losing her smile, seemed to grow impatient. No one in
that house ever talked back to her.

"Come, Rafael, don't be so silly. We'll have to treat you like a child."

And taking him by a sleeve, as if he were a refractory baby, she began
to pull at his jacket.

The young man, in his confusion, was hardly aware of what was taking
place. He seemed to be traveling along on an endless horizon, at greater
speed than he had been swept down the river just before. She had called
him by his first name; he was a pampered guest in a house he had for
months been trying in vain to enter, and she, Leonora, was calling him
"child" and treating him like a child, as if they had been friends all
their lives. What sort of woman was this? Was he not lost in some
strange world? The women of the city--the girls he met at the parties at
his home, seemed to be creatures of another race, living far, ever so
far, away, at the other end of the earth, cut off from him forever by
that immense sheet of water.

"Come, Mr. Obstinate, or we'll have to undress you like a doll."

She was bending over him; he could feel her breath upon his cheeks, and
the touch of her delicate, agile hands; and a sense of delicious
intoxication swept over him.

The fur coat was drawn snugly about his shoulders. It was a rare
garment; a cloak of blue fox as soft as silk, thick, yet light as the
plumes of some fantastic bird. Though Rafael passed for a tall man, its
edges touched the floor. The young man realized that thousands of francs
had suddenly been thrown over his back, and tremblingly he gathered the
bottom up, lest he should step upon it.

Leonora laughed at his embarrassment.

"Don't be afraid; no matter if you do tread on it. One would think you
were wearing a sacred veil from the respect you show that coat. It isn't
worth much. I use it only to travel in. A grandduke gave it to me in
Saint Petersburg."

And to show more clearly how little she prized the princely gift, she
wrapped it closer around the boy, patting at his shoulders to fit it
more tightly to him.

Slowly they walked back into the front room. Meanwhile, the appearance
of the barber, dressed in his luxuriant gown, was greeted with shouts of
laughter in the dining-room. Cupido was taking full advantage of the
occasion. The train in one hand and stroking his side-whiskers with the
other, he was writhing about like a prima donna in her big scene and
singing in a falsetto soprano voice. The peasant family laughed like
mad, forgetting the disaster that had overtaken their home; Beppa opened
her eyes wide, surprised at the elegant figure of the man, and the grace
with which he pronounced the Italian verses. Even poor doña Pepa hitched
around in her armchair and applauded. The barber, according to her, was
the most charming devil in the world.

Rafael was standing on the balcony, at Leonora's side, his gaze lost in
the darkness, his spirit lulled by the music of her sweet voice, his
body snug and comfortable in that elegant garment which seemed to have
retained something of the warmth and perfume of her shoulders. With
marks of very real interest, she was questioning him about the desperate
trip down the river.

Rafael answered her inquiries with bated breath.

"What you have done," the prima donna was saying, "deserves my deep,
deep gratitude! It is a chivalrous act worthy of ancient times.
Lohengrin, arriving in his little boat to save Elsa! Only the swan is
lacking ...unless you want to call Cupido a swan...."

"And suppose you had been carried off--drowned!..." the youth exclaimed
in justification of his rashness.

"Drowned!...I must confess that at first I was somewhat afraid. Not so
much of dying, for I'm somewhat tired of life--as you will realize after
you've known me a little longer. But a death like that, suffocated in
that mud, that filthy, dirty water that smells so bad, doesn't at all
appeal to me. If it were some green, transparent Swiss lake!... I want
beauty even in death; I'm concerned with the 'final posture,' like the
Romans, and I was afraid of perishing here like a rat in a sewer.... And
nevertheless, I couldn't help laughing at my aunt and our poor servants
to see the fright they were in!... Now the water is no longer rising,
and the house is strong. Our only trouble is that we're cut off, and
I'm waiting for daylight to come so that we can see where we are. The
sight of all this country changed into a lake must be very beautiful,
isn't it, Rafael?"

"You've probably seen far more interesting things," the young man
replied.

"I don't deny that; but I'm always most impressed by the sensation of
the moment."

And she fell silent, showing by her sudden seriousness the vexation that
his distant allusion to her past had caused.

For some moments neither of them spoke; and it was Leonora who finally
broke the silence.

"The truth is, if the water had gone on rising, we would have owed our
lives to you.... Let's see, now, frankly: why did you come? What kind
inspiration made you think of me. You hardly know me!"

Rafael blushed with embarrassment, and trembled from head to foot, as if
she had asked him for a mortal confession. He was on the point of
uttering the great truth, baring in one great explosion all his thoughts
and dreams and dreads of past days. But he restrained himself and
grasped wildly for an answer.

"My enthusiasm for the artist," he replied timidly. "I admire your
talent very much."

Leonora burst into a noisy laugh.

"But you don't know me! You've never heard me sing!... What do you know
about my "talent," as they call it? If it weren't for that chatterbox of
a Cupido, Alcira would never dream that I am a singer and that I'm
somewhat well-known--except in my own country."

Rafael was crushed by the reply; he did not dare protest.

"Come, Rafael," the woman continued affectionately, "don't be a child
and try to pass off the fibs boys use to deceive mama with. I know why
you came here. Do you imagine you haven't been seen from this very
balcony hovering about here every afternoon, lurking in the road like a
spy? You are discovered, sir."

The shy Rafael thought the balcony was collapsing underneath his feet.
He shivered in abject terror, drew the fur cloak tighter around him,
without knowing what he was about, and shook his head in energetic
denial.

"So it's not true, you fraud?" she said, with comic indignation. "You
deny that since we met up at the Hermitage you have been taking all your
walks in this neighborhood? _Dios mío_! What a monster of falsehood have
we here? And how brazenly he lies."

And Rafael, vanquished by her frank merriment, had finally to smile,
confessing his crime with a loud laugh.

"You're probably surprised at what I do and say," continued Leonora
drawing closer to him, leaning a shoulder against his with unaffected
carelessness, as if she were with a girl friend. "I'm not like most
women. A fine thing it would be for me, with the life I lead, to play
the hypocrite!... My poor aunt thinks I'm crazy because I say just what
I feel; in my time I've been much liked and much disliked on account of
the mania I have for not concealing anything.... Do you want me to tell
you the real truth?... Very well; you've come here because you love me,
or, at least, because you think you love me: a failing all boys of your
age have, as soon as they find a woman different from the others they
know."

Rafael bowed his head and said nothing; he did not dare look up. He felt
the gaze of those green eyes upon the back of his head and they seemed
to reach right into his soul.

"Let's see your face. Raise that head of yours a little. Why don't you
say it isn't so, as you did before? Am I right or not?"

"And supposing you were right?..." Rafael ventured to murmur, finding
himself thus suddenly discovered.

"Since I know I am, I thought it best to provoke this explanation, so as
to avoid any misunderstandings. After what has happened to-night, I want
to have you for a friend; friend you understand, and nothing more; a
comradeship based on gratitude. We ought to know in advance exactly
where we stand. We'll be friends, won't we?... You must feel quite at
home here; and I'm sure I shall find you a very agreeable chum. What
you've done to-night has given you a greater hold on my affection than
you could ever have gained in any ordinary social way; but you're going
to promise me that you won't drift into any of that silly love-making
that has always been the bane of my existence."

"And if I can't help myself?" murmured Rafael.

"'And if I can't help myself'," said Leonora, laughing and mimicking
the voice of the young man and the expression on his face. "'And if I
can't help myself'! That's what they all say! And why can't you help
yourself? How can one take seriously a love for a woman you are now
seeing for the second time? These sudden passions are all inventions of
you men. They're not genuine. You get them out of the novels you read,
or out of the operas we sing. Nonsense that poets write and callow boys
swallow like so many boobies and try to transplant into real life! The
trouble is we singers are in the secret, and laugh at such bosh. Well,
now you know--good friends, and the soft pedal on sentiment and drama,
eh? In that way we'll get along very well and the house will be yours."

Leonora paused and, threatening him playfully with her forefinger,
added:

"Otherwise, you may consider me just as ungrateful and cruel as you
please, but your gallant conduct of to-night won't count. You'll not be
permitted to enter this place again. I want no adorers; I have come here
looking for rest, friendship, peace ... Love! A beautiful, cruel
hoax!..."

She was speaking very earnestly, without moving, her gaze lost on that
immense sheet of water.

Rafael dared to look at her squarely now. He had raised his head and was
studying her as she stood there thinking. Her beautiful face was tinted
with a bluish light, that seemed to surround her with a halo of romance.
Morning was coming on, and the leaden curtains of the sky were rent in
the direction of the sea, allowing a livid light to filter through.

Leonora shivered as if from cold, and snuggled instinctively against
Rafael. With a shake of her head she seemed to rout a troop of painful
thoughts, and stretching out a hand to him she said:

"Which shall it be? Friends, or distant acquaintances? Do you promise to
be good, be a real comrade?"

Rafael eagerly clasped that soft, muscular hand, and felt her rings cut
deliciously into his fingers.

"Very well--friends then!... I'll resign myself, since there's no help
for it."

"In that case you will find what you now believe a sacrifice something
quite tolerable and quite consoling; you don't know me, but I know
myself. Believe me, even should I come to love you--as I never
shall--you would be the loser by it. I am worth much more as a friend
than as a lover. And more than one man in the world has found that out."

"I will be a friend, ready to do much more for you than I've done
to-night. I hope you will come to know me too."

"No promises now! What more can you do for me? The river doesn't flood
every day. You can't expect to be a hero every other moment. No, I'm
satisfied with to-night's exploit. You can't imagine how grateful I am.
It has made a very deep impression on my--friendly--heart.... May I be
quite frank? Well, when I met you there at the Hermitage, I took you for
one of these local _señoritos_ who have such an easy time of it in town,
and so, look upon every woman they meet as their property for the
asking. Afterwards, when I saw you lurking about the house, my scorn
increased. 'Who does that little dandy think he is?' I said to myself.
And how Beppa and I laughed over it! I hadn't even noticed your face
and your figure: I hadn't realized how handsome you were...."

Leonora laughed at the thought of how angry she had been, and Rafael,
overwhelmed by such candor, likewise smiled to conceal his
embarrassment.

"But after what happened to-night I am fond of you ... as people are
fond of friends. I am alone here: the friendship of a good and noble boy
like yourself, capable of sacrifice for a woman whom he hardly knows, is
a very comforting thing to have. Besides, that much doesn't compromise
me. I am a bird of passage, you see; I have alighted here because I'm
tired, ill--I don't just know what's the matter, but deeply broken in
spirit anyhow. I need rest, just plain existence--a plunge into sweet
nothingness, where I can forget everything; and I gratefully accept your
friendship. Later on, when you least expect it, probably, I'll fly away.
The very first morning when I wake up, feel quite myself again--and hear
inside my head the song of the mischievous bird that has advised me to
do so many foolish things in my life--I'll pack up my trunk and take
flight! I'll drop you a line of course; I'll send you newspaper
clippings that speak of me, and you'll see you have a friend who does
not forget you and who sends you greetings from London, Saint
Petersburg, or New York--any one of the corners of this world which many
believe so large yet where I am unable to stir without encountering
things that bore me."

"May that moment be long delayed!" said Rafael. "May it never come!"

"Rash boy!" Leonora exclaimed. "You don't know me. If I were to stay
here very long, we'd finish by quarreling and coming to blows. At bottom
I hate men: I have always been their most terrible enemy."

Behind their backs they heard the rustle of the gown that Cupido was
dragging along behind him with absurd antics. He was coming to the
balcony with doña Pepita to see the sunrise.

Through its dense clouds the sky was beginning to shed a gray, wan
light, under which the vast, watery plain took on the whitish color of
absinthe. Down the stream the debris of the inundation was floating,
sweepings of wretched poverty, uprooted trees, clumps of reeds, thatched
roofs from huts, all dirty, slimy, nauseating. Bits of flotsam and
jetsam became entangled between the orange-trees and formed dams that
little by little grew with the new spoils brought along by the current.

In the distance at the very end of the lake, a number of black points
could be seen in regular rhythmic motion, stirring their legs like
aquatic flies around some roofs barely protruding above the immense
field of water. The rescuers had arrived from Valencia--with whale-boats
of the Fleet, brought overland by rail to the scene of the flood.

The provincial authorities would soon be arriving in Alcira; and the
presence of Rafael was indispensable. Cupido himself, with sudden
gravity, advised him to go and meet those boats.

While the barber was putting on his own clothes, Rafael, with intense
regret, removed his fur cloak. It seemed that in taking it off he was
losing the warmth of that night of sweet intimacy, the contact of that
soft shoulder that had for hours long been leaning against him.

Leonora meanwhile looked at him fixedly.

"We understand each other, don't we?" she asked, slowly. "Friends, with
no hope of anything more than that. If you break the pact, you'll not
enter this place again, not even by the second-story window, as you did
last night."

"Yes, friends and nothing more," Rafael murmured with a tone of sincere
sadness, that seemed to move Leonora.

Her green eyes lighted up: her pupils seemed to glitter with spangles of
gold. She stepped nearer and held out her hand.

"You're a good boy; that's the way I like you: resignation and
obedience. For this time, and in reward for your good sense, we'll make
just one exception. Let's not part thus coldly.... So,--you may kiss
me,--as they do it on the stage--here!"

And she raised her hand up toward his lips. Rafael seized it hungrily
and kissed it over and over again, until Leonora, tearing it away with a
violence that showed extraordinary strength, reprimanded him sharply.

"You rogue!... Up to mischief so soon! What an abuse of confidence?
Good-bye! Cupido is calling you.... Good-bye."

And she pushed him toward the balcony, where the barber was already
holding the boat against the railing.

"Hop in, Rafael," said Cupido. "Better lean on me; the water's going
down and the boat's very low," Rafael jumped into his white craft,
which was now dirty and stained from the red water. The barber took the
oars. They began to move away.

"Good-bye! Good-bye! Many thanks!" cried doña Pepa. The maid and the
whole family of the gardener had come out on the balcony.

Rafael let go the tiller, and turned toward the house. He could see
nothing, however, but that proud beauty, who was waving her handkerchief
to them. He watched her for a long time, and when the crests of the
submerged trees hid the balcony from view, he bowed his head, giving
himself up entirely to the silent pleasure of tasting the sweetness that
he could still feel upon his burning lips.




VI


The elections set the whole District agog. The crucial moment for the
House of Brull had come, and all its loyal henchmen, as though still
uncertain of the Party's omnipotence, and fearing the sudden appearance
of hidden enemies, were running this way and that about the city and the
outlying towns, shouting Rafael's name as a clarion call to victory.

The inundation was something of the forgotten past. The beneficent sun
had dried the fields. The orchards fertilized by the silt of the recent
flood looked more beautiful than ever. A magnificent harvest was
forecasted, and, as sole reminders of the catastrophe, there remained
only a shattered enclosure here, a fallen fence there, or some sunken
road with the banks washed away. Most of the damage had been repaired in
a few days, and people were quite content, referring to the past danger
jokingly. Until next time!

Besides, plenty of relief money had been given out. Help had come from
Valencia, from Madrid, from every corner of Spain, thanks to the
whimpering publicity given the inundation in the local press; and since
the pious believer must attribute all his boons to the protection of
some patron saint, the peasants thanked Rafael and his mother for this
alms, resolving to be more faithful than ever to the powerful family.
So--long live the Father of the Poor!

Doña Bernarda's ambitious dreams were on the point of realization, and
she could not give herself a moment's rest. Her son's cool indifference
was something she could not understand for the life of her! The District
was his all right, but was that a reason for falling asleep on the job?
Who could tell what the "enemies of law and order"--there was more than
one of them in the city--might spring at the very last moment? No, he
must wake up--go and make a speech--now at this town, now at that--and
say a few words of encouragement to the people of property, especially.
And why not visit the _alcalde_, down in X---, just to show that poor
devil he was being taken seriously. Rafael must show himself in public,
keep everybody talking about him and thinking about him!

And Rafael obeyed, but taking good care to avoid the company of don
Andrés on such trips, in order to spend a few hours at the Blue House on
the way out or back, or else, to cut his engagement altogether and pass
the day with Leonora, trembling to return home lest his mother should
have learned what he had been up to.

Doña Bernarda, in fact, had not been slow in detecting her son's new
friendship. To begin with, her one concern in life was Rafael's health
and conduct. And in that gossipy inquisitive country-town, her son could
do virtually nothing which she did not know all about in the course of a
few hours. An indiscreet remark of Cupido had even brought her to the
bottom of that mysterious and perilous night trip down the flooded
river--not to rescue a "poor family," but to call on that
_comica_--that "chorus girl"--as doña Bernarda called Leonora in a
furious burst of scorn. Stormy scenes occurred that were to leave a
strong undercurrent of bitterness and fear in Rafael's character. Doña
Bernarda's harshness of disposition broke the young man's spirit, making
him realize with what good reason he had always feared his mother. That
uncompromising pietist, with her armorplate of impeccable virtue and
"sound principles" about her, crushed him flat with her very first
words. What in the world was he thinking of? Was he bound to dishonor
the name of Brull? Now after so many, many years of family sacrifice,
was he going to make a fool of himself, and give his enemies a hold on
him, just because of the first ballet-skirt that came along? And in her
rage she did not hesitate to rend the veil of reticence behind which her
conjugal fury and her conjugal unhappiness had run their parallel
courses.

"The same as your father!" doña Bernarda exclaimed. "There's no escaping
blood: a woman-chaser, a friend of low-lives, ready to drive me out of
house and home for the sake of any one of them ... and I, big fool that
I am, work for men like that! Forgetting the salvation of my soul in the
next world to see you get farther along in this than your father did!...
And how do you repay me? Just as he did; with one disappointment, one
irritation, after another!"

Then softening somewhat and feeling the need of imparting her great
plans for the future, she would pass from anger to friendly confidence,
and give Rafael insight into the condition of the family. He was so busy
with Party affairs, and thumbing his big books upstairs, that he did
not know how things were going at home. And he didn't need to know for
that matter: she was there to take care of that. But Rafael must realize
the gaps that had been opened in their fortune by his father's wild
conduct just before he died. She was performing miracles of economy.
Thanks to her efficient administration of affairs, and to the loyal aid
of don Andrés, many debts had already been paid off, and she had
redeemed several mortgages. But the burden was a heavy one and it would
still be many years before she could call herself quite free of it.

Besides--and as doña Bernarda came to this part of her talk she grew
tenderer and more insinuating still--he was now the leading man of the
District and so he must be the wealthiest. Now that wouldn't be a
difficult thing to manage. All he had to do was, be a good son, and
follow the advice of his mama, who loved him more than anything else in
the world... A deputy now, and later on, when he came back from Madrid,
marry! There were plenty of good girls around--well brought up, educated
in the fear of the Lord--and millionairesses besides--who would be more
than glad to be his wife.

Rafael smiled faintly at this harangue. He knew whom his mother had in
mind--Remedios, the daughter of the richest man in town--a rustic, the
latter, with more luck than brains, who flooded the English markets with
oranges and made enormous profits, circumventing by instinctive
shrewdness all the commercial combinations made against him.

That was why Rafael's mother was always insistently urging her son to
visit the house of Remedios, inventing all sorts of pretexts to get him
there. Besides, doña Bernarda invited Remedios to the Brull place
frequently, and rarely indeed did Rafael come home of an afternoon
without finding that timid maiden there--a dull, handsomish sort of
girl, dressed up in clothes that did cruel injustice to a peasant beauty
rapidly transformed, by her father's good luck, into a young "society"
girl.

"But, mama," said Rafael, smiling. "I'm not thinking of marriage!... And
when I do, I'll have to consider my own feelings."

After that interview a moral gulf had opened between mother and son. As
a child, Rafael had known his mother to frown and sulk after some
mischievous prank of his. But now, her aggressive, menacing,
uncommunicative glumness was prolonged for days and days.

On returning home at night he would find himself subjected to a
searching cross-examination that would last all during supper. Don
Andrés would usually be present, though he did not dare raise his head
when that masterful woman spoke. Where had he been? Whom had he seen?...
Rafael felt himself surrounded by a system of espionage that followed
him wherever he went in the city or in the country.

"No sir, today you were at the chorus-girl's house again!... Take care,
Rafael! Mark my word! You're killing me, you're killing me ...!"

And then those absurd clandestine trips to the Blue House began, the
leading man of the district, the advocate of Alcira's fortunes, creeping
on his stomach, skulking from bush to bush, in order not to be seen by
telltale observers!

Don Andrés did his best to console the irate woman. It was just a
passing whim of Rafael's! Boys will be boys! You've got to let them have
a good time now and then! What do you expect with a handsome fellow like
that and from the best family in the region! And the cynical old man,
accustomed to easy conquests in the suburbs, blinked maliciously, taking
it for granted that Rafael had won a complete triumph down at the Blue
House. How else explain the youth's assiduity in his visits there, and
his timid though tenacious rebelliousness against his mother's
authority?

"Such affairs, oh you enjoy them--what's the use! But in the end they
weary a fellow, doña Bernarda," the old man said sententiously. "She'll
be clearing out some fine day. Besides, just let Rafael go to Madrid as
deputy, and see the society there! When he comes back he'll have
forgotten this woman ever existed!"

The faithful lieutenant of the Brulls would have been astonished to know
how little Rafael was progressing with his suit.

Leonora was not the woman that she had shown herself on the night of the
flood. With the fascination of danger gone, the novelty of the
adventure, and the extraordinary circumstances of their second
interview, she treated Rafael with a kindly indifference like any other
of the adorers who had flocked about her in her day. She had come to
look upon him as a new piece of furniture that she found in place in
front of her every afternoon; an automaton, who appeared as regularly as
a clock strikes, to spend hours and hours staring at her, pale,
shrinking with an absurd consciousness of inferiority, and often
answering her questions with stupid phrases that made her laugh.

Her irony and deliberate frankness wounded Rafael cruelly. "Hello,
Rafaelito," she would say sometimes as he came in. "You here again?
Better look out! People will be talking about us before long. Then what
will mama say to you?" And Rafael would be stung to the quick. What a
disgrace, to be tied to a mother's apron-strings, and have to stoop to
all those subterfuges to visit this place without raising a rumpus at
home!

But try as he would, meanwhile, he could not shake off the spell that
Leonora was exercising over him.

Besides, what wonderful afternoons when she deigned to be good!
Sometimes, wearied with walks about the open country, and bored, as
might have been expected of a frivolous, fickle character like hers,
with the monotony of the landscape of orange-trees and palms, she would
take refuge in her parlor, and sit down at the piano! With the hushed
awe of a pious worshipper, Rafael would take a chair in a corner, and
gluing his eyes upon those two majestic shoulders over which curly
tresses fell like golden plumes, he would listen to her rich, sweet,
mellow voice as it blended with the languishing chords of the piano;
while through the open windows the breath of the murmurous orchard made
its way drenched in the golden light of autumn, saturated with the
seasoned perfume of the ripe oranges that peered with faces of fire
through the festoons of leaves.

Shubert, with his moody romances, was her favorite composer. The
melancholy of that sad music had a peculiar fascination for her in her
solitude. Her passionate, tumultuous soul seemed to fall into a
languorous enervation under the fragrance of the orange blossoms. At
times, she would be assailed by sudden recollections of triumphs on the
stage, and on such occasions, setting the piano ringing with the sublime
fury of the Valkyries' Ride, she would begin to shout Brunhilde's
"Hojotojo," the impetuous, savage war-cry of Wotan's daughter--a
melodious scream with which she had brought many an audience to its
feet, and which, in that deserted paradise, made Rafael shudder and
admire, as if the singer were some strange divinity--a blond goddess
with green eyes, wont to charge across the ice-fields through whirlwinds
of driving snow, but who, there, in a land of sunshine, had deigned to
become a simple, an entrancing woman!

And then again, throwing her beautiful body back in her chair, as if in
her mind's eye she could see some old palatial hall festooned with
roses, and in it a maze of hoop skirts, powdered wigs, and red heels,
whirling in the dance, she would brush the keys with a minuet by Mozart,
as subtly fragrant as priceless perfume, as seductive as the smile of a
painted princess with beauty-patches and false dimples!

Rafael had not forgotten the first night of their friendship, nor the
fingers that had been offered to his lips in that selfsame parlor. Once
he was moved to repeat the scene, and bending low over the keys, had
tried to kiss Leonora's hand.

The actress started, as if awakening from a dream. Her eyes flashed
angrily, though her lips did not lose their smile; and she raised her
hand threateningly, with all its fantastic glitter of jewelry, and
pretended to strike at him:

"Take care, Rafael; you're a child and I'll treat you as such. You
already know that I don't like to be annoyed. I won't send you away this
time, but if you do it again, you'll get a good cuffing. Don't forget
that when I want my hand kissed I begin by giving it voluntarily. What a
nuisance! Such a thing happens only once in a life-time.... But, I
understand: no more music for today; it's all over! I'll have to
entertain the little boy so's he won't fuss."

And she began to tell him stories of her professional career, which
Rafael at once appraised as new progress toward intimacy with the divine
beauty.

He looked over her pictures for the various operas in which she had
sung; a rich collection of beautiful photographs, with studio signatures
in almost every European tongue, some of them in strange alphabets that
Rafael could not identify. That pale, mystic Elizabeth of _Tannhäuser_
had been taken in Milan; that ideal, romantic Elsa of _Lohengrin_, in
Munich; here was a wide-eyed, bourgeois Eva from _die Meistersinger_,
photographed in Vienna; there a proud arrogant Brunhilde, with hostile,
flashing eyes, that bore the imprint of St. Petersburg. And there were
other souvenirs of seasons at Covent Garden, at the San Carlos of
Lisbon, the Scala of Milan, and opera houses of New York and Rio de
Janeiro.

As Rafael handled the large pasteboard mountings, he felt much like a
boy watching strange steamers entering a harbor and scattering the
perfumes of distant, mysterious lands all around. Each picture seemed
to wrap him in the atmosphere of its country, and from that peaceful
salon, murmuring with the breathing of the silent orchard, he seemed to
be traveling all over the earth.

The photographs were all of the same characters--heroines of Wagner.
Leonora, a fanatic worshipper of the German genius, was ever speaking of
him in terms of intimate familiarity, as if she had known him
personally, and wished to sing no operas but his. And in her eager
desire to compass all the Master's work, she did not hesitate to
compromise her reputation for power and vigor by attempting roles of
lighter or tenderer vein.

Rafael gazed at the portraits one by one; here she seemed emaciated,
wan, as if she had just recovered from an illness; there, she was strong
and proud, as if challenging the world with her beauty.

"Oh, Rafael!" she murmured pensively. "Life isn't all gaiety. I have had
my stormy times like everybody else. I have lived centuries, it seems,
and these strips of cardboard are chapters of my life-story."

And while she surrendered to a dreamy re-living of the past, Rafael
would go into ecstasies over a picture of Brunhilde, a beautiful
photograph which he had more than once thought of stealing.

That Brunhilde was Leonora herself; the arrogant Valkyrie, the strong,
the valiant Amazon, capable of trying to beat him for the slightest
unwarranted liberty he took--and of doing it besides. Beneath the helmet
of polished steel, with its two wings of white plumes, her blond locks
fell, while a savage flash glittered in her green eyes, and her
nostrils seemed to palpitate with indomitable fierceness. A cloak fell
from her shoulders that were round, muscular, powerful. A steel coat of
mail curved outward around her magnificent bust, and her bare arms, one
holding the lance, and the other resting on a burnished shield, as
shining and luminous as a sheet of crystal, showed vigor and strength
under feminine grace of line. There she was in all her goddess-like
majesty--the Pallas of a mythology of the North, as beautiful as
heroism, as terrible as war. Rafael could understand the mad enthusiasm,
the electrified commotion of her audiences as they saw her stepping out
among the rocks of painted canvas, setting the boards a-tremble with her
lithe footsteps, rudely raising her lance and shield above the white
wings of her helmet and shouting the cry of the Valkyries--"_Hojotoho!_"
which, repeated in the green tranquility of that Valencian orchard,
seemed to make the lanes of foliage quiver with a tremor of admiring
ecstasy.

Across the whole world, and everywhere in triumph, that whimsical,
adventuresome, madcap woman, of whose life as an actress so many stories
were told, had carried the arrogance of the virgin warrior-maid
conceived by the master Wagner. In a bulky book, of uneven irregular
pages, where the singer with the minute conscientiousness of a child,
had preserved everything the newspapers of the globe had written about
her, Rafael found echos of her stormy ovations. Many of the printed
clippings were yellow with age, but they could still evoke before his
dazzled eyes, visions of theaters packed with elegant, sensuous women,
as beautiful as Wotan's daughter in the coat-of-mail; atmospheres hot
with light and enthusiasm, a-glitter with sparkling jewels and
sparkling eyes; and in the background, with her helmet and her lance,
the dominating Valkyrie herself greeted with frantic applause and
limitless admiration.

In the collection were newspaper reproductions of the singer's
photographs, biographical notices, critical articles relating to the
triumphs of the celebrated _diva_ Leonora Brunna--for such was the stage
name adopted by Doctor Moreno's daughter--clipping after clipping
printed in Castilian or South American Spanish; columns of the clear,
close print of English papers; paragraphs on the coarse, thin paper of
the French and Italian press; compact masses of Gothic characters, which
troubled Rafael's eyes, and unintelligible Russian letters, that, to
him, looked like whimsical scrawls of a childish hand. And all in praise
of Leonora, one universal tribute to the talent of that woman, who was
looked upon so scornfully by the citified peasants of the boy's native
town. A divinity, indeed! And Rafael felt a growing hatred and contempt
for the gross, uncouth virtue of those who had left her in a social
vacuum. Why had she come to Alcira, anyway? What could possibly have led
her to abandon a world of triumphs, where she was admired by everyone,
for the life, virtually, of a barnyard?

Later she showed him some of her more personal mementoes; jewels of rare
beauty, expensive baubles, "testimonials," reminiscent of "evenings of
honor," when admirers had surprised her in the green room while outside
the audience was applauding wildly, and she, lowering her lance, and
surrounded by ushers with huge bouquets, would step forward to the
footlights and make her bow of acknowledgment, under a deluge of tinsel
and flowers. One medallion bore the portrait of the venerable don Pedro
of Brazil, the artist-emperor, who paid tribute to the singer in a
greeting written in diamonds. Gem-incrusted frames of gold spoke of
enthusiasts who perhaps had begun by desiring the woman to resign
themselves in the end to admiration for the artist. Here was a
collection of illuminated diplomas from charitable societies thanking
her for assistance at benefits. Queen Victoria of England had given her
a fan with an autograph dated from a concert at Windsor Castle. From
Isabel II came a royal bracelet, as a souvenir of various evenings at
the Castilla Palace in Paris. Millionaires, princes, grand-dukes,
presidents of Spanish-American republics, had left a whole museum of
costly trinkets at her feet. Characteristic of adorers from the United
States, where people always temper enthusiasm with usefulness, were a
number of portfolios, their bindings much worn by time, containing
railroad shares, land titles, stocks in enterprises of varying
stability, suggesting the rambles of the American promotor from the
prairies of Canada to the pampas of the Argentine.

In the presence of all the trophies that the arrogant Valkyrie had
gathered in on her triumphal passage through the world, Rafael felt
pride, first of all, at being friends with such a woman; but at the same
time a sense of his own insignificance, exaggerating, if anything, the
difference that separated them. How in the world had he ever dared make
love to a person like Leonora Brunna?

Finally came the most interesting, the most intimate of all her
treasures--an album which she allowed him hurriedly to glimpse through,
forbidding him, however, even to look at certain of the pages. It was a
volume modestly bound in dark leather with silver clasps; but Rafael
gazed upon it as on a wonderful fetish, and with all the awe-struck
adoration inspired by great names. Kings and emperors were the least
among the celebrities who had knelt in homage before the goddess. The
overshadowing geniuses of art were there, dedicating a word of
affection, a line of verse, a bar of music, to the beautiful songstress.
Rafael stared in open-mouthed wonderment at the signatures of the old
Verdi and of Boito. Then came the younger masters, of the new Italian
school, noisy and triumphant with the clamor of art brought within range
of the mob. In gallant phrases the Frenchmen, Massenet and Saint-Saens,
paid their respects to the greatest interpreter of the greatest of
composers; Rafael could decipher what was in Italian, scenting the sweet
perfume of Latin adulation despite the fact that he scarcely knew the
language. A sonnet by Illica moved him actually to tears. Other
inscriptions were meaningless to him--the lines from Hans Keller,
especially, the great orchestral conductor, disciple and confidant of
Wagner, the artistic executor, charged with watching over the master's
glory--that Hans Keller of whom Leonora was speaking all the time with
the fondness of a woman and the admiration of an artist--all of which
did not prevent her from adding that he was "a barbarian." Stanzas in
German, in Russian and in English, which, as the singer re-read them
brought a contented smile to her features, Rafael, to his great
despair, could not induce her to translate.

"Those are matters you wouldn't understand. Go on to the next page. I
mustn't make you blush."

And that was the only explanation she would give--as though he were a
child.

Some Italian verses, written in a tremulous hand and in crooked lines,
attracted Rafael's attention. He could half make their meaning out, but
Leonora would never let him finish reading them. It was an amorous,
desperate lament; a cry of racking passion condemned to disappointment,
writhing in isolation like a wild beast in its cage: Luigi Macchia.

"And who is Luigi Macchia?" asked Rafael. "Why such despair?"

"He was a young fellow from Naples," Leonora answered, at last, one
afternoon, in a sad voice, and turning her head, as if to conceal the
tears that had come to her eyes. "One day they found him under the pine
trees of Posilipo, with a bullet through his head. He wanted to die, you
see, and he killed himself.... But put all this aside and let's go down
to the garden. I need a breath of air."

They sauntered along the avenue that was bordered with rose-bushes, and
several minutes went by before either of them spoke. Leonora seemed
quite absorbed in her thoughts. Her brows were knitted and her lips
pressed tightly together, as if she were suffering the sting of painful
recollections.

"Suicide!" she said at last. "Doesn't that seem a silly thing to do,
Rafael? Kill yourself for a woman? Just as if we women were obliged to
love every man who thinks he's in love with us!... How stupid men are!
We have to be their servants, love them willy-nilly. And if we don't,
they kill themselves just to spite us."

And she was silent for a time.

"Poor Macchia! He was a good boy, and deserved to be happy. But if I
were to surrender to every desperate protestation made to me!...
However, he went and did just what he said he would do.... How crazy
they get! And the worst of it is, I have found others like him in my
travels."

She explained no farther. Rafael gazed at her, but respected her
silence, trying in vain to guess the thoughts that were stirring behind
her shining eyes, as green and golden as the sea under a noonday sun.
What a wealth of romance must be hidden in that woman's past! What
tragedies must have been woven into the checkered fabric of her
wonderful career!...

So the days went by, and election time came around. Rafael, in passive
rebellion against his mother, who rarely spoke a word to him now, had
completely neglected the campaign. But on the decisive Sunday he
triumphed completely, and Rafael Brull, Deputy from Alcira, spent the
night shaking hands, receiving congratulations, listening to serenades,
waiting for morning to come that he might run to the Blue House and
receive Leonora's ironic good wishes.

"I'm very glad to hear it," the actress said. "Now you'll be leaving
very soon and I'll lose sight of you. It was high time really! You know,
my dear child, you were beginning to get tiresome with your assiduous
worship, that mute, persistent, tenacious adoration of yours. But up in
Madrid you'll get over it all. Tut, tut, now ... don't say you won't. No
need to perjure yourself. I guess I know what young men are like! And
you're a young man. The next time we meet, you'll have other things in
your head. I'll be a friend, just a friend; and that's what--and all--I
want to be."

"But will I find you here when I come back?" Rafael asked, anxiously.

"You want to know more things than anybody I ever knew! How can I say
whether I'll be here or not? Nobody in the world was ever sure of
holding me. I don't know where I'll be tomorrow myself.... But, no," she
continued, gravely, "if you come back by next spring, you'll find me
here. I'm thinking of staying surely until then. I want to see the
orange-trees in bloom, go back to my early childhood--the only memories
of my past that have followed me everywhere. Many a time I have gone to
Nice, spending a fortune and crossing half the world to get there--and
just to see a handful of puny orange-trees in bloom; now I want to take
one great, deep, plunge into the deluge of orange blossoms that
inundates these fields every year. It's the one thing that keeps me in
Alcira.... I'm sure. So if you come back about that season, you will
find me; and we will meet for one last time; for that will be the limit
of my endurance. I shall simply have to fly away, however hard poor
auntie takes it.... For the present, however, I am quite comfortable.
You see I was so tired! I find this solitude a welcome refuge after a
stormy voyage. Only something very important indeed could persuade me to
leave it at once."

But they saw each other on many another afternoon in the garden, there.
It was saturated now with the fragrance of ripe oranges. The vast valley
lay blue beneath the winter sun. Oranges, oranges, everywhere, reaching
out, it seemed, through the foliage, to the industrious hands that were
plucking them from the branches. Carts were creaking all along the
roads, trundling heaps of golden fruit over the ruts. The large shipping
houses rang again with the voices of girls singing at their work as they
selected and wrapped the oranges in paper. Hammers were pounding at the
wooden crates, and off toward France and England in great golden waves
those daughters of the South rolled--capsules of golden skin, filled
with sweet juice--the quintessence of Spanish sunshine.

Leonora, standing on tiptoe under an old tree, with her back toward
Rafael, was looking for a particularly choice orange among the dense
branches. As she swayed this way and that, the proud, graceful curves of
her vigorous slenderness became more beautiful than ever.

"I'm leaving tomorrow," the young man said, dispiritedly.

Leonora turned around. She had found her orange and was peeling it with
her long pink nails.

"Tomorrow?" she said, smiling. "Everything comes if you wait long
enough!... The best of success to you, señor deputy."

And bringing the fragrant fruit to her lips, she sank her white,
glistening teeth into the golden pulp, closing her eyes rapturously, to
sense the full warm sweetness of the juice.

Rafael stood there pale and trembling, as if something desperate were
in his mind.

"Leonora! Leonora!... Surely you are not going to send me away like
this?"

And then suddenly, carried away by a passion so long restrained, so long
crushed under timidity and fear, he ran up to her, seized her hands and
hungrily sought her lips.

"Oh! What in the world are you up to, Rafael?... How dare you!" she
cried. And with one thrust of her powerful arms she threw him back,
staggering, against the orange-tree. The young man stood there with
lowered head, humiliation and shame written on every line of his face.

"You see, I'm a strong woman," said Leonora, in a voice quivering with
anger. "None of your foolish tricks, or you'll be sorry!"

She glared at him for a long time; but then gradually recovered her
equanimity, and began to laugh at the pitiable spectacle before her.

"But what a child you are, Rafael!... Is that what you call a friendly
good-bye?... How little you know me, silly! You force matters, you do, I
see. Well just understand, I'm impregnable, unless I choose to be
otherwise. Why, men have died without being able to kiss so much as the
tip of my fingers. It's time you were going, Rafael. We'll still be
friends, of course.... But in case we are to see each other again, don't
forget what I tell you. We are through with such nonsense once and for
all. Don't waste your time. I cannot be yours. I'm tired of men; perhaps
I hate them. I have known the handsomest, the most elegant, the most
famous of them all. I have been almost a queen; queen 'on the left hand
side,' as the French say, but so much mistress of the situation that,
had I cared to get mixed up in such vulgarity, I could have changed
ministries and overturned thrones. Men renowned in Europe for their
elegance--and their follies--have grovelled at my feet, and I have
treated them worse than I have treated you. The most celebrated women
have envied me and hated me--copying my dresses and my poses. And when,
tired of all that brilliancy and noise, I said 'Good-bye' and came to
this retreat, do you think it was to give myself to a village
_señorito_, though a few hundred country bumpkins think he is a
wonder?... Oh, say, Rafael, really...."

And she laughed a cruel, mocking laugh--that cut Rafael to the quick.
The young man bowed his head and his chest heaved painfully, as if the
tears that could not find issue through his eyes were stifling, choking
him. He seemed on the point of utter collapse.

Leonora repented of her cruelty.

She stepped up to the boy until she was almost touching him. Then taking
his chin in her two hands, she made him raise his head.

"Oh, I have hurt you, haven't I! What mean things I said to the poor
child! Let me see now. Lift that head up! Look me straight in the eye!
Say that you forgive me.... That cursed habit I have of never holding my
tongue! I have offended you; but please, don't pay any attention to
that! I was joking! What a fine way of repaying you for what you did
that night!... No; Rafael, you are a very handsome chap indeed ... and
very distinguished ... and you will make a great name for yourself, up
in Madrid!... You'll be what they call a 'personage,' and you'll
marry--oh my--a very stylish, elegant, society girl! I can see all
that.... But, meanwhile, my dear boy, don't depend on me. We are going
to be friends, and nothing more than friends, ever! Why, there are tears
in your eyes! Well, here. Come ... kiss my hand, I will let you ... as
you did that night--there, like that! I could be yours only if I loved
you; but alas! I shall never fall in love with the dashing Rafaelito!
I'm an old woman, already, and I've been so lavish with my heart, spent
it so freely, I'm afraid I have none left.... Poor, poor little Rafael!
I'm so sorry ... but, you see, you came so late ... so late ...!"




PART TWO

I


Hidden in the tall, thick rose-bushes that bounded the _plazoleta_ in
front of the Blue House, and under four old dead palms that drooped
their branches dry and melancholy under the vigorous tufts of younger
trees, were two rubblework benches, white-washed, the backs and armrests
of ancient Valencian tiles, the glazed surfaces flecked with arabesques
and varicolored fancies inherited from days of Saracen rule--sturdy, but
comfortable seats, with the graceful lines of the sofas of the
Eighteenth Century; and in them Leonora liked to spend her time in late
afternoons especially, when the palm trees covered the little square
with a cool, delightful shade.

On that warm March day, doña Pepa was sitting in one of them, her
silver-rimmed spectacles on her nose, reading the "Life" of the day's
saint. At her side was the maid. A true daughter of the _campagna_ of
Rome, Beppa had been trained to piety from her earliest years; and she
was listening attentively so as not to miss a word.

On the other bench were Leonora and Rafael. The actress, with lowered
head, was following the movements of her hands, busily engaged on some
embroidery.

Rafael found Leonora much changed after his months of absence.

She was dressed simply, like any young lady of the city; her face and
hands, so white and marble-like before, had taken on the golden
transparency of ripened grain under the continued caress of the
Valencian sun. Her slender fingers were bare of all rings, and her pink
ears were not, as formerly, a-gleam with thick clusters of diamonds.

"I've become a regular peasant, haven't I?" she said, as if she could
read in Rafael's eyes his astonishment at the transformation she had
undergone. "It's life in the open that works such miracles: today one
frill, tomorrow another, and a woman eventually gets rid of everything
that was once a part of her body almost. I feel better this way....
Would you believe it? I've actually deserted my dressing-table, and the
perfume I used lies all forsaken and forlorn. Fresh water, plenty of
fresh water ... that's what I like. I'm a long way from the Leonora who
had to paint herself every night like a clown before she could appear
before an audience. Take a good look at me! Well ... what do you think?
You might mistake me for one of your vassals almost, eh? I'll bet that
if I had gone out this morning to join your demonstration at the station
you wouldn't have recognized me in the crowd."

Rafael was going to say--and quite seriously, too--that he thought her
more beautiful than ever. Leonora seemed to have descended from her
height and drawn closer to him. But she guessed what was coming, and to
forestall any compliments, hastened to resume control of the
conversation.

"Now don't say you like me better this way. What nonsense! Remember, you
come from Madrid, from real elegance, a world you did not know
before!... But, to tell the truth, I like this simplicity; and the
important thing in life is to please yourself, isn't it? It was a slow
transformation, but an irresistible one; this country life gradually
filled me with its peace and calm; it went to my head like a bland
delicious wine. I just sleep and sleep, living the life of a human
animal, free from every emotion, and quite willing never to wake up
again. Why, Rafaelito! If nothing extraordinary happens and the devil
doesn't give an unexpected tug at my sleeve, I can conceive of staying
on here forever. I think of the outer world as a sailor must of the sea,
when he finds himself all cosy at home after a voyage of continuous
tempest."

"That's right, do stay," said Rafael. "You can't imagine how I worried
up in Madrid wondering whether or not I'd find you here on my return."

"Don't go telling any fibs," said Leonora, gently, smiling with just a
suggestion of gratification. "Do you think we haven't been following
your doings in Madrid? Though you never were a friend, exactly, of good
old Cupido, you've been writing him frequently--and all sorts of
nonsense; just as a pretext for the really important thing--the
postscript, with your regards to the 'illustrious artist,' sure to
provoke the consoling reply that the 'illustrious artist' was still
here. How those letters made me laugh!"

"Anyway, that will prove I wasn't lying that day when I assured you I
would not forget, in Madrid. Well, Leonora; I didn't! The separation has
made me worse, much worse, in fact."

"Thanks, Rafael," Leonora answered, quite seriously, as if she had lost
mastery over the irony of former days. "I know you're telling the
truth. And it saddens me, because it really is too bad. You understand,
of course, that I can't love you.... So--if you don't mind--let's talk
of something else."

And hastily, to shift the conversation from such dangerous ground, she
began to chat about her rustic pleasures.

"I have a hen-coop that's too charming for anything. If you could only
see me mornings, in a circle of cackling feathers, throwing fusillades
of corn about to keep the roosters away. You see they get under my
skirts and peck at my feet. It's hard to realize I can be the same woman
who, just a few months ago, was brandishing a stage lance and
interpreting Wagner's dreams, no less, as finely as you please! You'll
soon see _my_ vassals. I have the most astonishing layers you ever saw;
and every morning I rummage around in the straw like a thief to get the
eggs, and when I find them, they are still warm.... I've forgotten the
piano. I hadn't opened it for more than a week, but this afternoon--I
don't know why--I just felt like spending a little while in the society
of the geniuses. I was thirsty for music ... one of those moody whims of
the olden days. Perhaps the presentiment that you were coming: the
thought of those afternoons when you were upstairs, sitting like a booby
in the corner, listening to me.... But don't jump to the conclusion, my
dear deputy, that everything here is mere play--just chickens and the
simple life. No, sir! I have turned my leisure to serious account. I
have done big things to the house. You would never guess! A bathroom, if
you please! And it just scandalizes poor auntie; while Beppa says it's
a sin to give so much thought to matters of the body. I could give up
many of my old habits, but not my bath; it's the one luxury I have kept,
and I sent to Valencia for the plumbers, the marble, and the wood and...
well ... it's a gem. I'll show it to you, by and by. If some fine day I
should suddenly take it into my head to fly away, that bath will remain
here, for my poor aunt to preach about and show how her madcap niece
squandered a mint of money on sinful folly, as she calls it."

And she laughed, with a glance at the innocent doña Pepa, who, there on
the other bench, was for the hundredth time explaining to the Italian
maid the prodigious miracles wrought by the patron of Alcira, and trying
to persuade the "foreigner" to transfer her faith to that saint, and
waste no more time on the second or third raters of Italy.

"Don't imagine," the actress continued, "that I forgot you during all
this time. I am a real friend, you see, and take an interest! I learned
through Cupido, who ferrets out everything, just what you were doing in
Madrid. I, too, figured among your admirers. That proves what friendship
can do! ... I don't know why, but when señor Brull is concerned, I
swallow the biggest whoppers, though I know they're lies. When you made
your speech in the Chambers on that matter of flood protection, I sent
to Alcira for the paper and read the story through I don't know how many
times, believing blindly everything said in praise of you. I once met
Gladstone at a concert given by the Queen at Windsor Castle; I have
known men who got to be presidents of their countries on sheer
eloquence--not to mention the politicians of Spain. The majority of
them I've had, one time or another, as hangers-on in my
dressing-room--once I had sung at the 'Real.' Well, despite all that, I
took the exaggerations your party friends printed about you quite
seriously for some days, putting you on a level with all the solemn
top-notchers I have known. And why, do you suppose? Perhaps from my
isolation and tranquillity here, which do make you lose perspective; or
perhaps it was the influence of environment! It is impossible to live in
this region without being a subject of the Brulls!... Can I be falling
in love with you unawares?"

And once more she laughed the gleeful, candid, mocking laugh of other
days. At first she had received him seriously, simply, under the
influence still of solitude, country life and the longing for rest and
quiet. But once in actual contact with him again, the sight, again, of
that lovesick expression in eyes which now, however, showed a trace of
self-possession, the old teaser had reappeared in her; and her irony cut
into the youth's flesh like a steel blade.

"Stranger things than that have happened," Rafael snapped boldly, and
imitating her sarcastic smile. "It's humanly conceivable that even you
should wind up by falling in love with even me--out of pity, of course!"

"No," answered Leonora bluntly. "It's not even humanly conceivable. I'll
never fall in love with you ... And even if I should," she continued in
a gentle, almost mothering tone, "you would never know about it. I
should keep it jolly well to myself--so as to prevent your going crazy
on finding your affections returned. All afternoon I have been trying
to evade this explanation. I have brought up a thousand subjects, I have
inquired about your life in Madrid--even going into details that haven't
the slightest interest for me--all to keep the talk off love. But with
you, that's impossible; you always come back to that sooner or later.
Very well, so be it ... But I'll never love you--I must not love you. If
I had made your acquaintance somewhere else, but under the same romantic
circumstances, I don't say it mightn't have happened. But here!... My
scruples may make you laugh, but I feel as though I'd be committing a
crime to love you. It would be like entering a home and repaying the
hospitality by purloining the silverware."

"That's a new kind of nonsense you are talking," Rafael exclaimed. "Just
what do you mean? I don't think I understand, exactly."

"Well, you live here, you see, and you hardly realize what it's all
like. Love for love's sake alone! That may happen in the world where I
come from. There folks aren't scandalized at things. Virtue is
broad-minded and tolerant; and people, through a selfish desire to have
their own weaknesses condoned, are careful not to censure others too
harshly. But here!... Here love is the straight and narrow path that
leads to marriage. Now let's see how good a liar you are! Would you be
capable of saying that you would marry me?..."

She gazed straight at the youth out of her green, luminous, mocking
eyes, and with such frankness that Rafael bowed his head, stuttering as
he started to speak.

"Exactly," she went on. "You wouldn't, and you are right. For that
would be a piece of solemn, deliberate barbarity. I'm not one of the
women who are made for such things. Many men have proposed marriage to
me in my time, to prove what fools they were, I suppose. More than once
they've offered me their ducal crowns or the prestige of their
marquisates, with the idea that title and social position would hold me
back when I got bored and tried to fly away. But imagine me married!
Could anything be more absurd?"

She laughed hysterically, almost, but with an undertone that hurt Rafael
deeply. There was a ring of sarcasm, of unspeakable scorn in it, which
reminded the young man of Mephisto's mirth during his infernal serenade
to Marguerite.

"Moreover," continued Leonora, recovering her composure, "you don't seem
to realize just how I stand in this community. Don't imagine what's said
about me in town escapes me ... I just have to notice the way the women
look at me the few times I go in there. And I know also what happened to
you before you left for Madrid. We find out everything here, Rafaelito.
The gossip of these people carries--it reaches even this solitary spot.
I know perfectly well how your mother hates me, and I've even heard
about the squabbles you've had at home over coming here. Well, we must
put a stop to all that! I am going to ask you not to visit me any more.
I will always be your friend; but if we stop seeing each other it will
be to the advantage of us both."

That was a painful thrust for Rafael. So she knew! But to escape from
what he felt to be a ridiculous position, he affected an air of
independence.

"Don't you believe such bosh! It's just election gossip spread by my
enemies. I am of age, and I daresay I can go where I please, without
asking mamma."

"Very well; keep on coming, if you really want to; but all the same, it
shows how people feel toward me--a declaration of war, virtually. And if
I should ever fall in love with you ... heavens! What would they say
then? They'd be sure I had come here for the sole purpose of capturing
their don Rafael! You can see how far such a thing is from my mind. It
would be the end of the peace and quiet I came here to find. If they
talk that way now, when I'm as innocent as a lamb, imagine how their
tongues would wag then!... No, I'm not looking for excitement! Let them
snap at me as much as they please; but I mustn't be to blame. It must be
out of pure envy on their part. I wouldn't stoop to provoking them!"

And with a turn of her head in the direction of the city that was hidden
from view behind the rows of orange-trees, she laughed disdainfully.

Then her gleeful frankness returned once more--a candor of which she was
always ready to make herself the first victim--and in a low,
confidential, affectionate tone she continued:

"Besides, Rafaelito, you haven't had a good look at me. Why, I'm almost
an old woman!... Oh, I know it, I know it. You don't have to tell me.
You and I are of the same age; but you are a man; and I'm a woman. And
the way I've lived has added considerably to my years. You are still on
the very threshold of life. I've been knocking about the world since I
was sixteen, from one theatre to another. And my accursed disposition,
my mania for concealing nothing, for refusing to lie, has helped make me
worse than I really am. I have many enemies in this world who are just
gloating, I am sure, because I have suddenly disappeared. You can't
advance a step on the stage without rousing the jealousy of someone; and
that kind of jealousy is the most bloodthirsty of human passions. Can
you imagine what my kind colleagues say about me? That I've gotten along
as a woman of the _demimonde_ rather than as an artist--that I'm a
_cocotte_, using my voice and the stage for soliciting, as it were."

"Damn the liars!" cried Rafael hotly. "I'd like to have someone say that
in my hearing."

"Bah! Don't be a child. Liars, yes, but what they say has a grain of
truth in it. I have been something of the sort, really; though the blame
had not been wholly mine ... I've done crazy foolish things--giving a
loose rein to my whims, for the fun of the thing. Sometimes it would be
wealth, magnificence, luxury; then again bravery; then again just plain,
ordinary, good looks! And I would be off the moment the excitement, the
novelty, was gone, without a thought for the desperation of my lovers at
finding their dreams shattered. And from all this wild career of
mine--it has taken in a good part of Europe--I have come to one
conclusion: either that what the poets call love is a lie, a pleasant
lie, if you wish; or else that I was not born to love, that I am immune;
for as I go back over my exciting and variegated past, I have to
recognize that in my life love has not amounted to this!"

And she gave a sharp snap with her pink fingers.

"I am telling you everything, you see," she continued. "During your long
absence I thought of you often. Somehow I want you to know me
thoroughly, once and for all. In that way perhaps we can get along
together better. I can understand now why it is a peasant woman will
walk miles and miles, under a scorching sun or a pouring rain, to have a
priest listen to her confession. I am in that mood this afternoon. I
feel as though I must tell everything. Even if I tried not to, I should
not succeed. There's a little demon inside me here urging me, compelling
me, to unveil all my past."

"Please feel quite free to do so. To be a confessor even, to deserve
your confidence, is some progress for me, at any rate."

"Progress? But why should you care to progress ... into my heart! My
heart is only an empty shell! Do you think you'd be getting much if you
got me? I'm absolutely, absolutely worthless! Don't laugh, please! I
mean it! Absolutely worthless. Here in this solitude I have been able to
study myself at leisure, see myself as I really am. I recognize it plain
as day: I am nothing, nothing. Good looking?... Well, yes; I confess I
am not what you'd call ugly. Even if, with a ridiculous false modesty, I
were to say I was, there's my past history to prove that plenty of men
have found me beautiful. But, alas, Rafaelito! That's only the outside,
my facade, so to speak. A few winter rains will wash the paint off and
show the mould that's underneath. Inside, believe me, Rafael, I am a
ruin. The walls are crumbling, the floors are giving way. I have burned
my life out in gaiety. I have singed my wings in a headlong rush into
the candle-flame of life. Do you know what I am? I am one of those old
hulks drawn up on the beach. From a distance their paint seems to have
all the color of their first voyages; but when you get closer you see
that all they ask for is to be let alone to grow old and crumble away on
the sand in peace. And you, who are setting out on your life voyage,
come gaily asking for a berth on a wreck that will go to the bottom as
soon as it strikes deep water, and carry you down with it!... Rafael, my
dear boy, don't be foolish. I am all right to have as a friend; but it's
too late for me to be anything more ... even if I were to love you. We
are of a different breed. I have been studying you, and I see that you
are a sensible, honest, plodding sort of fellow. Whereas I--I belong to
the butterflies, to the opposite of all you are. I am a conscript under
the banner of Bohemia, and I cannot desert the colors. Each of us on his
own road then. You'll easily find a woman to make you happy.... The
sillier she is, the better.... You were born to be a family man."

It occurred to Rafael that she might be poking fun at him, as she so
often did. But no; there was a ring of sincerity in her voice. The
forced smile had vanished from her face. She was speaking tenderly,
affectionately, as if in motherly counsel to a son in danger of going
wrong.

"And don't make yourself over, Rafael. If the world were made up of
people like me, life would be impossible. I too have moments when I
should like to become a different person entirely--a fowl, a cow, or
something, like the folks around me, thinking of money all the time, and
of what I'll eat tomorrow; buying land, haggling with farmers on the
market, studying fertilizers, having children who'd keep me busy with
their colds and the shoes they'd tear, my widest vision limited to
getting a good price for the fall crop. There are times when I envy a
hen. How good it must be, to be a hen! A fence around me to mark the
boundaries of my world, my meals for the trouble of pecking at them, my
life-work to sit hour after hour in the sun, balanced on a roost.... You
laugh? Well, I've made a good start already toward becoming a hen, and
the career suits me to a 't.' Every Wednesday I go to market, to buy a
pullet and some eggs; and I haggle with the vendors just for the fun of
it, finally giving them the price they ask for; I invite the peasant
women to have a cup of chocolate with me, and come home escorted by a
whole crowd of them; and they listen in astonishment when I talk to
Beppa in Italian! If you could only see how fond they are of me!... They
can hardly believe their eyes when they see the _siñorita_ isn't half so
black as the city people paint her. You remember that poor woman we saw
up at the Hermitage that afternoon? Well, she's a frequent visitor, and
I always give her something. She, too, is fond of me.... Now all that is
agreeable, isn't it? Peace; the affection of the humble; an innocent old
woman, my poor aunt, who seems to have grown younger since I came here!
Nevertheless, some fine day, this shell, this rustic bark that has
formed around me in the sun and the air of the orchards, will burst, and
the woman of old--the Valkyrie--will step out of it again. And then, to
horse, to horse! Off on another gallop around the world, in a tempest of
pleasure, acclaimed by a chorus of brutal libertines!... I am sure that
is bound to happen. I swore to remain here until Spring. Well, Spring is
almost here! Look at those rose-bushes! Look at those orange-trees!
Bursting with life! Oh, Rafael, I'm afraid of Springtime. Spring has
always been a season of disaster for me."

And she was lost in thought for a moment. Doña Pepa and the Italian maid
had gone into the house. The good old woman could never keep away from
the kitchen long.

Leonora had dropped her embroidery upon the bench and was looking
upward, her head thrown back, the muscles of her arching neck tense and
drawn. She seemed wrapt in ecstacy, as if visions of the past were
filing by in front of her. Suddenly she shuddered and sat up.

"I'm afraid I'm ill, Rafael. I don't know what's the matter with me
today. Perhaps it's the surprise of seeing you; this talk of ours that
has called me back to the past, after so many months of tranquillity....
Please don't speak! No, not a word, please. You have the rare skill,
though you don't know it, of making me talk, of reminding me of things I
was determined to forget.... Come, give me your arm; let's walk out
through the garden; it will do me good."

They arose, and began to saunter along over the broad avenue that led
from the gate to the little square. The house was soon behind them, lost
in the thick crests of the orange-trees. Leonora smiled mischievously
and lifted a forefinger in warning.

"I took it for granted you had returned from your trip a more serious,
a more well-behaved person. No nonsense, no familiarities, eh? Besides,
you know already that I'm strong, and can fight--if I have to."




II


Rafael spent a sleepless night tossing about in his bed.

Party admirers had honored him with a serenade that had lasted beyond
midnight. The "prominents" among them had shown some pique at having
cooled their heels all afternoon at the Club waiting for the deputy in
vain. He put in an appearance well on towards evening, and after shaking
hands once more all around and responding to speeches of congratulation,
as he had done that morning, he went straight home.

He had not dared raise his head in Doña Bernarda's presence. He was
afraid of those glowering eyes, where he could read, unmistakably, the
detailed story of everything he had done that afternoon. At the same
time he was nursing a resolve to disobey his mother, meet her
domineering, over-bearing aggressiveness with glacial disregard.

The serenade over, he had hurried to his room, to avoid any chance of an
accounting.

Snug in his bed, with the light out, he gave way to an intense, a
rapturous recollection of all that had taken place that afternoon. For
all the fatigue of the journey and the bad night spent in a
sleeping-car, he lay there with his eyes open in the dark, going over
and over again in his feverish mind all that Leonora told him during
that final hour of their walk through the garden. Her whole, her real
life's story it had been, recorded in a disordered, a disconnected
way--as if she must unburden herself of the whole thing all at
once--with gaps and leaps that Rafael now filled in from his own lurid
imagination.

Italy, the Italy of his trip abroad, came back to him now, vivid,
palpitant, vitalized, glorified by Leonora's revelations.

The shadowy majestic Gallery of Victor Emmanuel at Milan! The immense
triumphal arch, a gigantic mouth protended to swallow up the Cathedral!
The double arcade, cross-shaped, its walls covered with columns, set
with a double row of windows under a vast crystal roof. Hardly a trace
of masonry on the lower stories; nothing but plate glass--the windows of
book-shops, music shops, cafés, restaurants, jewelry stores,
haberdasheries, expensive tailoring establishments.

At one end, the Duomo, bristling with a forest of statues and perforated
spires; at the other, the monument to Leonardo da Vinci, and the famous
_Teatro de la Scala_! Within the four arms of the Gallery, a continuous
bustle of people, an incessant going and coming of merging, dissolving
crowds: a quadruple avalanche flowing toward the grand square at the
center of the cross, where the Café Biffi, known to actors and singers
the world over, spreads its rows of marble tables! A hubbub of cries,
greetings, conversations, footsteps, echoing in the galleries as in an
immense cloister, the lofty skylight quivering with the hum of busy
human ants, forever, day and night, crawling, darting this way and that,
underneath it!

Such is the world's market of song-birds; the world's Rialto of Music;
the world's recruiting office for its army of voices. From that center,
march forth to glory or to the poorhouse, all those who one fine day
have touched their throats and believed they have some talent for
singing. In Milan, from every corner of the earth, all the unhappy
aspirants of art, casting aside their needles, their tools or their
pens, foregather to eat the macaroni of the _trattoria_, trusting that
the world will some day do them justice by strewing their paths with
millions. Beginners, in the first place, who, to make their start, will
accept contracts in any obscure municipal theatre of the Milan district,
in hopes of a paragraph in a musical weekly to send to the folks at home
as evidence of promise and success; and with them, overwhelming them
with the importance of their past, the veterans of art--the celebrities
of a vanished generation: tenors with gray hair and false teeth; strong,
proud, old men who cough and clear their throats to show they still
preserve their sonorous baritone; retired singers who, with incredible
niggardliness, lend their savings at usury or turn shopkeepers after
dragging silks and velvets over world famous "boards."

Whenever the two dozen "stars," the stars of first magnitude that shine
in the leading operas of the globe, pass through the Gallery, they
attract as much admiring attention as monarchs appearing before their
subjects. The _pariahs_, still waiting for a contract, bow their heads
in veneration; and tell, in bated breath, of the castle on Lake Como
that the great tenor has bought, of the dazzling jewels owned by the
eminent soprano, of the graceful tilt at which the applauded baritone
wears his hat; and in their voices there is a tingle of jealousy, of
bitterness against destiny--the feeling that they are just as worthy of
such splendor--the protest against "bad luck," to which they attribute
failure. Hope forever flutters before these unfortunates, blinding them
with the flash of its golden mail, keeping them in a wretched despondent
inactivity. They wait and they trust, without any clear idea of how they
are to attain glory and wealth, wasting their lives in impotence, to die
ultimately "with their boots on," on some bench of the Gallery.

Then, there is another flock, a flock of girls, victims of the Chimera,
walking with a nimble, a prancing step, with music scores under their
arms, on the way to the _maestro's_; slender, light-haired English
_misses_, who want to become prima donnas of comic opera; fair-skinned,
buxom Russian _parishnas_ who greet their acquaintances with the
sweeping bow of a dramatic soprano; Spanish _señoritas_ of bold faces
and free manners, preparing for stage careers as Bizet's
cigarette-girl--frivolous, sonorous song-birds nesting hundreds of
leagues away, and who have flown hither dazzled by the tinsel of glory.

At the close of the Carnival season, singers who have been abroad for
the winter season appear in the Gallery. They come from London, St.
Petersburg, New York, Melbourne, Buenos Aires, looking for new
contracts. They have trotted about the globe as though the whole world
were home to them. They have spent a week in a train or a month on a
steamer, to get back to their corner in the Gallery. Nothing has
changed, for all of their distant rambles. They take their usual table.
They renew their old intrigues, their old gossip, their old jealousies,
as if they had been gone a day. They stand around in front of the
show-windows with an air of proud disdain, like princes traveling
incognito, but unable quite to conceal their exalted station. They tell
about the ovations accorded them by foreign audiences. They exhibit the
diamonds on their fingers and in their neckties. They hint at affairs
with great ladies who offered to leave home and husband to follow them
to Milan. They exaggerate the salaries they received on their trip, and
frown haughtily when some unfortunate "colleague" solicits a drink at
the nearby Biffi. And when the new contracts come in, the mercenary
nightingales again take wing, indifferently, they care not whither. Once
more, trains and steamers distribute them, with their conceits and their
petulances, all over the globe, to gather them in again some months
later and bring them back to the Gallery, their real home--the spot to
which they are really tied, and on which they are fated to drag out
their old age.

Meantime, the _pariahs_, those who never arrive, the "bohemians" of
Milan--when they are left alone console themselves with tales of famous
comrades, of contracts they themselves refused to accept, pretending
uncompromising hauteur toward impresarios and composers to justify their
idleness; and wrapped in fur coats that almost sweep the ground, with
their "garibaldis" on the backs of their heads, they hover around
Biffi's, defying the cold draughts that blow at the crossing of the
Gallery, talking and talking away to quiet the hunger that is gnawing at
their stomachs; despising the humble toil of those who make their living
by their hands, continuing undaunted in their poverty, content with
their genius as artists, facing misfortune with a candor and an
endurance as heroic as it is pathetic, their dark lives illumined by
Hope, who keeps them company till she closes their eyes.

Of that strange world, Rafael had caught a glimpse, barely, during the
few days he had spent in Milan. His companion, the canon, had run across
a former chorister from the cathedral of Valencia, who could find
nothing to do but loiter night and day about the Gallery. Through him
Brull had learned of the life led by these journeymen of art, always on
hand in the "marketplace", waiting for the employer who never comes.

He tried to picture the early days of Leonora in that great city, as one
of the girls who trot gracefully over the sidewalks with music sheets
under their arms, or enliven the narrow side streets with all those
trills and cadences that come streaming out through the windows.

He could see her walking through the Gallery at Doctor Moreno's side: a
blonde beauty, svelte, somewhat thin, over-grown, taller than her years,
gazing with astonishment through those large green eyes of hers at the
cold, bustling city, so different from the warm orchards of her
childhood home; the father, bearded, wrinkled, nervous, still irritated
at the ruin of his Republican hopes; a veritable ogre to strangers who
did not know his lamb-like gentleness. Like exiles who had found a
refuge in art, they two went their way through that life of emptiness,
of void, a world of greedy teachers anxious to prolong the period of
study, and of singers incapable of speaking kindly even of themselves.

They lived on a fourth floor on the _Via Passarella_--a narrow, gloomy
thoroughfare with high houses, like the streets of old Alcira, preempted
by music publishers, theatrical agencies and retired artists. Their
janitor was a former chorus leader; the main floor was rented by an
agency exclusively engaged from sun to sun in testing voices. The others
were occupied by singers who began their vocal exercises the moment they
got out of bed, setting the house ringing like a huge music-box from
roof to cellar. The Doctor and his daughter had two rooms in the house
of _Signora Isabella_, a former ballet-dancer who had achieved notorious
"triumphs" in the principal courts of Europe, but was now a skeleton
wrapped in wrinkled skin, groping her way through the corridors,
quarreling over money in foul-mouthed language with the servants, and
with no other vestiges of her past than the gowns of rustling silk, and
the diamonds, emeralds and pearls that took their turns in her stiff,
shrivelled ears. This harpy had loved Leonora with the fondness of the
veteran for the new recruit.

Every day Doctor Moreno went to a café of the Gallery, where he would
meet a group of old musicians who had fought under Garibaldi, and young
men who wrote _libretti_ for the stage, and articles for Republican and
Socialist newspapers. That was his world: the only thing that helped him
endure his stay in Milan. After a lonely life back there in his native
land, this corner of the smoke-filled café seemed like Paradise to him.
There, in a labored Italian, sprinkled with Spanish interjections, he
could talk of Beethoven and of the hero of Marsala; and for hour after
hour he would sit wrapt in ecstasy, gazing, through the dense
atmosphere, at the red shirt and the blond, grayish locks of the great
Giuseppe, while his comrades told stories of this, the most romantic, of
adventurers.

During such absences of her father, Leonora would remain in charge of
_Signora Isabella_; and bashful, shrinking, half bewildered, would spend
the day in the salon of the former ballet-dancer, with its coterie of
the latter's friends, also ruins surviving from the past, burned-out
"flames" of great personages long since dead. And these witches, smoking
their cigarettes, and looking their jewels over every other moment to be
sure they had not been stolen, would size up "the little girl," as they
called her, to conclude that she would "go very far" if she learned how
to "play the game."

"I had excellent teachers," said Leonora, in speaking of that period of
her youth. "They were good souls at bottom, but they had very little
still to learn about life. I don't remember just when I began to see
through them. I don't believe I was ever what they call an 'innocent'
child."

Some evenings the Doctor would take her to his group in the café, or to
some second balcony seat under the roof of _La Scala_, if a couple of
complimentary tickets happened to come his way. Thus she was introduced
to her father's friends, bohemians with whom music went hand in hand
with the ideas and the ideals of revolution, curious mixtures of artist
and conspirator; aged, bald-headed, near-sighted "professors," their
backs bent by a lifetime spent leaning over music stands; and swarthy
youths with fiery eyes, stiff, long hair and red neckties, always
talking about overthrowing the social order because their operas had
not been accepted at _La Scala_ or because no _maestro_ could be found
to take their musical dramas seriously. One of them attracted Leonora.
Leaning back on a side-seat in the cafe, she would sit and watch him for
hours and hours. He was a fair-haired, extremely delicate boy. His
tapering goatee and his fine, silky hair, covered by a sweeping, soft
felt hat, made her think of Van Dyck's portrait of Charles I of England
that she had seen in print somewhere. They called him "the poet" at the
café, and gossip had it that an old woman, a retired "star," was paying
for his keep--and his amusements--until his verses should bring him
fame. "Well," said Leonora, simply, with a smile, "he was my first
love--a calf-and-puppy love, a schoolgirl's infatuation which nobody
ever knew about"; for though the Doctor's daughter spent hours with her
green golden eyes fixed upon the poet, the latter never suspected his
good fortune; doubtless because the beauty of his patroness, the
superannuated _diva_, had so obsessed him that the attractions of other
women left him quite unmoved. How vividly Leonora remembered those days
of poverty and dreams!... Little by little the modest capital the Doctor
owned in Alcira vanished, what with living expenses and music lessons.
Doña Pepa, at her brother's instance, sold one piece of land after
another; but even such remittances were often long delayed; and then,
instead of eating in the _trattoria_, near _la Scala_, with dancing
students and the more successful of the young singers, they would stay
at home; and Leonora would lay aside her scores and take a turn at
cooking, learning mysterious recipes from the old _danseuse_. For weeks
at a time they would live on nothing but macaroni and rice served _al
burro_, a diet that her father abhorred, the Doctor, meanwhile,
pretending illness to justify his absence from the café. But these
periods of want and poverty were endured by father and daughter in
silence. Before their friends, they still maintained the pose of
well-to-do people with plenty of income from property in Spain.

Leonora underwent a rapid transformation. She had already passed her
period of growth--that preadolescent "awkward age" when the features are
in constant change before settling down to their definitive forms and
the limbs seem to grow longer and longer and thinner and thinner. The
long-legged spindling "flapper," who was never quite sure where to stow
her legs, became the reserved, well-proportioned girl with the
mysterious gleam of puberty in her eyes. Her clothes seemed, naturally,
willingly, to curve to her fuller, rounding outlines. Her skirts went
down to her feet and covered the skinny, colt-like appendages that had
formerly made the denizens of the Gallery repress a smile.

Her singing master was struck with the beauty of his pupil. As a tenor,
Signor Boldini had had his hour of success back in the days of the
_Statuto_, when Victor Emmanuel was still king of Piedmont and the
Austrians were in Milan. Convinced that he could rise no higher, he had
come to earth, stepping aside to let those behind him pass on, turning
his stage experience to the advantage of a large class of girl-students
whom he fondled with an affectionate, fatherly kindliness. His white
goatee would quiver with admiring enthusiasm, as, playfully, lightly, he
would touch his fingers to those virgin throats, which, as he said,
were his "property." "All for art, and art for all!" And this motto, the
ideal of his life, he called it, had quite endeared him to Doctor
Moreno.

"That fellow Boldini could not be fonder of my Leonora if she were his
own daughter," the Doctor would say every time the _maestro_ praised the
beauty and the talent of his pupil and prophesied great triumphs for
her.

And Leonora went on with her lessons, accepting the light, the playful,
the innocent caresses of the old singer; until one afternoon, in the
midst of a romanza, there was a hateful scene: the _maestro_, despite
her horrified struggling, claimed a feudal right--the first fruits of
her initiation into theatrical life.

Through fear of her father Leonora kept silent. What might he not do on
finding his blind confidence in the _maestro_ so betrayed? She sank into
resigned passivity at last, and continued to visit Boldini's house
daily, learning ultimately to accept, as a matter of professional
course, the repulsive flattery of refined vice.

Poor Leonora entered on a life of wrong through the open door, learning,
at a single stroke, all the turpitude acquired by that shrivelled
_maestro_ during his long career back-stage. Boldini would have kept her
a pupil forever. He could never find her just well enough prepared to
make her debut. But hardly any money was coming from Spain now. Poor
doña Pepa had sold everything her brother owned and a good deal of her
own land besides. Only at the cost of painful stinting could she send
him anything at all. The Doctor, through connections with itinerant
directors and impresarios _à l'aventure_, "launched" his daughter
finally. Leonora began to sing in the small theatres of the Milan
district--two or three night engagements at country fairs. Such
companies were formed at random in the Gallery, on the very day of the
performance sometimes,--troupes like the strolling players of old,
leaving at a venture in a third-class compartment on the train with the
prospect of returning on foot if the impresario made off with the money.

Leonora began to know what applause was, what it meant to give _encore_
after _encore_ before crowds of rustic landowners, dressed in their
Sunday clothes, and ladies with false rings and plated chains; and she
had her first thrills of feminine vanity on receiving bouquets and
sonnets from subalterns and cadets in small garrison towns. Boldini
followed her everywhere, neglecting his lessons, in pursuit of this, his
last depraved infatuation. "All for art, art for all!" He must enjoy the
fruits of his creation, be present at the triumphs of his star pupil! So
he said to Doctor Moreno; and that unsuspecting gentleman, thankful for
this added courtesy of the master, would leave her more and more to the
old satyr's care.

The escape from that life came when she secured a contract for a whole
winter in Padua. There she met the tenor Salvatti, a high and mighty
_divo_, who looked down upon all his associates, though tolerated
himself, by the public, only out of consideration for his past.

For years now he had been holding his own on the opera stage, less for
his voice than for his dashing appearance, slightly repaired with pencil
and rouge, and the legend of romantic love affairs that floated like a
rainbow around his name--noble dames fighting a clandestine warfare for
him; queens scandalizing their subjects by blind passions he inspired;
eminent divas selling their diamonds for the money to hold him faithful
by lavish gifts. The jealousy of Salvatti's comrades tended to
perpetuate and exaggerate this legend; and the tenor, worn out, poor,
and a wreck virtually for all of his pose of grandeur, was able to make
a living still from provincial publics, who charitably applauded him
with the self-conceit of climbers pampering a dethroned prince.

Leonora, playing opposite that famous man, "starring," singing duets
with him, clasping hands that had been kissed by the queens of art, was
deeply stirred. This, at last, was the world she had dreamed of in her
dingy garret in Milan. Salvatti's presence gave her just the illusion of
aristocratic grandeur she had longed for. Nor was he slow in perceiving
the impression he had made upon that promising young woman. With a cold
calculating selfishness, he determined to profit by her naïve
admiration. Was it love that thrust her toward him? As, so long
afterwards, she analyzed her passion to Rafael, she was vehemently
certain it had not been love: Salvatti could never have inspired a
genuine feeling in anyone. His egotism, his moral corruptness, were too
close to the surface. No, he was a philanderer simply, an exploiter of
women. But for her it had been a blinding hallucination nevertheless,
fraught, during the first days, at least, with the delicious
exhiliration, the voluptuous abandonment of true love. She became the
slave of the decrepit tenor, voluntarily, just as she had become her
_maestro's_ slave through fear. And so complete had her infatuation
been, so overpowering its intoxication, that, in obedience to Salvatti,
she fled with him at the end of the season, and deserted her father, who
had objected to the intimacy.

Then came the black page in her life, that filled her eyes with
anguished tears as she went on with her story. What folks said about her
father's end was not true. Poor Doctor Moreno had not committed suicide.
He was altogether too proud to confess in that way the deep grief that
her ingratitude had caused him.

"Don't talk to me about that woman," he would say fiercely to his
landlady at Milan whenever the old _danseuse_ would mention Leonora. "I
have no daughter: it was all a mistake."

Unbeknown to Salvatti, who became terribly grasping as he saw his power
waning, Leonora would send her father a few hundred francs from London,
from Naples, from Paris. The Doctor, though in direst poverty, would at
once return the checks "to the sender" and, without writing a word;
where-upon Leonora paid an allowance every month to the housekeeper,
begging her not to abandon the old man.

The unhappy Doctor needed, indeed, all the care the landlady and her old
friends could give him. The _povero signor spagnuolo_--the poor Spanish
gentleman--spent his days locked up in his room, his violoncello between
his knees, reading Beethoven, the only one "in his family"--as he
said--"who had never played him false." When old Isabella, tired of his
music, would literally put him out of the house to get a breath of air,
he would wander like a phantom through the Gallery, distantly greeted
by former friends, who avoided closer contact with that black
despondency and feared the explosions of rage with which he received
news of his daughter's rising fame.

A rapid rise she was making in very truth! The worldly old women who
foregathered in the ballet-dancer's little parlor, could not contain
their admiration for their "little girl's" success; and even grew
indignant at the father for not accepting things "as things had to be."
Salvatti? Just the support she needed! An expert pilot, who knew the
chart of the opera world, who would steer her straight and keep her off
the rocks.

The tenor had skilfully organized a world wide publicity for his young
singer. Leonora's beauty and her artistic verve conquered every public.
She had contracts with the leading theatres of Europe, and though
critics found defects in her singing, her beauty helped them to forget
these, and one and all they contributed loyally to the deification of
the young goddess. Salvatti, sheltering his old age under this prestige
which he so religiously fostered, was keeping in harness to the very
end, and taking leave of life under the protecting shadow of that woman,
the last to believe in him and tolerate his exploitation.

Applauded by select publics, courted in her dressing-room by celebrated
men and women, Leonora began to find Salvatti's tyranny unbearable. She
now saw him as he really was: miserly, petulant, spoiled by praise.
Every bit of her money that came into his hands disappeared, she knew
not where. Eager for revenge, though really answering the lure of the
elegant world she glimpsed in the distance but was not yet a part of,
she began to deceive Salvatti in passing adventures, taking a diabolical
pleasure in the deceit. But no; as she looked back on that part of her
life with the sober eye of experience, she understood that she had
really been the one deceived. Salvatti, she remembered, would always
retire at the opportune moment, facilitating her infidelities. She
understood now that the man had carefully prepared such adventures for
her with influential men whom he himself introduced to make certain
profits out of the meeting--profits that he never declared.

After three years of this sort of life, when Leonora had reached the
full splendor of her beauty, she chanced to become the favorite of
fashion for one whole summer at Nice. Parisian newspapers, in their
"society columns" referred, in veiled language, to the passion of an
aged king, a democratic monarch, who had left his throne, much as a
manufacturer of London or a stockbroker of Paris would leave his office,
for a vacation on the Blue Coast. This tall, robust gentleman with a
patriarchal beard--the very type of the good king in fairy tales--had
not hesitated to be seen in public with a beautiful _artiste_.

That conquest, fleeting though it had been, put the finishing touch on
Leonora's eminence! "Ah! La Brunna!" people would declare
enthusiastically. "The favorite of king Ernesto.... Our greatest
artist." And troops of adorers began to besiege her under the keen,
mercenary eyes of the tenor Salvatti.

About this time her father died in a hospital at Milan--a very sad end,
as Signora Isabella, the former ballet-dancer, explained in her letters.
Of what had he died?... The old lady could not say, as the physicians
had differed; but her own view of the matter was that the _povero signor
spagnuolo_ had simply grown tired of living--a general collapse of that
wonderful constitution, so strong, so powerful, in a way, yet strangely
susceptible to moral and emotional influences. He was almost blind when
admitted to the hospital. He seemed quite to have lost his mind--sunk in
an unbreakable silence. Isabella had not dared to keep him in her house
after he had fallen into that coma. But the strange thing was, that as
death drew near, his memory of the past suddenly cleared, and the nurses
would hear him groan for nights at a time, murmuring in Spanish with
tenacious persistency:

"Leonora! My darling! Where are you?... Little girl, where are you?"

Leonora wept and wept, and did not leave her hotel for more than a week,
to the great disgust of Salvatti, who observed, in addition, that tears
were not good for her complexion.

Alone in the world!... Her own wrong-doing had killed her poor father!
No one was left now except her good old aunt, who was "existing" far
away in Spain, like a vegetable in a garden, her stupid mind entirely on
her prayer-book. Leonora vented her anguish in a burst of hatred for
Salvatti. He was responsible for her abandonment of her father! She
deserted him, taking up with a certain count Selivestroff, a handsome
and wealthy Russian, captain in the Imperial Guard.

So she had found her destiny! Her life would always be like that! She
would pass from stage to stage, from song to song, belonging to
everybody--and to nobody!

That fair Russian, so strong, so manly, so thoroughly a gentleman, had
loved her truly, with a passionate humble adoration.

He would kneel submissively at her feet, like Hercules in the presence
of Adriadne, resting his chin on her knees, looking up into her face
with his gray, kindly, caressing eyes. Timidly, doubtfully, he would
approach her every day as if he were meeting her for the first time and
feared a repulse. He would kiss her softly, delicately, with hushed
reserve, as if she were a fragile jewel that might break beneath his
tenderest caress. Poor Selivestroff! Leonora had wept at the thought of
him. In Russia and with princely Russian sumptuousness, they had lived
for a year in his castle, in the country, among a population of sodden
_moujiks_ who worshipped that beautiful woman in the white and blue furs
as devotedly as if she had been a Virgin stepping forth from the gilded
background of an ikon.

But Leonora could not live away from stageland: the ladies of the rural
aristocracy avoided her, and she needed applause and admiration. She
induced Selivestroff to move to St. Petersburg, and for a whole winter
she sang at the Opera there, like a grand dame turned opera singer out
of love for the work.

Once more she became the reigning _belle_. All the young Russian
aristocrats who held commissions in the Imperial Guard, or high posts in
the Government, spoke enthusiastically of the great Spanish beauty; and
they envied Selivestroff. The count yearned moodily for the solitude of
his castle, which held so many loving memories for him. In the bustling,
competitive life of the capital, he grew jealous, sad, melancholy,
irritable at the necessity of defending his love. He could sense the
underground warfare that was being waged against him by Leonora's
countless admirers.

One morning she was rudely awakened and leapt out of bed to find the
count stretched out on a divan, pale, his shirt stained with blood. A
number of gentlemen dressed in black were standing around him. They had
just brought him in from a carriage. He had been wounded in the chest.
The evening before, on leaving the theatre, the count had gone up for a
moment to his Club. He had caught an allusion to Leonora and himself in
some words of a friend. There had been blows--then hasty arrangements
for a duel, which had been fought at sunrise, with pistols. Selivestroff
died in the arms of his mistress, smiling, seeking those delicate,
powerful, pearly hands for one last time with his bleeding lips. Leonora
mourned him deeply, truly. The land where she had been so happy with the
first man she had really loved became intolerable to her, and abandoning
most of the riches that the count had given her, she went forth into the
world again, storming the great theatres in a new fever of travel and
adventure.

She was then just twenty-three, but already felt herself an old woman.
How she had changed!... More affairs? As she went over that period of
her life in her talk with Rafael, Leonora closed her eyes with a shudder
of modesty and remorse. Drunk with fame and power she had rushed about
the world lavishing her beauty on anyone who interested her for the
moment. The property of everybody and of nobody! She could not remember
the names, even, of all the men who had loved her during that era of
madness, so many had been caught in the wake of her stormy flight across
the world! She had returned to Russia once, and been expelled by the
Czar for compromising the prestige of the Imperial Family, through an
affair with a grand duke who had wanted to marry her. In Rome she had
posed in the nude for a young and unknown sculptor out of pure
compassion for his silent admiration; and she herself made his "Venus"
public, hoping that the world-wide scandal would bring fame to the work
and to its author. In Genoa she found Salvatti again, now "retired," and
living on usury from his savings. She received him with an amiable
smile, lunched with him, treated him as an old comrade; and at dessert,
when he had become hopelessly drunk, she seized a whip and avenged the
blows she had received in her time of slavery to him, beating him with a
ferocity that stained the apartment with gore and brought the police to
the hotel. Another scandal! And this time her name bandied about in a
criminal court! But she, a fugitive from justice, and proud of her
exploit, sang in the United States, wildly acclaimed by the American
public, which admired the combative Amazon even more than the artist.

There she made the acquaintance of Hans Keller, the famous orchestra
conductor, and a pupil and friend of Wagner. The German _maestro_ became
her second love. With stiff, reddish hair, thick-rimmed eyeglasses, an
enormous mustache that drooped over either side of his mouth and framed
his chin, he was certainly not so handsome as Selivestroff. But he had
one irresistible charm, the charm of Art. With the tragic Russian in her
mind and on her conscience, she felt the need of burning herself in the
immortal flame of the ideal; and she adored the famous musician for the
artistic associations that hovered about him. For the first time, the
much-courted Leonora descended from her lofty heights to seek a man's
attention and came with her amorous advances to disturb the placid calm
of that artist so wholly engrossed in the cult of the sublime Master.

Hans Keller noticed the smile that fell like a sunbeam upon his music
scrolls. He closed them and let himself be drawn off on the by-paths of
love. Leonora's life with the _maestro_ was an absolute rupture with all
her past. Her one wish was to love and be loved--to throw a cloak of
mystery over her real self, ashamed as she now was of her previous wild
career. Her passion enthralled the musician and she in turn felt at once
stirred and transfigured by the atmosphere of artistic fervor that
haloed the illustrious pupil of Wagner.

The spirit of Him, the Master, as Hans Keller called Wagner with pious
adoration, flashed before the singer's eyes like the revealing glory
that converted Paul on the road to Damascus. Music, as she now saw
clearly for the first time, was not a means of pleasing crowds,
displaying physical beauty, and attracting men. It was a religion--the
mysterious power that brings the infinite within us into contact with
the infinite that surrounds us. She became the sinner awakening to
repentance, and yearning for the atoning peace of the cloister, a
Magdalen of Art, touched on the high road of worldliness and frivolity
by the mystic sublimity of the Beautiful; and she cast herself at the
feet of Him, the supreme Master, as the most victorious of men, lord of
the mystery that moves all souls.

"Tell me more about Him," Leonora would say. "How much I would give to
have known him as you did!... I did see him once in Venice: during his
last days ...he was already dying."

And that meeting was, indeed, one of her most vivid and lasting
memories. The declining afternoon enlivening the dark waters of the
Grand Canal with its opalescent spangles; a gondola passing hers in the
opposite direction; and inside, a pair of blue, imperious eyes, shining,
under thick eyebrows, with the cold glint of steel--eyes that could
never be mistaken for common eyes, for the divine fire of the Elect, of
the demi-God, was bright within them! And they seemed to envelop her in
a flash of cerulean light. It was He--ill, and about to die. His heart
was wounded, bleeding, pierced, perhaps, by the shafts of mysterious
melody, as hearts of the Virgin sometimes bleed on altars bristling with
swords.

Leonora could still see him as if he were there in front of her. He
looked smaller than he really was, dwarfed, apparently, by illness, and
by the wrack of pain. His huge head, the head of a genius, was bent low
over the bosom of his wife Cosima. He had removed the black felt hat so
as to catch the afternoon breeze full upon his loose gray locks. His
broad, high curved forehead, seemed to weigh down upon his body like an
ivory chest laden full of unseen jewels. His arrogant nose, as strong as
the beak of a bird of prey, seemed to be reaching across the sunken
mouth toward the sensuous, powerful jaw. A gray beard ran down along the
neck, that was wrinkled, wasted with age. A hasty vision it had been, to
be sure; but she had seen him; and his venerable figure remained in her
memory like a landscape glimpsed at the flare of a lightning-flash. She
had witnessed his arrival in Venice to die in the peace of those canals,
in that silence which is broken only by the stroke of the oar--where
many years before he had thought himself dying as he wrote his
_Tristan_--that hymn to the Death that is pure, to the Death that
liberates! She saw him stretched out in the dark boat; and the splash of
the water against the marble of the palaces echoed in her imagination
like the wailing, thrilling trumpets at the burial of Siegfried--the
hero of Poetry marching to the Valhalla of immortality and glory upon a
shield of ebony--motionless, inert as the young hero of the Germanic
legend--and followed by the lamentations of that poor prisoner of life,
Humanity, that ever eagerly seeks a crack, a chink, in the wall about
it, through which the inspiriting, comforting ray of beauty may
penetrate.

And the singer gazed with tearful eyes at the broad _boina_ of black
velvet, the lock of gray hair, two broken, rusty steel pens--souvenirs
of the Master, that Hans Keller had piously preserved in a glass case.

"You knew him--tell me how he lived. Tell me everything: talk to me
about the Poet ... the Hero."

And the musician, no less moved, described the Master as he had seen him
in the best of health; a small man, tightly wrapped in an
overcoat--with a powerful, heavy frame, however, despite his slight
stature--as restless as a nervous woman, as vibrant as a steel spring,
with a smile that lightly touched with bitterness his thin, colorless
lips. Then came his "genialities," as people said, the caprices of his
genius, that figure so largely in the Wagner legend: his smoker, a
jacket of gold satin with pearl flowers for buttons; the precious cloths
that rolled about like waves of light in his study, velvets and silks,
of flaming reds and greens and blues, thrown across the furniture and
the tables haphazard, with no reference to usefulness--for their sheer
beauty only--to stimulate the eye with the goad of color, satisfy the
Master's passion for brightness; and perfumes, as well, with which his
garments--always of oriental splendor--were literally saturated; phials
of rose emptied at random, filling the neighborhood with the fragrance
of a fabulous garden, strong enough to overcome the hardiest uninitiate,
but strangely exciting to that Prodigy in his struggle with the Unknown.

And then Hans Keller described the man himself, never relaxed, always
quivering with mysterious thrills, incapable of sitting still, except at
the piano, or at table for his meals; receiving visitors standing,
pacing back and forth in his salon, his hands twitching in nervous
uncertainty; changing the position of the armchairs, rearranging the
furniture, suddenly stopping to hunt about his person for a snuff-box or
a pair of glasses that he never found; turning his pockets inside out,
pulling his velvet house-cap now down over one eye, now back over the
crown of his head, or again, throwing it into the air with a shout of
joy or crumpling it in his hand, as he became excited in the course of a
discussion!

And Keller would close his eyes, imagining that he could still hear in
the silence, the faint but commanding voice of the Master. Oh, where was
he now? On some star, doubtless, eagerly following the infinite song of
the spheres, a divine music that only his ears had been attuned to hear!
And to choke his emotion, the musician would sit down at the piano,
while Leonora, responsive to his mood, would approach him, and standing
as rigid as a statue, with her hands lost in the musician's head of
rough tangled hair, sing a fragment from the immortal _Tetralogy_.

Worship of Wagner transformed the butterfly into a new woman. Leonora
adored Keller as a ray of light gone astray from the glowing star now
extinguished forever; she felt the joy of humbleness, the sweetness of
sacrifice, seeing in him not the man, but the chosen representative of
the Divinity. Leonora could have grovelled at Keller's feet, let him
trample on her--make a carpet of her beauty. She willed to become a
slave to that lover who was the repository of the Master's thoughts; and
who seemed to be magnified to gigantic proportions by the custody of
such a treasure.

She tended him with the exquisite watchfulness of an enamored servant,
following him, on his trips in the summer, the season of the great
concerts, to Leipzig, Geneva, Paris; and she, the most famous living
prima donna, would stay behind the scenes, with no jealousy for the
applause she heard, waiting for Hans, perspiring and tired, to drop the
baton amid the acclamations of the audience and come back-stage to have
her dry his forehead with an almost filial caress.

And thus they traveled about Europe, spreading the light of the Master;
Leonora, voluntarily in the background, like a patrician of old, dressed
as a slave and following the Apostle in the name of the New Word.

The German musician let himself be adored, receiving all her caresses of
enthusiasm and love with the absent-mindedness of an artist so
preoccupied with sounds that at last he comes to hate words. He taught
his language to Leonora that she might some day realize a dream of hers
and sing in Bayreuth; and he grounded her in the principles that had
guided the Master in the creation of his great characters. And so, when
Leonora made her appearance on the stage one winter with the winged
helmet and the lance of the Valkyrie, she attained an eminence in
Wagnerian interpretation that was to follow her for the remainder of her
career. Hans himself was carried away by her power, and could never
recover from his astonishment at Leonora's complete assimilation of the
spirit of the Master.

"If only He could hear you!" he would say with conviction. "I am sure He
would be content."

And the pair traveled about the world together. Every springtime she, as
spectator, would watch him directing Wagnerian choruses in the "Mystic
Abyss" at Bayreuth. Winters it was he who went into ecstasies under her
tremendous "_Hojotoho_!"--the fierce cry of a Valkyrie afraid of the
austere father Wotan; or at sight of her awakening among the flames for
the spirited Siegfried, the hero who feared nothing in the world, but
trembled at the first glance of love!

But artists' passions are like flowers, fragrant, but quickly
languishing. The rough German musician was a simple person, unstable,
fickle, ready to be amused at any new plaything. Leonora admitted to
Rafael that she could have lived to old age submissively at Keller's
side, pampering his whims and selfish caprices. But one day Keller
deserted her, as she had deserted others, to take up with a sickly,
languid contralto, whose best charms could have been hardly comparable
to the morbid delicacy of a hot-house flower. Leonora, mad with love and
jealousy, pursued him, knocking at his door like a servant. For the
first time she felt the voluptuous bitterness of being scorned,
discarded, until reaction from despair brought her back to her former
pride and self-control!

Love was over. She had had enough of artists; though an interesting sort
of folk they were in their way. Far preferable were the ordinary, normal
men she had known before Keller's time! The foolisher--the more
commonplace--the better! She would never fall in love again!

Wearied, broken in spirit, disillusioned, she went back into her old
world. But now the legend of her past beset her. Again men came,
passionately besieging her, offering her wealth in return for a little
love. They talked of killing themselves if she resisted, as if it were
her duty to surrender, as if refusal on her part were treachery. The
gloomy Macchia committed suicide in Naples. Why? Because she did not
capitulate to his melancholy sonnets! In Vienna there had been a duel,
in which one of her admirers was slain. An eccentric Englishman followed
her about, looming in her pathway everywhere like the shadow of a fatal
Destiny, vowing to kill anybody she should prefer to him.... She had had
enough at last! She was wearied of such a life, disgusted at the male
voracity that dogged her every step. She longed to fall out of sight,
disappear, find rest and quiet in a complete surrender to some boundless
dream. And the thought--a comforting, soothing thought, it had been--of
the distant land of her childhood came back to her, the thought of her
simple, pious aunt, the sole survivor of her family, who wrote to her
twice every year, urging her to reconcile her soul with God--to which
end the good old Doña Pepa was herself aiding with prayer!

She felt, too, somehow, without knowing just why, that a visit to her
native soil would soften the painful memory of the ingratitude that had
cost her father's life. She would care for the poor old woman! Her
presence would bring a note of cheer into that gray, monotonous
existence that had gone on without the slightest change, ever. And
suddenly, one night, after an "Isolde" in Florence, she ordered Beppa,
the loyal and silent companion of her wandering life, to pack her
things!

Home! Home! Off for her native land! And might she find there something
to keep her ever from returning to the troubled stirring world she was
leaving!

She was the princess of the fairy tales longing to become a shepherdess.
There she meant to stay, in the shade of her orange-trees, now and then
fondling a memory of her old life, perhaps, but wishing eternally to
enjoy that tranquillity, fiercely repelling Rafael, therefore, because
he had tried to awaken her, as Siegfried rouses Brunhilde, braving the
flames to reach her side.

No; friends, friends, nothing else! She wanted no more of love. She
already knew what that was. Besides, he had come too late....

And Rafael tossed sleeplessly in his bed, rehearsing in the darkness the
story he had been told. He felt dwarfed, annihilated, by the grandeur of
the men who had preceded him in their adoration of that woman. A king,
great artists, handsome and aristocratic paladins, Russian counts,
potentates with vast wealth at their command! And he, a humble country
boy, an obscure junior deputy, as submissive as a child to his mother's
despotic ways, forced to beg for the money for his personal expenses
even--he was trying to succeed them!

He laughed with bitter irony at his own presumptuousness. Now he
understood Leonora's mocking tone, and the violence she had used in
repulsing all boorish liberties he had tried to take. But despite the
contempt he began to feel for himself, he lacked the strength to
withdraw now. He had been caught up in the wake of seduction, the
maelstrom of love that followed the actress everywhere, enslaving men,
casting them, broken in spirit and in will, to earth, like so many
slaves of Beauty.




III


"Good morning, Rafaelito ... we are seeing each other betimes today....
I am up so early not to miss the marketing. I remember that Wednesday
was always a great event in my life, as a child. What a crowd!..."

And Leonora, with the great swarming cities far from her mind, was
really impressed at the numbers of bustling people crowding the little
square, called _del Prado_, where every Wednesday the "grand market" of
the Alcira region was held.

Their sashes bulging with money bags, peasants were coming into town to
buy supplies for the whole week out in the orange country. Orchard women
were going from one stall to the next, as slender of body and as neatly
dressed as the peasant girls of an opera ballet, their hair in
_señorita_ style, their skirts of bright batiste gathered up to hold
their purchases and showing fine stockings and tight-fitting shoes
underneath. Tanned faces and rough hands were the only signs to betray
the rustic origin of the girls; because those were prosperous days for
the orange growers of the District.

Along the walls hens were clucking, ranged in piles and tied together by
the feet. Here and there were pyramids of eggs, vegetables, fruit. In
"shops" that were set up in the morning and taken down at night,
drygoods dealers were selling colored sashes, strips of cotton cloth and
calico, and black woolsey, the eternal garb of every native of the
Júcar valley. Beyond the Prado, in _El Alborchí_, was the hog market;
and then came the _Hostal Gran_ where horses were tried out. On
Wednesdays all the business of the neighborhood was transacted--money
borrowed or paid back, poultry stocks replenished, hogs bought to fatten
on the farms, whole families anxiously following their progress; and new
cart-horses, especially, the matter of greatest concern to the farmers,
secured on mortgage, usually, or with cash saved up by desperate
hoarding.

Though the sun had barely risen, the crowd, smelling of sweat and soil,
already filled the market place with busy going and coming. The
orchard-women embraced as they met, and with their heavy baskets propped
on their hips, went into the chocolate shops to celebrate the encounter.
The men gathered in groups; and from time to time, to "buck up" a
little, would go off in parties to swallow a glass of sweet brandy. In
and out among the rustics walked the city people: "petty bourgeois" of
set manners, with old capes, and huge hempen baskets, where they would
place the provisions they had bought after tenacious hagglings;
_señoritas_, who found in these Wednesday markets a welcome relief from
the monotony of their secluded life at home; idlers who spent hour after
hour at the stall of some vendor friend, prying into what each marketer
carried in his basket, grumbling at the stinginess of some and praising
the generosity of others.

Rafael gazed at his friend in sheer astonishment. What a beauty she was!
Who could ever have taken her, in that costume, for a world-famous prima
donna!

Leonora looked the living picture of an orchard girl: a plain cotton
dress, in anticipation of spring; a red kerchief around her neck; her
blond hair uncovered, combed back with artful carelessness and hastily
knotted low on the back of her head. Not a jewel, not a flower! Only her
height and her striking comeliness marked her off from the other girls.
Under the curious, devouring glances of the whole market throng, Rafael
smilingly greeted her, feasting his eyes on her fresh, pink skin, still
radiant from the morning bath, inhaling the subtle, indefinable
fragrance that hovered about that strong, healthy, youthful person.

She was constantly smiling, as if bent on dazzling the bumpkins, who
were gaping at her from a distance, with the pearly flash of her teeth.
The market-place began to buzz with admiring curiosity, or the thrill of
scandal. There, face to face, in view of the whole city, the deputy and
the opera singer were talking and laughing together like the best of
friends!

Rafael's supporters--the chief officials in the city government--who
were loitering about the square, could not conceal their satisfaction.
Even the humblest of the constables felt a certain pride. That beautiful
fairy was talking with "the Chief," smiling at him, even. What an honor
for "the Party!" But after all, why not? Everything considered, don
Rafael Brull deserved all that, and more! And those men, who were very
careful to keep silent when their wives spoke indignantly of the
"stranger," admired her with the instinctive fervor that beauty
inspires, and envied the deputy his good fortune. The old orchard-women
wrapped the couple in caressing glances of approval. There was a
handsome pair! What a fine match!

The town ladies in passing by would draw up full height and pretend not
to see them. On meeting acquaintances they would make wry faces and say
ironically: "Did you see?... here she is, in full sight of everybody,
casting her fly for doña Bernarda's son!" What a disgrace! It was
getting so a decent woman hardly dared go out of doors!

Leonora, quite unconscious of the interest she was arousing, chattered
on about her shopping. Beppa, you see, had decided to stay at home with
her aunt that morning; so she had come with her gardener's wife and
another woman--there they were over there with the large baskets. She
had no end of things to get--and she laughed as she read off the list. A
regular housewife she had become, yes, sir! She knew the price of
everything and could tell down to a _centime_ just what it was costing
her to live. It was like those hard times back in Milan, when she had
gone with her music roll under her arm to get macaroni, butter or coffee
at the grocer's. And what fun it all was!... However, Leonora observed
that, without a doubt, her audience was interpreting her cordial offhand
way with Rafael in the worst light possible. She gave him her hand and
took leave. It was growing late! If she stood there much longer the best
of the market would be carried off by others--if she found anything at
all left! "Down to business, then! Good-bye!"

And the young man saw her make her way, followed by the two country
women, through the crowds, pausing at the booths, welcomed by the
vendors with their best smiles, as a customer who never haggled;
interrupting her purchases to fondle the filthy, whining children the
poor women were carrying in their arms, and taking the best fruits out
of her basket to give to the little ones.

And everywhere general admiration! "_Así, siñorita_!--Here, my dear
young lady!" "_Vinga, doña Leonor_!--This way, doña Leonora!" the
huckstresses cried, calling her by name to show greater intimacy. And
she would smile, with a familiar intimate word for everybody, her hand
frequently visiting the purse of Russian leather that hung from her
wrist. Cripples, blind beggars, men with missing arms or legs, all had
learned of the generosity of that woman who scattered small change by
the fistful.

Rafael gazed after her, smiling indifferently in acknowledgment of the
congratulations the town notables were heaping on him. The
_alcalde_--the most hen-pecked husband in Alcira, according to his
enemies--affirmed with sparkling eyes that for a woman like that he was
capable of doing almost any crazy thing. And they all joined in a chorus
of invidious praise, taking it for granted that Rafael was the
_artiste's_ accepted lover; though the youth himself smiled bitterly at
the thought of his real status with that wonderful woman.

And she vanished, finally, into the sea of heads at the other end of the
market-place; though Rafael, from time to time, thought he could still
make out a mass of golden hair rising above the _chevelures_ of the
other girls. Willingly he would have followed; but Don Matias was at his
side--don Matias, the wealthy orange exporter, father of the wistful
Remedios who was spending her days obediently at doña Bernarda's side.

That gentleman, heavy of speech and heavier still of thought, was
pestering Rafael with a lot of nonsense about the orange business,
giving the young man advice on a new bill he had drawn up and wanted to
have introduced in Congress--a protectionist measure for Spanish
oranges. "Why, it will be the making of the city, boy! Every mother's
son of us swimming in money!" as he guaranteed with his hand upon his
heart.

But Rafael's gaze was lost in the distant reaches of the Prado, to catch
one more fleeting glimpse of a golden head of hair--proof of Leonora's
presence still! He found it hard to be courteous, even, to this man who,
according to authentic rumor, was destined to be his father-in-law. Of
all the drawling trickling words only a few reached his ears, beating on
his brain like monotonous hammer blows. "Glasgow ... Liverpool ... new
markets ... lower railroad rates ... The English agents are a set of
thieves ..."

"Very well, let them go hang," Rafael answered mentally. And giving a
mechanical "yes, yes!" to propositions he was not even hearing, he gazed
away more intently than ever, fearing lest Leonora should already have
gone. He felt relieved, however, when a gap opened in the crowd and he
could see the actress seated in a chair that had been offered her by a
huckstress. She was holding a child upon her knees, and talking with a
tiny, wretched, sickly creature who looked to Rafael like the
orchard-woman they had met at the hermitage.

"Well, what do you think of my plan?" don Matias asked.

"Excellent, magnificent, and well worthy of a man like you, who knows
the question from top to bottom. We'll discuss the matter thoroughly
when I return to the Cortes."

And to avoid a second exposition, he patted the wealthy boor on the
back, and wondered why in the world Fortune should have picked such a
disgusting man to smile on.

The whole city had known don Matias when he went around in peasant's
clogs and worked a tiny orchard he had secured on lease. His son, a
virtual half-wit, who took advantage of every opportunity to rifle the
old man's pockets and spend the money in Valencia with bull-fighters,
gamblers and horse-dealers, went barefoot in those days, scampering
about the roads with the children of the gipsies encamped in _El
Alborchi_. His daughter--the now well-behaved, the now modest, Remedios,
who was passing day after day at complicated needlework under the
tutelage of doña Bernarda--had grown up like a wild rabbit of the
fields, repeating with shocking fidelity all the oaths and vile language
she heard from the carters her father drank with.

"But you have to be an ox to get rich these days!" the barber Cupido
would say when don Matias came up for discussion.

Little by little the man had worked his way into the orange export
business--to England especially. His first stock he bought on credit;
and at once Fortune began to blow upon him with bloated cheeks, and she
was still puffing and puffing! His wealth had been accumulated in a few
years. In crises where the most powerful vessels foundered, that rude
and heavy bark, sailing on without chart or compass, suffered not the
slightest harm. His shipments always arrived at the psychological
moment. The fancy, carefully-selected oranges of other merchants would
land at Liverpool or London when the markets were glutted and prices
were falling scandalously. The lucky dolt would send anything at all
along, whatever was available, cheap; and circumstances always seemed to
favor him with an empty market and prices sky-high regardless of
quality. He realized fabulous profits. He had nothing but scorn for all
the wiseacres who subscribed to the English papers, received daily
bulletins and compared market quotations from year to year, getting, for
all their pains, results that made them tear their hair. He was an
ignoramus and he was proud of it! He trusted to his lucky star. Whenever
he thought it best, he would ship his produce off from the port of
Valencia, and--there you are!--it would always turn out that his oranges
found no competition on arrival and brought the highest prices. More
than once it had happened that rough weather held his vessel up.
Well--the market would sell out, and his shipment would have a clear
field just the same!

Within two years he had a place in town and had become a "personage." He
would smilingly declare that he wouldn't "go to the wall for under
eighty thousand _duros_." Later, ever on the wing, his fortune reached
dizzy heights. Folks whispered in superstitious awe the figures he made
in net profits at the end of every sailing. He owned warehouses as
large as churches in the vicinity of Alcira, employing armies of girls
to wrap the oranges and regiments of carpenters to make the crates. He
would buy the crop of an entire orchard at a single glance and never be
more than a few pounds off. As for the pay he gave, the city was proud
of its millionaire. Not even the Bank of Spain enjoyed the respect and
confidence his firm had won. No clerks and cashiers! No mahogany
furniture! Everything above board! Ask for a hundred thousand; and if
don Matías said "yes," he just went in to his bedroom and, God knows
from where, he would draw out a roll of bank-notes the size of your
body!

And this lucky rustic, this upstart lout, rich without deserving it for
any competence he had, was giving himself the airs of an intelligent
dealer, presuming to approach Rafael, "his deputy," with a proposal for
a freight-rate bill to promote the shipping of oranges into the interior
of Spain! As if a little thing like a bill in Congress would make any
difference to his way of getting money!

Of his wretched past don Matías preserved but a single trait: his
respect for the house of Brull. The rest of the city he treated with a
certain uppishness; but he could not conceal the awe which doña Bernarda
inspired in him--a feeling that was strengthened by gratitude for her
kindness in singling him out (after he had become rich), and for the
interest she showed in his "little girl." He cherished a vivid memory of
Rafael's father, the "greatest man" he had known in all his life. It
seemed as though he could still see don Ramón stopping on his big horse
in front of his humble farmhouse and, with the air of a grand lord,
leaving orders for what don Matías was to do in the coming elections.
He knew the bad state in which the great man had left his affairs upon
his death; and more than once he had given money to doña Bernarda
outright, proud that she should do him the honor of appealing to him in
her straits. But in his eyes, the House of Brull, poor or rich, was
always the House of Brull, the cradle of a dynasty whose authority
no power could shake. He had money. But those _others_, the
Brulls--ah!--they had, up there in Madrid, friends, influence! If they
wanted to they could get the ear of the Throne itself. They were people
with a "pull," and if anyone suggested in his presence that Rafael's
mother was thinking of Remedios as a daughter-in-law, don Matías would
redden with satisfaction and modestly reply:

"I don't know; I imagine it's all talk. My Remedios is only a town girl,
you see. The señor deputy is probably thinking of someone from the
'upper crust' in Madrid."

Rafael had for some time been aware of his mother's plans. But he had no
use for "that crowd." The old man, despite his boresome habit of
suggesting "new bills," he could stand on account of his touching
loyalty to the Brull family. But the girl was an utterly insignificant
creature, pretty, to be sure, but only as any ordinary young girl is
pretty. And underneath that servile gentleness of hers lay an
intelligence even more obtuse than her father's, a mind filled with
nothing but piety and the religious phrases in which she had been
educated.

That morning, followed by an aged servant, and with all the gravity of
an orphan who must busy herself with the affairs of her household and
act as head of the home, Remedios had walked by Rafael twice. She
scarcely looked at him. The submissive smile of the future slave with
which she usually greeted him had disappeared. She was quite pale, and
her colorless lips were pressed tight together. Without a doubt in the
world she had seen him, from a distance, talking and laughing with "the
chorus girl." His mother would know all about it within an hour! Really,
that young female seemed to think he was her private property! And the
angry expression on her face was that of a jealous wife taking notes for
a curtain-lecture!

Scenting a danger Rafael took hasty leave of don Matias and his other
friends, and left the market place to avoid another meeting with
Remedios. Leonora was still there. He would wait for her on the road to
the orchard. He must take advantage of the early hour!

The orange country seemed to be quivering under the first kisses of
spring. The lithe poplars bordering the road were covered with tender
leaves. In the orchards the buds on the orange-trees, filling with the
new sap, were ready to burst, as in one grand explosion of perfume, into
white fragrant bloom. In the matted herbage on the river-banks the first
flowers were growing. Rafael felt the cool caress of the sod as he sat
down on the edge of the road. How sweet everything smelled! What a
beautiful day it was!

The timorous, odorous violet must be sprouting on the damp ground yonder
under the alders! And he went looking along the stream for those little
purple flowers that bring dreams of love with their fragrance! He would
make a bouquet to offer Leonora as she came by.

He felt thrilled with a boldness he had never known before. His hands
burned feverishly. Perhaps it was the emotion from his own sense of
daring. He had resolved to settle things that very morning. The fatuity
of the man who feels himself ridiculous and is determined to raise
himself in the eyes of his admirers, excited him, filling him with a
cynical rashness.

What would his friends, who envied him as Leonora's lover, say if they
knew she was treating him as an insignificant friend, a good little boy
who helped her while away the hours in the solitude of her voluntary
exile?

A few kisses--on her hand; a few kind words; many many cruel jests, such
as come from a chum conscious of superiority ... that was all he had won
after months and months and months of assiduous courtship, months of
disobedience to his mother, in whose house he had been living like a
stranger, without affection, at daggers' points; months of exposure to
the criticism of his enemies, who suspected him of a liaison with the
"chorus girl" and were raising their brows, horror-stricken, in the name
of morality. How they would scoff, if they knew the truth! Those
addlepates down at the Club were always boasting of their amorous
adventures, which began inevitably with the sudden physical attack and
ended in easy triumph.

With the Spaniard's mortal dread of looking ridiculous, Rafael began to
assure himself that those brutes were right--that such was the road to
a woman's heart. He had been too respectful, too humble, gazing at
Leonora, timidly, submissively, from afar, as an idolater might look at
an ikon. Bosh! Wasn't he a man, and isn't the man the stronger? Some
show of a male authority, that was what she needed! He liked her! Well,
that was the end of it! His she must be! Besides, since she treated him
so kindly, she surely loved him! A few scruples perhaps! But that would
be nothing, before a show of real manhood!

Just as this valorous decision had emerged in the full splendor of its
dignity from the mess of vacillation in his weak, irresolute character,
Rafael heard voices down the road. He jumped to his feet. Leonora was
approaching, followed by the two peasant women, who were bent low under
their heavily laden baskets.

"Here, too!" the actress exclaimed with a laugh that rippled charmingly
under the white skin of her throat. "You are getting to be my shadow. In
the market place, on the road, everywhere! I find you every time I look
around!"

She accepted the bouquet of violets from the young man's hand, inhaling
their fragrance with evidence of keen enjoyment.

"Thanks, Rafael, they are the first I have seen this season. My
beautiful, faithful old friend! Springtime! You have brought her to me
this year, though I felt her coming days before! I am so happy--can't
you see? I feel as though I'd been a silkworm all winter, coiled up in a
cocoon, and had now suddenly grown my wings! And I'm going to fly out
over this great green carpet, so sweet with its first perfumes! Don't
you feel as I do, Rafael?..."

Rafael, gravely, said he did. He, too, felt a seething in his blood, the
nip of life in every one of his pores! And his eyes ran over the bare
neck in front of him, a neck of such tempting smoothness, its white
beauty set off by the red kerchief; and over the violets resting on that
strong, robust bosom. The two orchard women exchanged a shrewd smile, a
meaningful wink, at sight of Rafael, and went on ahead of their
mistress, with the evident design of not disturbing the couple by their
presence; but Leonora caught the look on their faces.

"Yes, go right on," she said. "We'll take our time, but we'll be there
soon!"

And when they were out of hearing she resumed, pointing to the women
with her closed parasol:

"Did you see that? Didn't you notice their smiles and the winks they
exchanged when they saw you on the road?... Oh, Rafael! You are blind as
a bat! And no good is going to come of it! If I had any reputation to
lose, I'd be mighty careful with a friend like you! What do you suppose
they are thinking?"

And she laughed with a pout of condescension, as though for her part,
she did not care what people might be saying about her friendship with
Rafael.

"On the market-place all the huckstresses talk to me about you, with the
idea of flattering me. They assure me we'd make a wonderful couple. My
kitchen woman seizes every opportunity to tell me how handsome you are.
You ought to thank her.... Even my aunt, my poor aunt, with one leg in
the grave, drew it out the other day to say to me: 'Do you notice that
Rafael visits us quite frequently? Do you think he wants to marry you?'
Marry, you see! Ha, ha, ha! Marry! That's all poor auntie can see in the
world for a woman!"

And she went on gaily chattering like a wild bird escaped from a cage
and happy at its liberty, though her frank, mocking laughter was in
strange contrast with the expression of sinister determination on
Rafael's face.

"But how glum and queer you look today! Are you ill?... What's the
matter?"

Rafael took advantage of this opening. Ill, yes! Sick with love! He knew
the whole place was gossiping about them. But it wasn't his fault. He
simply couldn't hide his feelings. If she only realized what that mute
adoration was costing him! He had tried to root the thought of her out
of his mind, but that had been impossible. He must see her, hear her! He
lived for her alone. Study? Impossible! Play, with his friends? They had
all become obnoxious to him! His house was a cave, a cellar, a place to
eat in and sleep in. He left it the moment he got out of bed, and kept
away from the city, too, which seemed stuffy, oppressive, like a jail to
him. Off to the fields; to the orchards, to the Blue House where she
lived! He would wait and wait for afternoon to come--the time when, by a
tacit arrangement neither of them had proposed, he might enter her
orchard and find her on the bench under the four dead palms!... Well, he
could not go on living that way. Poor folks envied him his power,
because he was a deputy, at twenty-five! And yet his one purpose in life
was to be ... well, she could guess what ... that garden bench, for
instance, gently, deliciously burdened with her weight for whole
afternoons; or that needlework which played about in her soft fingers;
or one of her servants, Beppa, perhaps, who could waken her in the
morning, bend low over her sleeping head, and smooth the loose tresses
spread like rivulets of gold over the white pillow. A slave, an animal,
a thing even, provided it should be in continuous contact with her
person--that was what he longed to be; not to find himself obliged, at
nightfall, to leave her after a parting absurdly prolonged by childish
pretexts, and return to his irritating, common, vulgar life at home, to
the solitude of his room, where he imagined he could see a pair of green
eyes staring at him from every dark corner, tempting him.

Leonora was not laughing. Her gold-spotted eyes had opened wide; her
nostrils were quivering with emotion. She seemed deeply moved by the
young man's eloquent sincerity.

"Poor Rafael! My poor dear boy!... And what are we going to do?"

Down at the Blue House, Rafael had never dared speak so openly. The
presence of Leonora's servants; the nonchalant, mocking air with which
she welcomed him at the door; the irony with which she met his every
hint at a declaration had always crushed, humiliated him. But there, on
the open highway, it was different somehow. He felt free. He would empty
his whole heart out.

What anguish! Every day he went to the Blue House trembling with hope,
enthralled in his dream of love! "Perhaps it will be today," he would
say to himself each time. And his legs would give way at the knees, and
he would choke as he swallowed! Then, hours later, at nightfall, he
would slink home, downcast, dispirited, desperate, staggering along the
road under the star-light as if he were drunk, repressing the tears
burning in his eyes, longing for the peace of death, like a weary
explorer who must go on and on breaking his way over one ice-field after
another. She must have noticed, surely! She must have seen the untiring
efforts he made to please her!... Ignorant, humble, recognizing the vast
gulf that separated them because of the different lives they had led,
how he had worked to raise himself to a level with the men who had loved
and won her! If she spoke of the Russian count--a model of stylish
elegance--the next day, to the great astonishment of his mother, Rafael
would take out his best clothes and, all sweating in the hot sun and
nearly strangled by a high collar, he would set out along that same
road--his Road to Calvary--walking on his toes like a boarding-school
girl in order not to get his shoes dirty. If Hans Keller had come to
Leonora's mind, he would run through his histories of music, and
dressing up like some artist he had read about in novels, would come to
her house fully intending to deliver an oration on the immortal Master,
Wagner, whom he knew nothing at all about, but whom he adored as a
member of his family.... Good God! All that was ridiculous, he knew very
well; it would have been far better to present himself just as he was,
undisguised, in all his littleness. He knew that this pretending to
equality with the thousand or more figures flitting in Leonora's memory,
was grotesque. But there was nothing, absolutely nothing he would not do
to stir her heart a little, be loved for a day, a minute, a second--and
then die!...

There was a note of such real feeling in the youth's confession that
Leonora, more and more deeply moved, unconsciously drew closer to him,
almost grazing him as they walked along; and she smiled slightly, as she
repeated her previous phrase--a blend of motherly affection and
compassion:

"Poor Rafael!... My poor dear boy!"

They had reached the gate to the orchard. The walk inside was deserted.
In the little square some hens were scratching about.

Overwhelmed by the strain of that confession, in which he had vented the
anguish and dreams of many months, Rafael leaned against the trunk of an
old orange-tree. Leonora stood in front of him, listening to his words,
with head lowered, making marks on the ground with the tip of her red
parasol.

Die, yes; he had often read in novels about people dying for love. And
he had always laughed at the absurdity of such a thing. But he
understood now. Many a night, tossing in his delirium, he had thought of
ending his misery in some tragic manner. The violent, domineering blood
of his father seethed in his veins. Once firmly convinced she could
never be his, he would kill her, to keep her from belonging to
anybody... and then stab himself! They would fall together to the
blood-soaked ground, and lie there as on a bed of red damask, and he
would kiss her cold lips, without fear of being disturbed; kiss her and
kiss her, till the last breath of his life exhaled upon her livid mouth.

He seemed to be saying all that with deadly earnestness. The muscles of
his strong face quivered, and his eyes--Moorish eyes--glowed like live
coals. Leonora was looking at him passionately now, as if a man were in
front of her. She shuddered with a strange fascination as she pictured
his barbarous dreams, fraught with blood and death. This was something
new! This boy, when he saw that his love was vain, would not gloomily
and prosaically slay himself as Macchia, the Italian poet, had done. He
would die, but asserting himself, killing the woman, destroying his idol
when it would not harken to his entreaties!

And, pleasantly excited by Rafael's tragic demeanor, she gave way to the
thrill of it, letting herself be carried along by his anguished rapture.
He had taken her arm and was drawing her off the path, out among the
low-hanging branches of the orange-trees.

For some time they were both silent. Leonora seemed to be drinking in
the virile perfume of that savage passionate adoration.

Rafael thought he had offended her, and was sorry for his violent words.

She must pardon him; he was beside himself, exasperated beyond bounds at
her strange resistance. Leonora! Leonora! Why persist in spoiling a
perfectly beautiful thing? He was not wholly a matter of indifference in
her eyes. She did not dislike him. Otherwise she would not have let him
be a friend and have permitted his frequent visits. Love?... Of course
she did not love him--poor unhappy wretch that he was, incapable of
inspiring passion in a woman like her. But let her just accept him. He
would teach her to love him in time, win her by the sheer beauty of his
own tenderness and worship. His love alone, alas, was great enough for
both of them and for all the famous lovers in history put together! He
would be her slave; a carpet for her to tread underfoot; a dog, always
at her feet, his eyes burning with the fire of eternal fidelity! She
would finally learn to be fond of him, if not out of passion, at least
out of gratitude and pity!

And as he spoke, he brought his face close to Leonora's, looking for his
own image in the depths of her green eyes; and he pressed her arm in a
fever of passion.

"Careful, Rafael.... That hurts! Let go, of me."

And as if suddenly sensing a danger in the full of a sweet dream, she
shuddered and pulled herself free with a nervous violence.

Then, quite recovered from the intoxication into which she had been led
by Rafael's passionate appeal, she began to speak calmly, composedly.

No; what he asked was impossible. Her fate was ordained; she did not
want love any more.... Friendship had carried them a bit astray. It was
her fault, but she would find a way to remedy that. If she had known him
years before--perhaps! She might have learned to love him. He was more
worthy of being loved than many of the men she had accepted. But he had
come too late. Now she was content with just living. Besides, what a
horror! Imagine a "grand passion" in a petty environment such as they
were in, a tiny world of gossip-mongers and evil tongues! Imagine having
to hide like a criminal to express a noble emotion! No, when she loved,
she loved in the open, with the sublime immodesty of the masterpiece
that scandalizes bumpkins with its naked beauty! How impossible it would
be, finding herself nibbled at constantly by gossiping fools, quite
beneath her contempt. She would feel the scorn and the indignation of a
whole town about her. They would accuse her of leading an innocent boy
astray, alienating him from his own mother. "No, Rafael; a thousand
times no; I have a little conscience left! I'm not the irresponsible
siren I used to be."

"But what about me?" cried the youth, seizing her arm again with a
boyish petulance. "You think of yourself and of other people, but never
of me. What am I going to do all along with my suffering?"

"Oh, you? Why ... you will forget," said Leonora gravely. "I have just
realized this very moment that it is impossible for me to stay here any
longer. We two must separate. I will leave before Spring is over; I'll
go ... I don't know where, back to the world at any rate, take up my
singing again, where I'll not find men of just your kind. Time, and my
absence, will attend to the curing of you."

Leonora winced before the flash of savage desire that gleamed in
Rafael's eyes. On her face she felt the ardent breath of lips that were
seeking her own, and she heard him murmur with a stifled roar of
passion:

"No. You shall not go; I refuse to let you go!"

And she felt his strong arms close about her, swaying her from head to
foot, in a clasp to which madness added strength. Her feet left the
ground, and a brutal thrust threw her to her side at the foot of an
orange-tree.

But, in a flash, the Valkyrie reappeared in Leonora. With a supreme
effort, she struggled free from the encircling vise, sat up, threw
Rafael violently to his back, got to her feet, and stamped a foot
brutally and mercilessly down upon the young man's chest, using her
whole weight as though bent on crushing the very framework of his body.

Her face was an inspiring thing to look upon. She seemed to have gone
mad! Her blond hair had fallen awry and was flecked with leaves and
grass and bark. Her green eyes flashed with metallic glints, like
daggers. Her lips were pale from emotion. And in that wild posture,
whether through force of habit, or the suggestiveness of the effort she
had made, she raised her warcry--a piercing, savage "_Hojotoho!_" that
rent the calm of the orchard, frightening the hens and sending them
scampering off over the paths. Her parasol she brandished as if it were
the lance of Wotan's daughter, and several times she aimed it at
Rafael's eyes, as if she intended to spear him blind.

The youth seemed to have collapsed less from the violence of the
struggle than from an overpowering sense of shame. He lay motionless on
the ground, without protesting, and as if not caring ever to rise
again--longing to die under the pressure of that foot which was so
heavily weighing down upon him, taking away his breath.

Leonora regained her composure, and slowly stepped back. Rafael sat up,
and reached for his hat.

It was a painful moment. They stood there cold, as if the sun had gone
out and a glacial wind were blowing through the orchard.

Rafael kept his eyes to the ground, afraid to look up and meet her gaze,
ashamed at the thought of his disordered clothes, which were soiled with
dirt; humiliated at having been beaten and pummeled like a robber caught
by a victim he had expected to find powerless.

He heard Leonora's voice addressing him with the scornful "_tu_" a lady
might use toward her lowest inferiors.

"Go!"

He raised his head and found Leonora looking at him, her eyes ablaze
with anger and offended dignity.

"I'm never taken by force," she said coldly. "I give myself ... if I
feel like it."

And in the gesture of scorn and rage with which she dismissed him,
Rafael thought he caught a trace of loathing at some memory of
Boldini--that repugnant lecher, who had been the only person in the
world to win her by violence.

Rafael tried to stammer an excuse, but that hateful association of the
brutal scene rendered her implacable.

"Go! Go, or I'll beat you again!... And never come back!"

And to emphasize the words, as Rafael, humiliated and covered with dirt,
was leaving the garden, she shut the gate behind him with such a violent
slam that the bars almost went flying.




IV


Doña Bernarda was much pleased with Rafael. The angry glances, the
gestures of impatience, the wordless arguments between mother and son,
which the household had formerly witnessed in such terror, had come to
an end.

The boy had not been visiting the Blue House for some time. She knew
that with absolute certainty, thanks to the gratuitous espionage
conducted for her by persons attached to the Brull family. He scarcely
ever left the house; a few moments at the Club after lunch; and the rest
of the day in the dining-room, with her and family friends; or else,
shut up in his room, with his books, probably, which the austere señora
revered with the superstitious awe of ignorance.

Don Andrés, her advisor, commented upon the change with a gloating "I
told you so." What had he always said, when doña Bernarda, in the
confiding intimacies of that friendship which amounted almost to a
senile, a tranquil, a distantly respectful passion, would complain of
Rafael's contrariness? That it would all pass; that it was a young man's
whim; that youth must have its fling! What was the use? Rafael hadn't
studied to be a monk! Many boys his age, and even older ones, were far
worse!... And the old gentleman smiled, for he was thinking of his own
easy conquests with the wretched flock of dirty, unkempt peasant girls
who wrapped the oranges in the shipping houses of Alcira. "You see, doña
Bernarda, you suffered too much with don Ramón. You are a bit too
exacting with Rafael. Let him have a good time! Let him enjoy himself!
He'll get tired of that chorus girl soon enough, pretty as she is. Then
you can take hold and start him right!"

Doña Bernarda once again had reason to appreciate the talent of her
counsellor. His predictions, made with a cynicism that always caused the
pious lady to blush, had been fulfilled to the letter!

She, too, was sure it was all over. Her son was not so blind as his
father had been. He had soon wearied of a "lost woman" like Leonora; he
had decided it was not worth while to quarrel with his mamma over so
trifling a matter, and have his enemies discredit him on that account.
He was returning to the path of duty; and to express her unbounded joy,
the good woman could not pamper him enough.

"And how about ... that?" her friends would ask her, mysteriously.

"Nothing," she would answer, with a proud smile. "Three weeks have gone
by and he hasn't shown the slightest inclination to go back. No, Rafael
is a good boy. All that was just a young one's notion. If you could only
see him keeping me company in the parlor every afternoon! An angel! Good
as pie! He spends hour after hour chatting with me and Matías's
daughter."

And then, broadening her smile and winking cunningly, she would add:

"I think there's something doing in that direction."

And indeed something was "doing"; at least, to judge by appearances.
Bored with wandering from room to room through the house, sick of his
books, with which he would spend hours and hours turning pages without
really seeing a word that was printed on them, Rafael had taken refuge
in the sitting-room where his mother did her sewing, supervising a
complicated piece of embroidery that Remedios was making.

The girl's submissive simplicity appealed to Rafael. Her ingenuousness
gave him a sense of freshness and repose. She was a cosy secluded refuge
where he might sleep after a tempest. His mother's satisfied smile was
there to encourage him in this feeling. Never had he seen her so kind
and so communicative. The pleasure of having him once more safe and
obedient in her hands had mollified that disposition so stern by nature
as to verge on rudeness.

Remedios, with her head bowed low over her embroidery, would blush deep
red whenever Rafael praised her work or told her she was the prettiest
girl in all Alcira. He would help her thread her needles, and hold his
hands out to make a winding frame for the skeins; and more than once,
with the familiarity of an old playmate, he would pinch her
mischievously through the embroidery hoop. And she would never miss the
chance to scream scandal.

"Rafael, don't be crazy," his mother would say, threatening him
indulgently with her withered forefinger. "Let Remedios work; if you
carry on so I won't let you come into the parlor."

And at night, alone in the dining-room with don Andrés, when the hour
of confidences came, doña Bernarda would forget the affairs of "the
House" and of "the Party," to say with satisfaction:

"It's going better."

"Is Rafael taking to her?"

"More and more every day. We're getting there, we're getting there! That
boy is the living image of his father when it comes to matters like
this. Believe me, you can't let one of that tribe out of your sight a
minute. If I didn't keep my eye peeled, that young devil would be doing
something that would discredit the House forever."

And the good woman was sure that Doctor Moreno's daughter--that
abominable creature whose good looks had been her nightmare for some
months past--no longer existed for Rafael.

She knew, from her spies, that on one market morning the two had met on
the street in town. Rafael had looked the other way, as if trying to
avoid her; the "_comica_" had turned pale and walked straight ahead
pretending not to see him. What did that mean?... A break for good of
course! The impudent hussy was livid with rage, you see, perhaps because
she could not trap her Rafael again; for he, weary of such
uncleanliness, had abandoned her forever. Ah, the lost soul, the
indecent gad-about! Excuse me! Was a woman to educate a son in the
soundest and most virtuous principles, make a somebody of him, and then
have an adventuress come along, a thousand times worse than a common
street-woman, and carry him off, as nice as you please, in her filthy
hands? What had the daughter of that scamp of a doctor thought?... Let
her fume! "You're sore just because you see he's dumped you for good!"

In the joy of her triumph doña Bernarda was thinking anxiously of her
son's marriage to Remedios, and, coming down one peg on the ladder of
her dignity toward don Matias, she began to treat the exporter as a
member of the family, commenting contentedly upon the growing affection
that united their two children.

"Well, if they're fond of each other," said the rustic magnate, "the
wedding can take place tomorrow so far as I'm concerned. Remedios means
a good deal to me; hard to find a girl like her for running a house; but
that needn't interfere with the marriage. I'm mighty well satisfied,
doña Bernarda, that we should be related through our children. I'm only
sorry that don Ramon isn't here to see it all."

And that was true. The one thing lacking to the millionaire's perfect
joy was that he would never have the chance to treat the tall, imposing
Don Ramon on equal terms for once,--the crowning triumph of a self-made
man.

Doña Bernarda, too, saw in this union the realization of her fondest
dreams: money joined to power; the millions of a business, whose
marvelous successes seemed like deliberate tricks of Chance, coming to
revivify with their sap of gold the Brull family tree, which was showing
the signs of age and long years of struggle!

Spring had come on apace. Some afternoons doña Bernarda would take "the
children" to her own orchards or to the wealthy holdings of don Matías.
It was a sight worth seeing--the kindly shrewdness with which she
chaperoned the young couple, shouting with shocked alarm if they
disappeared behind the orange-trees for a moment or two in their
frolics.

"That Rafael of ours," she would say to don Andrés, mimicking the long
face he used to put on when bringing up her troubles with her husband,
"what a rascal he is! I'll bet he's got both arms around her by this
time!"

"Let 'em alone, let 'em alone, doña Bernarda! The deeper in he gets with
this one, the less likely he'll be to go back to the other."

Back to her?... There was no fear of that. It was enough to watch Rafael
picking flowers and weaving them into the girl's hair while she
pretended to fight him off, blushing like a rose, and quite moved at
such homage.

"Now be good, Rafaelito," Remedios would murmur in a sort of entreating
bleat, "don't touch me; don't be so bold."

But her emotion would so betray her that you could see the thing she
most wanted in the world was for Rafael to place upon her body once
again those hands that made her tingle from the tips of her toes to the
roots of her hair. She resisted only because such was the duty of a
well-educated Christian girl. Like a young she-goat she would dash off
with graceful, tripping bounds between the rows of orange-trees, and _su
señoria_, the member from Alcira, would give chase with all his might,
his nostrils quivering and his eyes ablaze.

"Let's see if he can catch you!" the mother would call, with a laugh.
"Run and let him try to catch you!"

Don Andrés would roll up his wrinkled face into the smile of an old
faun. Such play made him feel young again.

"Huh, _señora_! I believe you. This is getting on--on, and then some.
I'd say, marry them off pretty quick; for, if you don't, mark my word,
there'll soon be something for Alcira to laugh about."

And they were both mistaken. Neither the mother nor don Andrés was
present to note the expression of dejection and despair on Rafael's face
when he was alone, shut up in his room, where, in the dark corners, he
could still see a pair of green, mysterious eyes gleaming at him and
tempting him.

Go back to her? Never! He still felt the shame, the humiliation of that
morning. He could see himself in all his tragic ridiculousness, in a heap
on the ground, trampled under foot by that Amazon, covered with dirt, as
humble and abashed as a criminal caught redhanded and with no excuse.
And then that word, that had cut like the lash of a whip: "Go!" As if he
were a lackey who had dared approach a Duchess! And then that gate
slamming behind him, falling like a slab over a tomb, setting up an
eternal barrier between him and the love of his life!

No, he would never go back! He was not brave enough to face her again.
That morning when he had met her by chance near the market-place, he
thought he would die of shame; his legs sagged under him, and the street
turned black as if night had suddenly fallen. She had disappeared; but
there was a ringing in his ears; and he had had to take hold of
something, as if the earth were swaying under his feet, and he would
fall.

He needed to forget that unutterable disgrace--a recollection as
tenacious as remorse itself. That was why he had plunged into the
affair with his mother's protegée--as a sort of anaesthetic. She was a
woman! And his hands, which seemed to have been unbound since that
painful morning, went out toward her; his tongue, free after his
vehement confession of love at the orchard-gate, spoke glibly now
expressing an adoration that seemed to go beyond the inexpressive
features of Remedios, and reach far, far away, to the Blue House, where
the other woman was, offended and in hiding.

With Remedios he would feel some sign of life, only to relapse into
torpid gloom the moment he was left alone. It was a foamy, frothy
intoxication he felt when with the girl, an effervescence that all
evaporated in solitude. He thought of Remedios as a piece of green
fruit--sound, free of cut or stain, and with all the color of maturity,
but lacking the taste that satisfies and the perfume that enthralls.

In his strange situation, spending days in childish games with a young
girl who aroused in him nothing more than the bland sense of fraternal
comradeship, and nights in sad and sleepless recollection, the one thing
that pleased him was intimacy with his mother. Peace had been restored
to the home. He could come and go without being conscious of a pair of
eyes glaring upon him and without hearing words of indignation stifled
between grating teeth.

Don Andrés and his friends at the Club kept asking him when the wedding
would take place. In presence of "the children" doña Bernarda would
speak of alterations that would have to be made in the house. She and
the servants would occupy the ground floor. The whole first story would
be for the couple, with new rooms that would be the talk of the
city--they would get the best decorators in Valencia! Don Matias treated
him familiarly, just as he had in the old days when he came to the
_patio_ to get his orders from don Ramón and found Rafael, as a child,
playing at his father's feet.

"Everything I have will be for you two. Remedios is an angel, and the
day I die, she will get more than my rascal of a son. All I ask of you
is not to take her off to Madrid. Since she is leaving my roof, at least
let me be able to see her every day."

And Rafael would listen to all these things as in a dream. In reality he
had not expressed the slightest desire to marry; but there was his
mother, taking everything for granted, arranging everything, imposing
her will, accelerating his sluggish affection, literally forcing
Remedios into his arms! His wedding was a foregone conclusion, the topic
of conversation for the entire city.

Sunk in this sadness, in the clutch of the tranquillity which now
surrounded him and which he was afraid to break; weak, as a matter of
character, and without will power, he sought consolation in the
reflection that the solution his mother was preparing was perhaps for
the best.

His friendship with Leonora had been broken forever. Any day she might
take flight! She had said so very often. She would be going very
soon--when the blossoms were off the orange-trees! What would be left
for him then ... except to obey his mother? He would marry, and perhaps
that would serve as a distraction. Little by little his affection for
Remedios might grow. Perhaps in time he would even come to love her.

Such meditations brought him a little calm, lulling him into an
attitude of agreeable irresponsibility. He would turn child again, as he
once had been, have his mother take charge of everything; let himself be
drawn along, passive, unresisting, by the current of destiny.

But at times this resignation boiled up into hot, seething ebullitions
of angry protest, of raging passion. At night Rafael could not sleep.
The orange-trees were beginning to bloom. The blossoms, like an odorous
snow, covered the orchards and shed their perfume as far even as the
city streets. The air was heavy with fragrance. To breathe was to scent
a nosegay. Through the window-gratings under the doors, through the
walls, the virginal perfume of the vast orchards filtered--an
intoxicating breath, that Rafael, in his impassioned restlessness,
imagined as wafted from the Blue House, caressing Leonora's lovely
figure, and catching something of the divine fragrance of her redolent
beauty. And he would roll furiously between the sheets, biting the
pillow and moaning.

"Leonora! Leonora!"

One night, toward the end of April, Rafael drew back in front of the
door to his room, with the tremor he would have felt on the threshold of
a place of horror. He could not endure the thought of the night that
awaited him. The whole city seemed to have sunk into languor, in that
atmosphere so heavily charged with perfume. The lash of spring was
stirring all the impulses of life with its exciting caress, and goading
every feeling to new intensity. Not the slightest breeze was blowing.
The orchards saturated the calm atmosphere with their odorous
respiration. The lungs expanded as if there were no air, and all space
were being inhaled in each single breath. A voluptuous shudder was
stirring the countryside as it lay dozing under the light of the moon.

Hardly realizing what he was doing, Rafael went down into the street.
Soon he found himself upon the bridge, where a few strollers, hat in
hand, were breathing the night air eagerly, looking at the clusters of
broken light that the moon was scattering over the river like fragments
of a mirror.

He went on through the silent, deserted streets of the suburbs, his
footsteps echoing from the sidewalks. One row of houses lay white and
gleaming under the moon. The other was plunged in shadow. He was drawn
on and on into the mysterious silence of the fields.

His mother was asleep, he suddenly reflected. She would know nothing. He
would be free till dawn. He yielded further to the attraction of the
roads that wound in and out through the orchards, where so many times he
had dreamed and hoped.

The spectacle was not new to Rafael. Every year he had watched that
fertile plain come to life at the touch of Springtime, cover itself with
flowers, fill the air with perfumes; and yet, that night, as he beheld
the vast mantle of orange-blossoms that had settled over the fields, and
was gleaming in the moonlight like a fall of snow, he felt himself
completely in control of an infinitely sweet emotion.

The orange-trees, covered from trunk to crown with white, ivory-smooth
flowerets, seemed like webs of spun glass, the vegetation of one of
those fantastic snow-mantled landscapes that quiver sometimes in the
glass spheres of paper-weights. The perfume came in continuous,
successive waves, rolling out upon the infinite with a mysterious
palpitation, transfiguring the country, imparting to it a feeling of
supernaturalness--the vision of a better world, of a distant planet
where men feed on perfume and live in eternal poetry. Everything was
changed in this spacious love-nest softly lighted by a great lantern of
mother-of-pearl. The sharp crackling of the branches sounded in the deep
silence like so many kisses; the murmur of the river became the distant
echo of passionate love-making, hushed voices whispering close to the
loved one's ears words tremulous with adoration. From the canebrake a
nightingale was singing softly, as if the beauty of the night had
subdued its plaintive song.

How good it was to be alive! The blood tingled more rapidly, more hotly,
through the body! Every sense seemed sharper, more acute; though that
landscape imposed silence with its pale wan beauty, just as certain
emotions of intense joy are tasted with a sense of mystic shrinking!

Rafael followed the usual path. He had turned instinctively toward the
Blue House.

The shame of his disgrace still smarted raw within him. Had he met
Leonora now in the middle of the road he would have recoiled in childish
terror; but he would not meet her at such an hour. That reflection gave
him strength to walk on. Behind him, over the roofs of the city, the
tolling of a clock rolled. Midnight! He would go as far as the wall of
her orchard, enter if that were possible, stand there a few moments in
silent humility before the house, looking up adoringly at the windows
behind which Leonora lay sleeping.

It would be his farewell! The whim had occurred to him as he left the
city and saw the first orange-trees laden with the blossoms whose
perfume had for many months been holding the songstress there in patient
expectation. Leonora would never know he had been near her in the silent
orchard bathed in moonlight, taking leave of her with the unspoken
anguish of an eternal farewell, as to a dream vanishing on the horizon
of life!

The gate with the green wooden bars came into view among the trees--the
gate that had been slammed behind him in insulting dismissal. Among the
thorns of the hedge he looked for an opening he had discovered in the
days when he used to hover about the house. He went through, and his
feet sank into the fine, sandy soil of the orange-groves. Above the tops
of the trees, the house itself could be seen, white in the moonlight.
The rain-troughs of the roof and the balustrades of the balconies shone
like silver. The windows were all closed. Everything was asleep.

He was about to step forward, when a dark form shot out from between two
orange-trees and stopped near him with a muffled growl. It was the house
dog, an ugly, ill-tempered animal trained to bite before it barked.

Rafael recoiled instinctively from the warm breath of that panting,
furious muzzle which was reaching for his leg; but the dog, after a
second's hesitation, began to wag its tail with pleasure; and was
content merely to sniff at the boy's trousers so as to make absolutely
sure of an old friend's identity. Rafael patted him on the head, as he
had done so many times, distractedly, in conversations with Leonora on
the bench in the _plazoleta_. A good omen this encounter seemed! And he
walked on, while the dog resumed his watch in the darkness.

Timidly he made his way forward in the shelter of a large patch of
shadow cast by the orange-trees, dragging himself along, almost, like a
thief afraid of an ambuscade.

He reached the walk leading to the _plazoleta_ and was surprised to find
the gate half open. Suddenly he heard a suppressed cry near by.

He turned around, and there on the tile bench, wrapped in the shadow of
the palm-trees and the rose-bushes, he saw a white form--a woman. As she
rose from her seat the moonlight fell squarely on her features.

"Leonora!"

The youth would have gladly sunk into the earth. "Rafael! You here?..."

And the two stood there in silence, face to face. He kept his eyes fixed
on the ground, ashamed. She looked at him with a certain indecision.

"You've given me a scare that I'll never forgive you for," she said at
last. "What are you doing here?..."

Rafael was at a loss for a reply. He stammered with an embarrassment
that quite impressed Leonora; but despite his agitation, he noticed a
strange glitter in the girl's eyes, and a mysterious veiling of her
voice that seemed to transfigure her.

"Come, now," said Leonora gently, "don't hunt up any far-fetched
excuses.... You were coming to bid me good-bye--and without trying to
see me! What a lot of nonsense! Why don't you say right out that you
are a victim of this dangerous night--as I am, too?"

And her eyes, glittering with a tearful gleam, swept the _plazoleta_,
which lay white in the moonlight; and the snowy orange-blossoms, the
rose-bushes, the palm-trees, that stood out black against the blue sky
where the stars were twinkling like grains of luminous sand. Her voice
trembled with a soft huskiness, as caressing as velvet.

Rafael, quite encouraged by this unexpected reception, tried to beg
forgiveness for the madness that had caused his expulsion from the
place; but the actress cut him short.

"Let's not discuss that unpleasant thing! It hurts me just to think of
it. You're forgiven; and since you've fallen on this spot as though
heaven had dropped you here, you may stay a moment. But ... no
liberties. You know me now."

And straightening up to her full height as an Amazon sure of herself,
she turned to the bench, motioning to Rafael to take a seat at the other
end.

"What a night!... I feel a strange intoxication without wine! The
orange-trees seem to inebriate me with their very breath. An hour ago my
room was whirling round and round, as though I were going to faint. My
bed was like a frail bark tossing in a tempest. So I came down as I
often do; and here you can have me until sleep proves more powerful than
the beauty of this beautiful night."

She spoke with a languid abandonment; her voice quivering, and tremors
rippling across her shoulders, as if all the perfume were hurting her,
oppressing her powerful vitality. Rafael sat looking at her over the
length of the bench--a white, sepulchral figure, wrapped in the hooded
cape of a dressing-gown--the first thing she had laid hands upon when
she had thought of going out into the garden.

"I was frightened when I saw you," she continued, in a slow, faint
voice. "A little fright, nothing more! A natural surprise, I suppose;
and yet, I was thinking of you that very moment. I confess it. I was
saying to myself: 'What can that crazy boy be doing, at this hour, I
wonder?' And suddenly you appeared, like a ghost. You couldn't sleep;
you were excited by all this fragrance; and you have come to try your
luck anew, with the hope that brought you here at other times."

She spoke without her usual irony, softly, simply, as if she were
talking to herself. Her body was thrown limply back against the bench,
one arm resting behind her head.

Rafael started to speak once more of his repentance, of his desire to
kneel in front of the house there in mute entreaty for pardon, while she
would be sleeping in the room above. But Leonora interrupted him again.

"Hush! Your voice is very loud. They might hear you. My aunt's room is
in the other wing of the house, but she's not a heavy sleeper....
Besides, I don't care to listen to talk about remorse, pardon, and such
things. It makes me think of that morning. The mere fact that I am
letting you stay here ought to be enough, oughtn't it? I want to forget
all that.... Hush, Rafael! Silence makes the beauty of the night more
wonderful. The fields seem to be talking with the moon, and these waves
of perfume that are sweeping over us are echoes of their passionate
words."

And she fell silent, keeping absolutely still, her eyes turned upward,
catching the moonbeams in their tear-like moisture. From time to time
Rafael saw her quiver with a mysterious tremor; then extend her arms and
cross them behind her head of golden hair, in a voluptuous stretch that
made her white robe rustle, while her limbs grew taut in a delicious
tension. She seemed upset, ill almost; at times her panting breath was
like a sob. Her head drooped over a shoulder and her breast heaved with
countless sighs.

The youth was obediently silent, fearing lest the remembrance of his
base audacity should again come up in the conversation; and not
venturing to reduce the distance that separated them on the bench. She
seemed to divine what he was thinking and began to speak, slowly, of the
abnormal state of mind in which she found herself.

"I don't know what's the matter with me tonight. I feel like crying,
without knowing why. I am filled with a strange inexplicable happiness,
and yet I could just weep and weep. Oh, I know--it's the Springtime; all
this fragrance that whips my nerves like a lash. I really believe I'm
crazy.... Springtime! My best friend--though she has done me only wrong!
If ever I have been guilty of any foolish thing in my life, Spring was
at the bottom of it.... It's youth reborn in us--madness paying us its
annual visit.... And I--ever faithful to her, adoring her; waiting in
this out-of-the-way spot almost a year for her to come, to see her once
more in her best clothes, crowned with orange-blossoms like a virgin--a
wicked virgin who pays me back for my devotion with betrayal!... Just
see what I've come to! I am ill--I don't know why--with excess of life,
perhaps. She drives me on I don't know where, but certainly where I
ought not to go.... If it weren't for sheer will-power on my part, I'd
collapse in a heap on this bench here. I'm just like a drunken man
bending every effort to keep his feet and walk straight."

It was true; she was really ill. Her eyes grew more and more tearful;
her body was quivering, shrinking, collapsing, as if life were
overflowing within her and escaping through all her pores.

Again she was silent, for a long time, her eyes gazing vacantly into
space; then, she murmured, as if in answer to a thought of her own.

"No one ever understood as well as He. He knew everything, felt as
nobody ever felt the mysterious hidden workings of Nature; and He sang
of Springtime as a god would sing. Hans used to remark that many a time;
and it's so."

Without turning her head she added, in a dreamy musing voice.

"Rafael, you don't know _Die Walküre_, do you? You've never heard the
Spring Song?"

He shook his head. And Leonora, with her eyes still gazing moonward, her
head resting back against her arms, which escaped in all their round,
pearly strength from her drooping sleeves, spoke slowly, collecting her
memories, recreating in her mind's eye that Wagnerian scene of such
intense poetry--the glorification and the triumph of Nature and Love.

Hunding's hut, a barbaric dwelling, hung with savage trophies of the
chase, suggesting the brutish existence of man scarcely yet possessed of
the world, in perpetual strife with the elements and with wild animals.
The eternal fugitive, forgotten of his father,--Sigmund by name, though
he calls himself "Despair," wandering years and years through the
forests, harrassed by beasts of prey who take him for one of themselves
in his covering of skins, rests at last at the foot of the giant oak
that sustains the hut; and as he drinks the hidromel in the horn offered
to him by the sweet Siglinda, he gazes into her pure eyes and for the
first time becomes aware that Love exists.

The husband, Hunding, the wild huntsman, takes leave of him at the end
of the rustic supper: "Your father was the Wolf, and I am of the race of
Hunters. Until the break of day, my house protects you; you are my
guest; but as soon as the sun rises in the heavens you become my enemy,
and we will fight.... Woman, prepare the night's drink; and let us be
off to bed."

And the exile sits alone beside the fireplace, thinking of his immense
loneliness. No home, no family, not even the magic sword promised him by
his father the Wolf. And at daybreak, out of the hut that shelters him
the enemy will come to slay him. The thought of the woman who allayed
his thirst, the sparkle of those pure eyes wrapping him in a gaze of
pity and love, is the one thing that sustains him.... She comes to him
when her wild consort has fallen asleep. She shows him the hilt of the
sword plunged into the oak by the god Wotan; nobody can pull it out: it
will obey only the hand of him to whom it has been destined by the god.

As she speaks the wandering savage gazes at her in ecstasy, as if she
were a white vision revealing to him the existence of something more
than might and struggle in the world. It is the voice of Love. Slowly he
draws near; embraces her; clasps her to his heart, while the door is
pushed open by the breeze and the green forest appears, odorous in the
moonlight--nocturnal Springtime, radiant and glorious, wrapped in a
mantle of music and perfume.

Siglinda shudders. "Who has come in?" No one--and yet, a Stranger has
entered the hovel, opening the door with an invisible hand. And Sigmund,
at the inspiration of Love, divines the identity of the visitant. "It is
Springtime laughing in the air about your tresses. The storms are gone;
gone is the dark solitude. The radiant month of May, a young warrior in
an armor of flowers, has come to give chase to bleak Winter, and in all
this festival of rejoicing Nature, seeks his sweetheart: Youth. This
night, which has brought you to me, is the unending night of Spring and
Youth."

And, Leonora was thrilled as she heard in her memory the murmur of the
orchestra accompanying the song of tenderness inspired by Spring; the
rustle of the forest branches benumbed by the winter, now swaying with
the new sap that had flowed into them like a torrent of vitality; and
out on the brightly lighted _plazoleta_ she could almost see Sigmund and
Siglinda clasping in an eternal unseverable embrace, as she had seen
them from the wings of the opera, where she would be waiting as a
Valkyrie to step out and set an audience wild with her mighty
"_Hojotoho!"_

She was feeling the same loneliness and yearning that Sigmund felt in
Hunding's hovel. Without a family, without a home, wandering over the
world, she longed for someone to lean on, someone to clasp tenderly to
her heart! And it was she who unconsciously, instinctively, had drawn
closer to Rafael, and placed her hand in his.

She was ill. She sighed softly with the appealing entreaty of a child,
as if the intense poetry of that memory of music had shattered the frail
remnant of will that had kept her mistress of herself.

"I don't know what's the matter with me to-night. I feel as though I
were dying.... But such a sweet death! So sweet!... What madness,
Rafael! How rash it was of us to have seen each other on such a
night!..."

And with supplicating eyes, as if entreating forgiveness, she gazed out
into the majestic moonlight, where the silence seemed to be stirring
with the palpitation of a new life. She could divine that something was
dying within her, that her will lay prostrate on the ground, without
strength to defend itself.

Rafael, too, was overwhelmed. He held her clasped against his breast,
one of her hands in his. She was weak, languid, will-less, incapable of
resistance; yet he did not feel the brutal passion of the previous
meeting; he did not dare to move. A sense of infinite tenderness came
over him. All he yearned for was to sit there hour after hour in contact
with that beautiful form, clasping her tightly to him, making her one
with him, as a jewel-case might guard a jewel.

He whispered mysteriously into her ear, hardly knowing what he was
saying; tender words that seemed to be coming from someone within him,
thrilling him with a tingling, suffocating passion as they left his
lips.

Yes, it was true; that night was the night dreamed of by the immortal
Poet; the wedding night of smiling Youth and of martial May in his armor
of flowers. The fields were quivering voluptuously under the rays of the
moon; and they, two young hearts, feeling the flutter of Love's wings
about their hair, why should they sit unresponsive there, blind to the
beauty of the night, deaf to the infinite caress that was echoing from
all around?

"Leonora! Leonora!" moaned Rafael.

He had slipped down from the bench. Before he was aware of it, he found
himself kneeling at her feet, clutching her hands, and thrusting his
face upward without daring to reach her lips.

She drew weakly back, protesting feebly, with a girlish plaint:

"No, no; it would hurt me.... I feel that I'm dying."

"You belong to me," the youth continued with an exaltation
ill-suppressed. "You belong to me forever; to gaze into your dear eyes,
and to murmur in your ear, your sweet, beautiful, name, and die, if need
be, here. What do we care for the world and its opinions?"

And Leonora with weakening resistance, continued to refuse:

"No, no.... I must not. It's a feeling I can't explain."

And that was so. The gentle quiver of Nature under the kiss of
Springtime, the intense perfume of the flower that is the emblem of
virginity, had transfigured that madcap singer, that adventuress of a
career so checkered, who had been violently thrust into her first
experience of passion, and now for the first time felt the blush of
modesty in the arms of a man. Nature, intoxicating her, shattering her
will, seemed to have created a strange virginity in that body so
familiar with the call of passion.

"Oh, Rafael, what is happening to me?... What's happening to me? It must
be love; a new love that I did not think I should ever know.... Rafael ...
Rafael, my own boy!"

And weeping softly, she took his head in her hands, pressed her lips to
his, and then fell back in her seat with eyes distended, maddened with
the joy of that kiss.

"I belong to you, Rafael! Yours ... but forever. I have always loved you
from the first, but now ... I adore you.... For the first time in my
life I say that with all my soul."

Hardly able to realize his good fortune, Rafael was thrilled by a deeply
generous sentiment. There was nothing he would not give to that
woman....

"Yes; you belong to me forever.... I will marry you."

But in his dreamy, wild intoxication he saw the artiste's eyes open wide
in surprise, as a sad smile flitted across her lips.

"Marry me And why?... That's well enough for other women; but me you
must love, my darling child, ever so much, as much as you can.... Just
love me!... I believe only in Love!"




V


"But my dear child, when are we getting to this island of yours?... It
bores me to be here sitting on this seat, so far away from my little
boy, watching his arms get tired from all that rowing. I must kiss him..
even if he says no! It will rest him, I am sure."

And rising to her feet, Leonora took two steps forward in the white
boat, though threatening to upset it, and kissed Rafael several times.
He lay aside the oars and laughingly defended himself.

"Madcap! We'll never get there at this rate. With rests like this we
make very little progress, and I've promised to take you to my island."

Once again he bent to the oars, heading out toward midstream over the
moonlit water, as if to vouchsafe the groves on either bank an equal
pleasure in the romantic escapade.

It had been one of her caprices--a desire repeated during his visits to
the Blue House on some afternoons, in the presence of doña Pepa and the
maid, and on every night, as he passed through the opening in the hedge
where Leonora's bare arms were waiting for him in the darkness.

For more than a week Rafael had been living in a sweet dream. Never had
he imagined that life could be so beautiful. It was a mood of delicious
abstraction. The city no longer existed for him. The people that moved
about him seemed like so many spectres: his mother and Remedios were
invisible beings. Their words he would hear and answer without taking
the trouble to look up.

He spent his days in feverish impatience for night to come--that the
family might finish supper and leave him free to go to his room, whence
he would cautiously tip-toe, as soon as the house was silent and
everybody was asleep.

Indifferent to everything foreign to his love, he did not realize the
effect his conduct was having on his mother. She had noticed that his
door was locked all morning while he slept off the fatigue of a
sleepless night. She had already tired of asking him whether he was ill,
and of getting the same reply:

"No, mama; I've been working nights; an important study I'm preparing."

It was all his mother could do on such occasions to restrain herself
from shouting "Liar!" Two nights she had gone up to his room, to find
the door locked and the keyhole dark. Her son was not inside. She would
lie awake for him now; and every morning, somewhat before dawn, she
would hear him softly open the outside door and tip-toe up the stairs,
perhaps in his stocking-feet.

The female Spartan said nothing however, hoarding her indignation in
silence, complaining only to don Andrés of the recrudescence of a
madness that was upsetting all her plans. Through his numerous henchmen
the counselor kept watch upon the young man. His spies followed Rafael
cautiously through the night, up to the gate of the Blue House.

"What a scandal!" exclaimed doña Bernarda. "At night, too! He'll wind
up by bringing her into this house! Can it be that that simpleton of a
doña Pepita is blind to all this?"

And there was Rafael, unaware of the storm that was gathering about his
head, no longer deigning even to speak to Remedios, or look at her, as
with her head bowed like a sulky goat, she went around stifling her
tears at the memory of those happy strolls in the orchard under doña
Bernarda's surveillance.

The deputy had eyes for nothing outside of the Blue House; his happiness
had blinded him. The one thing that annoyed him was the necessity of
hiding his joy--his inability to make his good fortune public, so that
all his admirers might learn of it.

He would willingly have gone back to the days of the Roman decadence,
when the love affairs of the powerful became matters of national
adoration.

"What do I care for their gossip" he once said to Leonora. "I love you
so much that I'd like to see the whole city worship you in public. I'd
like to snatch you up in my arms, and appear upon the bridge at high
noon, before a concourse stupefied by your beauty: 'Am I or am I not
your "_quefe_"?' I'd ask. 'Well, if I am, adore this woman, who is my
very soul and without whom I could not live. The affection which you
have for me you must have also for her.' And I'd do just as I say if it
were possible."

"Silly boy ... adorable child," she had replied, showering him with
kisses, brushing his dark beard with her soft, quivering lips.

And it was during one of their meetings--when their words were broken
by sudden impulses of affection, and their lips were tightly pressed
together--that Leonora had expressed her capricious desire.

"I'm stifling in this house. I hate to caress you inside four walls, as
if you were only a passing whim. This is unworthy of you. You are Love,
who came to seek me out on the most beautiful of nights. I like you
better in the open air. You look more handsome to me then, and I feel
younger."

And recalling those trips down the river about which Rafael had told her
so many times when they were only friends--that islet with its curtains
of reeds, the willows bending over the water and the nightingale singing
from its hiding-place--she had asked him, eagerly:

"What night are you going to take me there? It's a whim of mine, a wild
idea; but, what does love exist for, if not to make people do the
foolish things that sweeten life?... Carry me off in your boat! The bark
that bore you there will transport the two of us to your enchanted
island; we will spend the whole night in the open air."

And Rafael, who was flattered by the idea of taking his love publicly
down the river, through the slumbering countryside, unfastened his boat
at midnight under the bridge and rowed it to a canebrake near Leonora's
orchard.

An hour later they emerged through the opening in the hedge, arm in arm,
laughing at the mischievous escapade, disturbing the majestic silence of
the landscape with noisy, insolent kisses.

They got into the boat, and with a favoring current, began to descend
the Júcar, lulled by the murmur of the river as it glided between the
high mudbanks covered with reeds that bent low over the water and
formed mysterious hiding places.

Leonora clapped her hands with delight. She threw over her neck the silk
shawl with which she had covered her head. She unbuttoned her light
traveling coat, and inhaled with deep enjoyment the moist, somewhat
muggy breeze that was curling along the surface of the river. Her hand
trembled as it dipped into the water from time to time.

How beautiful it was! All by themselves, and wandering about, as if the
world did not exist; as if all Nature belonged to them, to them alone!
Here they were, slipping past clusters of slumbering houses, leaving the
city far behind. And nobody had suspected that passion, which in its
enthusiasm had broken its chains and left its mysterious lair to have
the heavens and the fields for sympathetic witnesses. Leonora would have
wished that the night should never end; that the waning moon, which
seemed to have been slashed by a sword, should stop eternally in the sky
to wrap them forever in its feeble, dying light; that the river should
be endless, and the boat float on and on until, overwhelmed by so much
love, they should breathe the last gasp of life away in a kiss as
tenuous as a sigh.

"If you could only know how grateful I am to you for this excursion,
Rafael!... I'm happy, so happy. Never have I had such a night as this.
But where is the island? Have we gone astray, as you did the night of
the flood?"

No! At last they reached the place. There Rafael had spent many an
afternoon hidden in the bushes, cut off by the encircling waters,
dreaming that he was an adventurer on the virgin prairies or the vast
rivers of America, performing exploits he had read about in the novels
of Fenimore Cooper and Mayne Reid.

A tributary joined the Júcar at this point, emptying gently into the
main stream from under a thicket of reeds and trees that formed a
triumphal arch of foliage. At the confluence rose the island--a tiny
piece of land almost level with the water, but as fresh as green and
fragrant as an aquatic bouquet. The banks were lined with dense clumps
of cane, and a few willows that bent their hairy foliage low over the
water, forming dark vaults through which the boat could make its way.

The two lovers entered the shade. The curtain of branches concealed them
from the river; a bare tear of moonlight managed to filter through the
mane of willows.

Leonora felt a first sense of uneasiness in this dark, damp, cave-like
haunt. Invisible animals took to the water with dull splashes as they
heard the boat's bow touch the mud of the bank. The actress clutched her
lover's arm with nervous pleasure.

"Here we are," murmured Rafael. "Hold on to something and get out.
Careful, careful! Don't you want to hear the nightingale? Here we have
him. Listen."

It was true. In one of the willows, at the other side of the island, the
mysterious bird was trilling from his hiding place, a dizzying shower of
notes, which broke at the crescendo of the musical whirl-pool into a
plaint as soft and long-sustained as a golden thread stretched in the
silence of the night across the river, that seemed to be applauding
with its hushed murmur. To get nearer, the lovers went up through the
rushes, stopping, bending over at each step, to keep the branches from
crackling underneath their feet.

Favoring moisture had covered the islet with an exuberant undergrowth.
Leonora repressed exclamations of glee as she found her feet caught in
meshes of reeds or received the rude caresses of the branches that
snapped back, as Rafael went ahead, and brushed against her face. She
called for help in a muffled voice; and Rafael, laughing also, would
hold out his hand to her, taking her finally to the very foot of the
tree where the nightingale was singing.

The bird, divining the presence of intruders, ceased his song. Doubtless
he had heard the rustle of their clothing as they sat down at the foot
of the tree, or the tender words they were murmuring into each other's
ear.

Over all, the silence of slumbering Nature reigned--that silence made up
of a thousand sounds, harmonizing and blending in one majestic calm; the
murmur of the water, the stirring of the foliage, the mysterious
movements of unseen creatures crawling along under the leaves or
patiently boring their winding galleries in the creaking trunks.

The nightingale began again to sing, timidly, like an artist afraid of
an impending interruption. He uttered a few disconnected notes with
anxious rests between them--love sighs they seemed, broken by sobs of
passion. Then gradually he took courage, regained self-confidence, and
entered on his full song, just as a soft breeze rose, swept over the
island, and set all the trees and reeds rustling in mysterious
accompaniment.

The bird gradually grew intoxicated with the sound of his own trilling,
cadenced, voice; one could almost see him up there in the thick
darkness, panting, ardent, in the spasm of his musical inspiration,
utterly engrossed in his own beautiful little world of song, overwhelmed
by the charm of his own artistry.

But the bird had ceased his music when the two lovers awoke in a tight
embrace, still in ecstasy from the song of love to which they had fallen
asleep. Leonora was resting a dishevelled head on Rafael's shoulder,
caressing his neck with an eager, wearied breathing, whispering in his
ear, random, incoherent words that still were vibrant with emotion.

How happy she was there! Everything comes for true love! Many a time,
during the days of her unkindness to him, she had looked out from her
balcony upon the river winding down through the slumbering countryside;
and she had thought with rapture of a stroll some day through that
immense garden on Rafael's arm--of gliding, gliding down the Júcar, to
that very island.

"My love is an ancient thing," she murmured. "Do you suppose, I have
been loving you only since the other night? No, I have loved you for a
long, long time.... But don't you go and get conceited on that account,
_su señoria_! I don't know how it began: It must have been when you were
away in Madrid. When I saw you again I knew that I was lost. If I still
resisted, it was because I was a wise woman; because I saw things
clearly. Now I'm mad and I've thrown my better judgment to the winds.
God knows what will become of us.... But come what may, love me, Rafael,
love me. Swear that you'll love me always. It would be cruel to desert
me after awakening a passion like this."

And, in an impulse of dread, she nestled closer against his breast, sank
her hands into his hair, lifted her head back to kiss him avidly on the
face, the forehead, the eyes, the lips, nibbling playfully, tenderly at
his nose and chin, yet with an affectionate vehemence that drew cries of
mock protest from Rafael.

"Madcap!" he muttered, smiling. "You're hurting me."

Leonora looked steadily at him out of her two great eyes that were
a-gleam with love.

"I could eat you up," she murmured. "I feel like devouring you, my
heaven, my king, my god.... What have you given me, tell me, little boy?
How have you been able to fascinate me, make me feel a passion that I
never, never felt before?"

And again they fell asleep.

Rafael stirred in his lover's arms, and suddenly sat up.

"It must be late. How many hours have we been here, do you suppose?"

"Many, many hours," Leonora answered sadly. "Hours of happiness always
go so fast."

It was still dark. The moon had set. They arose and, hand in hand,
groping their way along, they reached the boat. The splash of the oars
began again to sound along the dark stream.

Suddenly the nightingale again piped gloomily in the willow wood, as if
in farewell to a departing dream.

"Listen, my darling," said Leonora. "The poor little fellow is bidding
us good-bye. Just hear how plaintively he says farewell."

And in the strange exhiliration that comes from fatigue, Leonora felt
the flames of art flaring up within her, seething through her organism
from head to foot.

A melody from _Die Meistersinger_ came to her mind, the hymn that the
good people of Nuremberg sing when Hans Sachs, their favorite singer, as
bounteous and gentle as the Eternal Father, steps out on the platform
for the contest in poetry. It was the song that the poet-minstrel, the
friend of Albrecht Dürer, wrote in honor of Luther when the great
Reformation broke; and the prima donna, rising to her feet in the stern,
and returning the greeting of the nightingale began:

  "_Sorgiam, che spunta il dolce albor,
  cantar ascolto in mezzo ai fior
  voluttuoso un usignol
  spiegando a noi l'amante vol_!..."

Her ardent, powerful voice seemed to make the dark surface of the river
tremble; it rolled in harmonious waves across the fields, and died away
in the foliage of the distant island, whence the nightingale trilled an
answer that was like a fainting sigh. Leonora tried to reproduce with
her lips the majestic sonorousness of the Wagnerian chorus, mimicking
the rumbling accompaniment of the orchestra, while Rafael beat the
water with his oars in time with the pious, exalted melody with which
the great Master had turned to popular poetry adequately to greet the
outbreak of Reform.

They went on and on up the river against the current, Leonora singing,
Rafael bending over the oars, moving his sinewy arms like steel springs.
He kept the boat inshore, where the current was not so strong. At times
low branches brushed the heads of the lovers, and drops of dew fell on
their faces. Many a time the boat glided through one of the verdant
archways of foliage, making its way slowly through the lily-pads; and
the green overhead would tremble with the harmonious violence of that
wonderful voice, as vibrant and as resonant as a great silver bell.

Day had not yet dawned--the _dolce albor_ of Hans Sachs' song--but at
any moment the rosy rim of sunrise would begin to climb the sky.

Rafael was hurrying to get back as soon as possible. Her sonorous voice
of such tremendous range seemed to be awakening the whole countryside.
In one cottage a window lighted up. Several times along the river-bank,
as they rowed past the reeds, Rafael thought he heard the noise of
snapping branches, the cautious footsteps of spies who were following
them.

"Hush, my darling. You had better stop singing; they'll recognize you.
They'll guess who you are."

They reached the bank where they had embarked. Leonora leaped ashore.
They must separate there; for she insisted on going home alone. And
their parting was sweet, slow, endless.

"Good-bye, my love; one kiss. Until tomorrow ... no, later--today."

She walked a few steps up the bank, and then suddenly ran back to
snuggle again in her lover's arms.

"Another, my prince ... the last."

Day was breaking, announced not by the song of the lark, as in the
garden of Shakespere's lovers at Verona, but by the sound of carts,
creaking over country roads in the distance, and by a languid, sleepy
melody of an orchard boy.

"Good-bye, Rafael.... Now I must really go. They'll discover us."

Wrapping her coat about her she hurried away, waving a final farewell to
him with her handkerchief.

Rafael rowed upstream toward the city. That part of the trip--he
reflected--alone, tired, and struggling against the current, was the one
bad part of the wonderful night. When he moored his boat near the bridge
it was already broad day. The windows of the river houses were opening.
Over the bridge carts laden with produce for the market were rumbling,
and orchard women were going by with huge baskets on their heads. All
these people looked down with interest on their deputy. He must have
spent the night fishing. And this news passed from one to the other,
though not a trace of fishing tackle was visible in the boat. How they
envied rich folks, who could sleep all day and spend their time just as
they pleased!

Rafael jumped ashore. All that curiosity he was attracting annoyed him.
His mother would know everything by the time he got home!

As he climbed slowly and wearily, his arms numb from rowing, to the
bridge, he heard his name called.

Don Andrés was standing there, gazing at him out of those yellow eyes of
his, scowling through his wrinkles with an expression of stern
authority.

"You've given me a fine night, Rafael. I know where you've been. I saw
you row off last night with that woman; and plenty of my friends were on
hand to follow you and find out just where you went. You've been on the
island all night; that woman was singing away like a lunatic.... God of
Gods, boy! Aren't there any houses in the world? Do you have to play the
band when you're having an affair, so that everybody in the Kingdom can
come and look?"

The old man was truly riled; all the more because he was himself the
secretive, the dexterous, libertine, adopting every precaution not to be
discovered in his "weaknesses." Was it anger or envy that he felt on
seeing a couple enough in love with each other to be fearless of gossip
and indifferent to danger, to throw prudence to the winds, and flaunt
their passion before the world with the reckless insolence of happiness?

"Besides, your mother knows everything. She's discovered what you've
been up to, these nights past. She knows you haven't been in your room.
You're going to break that woman's heart!"

And with paternal severity he went on to speak of doña Bernarda's
despair, of the danger to the future of the House, of the obligations
they were under to don Matías, of the solemn promise given, of that poor
girl waiting to be married!

Rafael walked along in silence and like an automaton. That old man's
chatter brought down around his head, like a swarm of pestering
mosquitoes, all the provoking, irritating obligations of his life. He
felt like a man rudely awakened by a tactless servant in the middle of a
sweet dream. His lips were still tingling with Leonora's kisses! His
whole body was aglow with her gentle warmth! And here was this old
curmudgeon coming along with a sermon on "duty," "family," "what they
would say"--as if love amounted to nothing in this life! It was a plot
against his happiness, and he felt stirred to the depths with a sense of
outrage and revolt.

They had reached the entrance to the Brull mansion. Rafael was fumbling
about for the key-hole with his key.

"Well," growled the old man. "What have you got to say to all this? What
do you propose to do? Answer me! Haven't you got a tongue in your head?"

"I," replied the young man energetically--"will do as I please."

Don Andrés jumped as though he had been stung. My, how this Rafael had
changed!... Never before had he seen that gleam of aggressiveness,
arrogance, belligerency in the eye of the boy!

"Rafael, is that the way you answer me,--a man who has known you since
you were born? Is that the tone of voice you use toward one who loves
you as your own father loved you?"

"I'm of age, if you don't mind my saying so!" Rafael replied. "I'm not
going to put up any longer with this comedy of being a somebody on the
street and a baby in my own house. Henceforth just keep your advice to
yourself until I ask for it. Good day, sir!"

As he went up the stairs he saw his mother on the first landing, in the
semi-darkness of the closed house, illumined only by the light that
entered through the window gratings. She stood there, erect, frowning,
tempestuous, like a statue of Avenging Justice.

But Rafael did not waver. He went straight on up the stairs, fearless
and without a tremor, like a proprietor who had been away from home for
some time and strides arrogantly back Into a house that is all his own.




VI


"You're right, don Andrés. Rafael is not my son. He has changed. That
wanton woman has made another man of him. Worse, a thousand times worse,
than his father! Crazy over the huzzy! Capable of trampling on me if I
should step between him and her. You complain of his lack of respect to
you! Well, what about me?... You wouldn't have thought it possible! The
other morning, when he came into the house, he treated me just as he
treated you. Only a few words, but plain enough! He'll do just as he
pleases, or--what amounts to the same thing--he'll keep up his affair
with that woman until he wearies of her, or else blows up in one grand
debauch, like his father.... My God! And that's what I've suffered for
all these years. That's what I get for sacrificing myself, day in day
out, trying to make somebody out of him!"

The austere doña Bernarda, dethroned by her son's resolute
rebelliousness, wept as she said this. In her tears of a mother's grief
there was something also of the chagrin of the authoritarian on finding
in her own home a will rebellious to hers and stronger than hers.

Between sobs she told don Andrés how her son had been carrying on since
his declaration of independence. He was no longer cautious about
spending the night away from home. He was coming in now in broad
daylight; and, afternoons, with his meals "still in his mouth" as she
said, he would take the road to the Blue House, on the run almost, as if
he could not get to perdition soon enough. The dead hand of his father
was upon him!

All you had to do was look at him. His face discolored, yellow, pale;
his skin drawn tight over his cheekbones; and--the only sign of
life--the fire that gleamed in his eyes like a spark of wild joy! Oh, a
curse was on the family! They were all alike ...!

The mother did her best to conceal the truth from Remedios. Poor girl!
She was going about crestfallen and in deep dejection, unable to explain
Rafael's sudden withdrawal.

The matter had to be kept secret; and that was what held doña Bernarda's
rage within bounds during her rapid, heated exchanges with her son.

Perhaps everything would come out all right in the end--something
unforeseen would turn up to undo the evil spell that had been cast over
Rafael. And in this hope she used every effort to keep Remedios and her
father from learning what had happened. She feigned contentment in their
presence, and invented a thousand pretexts--studies, work, even
illness--to justify her son's neglect of his "fiancee." At the same
time, the disconsolate mother feared the people around her--the gossip
of a small town, bored with itself, ever on the alert, hunting for
something interesting to talk about and get scandalized about.

The news of Rafael's affair spread like wildfire meanwhile, considerably
magnified as it passed from mouth to mouth. People told hair-raising
tales of that expedition down the river, of walks through the orange
groves, of nights spent at doña Pepa's house, Rafael entering in the
dark, in his stocking feet, like a thief; of silhouettes of the lovers
outlined in suggestive poses against the bedroom curtain; of their
appearing in windows their arms about each other's waists, looking at
the stars--everything sworn to by voluntary spies, who could say "I saw
it with my own eyes"--persons who had spent whole nights, on the
river-bank, behind some fence, in some clump of bushes, to surprise the
deputy on his way to or from his assignations.

In the cafés or at the Casino, the men openly envied Rafael, commenting
with eyes a-glitter on his good fortune. That fellow had been born under
a lucky star! But later at home they would add their stern voices to the
chorus of indignant women. What a scandal! A deputy, a public man, a
"personage" who ought to set an example for others! That was a disgrace
to the constituency! And when the murmur of general protest reached the
ears of doña Bernarda, she lifted her hands to heaven in despair. Where
would it all end! Where would it all end! That son of hers was bent on
ruining himself!

Don Matías, the rustic millionaire, said nothing; and, in the presence
of doña Bernarda, at least, pretended to know nothing. His interest in a
marriage connection with the Brull family counselled prudence. He, too,
hoped that it would all blow over, prove to be the blind infatuation of
a young man. Feeling himself a father, more or less, to the boy, he
thought of giving Rafael just a bit of advice when he came upon him in
the street one day. But he desisted after a word or two. A proud glance
of the youth completely floored him, making him feel like the poor
orange-grower of former days, who had cringed before the majestic,
grandiose don Ramón!

Rafael was intrenched in haughty silence. He needed no advice. But alas!
When at night he reached his beloved's house--it seemed to be redolent
with the very perfume of her, as if the furniture, the curtains, the
very walls about her had absorbed the essence of her spirit--he felt the
strain of that insistent gossip, of the persecution of an entire city
that had fixed its eyes upon his love.

Two against a multitude! With the serene immodesty of the ancient
idylls, they had abandoned themselves to passion in a stupid, narrow
environment, where sprightly gossip was the most appreciated of the
moral talents!

Leonora grew sad. She smiled as usual; she flattered him with the same
worship, as if he were an idol; she was playful and gay; but in moments
of distraction, when she did not notice that he was watching, Rafael
would surprise a cast of bitterness about her lips--and a sinister light
in her eyes, the reflection of painful thoughts.

She referred with acrid mirth one night to what people were saying about
them. Everything was found out sooner or later in that city! The gossip
had gotten even to the Blue House! Her kitchen woman had hinted that she
had better not walk so much along the river front--she might catch
malaria. On the market place the sole topic of conversation was that
night trip down the Júcar ... the deputy, sweating his life out over
the oars, and she waking half the country up with her strange songs!...
And she laughed, but with a hard, harsh laugh of affected gaiety that
showed the nervousness underneath, though without a word of complaint.

Rafael remorsefully reflected that she had foreseen all that in first
repelling his advances. He admired her resignation. She would have been
justified in rebuking him for the harm he had done her. As it was, she
was not even telling him all she knew! Ah, the wretches! To harass an
innocent woman so! She had loved him, given herself to him, bestowed on
him the royal gift of her person. And the deputy began to hate his city,
for repaying in insult and scandal the wondrous happiness she had
conferred on its "chief"!

On another night Leonora received him with a smile that frightened him.
She was affecting a mood of hectic cheerfulness, trying to drown her
worries by sheer force, overwhelming her lover with a flood of light,
frivolous chatter; but suddenly, at the limit of her endurance, she gave
way, and in the middle of a caress, burst into tears and sank to a
divan, sobbing as if her heart would break.

"Why what's the matter? What has happened ...?"

For a time she could not answer, her voice was too choked with weeping.
At last, however, between sobs, burying her tear-stained face on
Rafael's shoulder, she began to speak, completely crushed, fainting from
virtual prostration.

She could stand it no longer! The torture was becoming unbearable. It
was useless for her to pretend. She knew as well as he what people were
saying in the city. They were spied upon continuously. On the roads, in
the orchard, along the river, there were people constantly on the watch
for something new to report. That passion of hers, so sweet, so
youthful, so sincere, was a butt of public laughter, a theme for idle
tongues, who flayed her as if she were a common street-woman, because
she had been good to him, because she had not been cruel enough to watch
a young man writhe in the torment of passion, indifferently.... But
though this persecution from a scandalized public was bad enough, she
did not mind it. Why should she care what those stupid people said? But,
alas, there were others--the people around Rafael, his friends, his
family, ... his mother!

Leonora sat silent for a moment, as if waiting to see the effect of that
last word; unless, indeed, she were hesitating, out of delicacy, to
include her lover's family in her complaint. The young man shrank with a
terrible presentiment. Doña Bernarda was not the woman to stand by idle
and resigned in the face of opposition, even from him!

"I see ... mother!" he said in a stifled voice. "She has been up to
something. Tell me what it is. Don't be afraid. To me you are dearer
than anything else in the world."

"Well ... there is auntie ..." Leonora resumed; and Rafael remembered
that doña Pepa, remarking his assiduous visits to the Blue House, had
thought her niece might be contemplating marriage. In the afternoon,
Leonora explained, she had had a _scene_ with her aunt. Doña Pepa had
gone into town to confession, and on coming out of church had met doña
Bernarda. Poor old woman! Her abject terror on returning home betrayed
the intense emotion Rafael's mother had succeeded in wakening in her.
Leonora, her niece, her idol, lay in the dust, stripped of that blind,
enthusiastic, affectionate trust her aunt had always had for her. All
the gossip, all the echoes of Leonora's adventurous life, that
had--heretofore but feebly--come to her ears, the old lady had never
believed, regarding them as the work of envy. But now they had been
repeated to her by doña Bernarda, by a lady "in good standing," a good
Christian, a person incapable of falsehood. And then after rehearsing
that scandalous biography, Rafael's mother had come to the shocking
effrontery with which her niece and Rafael were rousing the whole city;
flaunting their wrong-doing in the face of the public; and turning her
home, the respectable, irreproachable home of doña Pepa, into a den of
vice, a brothel!

And the poor woman had wept like a child in her niece's presence,
adjuring her to "abandon the wicked path of transgression," shuddering
with horror at the great responsibility she, doña Pepa, had unwittingly
assumed before God. All her life she had labored and prayed and fasted
to keep her soul clean. She had thought herself almost in a state of
grace, only to awaken suddenly and find herself in the very midst of sin
through no fault of her own--all on account of her niece, who had
converted her holy, her pure, her pious home into an ante-chamber of
hell! And it was the poor woman's superstitious terror, the conviction
of damnation that had seized on doña Pepa's simple soul, that wounded
Leonora most deeply.

"They've robbed me of all I had in the world," she murmured desperately,
"of the affection of the only dear one left after my father died. I am
not the child of former days to auntie; that is apparent from the way
she looks at me, the way she shuns me, avoiding all contact with me....
And just because of you, because I love you, because I was not cruel to
you! Oh, that night! How I shall suffer for it!... How clearly I foresaw
how it would all end!"

Rafael was humiliated, crushed, filled with shame and remorse at the
suffering that had fallen upon this woman, because she had given herself
to him. What was he to do? The time had come to prove himself the
strong, the resourceful man, able to protect the beloved woman in her
moment of danger. But where should he strike first to defend her?...

Leonora lifted her head from her lover's shoulder, and withdrew from his
embrace. She wiped away her tears and rose to her feet with the
determination of irrevocable resolution.

"I have made up my mind. It hurts me very much to say what I am going to
say; but I can't help it. It will do you no good to say 'no'--I cannot
stay under this roof another day. Everything is over between my aunt and
me. Poor old woman! The dream I cherished was to care for her lovingly,
tenderly till she died in my arms, be to her what I failed to be to
father.... But they have opened her eyes. To her I am nothing but a
sinner now and my presence upsets everything for her.... I must go away.
I've already told Beppa to pack my things.... Rafael, my love, this is
our last night together.... To-morrow ... and you will never see me
again."

The youth recoiled as if someone had struck him in the breast.

"Going? Going ...? And you can say that coolly, simply, just like that?
You are leaving me ... this way ... just when we are happiest ...?"

But soon he had himself in hand again. This surely could be nothing more
than a passing impulse, a notion arrived at in a flash of anger. Of
course she did not really mean to go! She must think things over, see
things clearly. That was a crazy idea! Desert her Rafaelito? Absurd!
Impossible!

Leonora smiled sadly. She had expected him to talk that way. She, too,
had suffered much, ever so much, before deciding to do it! It made her
shudder to think that within two days she would be off again, alone,
wandering through Europe, caught up again in that wild, tumultuous life
of art and love, after tasting the full sweetness of the most powerful
passion she had ever known--of what she believed was her "first love."
It was like putting to sea in a tempest with destination unknown. She
loved him, adored him, worshipped him, more than ever now that she was
about to lose him.

"Well, why are you going?" the young man asked. "If you love me, why are
you forsaking me?"

"Just because I love you, Rafael.... Because I want you to be happy."

For her to remain would mean ruin for him: a long battle with his
mother, who was an implacable, a merciless foe. Doña Bernarda might be
killed, but never conquered! Oh, no! How horrible! Leonora knew what
filial cruelty was! How had she treated her father? She must not now
come between a son and a mother! Was she, perhaps, a creature accursed,
born forever to corrupt with her very name the sacredest, purest
relations on earth?

"No, you must be good, my heart. I must go away. We can't go on loving
each other here. I'll write to you, I'll let you know all I'm doing....
You'll hear from me every day, if I have to write from the North Pole!
But you must stay! Don't drive your mother to despair! Shut your eyes to
the poor woman's injustice! For after all, she is doing it all out of
her immense love for you.... Do you imagine I am glad to be leaving
you--the greatest happiness I have ever known?"

And she threw her arms about Rafael, kissing him over and over again,
caressing his bowed, pensive head, within which a tempest of conflicting
ideas and resolutions was boiling.

So those bonds which he had come to believe eternal were to be broken?
So he was to lose so easily that beauty which the world had admired, the
possession of which had made him feel himself the first among men? She
talked of a love from a distance, of a love persisting through years of
separation, travel, all the hazards of a wandering life; she promised to
write to him every day!... Write to him ... from the arms of another
man, perhaps! No! He would never give up such a treasure; never!

"You shall not go," he answered at last decisively. "A love like ours is
not ended so easily. Your flight would be a disgrace to me--it would
look as if I had affronted you in some way, as if you were tired of me."

Deep in his soul he felt eager to make some chivalrous gesture. She was
going away because she had loved him! He should stay behind, sad and
resigned like a maid abandoned by a lover, and with the sense of having
harmed her on his conscience! _Ira de diós_! He, as a man, could not
stand by with folded arms accepting the abnegation of a woman, to stick
tied to his mother's apron-strings in boobified contentment. Even girls
ran away from home and parents sometimes, in the grip of a powerful
love; and he, a man, a man "in the public eye" also--was he to let a
beautiful girl like Leonora go away sorrowful and in tears, so that he
could keep the respect of a city that bored him and the affection of a
mother who had never really loved him? Besides, what sort of a love was
it that stepped aside in a cowardly, listless way like that, when a
woman was at stake, a woman for whom far richer, far more powerful men
than he, men bound to life by attractions that he had never dreamed of
in his countrified existence, had died or gone to ruin?...

"You shall not go," he repeated, with sullen obstinacy. "I won't give up
my happiness so easily. And if you insist on going, we will go
together."

Leonora rose to her feet all quivering. She had been expecting that; her
heart had told her it was coming. Flee together! Have her appear like an
adventuress, drawing Rafael on, tearing him from his mother's arms after
crazing him with love? Oh, no! Thanks! She had a conscience! She did
not care to burden it with the execration of a whole city. Rafael must
consider the matter calmly, face the situation bravely. She must go away
alone. Afterwards, later on, she would see. They might chance to meet
again; perhaps in Madrid, when the Cortes reassembled! He would be
there, and alone; she could find a place at the _Real_, singing for
nothing if that should prove necessary.

But Rafael writhed angrily at her resistance. He could not live without
her! A single night without seeing her would mean despair. He would end
as Macchia ended! He would shoot himself!

And he seemed to mean it. His eyes were fixed on the floor as if he were
staring at his own corpse, lying there on the pavement, motionless,
covered with blood, a revolver in its stiffened hand.

"Oh, no! How horrible! Rafael, my Rafael!" Leonora groaned, clasping him
around the neck, hanging upon him in terror.

Her lover continued to protest. He was free. Had he been a married man;
if, in his flight, he were leaving a wife behind to cry betrayal, or
children calling for his help in vain, it would all be a different
matter. She could properly feel the repugnance of a kind heart unwilling
that love should mean a shattered home! But whom was he abandoning? A
mother, who, in a short time, would find consolation in the thought that
he was well and happy, a mother jealous of any rivalry in her son's
affection, and to that jealousy willing to sacrifice his very happiness!
Any harm an elopement would bring would by no means be irreparable. No,
they must go away together, parade their love through the whole world!

But Leonora, lowering her head again, repeated feebly:

"No, my mind is made up. I must go alone. I haven't the strength to face
a mother's hatred."

Rafael flushed indignantly:

"Why not say outright that you don't love me. You're tired of me, and of
this environment. The hankering for your old life has come over you
again; your old world is calling!"

The actress fixed her great, luminous, tear-stained eyes upon him. And
they were filled with tenderness and pity.

"Tired of you!... When I have never felt such desperation as tonight!
You say I want my old life back. You don't realize that to leave here
seems like entering a den of torture.... Oh, dear heart, you'll never
know how much I love you."

"Well, then ...?"

And to tell everything, to spare no detail of the danger he would face
after separation, Rafael spoke of the life he would lead alone with his
mother in that dull, unspeakable city. Leonora was assuming that
affection played some part in his mother's indignant opposition. Well,
doña Bernarda did love him--agreed: he was her only son; but ambition
was the decisive thing in her schemes, her passion for the
aggrandizement of the House--the controlling motive of her whole life.
She was openly, frankly, using him as security in an alliance she was
planning with a great fortune. She wanted to marry him to money: and if
Leonora were to go, if he were left alone, forsaken, then despair--and
time, which can do all things--would break his will; and eventually he
would succumb, like a victim at the altar, who, in his terror and
abasement, does not sense the real significance of the sacrifice forced
upon him.

The words reached a jealous spot in Leonora's heart. All the scattered
rumors that had come to her ears in former days now echoed in her
memory. She knew that Rafael was telling the truth. The man she loved,
given away by his mother--to another woman!... Lost forever if she lost
him now!... And her eyes opened wide with horror and revulsion.

"And I refuse, Leonora, do you understand? I refuse!" continued her
lover with unaffected resolution. "I belong to you, you are the only
woman I love. I shall follow you all over the world, even against your
wishes, to be your servant, see you, speak to you, and there are not
millions enough in the world to stop me!"

"Oh, my darling! My darling! You love me, you love me--as I love you!"

And in a frenzy of passion she fell impetuously, madly upon him,
clutching him in her arms like a fury. In her caresses Rafael felt an
intensity that almost frightened him. The room seemed to be whirling
about him. Trembling, limp and weak, he sank to the divan, overwhelmed,
pounded to pieces, it seemed, by that vehement adoration, that caught
him up and carried him away like a tumultuous avalanche. His senses left
him in that trembling confusion, and he closed his eyes.

When he opened them, the room was dark. Around his neck he could feel a
gentle arm that was tenderly sustaining him, and Leonora was whispering
in his ear.

Agreed! They would go together: to continue their love duct in some
charming place, where nobody knew them, where envy and vulgarity would
not disturb. Leonora knew every nook in the world. She would have none
of Nice and the other cities of the Blue Coast, pretty places,
coquettish, bepowdered and rouged like women fresh from their dressing
tables! Besides there would be too many people there. Venice was better.
They would thread the narrow, solitary silent canals there, stretched
out in a gondola, kissing each other between smiles, pitying the poor
unfortunate mortals crossing the bridges over them, unaware of how great
a love was gliding beneath their feet!

But no, Venice is a sad place after all: when it rains, it rains and
rains! Naples rather; Naples! _Viva Napoli_! And Leonora clapped her
hands in glee! Live in perpetual sunshine, freedom, freedom, freedom to
love openly, as nakedly as the _lazzaroni_ walk about the streets! She
owned a house in Naples,--at Posilipo, that is--a _villino_, in pink
stucco, a dainty little place with fig trees, nopals and parasol pines,
that ran in a grove down a steep promontory to the sea I They would fish
in the bay there--it was as smooth and blue as a looking-glass! And
afternoons he would row her out to sea, and she would sing, looking at
the waters ablaze with the sunset, at the plume of smoke curling up from
Vesuvius, at the immense white city with its endless rows of windows
flaming like plaques of gold in the afterglow. Like gipsies they would
wander through the countless towns dotting the shores of the miraculous
Bay; kissing on the open sea among the fisherboats, to the accompaniment
of passionate Neapolitan boat-songs; spending whole nights in the open
air, lying in each other's arms on the sands, hearing the pearly
laughter of mandolins in the distance, just as that night on the island,
they had heard the nightingale! "Oh, Rafael, my god, my king! How
wonderful!"

When day dawned, they were still sitting there weaving fanciful plans
for the future, arranging all the details of their elopement. She would
leave Alcira as soon as possible. He would join her two days later, when
all suspicion had been quieted, when everybody would imagine she was
far, far away. Where would they meet? At first they thought of
Marseilles, but that was a long way off! Then they thought of Barcelona.
But that, too, meant hours of travel, when hours, minutes, counted for
so much. It seemed utterly incredible that they could live two days
without each other! No, the sooner they met again the better! And,
bargaining with time like peasants in a market, at last they chose the
nearest city possible, Valencia.

For love--true love--is fond of brazenness!




VII


They had just finished lunch among the trunks and boxes that occupied a
great part of Leonora's room in the _Hôtel de Roma_ in Valencia.

For the first time they were at a table in familiar intimacy, with no
other witness than Beppa, who was quite accustomed to every sort of
surprise in her mistress's adventurous career. The faithful maid was
examining Rafael with a respectful kindliness, as if he were a new idol
that must share the unswerving devotion she showed for Leonora.

This was the first moment of tranquillity and happiness the young man
had tasted for some days. The old hotel, with its spacious rooms, its
high ceilings, its darkened corridors, its monastic silence, seemed to
him a veritable abode of delight, a grateful place of refuge where for
once he would be free of the gossip and the strife that had been
oppressing him like a belt of steel. Besides, he could already feel the
exotic charm that lingers around harbors and great railroad terminals.
Everything about the place, from the macaroni of the lunch, and the
Chianti in its straw-covered, heavy-paunched bottle, to the musical,
incorrect Spanish of the hotel-proprietors--fleshy, massive men with
huge mustaches in Victor Emmanuel style--spoke of flight, of delightful
seclusion in that land so glowingly described by Leonora.

She had made an appointment with him in that hotel, a favorite haunt of
artists. Somewhat off the main thoroughfares, the "Roma" occupies one
whole side of a sleepy, peaceful, aristocratic square with no noise save
the shouting of cab-drivers and the beating of horses' hoofs.

Rafael had arrived on the first morning train--and with no baggage; like
a schoolboy playing truant, running off with just the clothes he had on
his back. The two days since Leonora left Alcira had been days of
torture to him. The singer's flight was the talk of the town. People
were scandalized at the amount of luggage she had. Counted over in the
imagination of that imaginative city, it eventually came to fill all the
carts in the province.

The man who knew the business to the bottom was Cupido, the barber, who
had dispatched the trunks and cases for her. He knew where the dangerous
woman was bound, and he kept it so secret that everybody found it out
before the train started. She was going back to Italy! He himself had
checked and labelled the baggage to the Customs' House at the
frontier--cases as big as a house, man! Trunks he could have lain down
comfortable in, with his two "Chinamen" to boot! And the women, as they
listened to his tale, applauded the departure with undissimulated
pleasure. They had been liberated from a great danger. Joy go with her!

Rafael kept quite to himself. He was vexed at the curiosity of people,
at the scoffing sympathy of his friends who condoled with him that his
happiness was ending. For two days he remained indoors, followed by his
mother's inquiring glances. Doña Bernarda felt more at ease now that the
evil influence of the "chorus girl" promised to be over; but none the
less she did not lose her frown. With a woman's instinct, she still
scented the presence of danger.

The young man could hardly wait for the time to come. It seemed
unbearable for him to be there at home while "she" was away off
somewhere, alone, shut up in a hotel, waiting just as impatiently as he
was for the moment of reunion.

What a sunrise it had been that day when he set out! Rafael burned with
shame as he crept like a burglar in his stockings and on tip-toe,
through the room where his mother received the orchard-folk and adjusted
all accounts pertaining to the tilling of the land. He groped his way
along guided by the light that came in through the chinks in the closed
windows. His mother was sleeping in a room close by; he could hear her
breathe--the labored respiration of a deep sleep that spelled recovery
from the insomnia of the days of his love trysts. He could still feel
the criminal shudder that rippled through him at a slight rattle of the
keys, which had been left with the confidence of unlimited authority in
the lock of an old chest where doña Bernarda kept her savings. With
tremulous hands he had collected all the money she had put away in the
small boxes there. A thief, a thief! But, after all, he was taking only
what belonged to him. He had never asked for his share of his father's
estate. Leonora was rich. With admirable delicacy she had refused to
talk of money during their preparations for the journey; but he would
refuse to live on her! He did not care to be like Salvatti, who had
exploited the singer in her youth! That thought it had been which gave
him strength to take the money finally and steal out of the house. But
even on the train he felt uneasy; and _su señoria_, the deputy, shivered
with an instinctive thrill of fear, every time a tricorne of the Civil
Guard appeared at a railroad station. What would his mother say when she
got up and found the money gone?

As he entered the hotel his self-confidence returned and his spirits
revived. He felt as if he were entering port after a storm. He found
Leonora in bed, her hair spread over the pillow in waves of gold, her
eyes closed, and a smile on her lips, as if he had surprised her in the
middle of a dream, where she had been tasting her memories of love. They
ordered lunch in the room early, intending to set out on their journey
at once. Circumspection, prudence, until they should be once beyond the
Spanish border! They would leave that evening on the Barcelona mail for
the frontier. And calmly, tranquilly, like a married couple discussing
details of house-keeping in the calm of a quiet home, they ran over the
list of things they would need on the train.

Rafael had nothing. He had fled like a fugitive from a fire, with the
first clothes he laid hands on as he bounded out of bed. He needed many
indispensable articles, and he thought of going out to buy them--a
matter of a moment.

"But are you really going out?" asked Leonora with a certain anguish, as
if her feminine instinct sensed a danger. "Are you going to leave me
alone?..."

"Only a moment. I won't keep you waiting long."

They took leave of each other in the corridor with the noisy,
nonchalant joy of passion, indifferent to the chamber-maids who were
walking to and fro at the other end of the passageway.

"Good-bye, Rafael.... Another hug; just one more."

And as, with the taste of the last kiss still fresh on his lips, he
reached the square, he saw a bejewelled hand still waving to him from a
balcony.

Anxious to get back as soon as possible, the young man walked hurriedly
along, elbowing his way among the cab-drivers swarming in front of the
great _Palacio de Dos Aguas_, closed, silent, slumbering, like the two
giants that guarded its portals, displaying in the golden downpour of
sunlight the overdecorated yet graceful sumptuousness of its roccocò
facade.

"Rafael! Rafael!..."

The deputy turned around at the sound of his name, and blanched as if he
had seen a ghost. It was don Andrés, calling to him.

"Rafael! Rafael!"

"You?... Here?"

"I came by the Madrid express. For two hours I've been hunting for you
in all the hotels of Valencia. I knew you were here.... But come, we
have a great deal to talk over. This is not just the place to do it."

And the old Mentor glowered hatefully at the _Hôtel de Roma_, as if he
wanted to annihilate the huge edifice with everybody in it.

They walked off, slowly, without knowing just where they were going,
turning corners, passing several times through the same streets, their
nerves tense and quivering, ready to shout at the top of their lungs,
yet using every effort to speak softly, so as not to attract attention
from the passers-by who were rubbing against them on the narrow
side-walks.

Don Andrés, naturally, was the first to speak:

"You approve of what you've done?"

And seeing that Rafael, like a coward, was trying to pretend innocent
astonishment, asking "what" he had done, observing that he had come to
Valencia on a matter of business, the old man broke into a rage.

"Now, see here, don't you go lying to me: either we're men or we're not
men. If you think you've acted properly, you ought to stand up for it
and say so. Don't imagine you're going to pull the wool over my eyes and
then run off with that woman to God knows where. I've found you and I'm
not going to let you go. I want you to know the truth. Your mother is
sick abed; she tipped me off and I caught the first train to get here.
The whole house is upside down! At first it was thought a robbery had
been committed. By this time the whole city must be agog about you. Come
now!... What do you say to that? Do you want to kill your mother? Well,
you're going about it right! Good God! And this is what they call a 'boy
of talent,' a 'young man of promise'! How much better it would have been
if you were a dunce like me or your father--but a dunce at least who
knows how to get a woman if he has to, without making a public ass of
himself!"

Then he went into detail. Rafael's mother had gone to the old chest to
get some money for one of her laborers. Her cry of horror and alarm had
thrown the whole house into an uproar. Don Andrés had been hastily
summoned. Suspicions against the servants, a "third degree" for the
whole lot, all of them protesting and weeping, in outrage! Until finally
doña Bernarda sank to a chair in a swoon, whispering into her adviser's
ear:

"Rafael is not in the house. He has gone ... perhaps never to return. I
am sure of it--he took the money!"

While the others were getting the sobbing mother to bed, and sending for
the doctor, don Andrés had made for the station to catch the express. He
could tell from the way people looked at him that everybody knew what
had been going on. Gossip had already connected the excitement in the
Brull mansion with Rafael's taking the early train! He had been seen by
several persons, in spite of his precautions.

"Well, is the Hon. don Rafael Brull, member from Alcira, satisfied with
his morning's work? Don't you think the laugh your enemies have raised
deserves an _encore_!"

For all his bitter sarcasm the old man spoke in a faltering voice, and
seemed on the verge of tears. The labor of his entire life, the great
victories won with don Ramón, that political power which had been so
carefully built up and sustained over decades, was about to crumble to
ruins; all because of a light-headed, erratic boy who had handed to the
first skirt who came along everything that belonged to him and
everything that belonged to his friends as well.

Rafael had gone into the interview in an aggressive mood, ready to
answer with plain talk if that sodden idiot should go too far in his
recriminations. But the sincere grief of the old man touched him deeply.
Don Andrés, who resembled Rafael's father as the cat resembles the
tiger, could think of nothing but Brull politics; and he was almost
sobbing as he saw the danger which the prestige of the Brull House was
running.

With bowed head, crushed by the realization of the scene that had
followed his flight, Rafael did not notice where they were going. But
soon he became conscious of the perfume of flowers. They were crossing a
garden; and as he looked up he saw the figure of Valencia's conqueror on
his sinewy charger glistening in the sun.

They walked on. The old man began in wailing accents to describe the
situation which the Brull House was facing. That money, which perhaps
Rafael still had in his pocket--more than thirty thousand
_pesetas_--represented the final desperate efforts of his mother to
rescue the family fortune, which had been endangered by don Ramón's
prodigal habits. The money was his, and don Andrés had nothing to say in
that regard. Rafael was at liberty to squander it, scatter it to the
four winds of heaven; but don Andrés wasn't talking to a child, he was
talking to a man with a heart: so he begged him, as his childhood
preceptor, as his oldest friend, to consider the sacrifices his mother
had been making--the privations she had imposed upon herself, going
without new clothes, quarreling with her help over a _céntimo_, despite
all her airs as a grand lady, depriving herself of all the dainties and
comforts that are so pleasant to old age--all that her son, her _señor
hijo_, might waste it in gay living on a woman! Thirty thousand! And
don Andrés mentioned the sum with bated breath! It had taken so much
trouble to hoard it! Come, man! The sight of such things was enough to
make a fellow cry like a baby!...

And suppose his father, don Ramón, were to rise from the grave? Suppose
he could see how his Rafael were destroying at a single stroke what it
had cost him so many years to build up, just because of a woman!...

They were now crossing a bridge. Below, against the background of white
gravel in the river-bed the red and blue uniforms of a group of soldiers
could be seen; and the drums were beating, sounding in the distance like
the humming of a huge bee-hive--worthy accompaniment, Rafael reflected,
to the old man's evocation of the youth's father. Rafael thought he
could almost see in front of him the massive body, the flourishing
mustache, the proud, arrogant brow of don Ramón, a born fighter, an
adventurer destined from the cradle to lead men and impose his will upon
inferiors.

What would that heroic master of men have said of this? Don Ramón would
give a lot of money to a woman--granted--but he wouldn't have swapped
all the beauties on earth put together for a single vote!

But his son, the boy on whom he had grounded his fondest hopes--the
redeemer destined to raise the House of Brull to its loftiest glory--the
future "personage" in Madrid, the fondled heir-apparent, who had found
his pathway already cleared for him at birth--was throwing all his
father's labors through the window, the way you toss overboard
something it has cost you nothing to earn! It was easy to see that
Rafael had never known what hard times were--those days of the
Revolution, when the Brulls were out of power and held their own just
because don Ramón was a bad man with a gun--desperate election
campaigns, when you marched to victory over somebody's dead body, bold
cross-country rides on election night, never knowing when you would meet
the _roder_ in ambush--the outlaw sharpshooter who had vowed to kill don
Ramón; then endless prosecutions for intimidation and violence, which
had given doña Bernarda and her husband months and months of anxiety,
lest a catastrophe from one moment to the next bring prison and
forfeiture of all their property! All that his father had gone through,
for his boy's sake; to carve out a pedestal for Rafael, pass on to him a
District that would be his own, blazing a path over which he might go to
no visible limit of glory! And he was just throwing it all away,
relinquishing forever a position that had been built up at the cost of
years and years of labor and peril! That is what he would be doing,
unless that very night he returned home, refuting by his presence there
the rumors his scandalized adherents were circulating.

Rafael shook his head. The mention of his father had touched him, and he
was convinced by the old man's arguments; but none the less he was
determined to resist. No, and again no; his die was cast: he would
continue on his way.

They were now under the trees of the Alameda. The carriages were rolling
by, forming an immense wheel in the center of the avenue. The harnesses
of the horses and the lamps of the drivers' boxes gleamed in the
sunlight. Women's hats and the white lace shawls of children could be
seen through the coach windows as they passed.

Don Andrés became impatient with the youth's stubbornness. He pointed to
all those happy, peaceful-looking families out for their afternoon
drive--wealth, comfort, public esteem, abundance, freedom from struggle
and toil! _Cristo_, boy! Was that so bad, after all? Well, that was just
the life he could have if he would be good and not turn his back on his
plain duty--rich, influential, respected, growing old with a circle of
nice children about him. What more could a decent person ask for in this
world?

All that bohemian nonsense about pure love, love free from law and
restraint, love that scoffs at society and its customs, sufficient unto
itself and despising public opinion, that was just bosh, the humbug of
poets, musicians and dancers--a set of outcasts like that woman who was
taking him away, cutting him off forever from all the ties that bound
him to family and country!

The old man seemed to take courage from Rafael's silence. He judged the
moment opportune for launching the final attack upon the boy's
infatuation.

"And then, what a woman! I have been young, like you, Rafael. It's true
I didn't know a stylish woman like this one, but, bah! they're all
alike. I have had my weaknesses; but I tell you I wouldn't have lifted a
finger for this actress of yours! Any one of the girls we have down home
is worth two of her. Clothes, yes, talk, yes, powder and rouge inches
deep!... I'm not saying she's bad to look at--not that; what I say
is... well, it doesn't take much to turn your head--you're satisfied
with the leavings of half the men in Europe...."

And he came to Leonora's past, the lurid, much exaggerated legend of her
journey through life--lovers by the dozens; statues and paintings of her
in the nude; the eyes of all Europe centered on her beauty; the public
property of a continent! "That was virtue to go crazy about, come now!
Quite worth leaving house and home for, no doubt of that!"

The old man winced under the flash of anger that blazed in Rafael's
eyes. They had just crossed another bridge, and were entering the city
again. Don Andrés, wretched coward that he was, sidled away to be within
reach of the customs' office if the fist he could already see cleaving
the air should come his way.

Rafael, in fact, stopped in his tracks, glaring. But in a second or two
he went on his way again, dejected, with bowed head, ignoring the
presence of the old man. Don Andrés resumed his place at the boy's side.

The cursed old fox! He had stuck the knife in the right place! Leonora's
past! Her favors distributed with mad lavishness over the four corners
of the globe! An army of men of every nation owning her for a moment
with the appeal of luxury or the enchantment of art! A palace today and
a hotel tomorrow! Her lips repeating in all the languages of Babel the
very words of love that had fired him as if he had been the first to
hear them! He was going to lose everything for that--that refuse, as don
Andrés said--a public scandal, a ruined reputation; and a murdered
mother perhaps,--for that! Oh, that devil of a don Andrés! How cunningly
he had slashed him, and then plunged his fingers into the bleeding gash
to make the wound deeper! The old man's plain common-sense had shattered
his dream. That man had been the rustic, cunning Sancho at the side of
the quixotic don Ramón; and he was playing the same role with Rafael!

Leonora's story came back to the boy in one flash--the frank confession
she had made during the days of their mere friendship, when she had told
him everything to prevent his continuing to desire her. However much she
might adore him, he would be nothing after all but a successor to a
Russian count, and a German musician; the latest, simply among those
countless ephemeral lovers, whom she had barely mentioned but who must
none the less have left some trace in her memory. The last item in a
long inventory! The most recent arrival, coming several years late, and
content to nibble at the soggy over-ripe fruit which they had known when
it was fresh and firm. Her kisses that so deeply disturbed him! What
were they but the intoxicating, unhealthful perfume of a whole career of
corruptness and licentiousness, the concentrated essence of a world
madly dashing at her seductive beauty, as a bird of night breaks its
head against the globe of a lighthouse? Give up everything for that! The
two of them traveling about the world, free, and proud of their
passion!... And out in that world he would encounter many of his
predecessors; and they would look at him with curious, ironic eyes,
knowing of her all that he would know, able to repeat all the panting
phrases she would speak to him in the exaggerations of her insatiable
passion! The strange thing about it was that all this had not occurred
to him sooner. Blind with happiness, he had never thought an instant of
his real place in that woman's life!

How long had they been walking through the streets of Valencia?... His
legs were sagging under him! He was faint with weariness. He could
hardly see. The gables of the houses were still tipped with sunlight,
yet he seemed to be groping about in a deep night.

"I'm thirsty, don Andrés. Let's go in somewhere."

The old man headed him toward the Café de España, his favorite resort.
He selected the table in the center of the big square salon under the
four clocks supported by the angel of Fame. The walls were covered with
great mirrors that opened up fantastic perspectives in the dingy room
where the gilded ornaments were blackened by the smoke and a crepuscular
light filtered in through the lofty skylight as into a sombre crypt.

Rafael drank, without realizing just what his glass contained--a poison,
it felt like, that froze his heart. Don Andrés sat looking at the
writing articles on the marble table: a letter-case of wrinkled
oil-cloth, and a grimy ink-well. He began to rap upon them with the
holder of the public pen--rusty and with the points bent--an instrument
of torture well fitted for a hand committed to despair!

"We have just an hour to catch our train! Come, Rafael, be a man!
There's still time! Come, let's get out of this mess we're in!"

And he held out the pen, though he had not said a word about writing to
anybody.

"I can't, don Andrés. I'm a gentleman. I've given my word; and I will
not go back upon it, come what may!"

The old man smiled ironically.

"Very well, be as much of a gentleman as you please. She deserves it!
But when you break with her, when she leaves you, or you leave her,
don't come back to Alcira. Your mother won't be there to welcome you! I
shall be--I don't know where; and those who made you deputy will look
upon you as a thief who robbed and killed his mother.... Oh, get mad if
you want to--beat me up even; people at the other tables are already
looking at us.... Why not top the whole business off with a saloon
brawl? But just the same, everything I've been saying to you is gospel
truth!..."

In the meantime Leonora was growing impatient in her hotel room. Three
hours had gone by. To relieve her nervousness she sat down behind the
green curtain at the window watching pedestrians crossing the square.

How like a small piazza of old Florence this place was, with its stately
aristocratic residences, shrouded in imposing gloom; it's grass-grown,
cobblestone pavements hot from the sun; its sleepy solitude: an
occasional woman, or a priest, or a tourist,--and you could hear their
footsteps even when they were far away! Here was a curious corner of the
_Palacio de Dos Agnas_--panels of jasper stucco with a leaf design on
the mouldings! That talking came from the drivers gathered in the hotel
door--the innkeeper and the servants were setting the chairs out on the
sidewalk as if they were back at home--in a small Italian town! Behind
the roof opposite, the sunlight was gradually fading, growing paler and
softer every moment.

She looked at her watch. Six o'clock! Where on earth could that Rafael
have gone? They were going to lose the train. In order to waste no time,
she ordered Beppa to have everything in readiness for departure. She
packed her toilet articles; then closed her trunks, casting an inquiring
glance over the room with the uneasiness of a hasty leave-taking. On an
armchair near the window she laid her traveling coat, then her hand-bag,
and her hat and veil. They would have to run the moment Rafael came in.
He would probably be very tired and nervous from returning so late.

But Rafael did not come!... She felt an impulse to go out and look for
him; but where? She had not been in Valencia since she was a child. She
had forgotten the streets. Then she might actually pass Rafael on the
way without knowing it, and wander aimlessly about while he would be
waiting for her at the hotel. No. It would be better to stay there!

It was now dusk and the hotel-room was virtually dark. She went to the
window again, trembling with impatience, filled with all the gloom of
the violet light that was falling from the sky with a few red streaks
from the sunset. They would surely lose the train now! They would have
to wait until the next day. That was a disappointment! They might have
trouble in getting away!

She whirled nervously about as she heard someone calling from the
corridor.

"Madame, madame, a letter for you!"

A letter for her!... She snatched it feverishly from the bell-boy's
hand, while Beppa, seated on a trunk, looked on vacantly, without
expression.

She began to tremble violently. The thought of Hans Keller, the
ungrateful artist, suddenly rose in her memory. She looked for a candle
on the chiffonier. There was none. Finally she went to the balcony and
tried to read the letter in the little light there was.

It was his handwriting on the envelope--but tortuous, labored, as if it
were the product of a painful effort. She felt all her blood rush back
upon her heart. Madly she tore the letter open, and read with the haste
of a person anxious to drain the cup of bitterness at a single draught,
skipping a line here and a line there, taking in only the significant
words.

"My mother very ill.... I must go home for a day or two ... my duty as a
son ... we'll soon meet again." And then all the cowardly, conventional
excuses that chivalry has created to soften the harshness of
desertion--the promise to join her again as soon as possible; passionate
protestations that she was the only woman in the world he loved.

Her first thought was to go back to Alcira at once, walk there if
necessary, find the scamp somewhere, throw the letter into his face,
beat him, claw him to pieces!

"Ah, the wretch! The infamous, cowardly, unspeakable wretch!" she cried.

Beppa had found a candle. She lighted it. And there her mistress
was--staggering, deathly pale, her eyes wide open, her lips white with
anguish! Leonora began to walk up and down the apartment, taut and
strained, as if her feet were not moving at all, as if she were being
thrust about by an invisible hand.

"Beppa," she groaned finally, "he has gone. He is deserting me."

The maid did not care about the desertion particularly. She had been
through that before. She was thinking about Leonora, waiting for the
impending crisis, studying the anguished countenance of her mistress
with her own placid, bovine eyes.

"The wretch!" Leonora hissed, pacing back and forth in the chamber.
"What a fool, what a complete, unconscionable fool I have been! Giving
myself to that man, believing in that man, trusting that man, giving up
my peace of mind, the last relative I had in the world for that man!...
And why would he not let me go off alone? He made me dream of an eternal
springtime of love, and now he deserts me.... He has tricked me ... he
is laughing at me ... and I can not hate him. Why did he insist on
rousing me when I was there alone, quite peaceful, forgetting
everything, sunk in a placid indulgent calm!... The cool fraud that he
was!... But what do I care, after all?... It's all over. Come Beppa,
cheer up! Hah-hah! Come, Beppa! We're off! We're off! We're going to
sing again! Off over the whole globe. Good-bye to this rat-hole forever!
I'm through educating children! Now for life again! And we'll drain them
dry, the brutes! Kick them about like the selfish donkeys they are!
Well, well! I can't believe I've been taken in this way! Isn't it a
joke? The best joke you ever heard! Ha, ha, ha! And I thought I knew the
world ...! Ha, ha! Ha, ha!..."

And her laugh was audible distinctly down in the square. It was a wild,
shrill, metallic laughter, that seemed to be rending her flesh! The
whole hotel was in commotion, while the actress, with foaming lips, fell
to the floor and began to writhe in fury, overturning the furniture and
bruising her body on the iron trimmings of her trunks.




PART THREE


I

"Don Rafael, the gentlemen of the Committee on the Budget are waiting
for you in the second section."

"I'll be there directly."

And the deputy bent low over his desk in the writing-room of the
Congress, went on with his last letter, adding one more envelope to the
heap of correspondence piled up at the end of the table, near his cane
and his silk hat.

This was his daily grind, the boresome drudgery of every afternoon; and
around him, with similar expressions of disgust on their faces, a large
number of the country's representatives were busy at the same task.
Rafael was answering petitions and queries, stifling the complaints and
acknowledging the wild suggestions that came in from the District--the
endless clamor of the voters at home, who never met the slightest
annoyance in their various paths of life without at once running to
their deputy, the way a pious worshipper appeals to the miracle-working
saint.

He gathered up his letters, gave them to an usher to mail, and
sauntering off with a counterfeit sprightliness that was more
counterfeit as he grew fatter and fatter with the years, walked through
to the central corridor, a prolongation of the lobby in front of the
_Salón de Conferencias_.

The Honorable señor don Rafael Brull, member from Alcira, felt as much
at ease as if he were in his own house when he entered that corridor,--a
dark hole, thick with tobacco smoke, and peopled with black suits
standing around in groups or laboriously elbowing their way through the
crowds.

He had been there eight years; though he had almost lost count of the
times he had been "duly elected" in the capricious ups and downs of
Spanish politics, which give to Parliaments only a fleeting existence.
The ushers, the personnel of the Secretariat, the guards and janitors,
treated him with deferential intimacy, as a comrade on a somewhat higher
level, but as much of a fixture as they were to the Spanish Congress. He
was not one of those men who are miraculously washed into office on the
crest of a reform wave, but never succeed in repeating the trick, and
spend the rest of their lives idling on the sofas of the Conference
Chamber, with wistful memories of lost greatness, waiting to enter
Congress afternoons, to preserve their standing as ex-deputies, and
forever hoping that their party will some day return to power, so that
once again they may sit on the red benches. No, don Rafael Brull was a
gentleman with a District all his own: he came with a clean, undisputed
and indisputable certificate of election, whether his own party or the
Opposition were in the saddle. For lack of other discoverable merit in
him, his fellow-partisans would say: "Brull is one of the few who come
here on honest returns." His name did not figure brilliantly in the
Congressional record, but there was not an employee, not a journalist,
not a member of the "ex-honorables" who, on noticing the word "Brull" on
all the committees, did not at once exclaim: "Ah, yes! Brull ... of
Alcira."

Eight years of "service to the country." Eight years of lodging-house
life, while yonder lay a sumptuous home adorned with a luxuriousness
that had cost his mother and his father-in-law half a fortune! Long
seasons of separation from his wife and his children--and without
amusements, to avoid spending money lest the folks at home suspect him
of dereliction in public--and private--duty! What a dog's life his eight
years as deputy had been! Indigestion from the countless gallons of
sugared water drunk at the Congressional bar; callouses on his feet from
endless promenades along the central corridor, absentmindedly knocking
the varnish off the tiles of the wainscoating with the tip of his cane;
an incalculable quantity of _pesetas_ spent on carriages, through fault
of his supporters, who sent him trotting every morning from one Ministry
to the next, asking for the earth, and getting a grain of sand!

He had not as yet gotten anywhere in particular; but according to
Chamber gossip he was a "serious" well-balanced young man, of few words,
but good ones, and sure some day to be rewarded with a Portfolio.
Content with the rôle of safety and sanity that had been assigned to
him, he laughed very seldom, and dressed soberly, with not a dissonant
color to brighten his black attire. He would listen patiently to things
that did not concern him in the least, rather than venture a personal
opinion with the chance of going wrong--satisfied with premature
wrinkles, premature corpulency, and premature baldness, since nothing
could be more respectable than a thoughtful face, a conspicuous paunch,
and a pate that could shine with venerable brilliancy under the lamps of
the Chamber. At thirty-four, he looked more like forty-five. When he
spoke he would remove his spectacles with a gesture he had carefully
imitated from the deceased leader of "the Party." He would never take
the floor without prefacing his remarks with: "My understanding is ...,"
or "I have my own humble opinion on this matter...." And this was what
don Rafael Brull had learned in eight years of parliamentary assiduity!

The new Conservative leader, seeing that he could always depend on
Brull's vote and that Alcira elections cost "the Party" nothing, had a
certain consideration for Rafael. He was a soldier always on hand for
roll-call, whenever a new Parliament was formed. He would present
himself with his certificate of election, whether his party, with all
the insolence of victory, occupied the benches on the Right, or hungry
and defiant, and reduced in numbers, was huddled on the Left, determined
to find fault with everything the reigning Ministry did. Two sessions as
part of the minority had won him a certain intimacy with the leader in
that frank comradeship that Oppositions always have, since, from leader
down to the most silent member, all the deputies "out of power" are on a
level. Besides, in those two seasons of misfortune, to aid in the
destructive tactics of his faction, he put little interpellations to the
government, at the openings of the sessions when the crowds were small;
and more than once he heard from the pale smiling lips of the chief:
"Very good, Brull; that was to the point." And such congratulations
were duly echoed in his home city, where rustic imagination did the
rest.

In addition, a few parliamentary honors had come his way; the "Grand
Cross" had been given him, as it is given to most deputies of a certain
length of service--from membership, eventually, on committees charged
with representing the legislative branch of the government at formal
public functions. If an "Answer to the Message" was to be taken "to the
Palace," he was one of those chosen for the purpose; and he trembled
with emotion to think of what his mother, his wife, all the people down
yonder at home would say if they could see him riding there in the
sumptuous carriage of state, preceded by bright-liveried horsemen and
saluted by trumpets blaring the royal march! He was also usually among
the delegates who came out on the staircase of the Congress to welcome
Their Majesties on the opening of a parliament. Finally, for one
session, he was on "the Committee for the Interior," an appointment that
raised his prestige a thousand percent among the ushers.

"That fellow Brull," they would say in the Chamber, "will be somebody
the day his party returns to power."

Well, now "the Party" was in power again. During one of those ordered,
calculated "changes of direction" to which Spain lives subject, because
of its parliamentary system of party weights and party balances, the
Conservatives captured the premiership; and Rafael went on the budget
committee. There he would do something more than make interpellations
when he opened his mouth to speak. In fact he had to win his spurs,
justify his filling one of those posts which, according to report, his
chief was holding for him.

The green deputies, the younger set constituting the new majority, elect
and triumphant through grace of the Ministry of the Interior, respected
him and deferred to what he said, much as students listen to a tutor who
they know receives his orders from the master directly--the
subordination of freshmen, as it were, to the sophomore who knows the
rules.

Whenever a vote was being taken and the Opposition was excited over the
chance of putting the government in the minority, the Premier would look
about anxiously over the hall for Brull.

"See here, Brull, better bring your people in; we're going to have a
close call."

And Brull, proud at being noticed thus, would dash out like a streak of
lightning while the bells were ringing and the ushers were running about
summoning the deputies to vote. He would make the rounds of the desks in
the writing rooms, elbow his way into groups in the corridors; and
filling with self-importance because of the authority conferred upon
him, he would rudely shoo the ministerial flock off toward the Chamber,
grumbling fogeywise and assuring them that "in his time," when he was
serving his first term, there was "far better discipline." When the vote
was all in and the victory won, he would sigh with satisfaction. He had
saved the government! And perhaps the nation!

At times a residue of the sincerity and frankness of his character as a
boy would rise to the surface in him. Then cruel doubts would assail his
faith in himself. Weren't they all playing a stupid comedy there
without the slightest wit or sense in it? Really was what they said and
did there of the slightest importance to the country--to anybody?

Standing in the corridor, he would feel the nervous flutter of the
journalists about him--those poor, intelligent, attractive, young
fellows, who found it so hard to make a living. From the press-gallery
they would sit and look down on the legislators the way birds in the
treetops must look down on the wretchedness of the streets below,
laughing at the nonsense those solemn baldpates were talking! Could a
farce on the stage be more amusing?

To Rafael those "intellectuals" seemed to bring a breeze from out of
doors into the close, sordid, vitiated air of the Chamber. They stood
for the thought of the world outside--the idea fatherless, unsponsored,
the aspiration of the great masses--a breath of fresh air in the
sick-room of a chronic invalid forever dying, forever unburiable.

Their judgment always differed from that of the country's
representatives. His Excellency señor don What's-his-Name was in their
eyes, a mud-eel, and in their lingo a _congrio_; the illustrious orator
What-do-you-call-him, who took up a sixteen-page sheet in the
Congressional Record every time he spoke, was a _percebe_, a "barnacle
on the keel of Progress"; every act of parliament struck them as a bit
of balderdash, though, to hold their jobs, they praised it to the skies
in their articles. And why was it that the country, in some mysterious
way, would always think eventually what those boys thought, so long, and
only so long, as they remained boys? Would they have to come down from
their scats in the press-gallery to the red benches on the floor before
the real will of the country would make itself felt?

Rafael Brull finally realized that national opinion was present on the
floor, among his fellow members, also, but like a mummy in a
sarcophagus: bound hand and foot in rhetoric and conventional utterance,
spiced, embalmed with proprieties that made any outburst of sincerity,
any explosion of real feeling, evidence of "bad taste!"

In reality everything was going well with the Ship of State. The nation
had passed from action to talk, and from talk to passivity, and from
passivity to resignation. The era of revolutions was gone forever. The
infallible system of government had proved to be this mechanism of
pre-arranged "crises" and amicable exchanges of patronage between
Liberals and Conservatives, each member of the party in power and each
member of the party out of power knowing just what he was to say and
just what he was to get.

So, in that palace of over-ornate architecture, as pretentious and as
showy as the mansion of a millionaire _parvenu_, Rafael was condemned to
spend his lifetime, foregoing the blue sky and the flowering fields and
orchards of Alcira that a family ambition might be realized.

Nothing noteworthy had occurred during those eight years. His life had
been a muddy, monotonous stream, with neither brilliancy nor beauty in
its waters, lazily meandering along, like the Júcar in winter. As he
looked back over his career as a "personage," he could have summed it up
in three words: he had married.

Remedios was his wife. Don Matias was his father-in-law. He was
wealthy. He had control over a vast fortune, for he exercised despotic
rule over his wife's peasant father, the most fervent of his admirers.
His mother seemed to have put the last of her strength into the
arrangement of that "marriage of convenience." She had fallen into a
senile decrepitude that bordered on dotage. Her sole evidence of being
alive was her habit of staying in church until the doors were closed and
she could stay no longer. At home she did nothing but recite the rosary,
mumbling away in some corner of the house, and taking no part in the
noisy play of her grandchildren. Don Andrés had died, leaving Rafael
sole "boss" of "the Party." He had had three children. They had had
their teeth, their measles, their whooping-cough. These episodes, with a
few escapades of that brother of Remedios, who feared Rafael's paunch
and bald head more than the wrath of don Matias, were the only
distractions in a thoroughly dull existence.

Every year he bought a new piece of land. He felt a thrill of pride when
from the top of San Salvador--that Hermitage, alas, of such desperate
and unfading memory!--he looked down upon the vast patches of land with
orange-trees in straight rows and fenced in by green walls, that all,
all, belonged to him. The joy of ownership, the intoxication of property
had gone to his head.

As he entered the old mansion, entirely made over now, he felt the same
sense of well-being and power. The old chest in which his mother used to
keep her money stood where it had always stood; but it was no longer
devoted to savings hoarded slowly at the cost of untold sacrifice and
privation to raise mortgages and temporize with creditors. Never again
had he tip-toed up in the dark to rifle it. Now it was his own. And at
harvest time it became literally crammed with the huge rolls of
banknotes his father-in-law paid over in exchange for the oranges of the
Brull orchards. And Rafael had a covetous eye on what don Matías had in
the banks; for all that, too, would come to him when the old man died.
Acquisitiveness--money and land--had become his one, his ruling passion.
Monotony, meanwhile, had turned him into an accurate, methodical,
meticulous machine; so that every night he would make out a schedule,
hour for hour, of all that he would do on the following day. At the
bottom of this passion for riches conjugal contagion probably lay. Eight
years of unbroken familiarity had finally inoculated him with most of
the obsessions and most of the predilections of his wife.

The shrinking, timorous little she-goat that used to gambol about with
him in pursuit, the poor child who had been so wistful and downcast
during the days of his wantonness, had now become a woman with all the
imperious obstinacy, all the domineering superiority of the female of
the species as it has evolved in the countries of the South. Cleanliness
and frugality in Remedios took the form of unendurable tyranny. She
scolded her husband if he brought the slightest speck of dust into the
house on his shoes. She would turn the place upside down, flay all the
servants alive, if ever a few drops of oil were spilled from a jar, or a
crumb of bread were wasted on the table.

"A jewel for the home! And didn't I tell you so?" her father would
whisper, satisfied with his daughter's obtrusive qualities.

Rafael, for his part, found them intolerable. He had tried to love his
bride in the early months of their marriage. He made an honest effort to
forget, and recall the playful, passionate impulses he had felt on those
days when he had chased her around the orchards. But after a first fever
of passion had passed, she had proved to be a cold, calculating
child-bearer, hostile to expansiveness of love out of religious
scruples, viewing it her duty to bring new offsprings into the world to
perpetuate the House of Brull and to fill "grandaddy" don Matías with
pride at sight of a nursery full of future "personages" destined to the
heights of political greatness in the District and in the nation.

Rafael had one of those gentle, temperate, honest, households that, on
the afternoon of their walk through Valencia, don Andrés had pointed out
to him as a radiant hope, if only he would turn his back on his mad
adventure. He had a wife; and he had children; and he was rich. His
father-in-law ordered shotguns for him from his correspondents in
England. Every year a new horse was added to the stable, and don Matias
would see to purchasing the best that could be found in the fairs of
Andalusia. He hunted, took long horseback rides over the roads of the
district, dispensed justice in the _patio_ of the house, just as his
father don Ramón had done. His three little ones, finding him somewhat
strange after his long absences in Madrid and more at home with their
grand-parents than with him, would group themselves with bowed, bashful
heads around his knees, silently waiting for his paternal kiss.
Everything attainable around him was within his reach for the asking;
and yet--he was not happy.

From time to time the adventure of his youth would come back to his
mind. The eight years that had passed seemed to have put a century
between him and those ancient days. Leonora's face had slowly, slowly,
faded in his memory, till all he could remember were her two green eyes,
and her blond hair that crowned her with a crown of gold. Her aunt, the
devout, ingenuous doña Pepa, had died some time since--leaving her
property for the salvation of her soul. The orchard and the Blue House
belonged now to Rafael's father-in-law, who had transferred to his own
home the best of its equipment--all the furniture and decorations that
Leonora had bought during her period of exile, while Rafael had been in
Madrid and she had thought of living the rest of her life in Alcira.

Rafael carefully avoided revisiting the Blue House, out of regard for
his wife's possible susceptibilities. As it was, the woman's silence
sometimes weighed heavily upon him, a strange circumspection, which
never permitted the slightest allusion to the past. In the coldness and
the uncompromising scorn with which she abominated any poetic madness in
love, an important part was doubtless played by the suppressed memory of
her husband's adventure with the actress, which everybody had tried to
conceal from her and which had deeply disturbed the preparations for her
wedding.

When the deputy was alone in Madrid, as much at liberty as before his
marriage, he could think of Leonora freely, without those restraints
which seemed to disturb him back at home in the bosom of his family.
What could have become of her? To what limits of mad frolic had she gone
after that parting which even after years had passed, still brought a
blush of shame to Rafael's cheeks? The Spanish papers paid very little
attention to matters of foreign art. Only twice in their columns did he
discover Leonora's stage name with an account of her new triumphs. She
had sung in Paris in French, with as much success as a native _artiste_.
The purity of her accent had surprised everyone. In Rome she had played
the "lead" in an opera by a young Italian composer, and her coming had
been announced by press agents as a great event. The opera had failed to
please; not so the singer. Her audience had been moved to tears by her
execution of a scene in the last act, where she wept for a lost love.

After that--silence, no news whatever! She had disappeared. A new love
affair, Rafael supposed, a new outburst of that vehement passion which
made her follow her chosen man like a slave. And Rafael felt a flash of
jealousy at the thought, as if he had rights over the woman still, as if
he had forgotten the cruelty with which he had bidden her farewell.

That, fundamentally, had been the cause of all the bitterness and
remorse in his life. He understood now that Leonora had been his one
genuine passion: the love that comes to people once in a lifetime. It
had been within reach of his hand, and he had failed to grasp it, had
frightened it away forever with a cowardly act of villany, a cruel
farewell, the shame of which would go to the grave with him. Garlanded
in the orange-blossoms of the orchard, Love had passed before him,
singing the Hymn of wild Youth that knows neither scruples nor ambition.
Love, true love had invited him to follow--and he had answered with a
stab--in the back! That love would never return, as he well knew. That
mysterious being with its smiles and with its frolics, goes forever when
once it goes. It knows no bartering with destiny. It demands blind
obedience and bids the lover take the woman who offers her hand,
orchard-maid or prima donna as she may be. The man who hesitates is
lost.

And Rafael felt that an endless night had closed around him! He found
all his efforts to escape from his dullness and depression vain. He
could not shake off the senility that was creeping over his spirit.
Sadly he bowed to the conviction that another love like the first was
impossible.

For two months he had been the lover of Cora, a popular girl of the
private rooms of the Fornos, a tall, thin, strong Galician beauty--as
strong, alas, as the other. Cora had spent a few months in Paris, and
had returned thence with her hair bleached and a distinctly French
manner of lifting her skirt as if she were strolling along the
_trottoir_ of the _boulevards_. She had a sweet way of mixing French
words in her conversation, calling everybody _mon cher_ and pretending
expertness in the organization of a supper. At all events she shone like
a great _cocotte_ among her competitors, though her real asset was a
line of _risqué_ stories, and a certain gift for low songs.

Rafael soon wearied of this affair. He did not like her manufactured
beauty, nor her tiresome chatter that always turned on fashions. She was
always wanting money for herself and for her friends. Rafael, as a
wealthy miser, grew alarmed. Remorsefully he thought of his children's
future, as if he were ruining them; and of what his economical Remedios
would say of his considerably augmented expenditures. Well he knew that
Remedios haggled for everything down to the last _céntimo_, and that her
one extravagance was an occasional new shawl for the local Virgin, and
an annual _fiesta_ for the Saint with a large orchestra and hundreds of
candles! He broke off relations with the Galician _boulevardière_, and
found the rupture a sweet relief. It seemed to remove a sully from the
memory of his youthful passion. Moreover, his Party had just returned to
power and it was important to have no blemish on his standing as a
"serious" person! He resumed his seat on the Right, and near the Blue
Bench this time, as one of the senior deputies. The moment for work had
come! Now, it was time to see whether he could not make a position for
himself with one good boost!

They named him to the Committee on the Budget, and he took it upon
himself to refute certain strictures presented by the Opposition to the
Government program on Pardon and Justice. One friend he could count on
was the minister: a respectable, solemn marquis who had once been an
Absolutist, and who, wearied of platonisms, as he put it, had finally
"recognized" the liberal regime, without amending his former ideas,
however.

Rafael was as nervous as a schoolboy on the eve of his first
examinations. At the library he studied everything that had been said on
the subject by countless deputies in a century of Parliamentary
government. His friends in the Conference Chamber--the legislative
bohemia of "ex-honorables" and unsuccessful aspirants, who were loyal to
him in gratitude for passes to the floor--were encouraging him and
prophesying victory. They no longer approached him to begin: "When I was
auditor ..." to indulge in a veritable intoxication on the fumes of
their past glory; no longer did they ask him what don Francisco thought
of this, that, or the other thing, to draw their own wild inferences
from his replies and start rumors going based on "inside information."
Now, quite frankly, they "advised" him, giving him hints in accordance
with what they had said or meant to say during that discussion of the
budget back in González Brabo's time, to end by murmuring, with a smile
that gave him the shudders: "Well, anyhow, we'll see! Good luck to you!"

And that flock of disgruntled spirits who sat around waiting for an
election that would never come and ran like old war-horses at the scent
of gun-powder to group themselves, as soon as a row started and the bell
began to ring for order, in two factions on either side of the
president's chair, could never have imagined that the young deputy, on
many a night, broke off his study with a temptation to throw the thick
tomes of records against the wall, yielding finally, with thrills of
intense voluptuousness, to the thought of what might have become of him
had he gone out into life on his own in the trail of a pair of green
eyes whose golden lights he thought he could still see glittering in
front of him between the lines of clumsy parliamentary prose, tempting
him as they had tempted him of yore!




II


"Order of the day. Resumption of debate on ecclesiastical
appropriations!"

The Chamber suddenly came to life with a wild movement of dispersion,
something comparable to the stampede of a herd or the panic of an army.
The deputies of quickest motory reactions were on their feet in an
instant, followed by dozens and dozens of others, all making for the
doors. Whole blocks of seats were emptied.

The Chamber had been packed from the opening of the Session. It was a
day of intense excitement: a debate between the leader of the Right and
a former comrade who was now in the Opposition. The jealousy between the
two old cronies was resulting in a small-sized scandal. Mutual secrets
of their ancient intimacy as colleagues were coming to light--many of
the intrigues that had settled historic parliamentary contests for the
premiership. The galleries were filled with spectators who had come to
enjoy the fun. The deputies and ministers occupied every seat on either
hand of the presidential chair. But now the incident was closed. Two
hours of veiled insult and pungent gossip had passed all too soon. And
the phrase "Ecclesiastical Appropriations" had served as a fire-alarm.
Run--do not walk--to the nearest exit!

However, the name of the orator who was now being given the floor
served to check the stampede somewhat, much as routs have been stopped
by some great historic warcry. A few deputies hurried back to their
benches. All eyes turned toward the extreme Left of the Chamber, where,
a white head, rising above the red seats over a pair of spectacles and a
gently ironical smile, was coming into view.

The old man was on his feet, at last. He was small, so frail of person,
that he hardly overtopped the men still seated. All his vital energies
had been concentrated in that huge, nobly proportioned head of his, pink
at the top, with shocks of white hair combed back over it. His pale
countenance had the warlike transparency of a sound, vigorous old age.
To it a shining, luminous silvery beard added a majesty like that with
which Sacred Art used to picture the Almighty.

The venerable orator folded his arms and waited for the noise in the
Chamber to cease. When the last determined fugitives had disappeared
through the exit doors, he began to speak. The journalists in the
press-gallery craned their necks toward "the tribune," hushing for
silence in order not to lose a word.

This man was the patriarch of the Chamber. He represented "the
Revolution"--not only the old-fashioned, the political, revolution, but
the modern, the social and economic revolution. He was the enemy of all
present systems of government and society. His theories irritated
everybody, like a new and incomprehensible music falling on slumbering
ears. But he was listened to with respect, with the veneration inspired
by his years and his unsullied career. His voice had the melodious
feebleness of a muffled, silver bell; and his words rolled through the
silence of the hall with a certain prophetic stateliness, as if the
vision of a better world were passing before his eyes as he spoke, the
revelation of a perfect society of the future, where there would be no
oppression and no misery, the dream he had so often dreamed in the
solitude of his study.

Rafael was sitting at the head of the committee bench, somewhat apart
from his companions. They were giving him ample room, as bull-fighters
do their _matador_. He had bundles of documents and volumes piled up at
his seat, in case he should need to quote authorities in his reply to
the venerable orator.

He was studying the old man admiringly and in silence. What a strong,
sturdy spirit, as hard and cold and clear as ice! That veteran had
doubtless had his passions like other men. At moments, through his calm
impassive exterior, a romantic vehemence would seem to burn, a poetic
ardor, that politics had smothered, but which smouldered on as volcanic
fires lie dormant rumbling from time to time under the mantle of snow on
a mountain peak. But he had known how to adjust his life to duty; and
without belief in God, with the support of philosophy only, his virtue
had been strong enough to disarm his most violent enemies.

And a weakling, a dawdler like himself, must reply to a hero like
that!... Rafael began to be afraid; and to recover his spirits he swept
the hall with his eyes. What the regular hangers-on of the sessions
would have called a medium-sized house! A few deputies scattered about
the benches! But the public galleries were filled with spectators,
workingmen mostly, absolutely quiet, and all ears, as if they were
drinking in every word of the old republican! In the reserved seats,
just previously packed with curiosity-seekers interested in the set-to
scheduled for the opening of the session, only a few foreign tourists
were left. They were taking in everything--even the fantastic uniforms
of the mace-bearers; and they were determined not to leave until they
were put out. A few women of the so-called "parliament set," who came
every afternoon when there was a squabble on the program, were munching
caramels and staring in wonderment at the old man. There he was, the
arch enemy of law and order! The man whose name it was bad form to
mention at their afternoon teas! Who would have supposed he had such a
kindly, harmless face? How easily, with what naturalness and grace, he
wore his frock coat! Incredible!... In the diplomatic gallery a solitary
lady! She was extravagantly attired in a huge picture hat with black
plumes. Almost hidden behind her was a fair haired youth, his hair
parted in the middle, his dress the height of correctness and foppery.
Some rich tourist-woman probably! She was directly opposite Rafael's
bench. He could see that her gloved hand rested on the railing, as she
moved her fan to and fro with an almost discourteous noise. The rest of
her body was lost in the darkness of the gallery. She bent back from
time to time to whisper and laugh with her escort.

Somewhat reassured by the empty appearance of the house, Rafael scarcely
paid any further attention to the orator. He had guessed all that the
man would say, and he was satisfied. The outline of the long answer he
had prepared would not in the least be affected.

The old man was inflexible and unchangeable. For thirty years he had
been saying the same thing over and over again. Rafael had read that
speech any number of times. The man had made a close study of national
evils and abuses, and had formulated a complete and pitiless criticism
of them in which the absurdities stood out by force of contrast. With
the conviction that truth is forever the same and that there is nothing
ever so novel as the truth, he had kept repeating his criticism year
after year in a pure, concise, sonorous style that seemed to scatter the
ripe perfume of the classics about the muggy Chamber.

He spoke in the name of the future Spain, of a Spain that would have no
kings, because it would be governed by itself; that would pay no
priests, because, respecting freedom of conscience, it would recognize
all cults and give privileges to none. And with a simple, unaffected
urbanity, as if he were constructing rhyming verses, he would pair
statistics off, underscoring the absurd manner in which the nation was
taking leave of a century of revolution during which all peoples had
done things while Spain was lying stagnant.

More money, he pointed out, was spent on the maintenance of the Royal
House than upon public education. Conclusion: the support of a single
family in idleness was worth more than the awakening of an entire people
to modern life! In Madrid, in the very capital, within sight of every
one of his hearers, the schools remained in filthy hovels, while
churches and convents rose overnight on the principal streets like
magic palaces. During twenty-odd years of Restoration, more than fifty
completely new, religious edifices, girding the capital with a belt of
glittering structures, had been built. On the other hand, only a single
modern school, at all comparable to the ordinary public schools of any
town in England or Switzerland! The young men of the nation were feeble,
unenthusiastic, selfish and--pious--in contrast with fathers, who had
adored the generous ideals of liberty and democracy and had stood for
action, revolt! The son was an old man at majority, his breast laden
with medals, with no other intellectual stimulus than the debates of his
religious fraternity, trusting his future and his thinking to the Jesuit
introduced into the family by the mother, while the father smiled
bitterly, realizing that he was a back-number, belonging to a different
world, to a dying generation--though to a generation which had
galvanized the nation for a moment with the spirit of revolutionary
protest!

Here was the Church collecting pay for its services from the faithful,
and then over again from the State! Here was the Ministry of the
Interior appealing for a reduction in taxes--a program of strict
economy--while new bishoprics were being created and ecclesiastical
appropriations swelled for the benefit of the upper clergy; and with no
advantage at all, meanwhile, to the proletariat of the soutane, to the
poor curates who, to make a bare living, had to practice the most
impious worldliness and unscrupulously exploit the house of God! And
while this was going on public works could wait, towns could go without
roads, Districts without railroads, though the wildest savages of Asia
and Africa had both! Fields could continue to perish of drought while
nearby rivers continued to pour their unutilized waters into the sea!

A thrill of conviction rippled through the Chamber. The silence was
absolute. Everybody was holding his breath so as not to lose a syllable
from that faint voice, which sounded like a cry from a distant tomb. It
was as though Truth in person were passing through those murky
precincts; and when the orator ended with an invocation to the future,
in which social absurdities and injustice should no longer exist, the
silence became deeper still, as if a glacial blast of death were blowing
upon those brains that had thought themselves deliberating in the best
of all possible worlds.

It was now time for the reply. Rafael arose, pale, pulling at his cuffs,
waiting a few minutes for the excitement in the Chamber to subside. The
audience had relaxed and was whispering and stirring about, after the
sustained attention compelled by the concise style and the barely
audible voice of the old man.

If Rafael was depending on the sympathy of an audience to encourage him,
things looked promising indeed! The hall began to empty. Why not? Who is
interested in a committee's reply to the Opposition? Besides, Brull had
a bundle of documents on hand. A long-winded affair! Let's escape!
Deputies filed by in line across the semi-circle in front of him; while
above, in the galleries, the desertion was general. The caramel-chewers,
noting that the display of celebrities was over for the day, rose from
their places. Their coaches were ready outside for a ride through the
Castellana. That strange woman in the diplomatic gallery had also risen
to go. But no: she was giving her hand to her companion, bidding him
good-bye. Now she had resumed her seat, continuing the busy movement of
her fan that annoyed Rafael so. Thanks for the compliment, my fair one I
Though as far as he was concerned, the whole audience might have gone,
leaving only the president and the mace-bearers. Then he could speak
without any fear at all! The public galleries, especially, unnerved him.
Nobody had moved there. Those workingmen were without doubt waiting for
the rebuttal of his answer from their venerable spokesman. Rafael felt
that the swarthy heads above all those dirty blouses and shirt-fronts
without collars or neckties were eyeing him with stony coldness. "Now
we'll see what this ninny has got to say!"

Rafael began with a eulogy on the immaculate character, the political
importance and the profound learning of that venerable septuagenarian
who still had strength to battle consistently and nobly for the lost
cause of his youth. An exordium of this nature was the regular
procedure. That was how "the Chief" did things. And as he spoke,
Rafael's eyes turned anxiously upon the clock. He wanted to be long,
very long. If he did not talk for an hour and a half or two hours he
would feel disgraced. Two hours was the least to be expected from a man
of his promise. He had seen party chiefs and faction leaders go it for a
whole afternoon, from four to eight, hoarse and puffing, sweating like
diggers in a sewer, with their collars wilted to rags, watching the
great hall-clock with the intentness of a man waiting to be hanged.
"Still an hour left before closing time!" a speaker's friends would say.
And the great orator, like a wearied horse, but a thoroughbred, would
find new energy somewhere and start on another lap, round and round,
repeating what he had already said a dozen times, summarizing the two
ideas he had managed to produce in four hours of sonorous chatter. With
duration as the test of quality, no one on the government had yet
succeeded in equaling a certain redheaded deputy of the Opposition who
was forever heckling the Premier, and could talk, if need be, three days
in succession for four hours a day.

Rafael had heard people praise the conciseness and the clarity of
new-fangled oratory in the parliaments of Europe. The speeches of party
leaders in Paris or in London took up never more than half a column in a
newspaper. Even the old man he was answering had adopted, to be original
in everything, that selfsame conciseness: every sentence of his
contained two or three ideas. But the member from Alcira would not be
led astray by such niggardly parsimony. He believed that ponderousness
and extension were qualities indispensable to eloquence. He must fill a
whole issue of the Congressional Record, to impress his friends back
home in the District. So he talked and talked on, trying deliberately to
avoid ideas. Those he had he would keep in reserve as long as possible,
certain that the longer he held them prisoner the longer and more solemn
would his oration be.

He had gained a quarter of an hour without making any reply to the
previous speech whatever, and literally burying his illustrious
antagonist in flowers. _Su señoria_ was noteworthy firstly, because,
secondly, because, fourteenthly, because ... Nay more, he had
accomplished this, performed that, endeavored the other
thing--"But"--and with this _but_, alas, Rafael must begin to loosen up
on a little of what he had prepared in advance. _Su señoria_ was an
"ideologue" of immense talent, but ever removed from reality; he would
govern peoples in accordance with theories dug out of books, without
paying any attention to practical considerations, to the individual and
indestructible character possessed by every nation!...

And it was worth sitting an afternoon even in that Chamber to hear the
slighting tone of scorn with which the member from Alcira emphasized
that word _ideologue_ and that phrase about "theories dug out of books"
and "living removed from reality!"

"Good, fine. That's the way to give it to him," his comrades encouraged,
nodding their sleek bald-pates in indignation against anybody who tried
to live apart from reality. Those _ideologues_ needed somebody to tell
them what was what!

And the minister, Rafael's friend, the only auditor left on the Blue
Bench, pressing his huge paunch against the desk, turned his head--an
owlish, hairy head with a sharp beak--to smile indulgently on the young
man.

The orator continued, his confidence increasing as he went on, fortified
by these signs of approval. He spoke of the patient, deliberate study
the committee had made of this matter of the ecclesiastical bud-gets. He
was the most modest, the least among them, but there were his
comrades--they were there, in truth, solemn gentlemen in English
frock-coats, with their hair parted in the middle, from their foreheads
to the napes of their necks--studious young men--who had flattered him
with the honor of speaking for them--and if they had not been more
economical, it was because greater economy had been impossible.

And the heads of the committee-men nodded as they murmured gratefully:

"Say, this fellow Brull can make quite a speech!"

The government was ready to exercise any economy that should prove
prudent and feasible, without prejudice to the dignity of the nation;
but Spain was an eminently religious country, favored by God in all her
crises; and no government loyal to the national genius could ever touch
a _céntimo_ of the ecclesiastical appropriation. Never! Never!...

On the word _never_ his voice resounded with the melancholy echo that
rings in empty houses. Rafael looked in anguish at the clock. Half an
hour. Half an hour gained, and still he had not really damaged his
outline. His talk was going so well that he was sorry the Chamber was
far from crowded!... Before him, in the shadows of the diplomatic
gallery, that fan kept fluttering. Pesky woman! Why couldn't she keep
quiet and not spoil his speech!

The president, so restless and vigilant, so ever-ready with watch and
bell in hand when any of the Opposition had the floor, was now sitting
back in his chair with his eyes shut, dozing away with the confidence of
a stage director who is sure the show will go off without a hitch. The
panes of the glass dome were glowing under the rays of the sun, but they
allowed only a diffuse, green light, a discreet, soft, crypt-like
clarity to seep through into the Chamber that lay below in monastic
calm. Through the windows over the president's chair, Rafael glimpsed
patches of the blue sky, drenched in the gentle light of an afternoon of
Springtime. A white dove was hovering in the perspective of those blue
squares.

Rafael felt a slackening of his powers of endurance, as if an
irresistible languor were stealing over him. The sweet smile of Nature
peering at him through the transoms of that gloomy, parliamentary tomb
had taken him back to his orange-orchards, and to his Valencian meadows
covered with flowers. He felt a curious impulse to finish his speech in
a few hasty words, grab his hat and flee, losing himself out among the
groves of the Royal Gardens. With that sun and those flowers outside,
what was he doing in that hole, talking of things that did not concern
him in the least?... But he successfully passed this fleeting crisis. He
ceased rummaging among the bundles of documents piled up on the bench,
stopped thumbing papers so as to hide his perturbation, and waving the
first sheet that came to his hand, he went on.

The intention of the gentleman in opposing this appropriation was not
hidden from him. On this matter he had his own, his private and personal
ideas. "I understand that _su señoria_, in here proposing retrenchment,
is really seeking to combat religious institutions, of which he is a
declared enemy."

And as he reached this point, Rafael dashed wildly into the fray. He was
treading firm and familiar ground. All this part of the speech he had
prepared, paragraph by paragraph: a defense of Catholicism, an apology
_pro fide_, so intimately bound up with the history of Spain. He could
now use impassioned outbursts and tremors of lyric enthusiasm, as if he
were preaching a new crusade.

On the Opposition benches he caught the ironic glitter of a pair of
spectacles, the convulsions of a white chin quivering over two folded
arms, as if a kindly, indulgent smile had greeted his parade of so many
musty and faded commonplaces. But Rafael was not to be intimidated. He
had gotten away with an hour almost! Forward, to "Section Two" of the
outline, the part about the great national and Christian epic! And he
began to reel off visions of the cave of Covadonga; the fantastic tree
of the Reconquest "where the warrior hung up his sword, the poet his
harp," and so on and so on, for everybody hung up something there; seven
centuries of wars for the cross, a rather long time, believe me,
gentlemen, during which Saracen impiety was expelled from Spanish soil!
Then came the great triumphs of Catholic unity. Spain mistress of almost
the whole world, the sun never allowed to set on Spanish domains; the
caravels of Columbus bearing the cross to virgin lands; the light of
Christianity blazing forth from the folds of the national banner to shed
its illuminating rays throughout the earth.

And as if this hymn to enlightening Christianity, chanted by an orator
who could now hardly see across the gloomy hall, had been a signal, the
electric lights went on; and the statues, the escutcheons, and the
harsh, blatant figures painted on the cupola, sprang forth from
obscurity.

Rafael could hardly contain his joy at the facility with which his
speech was developing. That wave of light which was shed over the hall,
in the middle of the afternoon, while the sun was still shining, seemed
to him like the sudden entrance of Glory, approaching to give him the
accolade of renown.

Caught up now in the real torrent of his premeditated verbosity, he
continued to relieve himself of all that he had learned by cramming
during the past few days. "In vain does _su señoria_ fatigue his wits.
Spain is and will remain a profoundly religious country. Her history is
the history of Catholicism: she has survived in all her times of storm
and stress by tightly embracing the Cross." And he could now come to the
national wars; from the battles in which popular piety saw Saint James,
on his white steed, lopping off the heads of the Moors with his golden
cutlass, to the uprising of the people against Napoleon, behind the
banner of the parish and with their scapularies on their bosoms. He did
not have a word to say about the present. He left the pitiless criticism
of the old revolutionist intact. Why not? The dream of an ideologue! He
was absorbed in his song of the past, affirming for the hundredth time
that Spain had been great because she had been Catholic and that when
for a moment she had ceased to be Catholic, all the evils of the world
had descended upon her. He spoke of the excesses of the Revolution, of
the turbulent Republic of '73, (a cruel nightmare to all right-thinking
persons) and of the "canton" of Cartagena (the supreme recourse of
ministerial oratory),--a veritable cannibal feast, a horror that had
never been known even in this land of _pronunciamientos_ and civil wars.
He tried his best to make his hearers feel the terror of those
revolutions, whose chief defect had been that they had revolutionized
nothing.... And then came a panegyric on the Christian family, on the
Catholic home, a nest of virtues and blessings, whereas in nations where
Catholicism did not reign all homes were repulsive brothels or horrible
bandit caves.

"Fine, Brull, very good," grunted the minister, his elbows stretched
forward over his desk, delighted to hear his own ideas echoing from the
young man's mouth.

The orator rested for a moment, with his glance sweeping the galleries
now bright with the electric lighting. The woman in the diplomatic
section had stopped fanning herself. She was following him closely. Her
eyes met his.

Of a sudden Rafael nearly fell to his seat. Those eyes!... Perhaps an
astonishing resemblance! But no; it was she--she was smiling to him with
that same jesting, mocking smile of their earlier acquaintance!

He felt like the bird writhing on the tree unable to free itself from
the hypnotic stare of the serpent coiled near the trunk. Those
sarcastic, mischievous eyes had upset all his train of thought. He tried
to finish in some way or other, to end his speech as soon as possible.
Every minute was an added torment to him; he imagined he could hear the
mute gibes that mouth must be uttering at his expense.

Again he looked at the clock; in fifteen minutes more he would be
through. And he spurted on at a mad pace, with a hurried voice,
forgetting the devices he had thought of to prolong the peroration,
dumping them out all in a heap--anything to get through! "The
Concordate... sacred obligations toward the clergy ... their services
of old ... promises of close friendship with the Pope ... the generous
father of Spain ... in short, we cannot reduce the budget by a _céntimo_
and the committee stands, by its proposals without accepting a single
amendment."

As he sat down, perspiring, excited, wiping his congested face
energetically, his bench companions gathered around him congratulating
him, shaking his hands. He was every inch an orator! He should have gone
deeper into the matter and taken even more time! He shouldn't have been
so modest!

And from the bench below came the grunt of the minister:

"Very good, very good. You said exactly what I would have said."

The old revolutionist arose to make a short rebuttal, repeating the
contentions of his original speech, of which no denial had been
attempted.

"I'm quite tired," sighed Rafael, in reply to the felicitations.

"You can go out if you wish," said the minister. "I think I'll answer
the rebuttal myself. It's a courtesy due to so old a deputy."

Rafael raised his eyes toward the diplomatic gallery. It was empty. But
he imagined he could still make out the plumes of a woman's hat in the
dark background.

He left his bench hastily and hurried to the corridor, where a number of
deputies were waiting with their congratulations.

Not one of them had heard him, but they were all profuse in their
flattering remarks. They shook his hand and detained him maddeningly.
Once more he thought he could descry at the end of the corridor, at the
foot of the gallery staircase, standing out against the glass exit-door,
those black, waving plumes.

He elbowed his way through the crowds, deaf to all congratulations,
brushing aside the hands that were proferred to him.

Near the door he stumbled into two of his associates, who were looking
out with eyes radiant with admiration.

"What a woman? Eh?"

"She looks like a foreigner. Some diplomat's wife, I guess!"




III


As he came out of the building he saw her on the sidewalk, about to step
into a vehicle. An usher of the Congress was holding the carriage door
open, with the demonstrative respect inspired by the goldbraid shining
on the driver's hat. It was an embassy coach!

Rafael approached, believing, from the carriage, that it still might
prove to be a case of an astonishing resemblance. But no; it was she;
the same woman she had always been, as if eight hours and not eight
years had passed:

"Leonora! You here!..."

She smiled, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to see him
again.

"I saw you and heard you. You did very well, Rafael: I enjoyed it."

And grasping his hand in a frank, hearty clasp of friendship, she
entered the carriage with a rustle of silk and fine linen.

"Come! Won't you step in too?" she asked, smiling. "Join me for a little
drive along the Castellana. It's a magnificent afternoon; a little fresh
air won't do any harm after that muggy room."

Rafael, to the astonishment of the usher, who was surprised to see him
in such seductive company, got in; and the carriage rolled off. There
they were, together again, sitting side by side, swaying gently back and
forth with the motion of the soft springs.

Rafael was at a loss for words. The cold, ironic smile of his former
lover chilled him. He was flushed with shame at the thought of how he
had treated that beautiful creature the last time they had seen each
other. He wanted to say something, and yet he could not find a way to
begin. The ceremonious, formal _usted_ she had employed in inviting him
into the carriage embarrassed him. At last he ventured, timidly, also
avoiding the intimate _tu_!

"Imagine our meeting here! What a surprise!"

"I got in yesterday; tomorrow I leave for Lisbon. A short stop, isn't
it! Just time for a word with the director of the _Real_; perhaps I'll
come next winter to sing _Die Walküre_ here. But let's talk about you,
illustrious orator.... But I may say _tu_ to you, mayn't I?" she
corrected--"for I believe we are still friends."

"Yes, friends, Leonora.... I have never been able to forget you."

But the feeling he put into the words vanished before the cold smile
with which she answered.

"Friends; that's it," she said, slowly. "Friends, and nothing more.
Between us there lies a corpse that prevents us from getting very close
to each other again."

"A corpse?" asked Rafael, not catching her meaning.

"Yes; the love you murdered.... Friends, nothing more; comrades united
by complicity in a crime."

And she laughed with cruel sarcasm, while the carriage turned into one
of the avenues of Recoletos. Leonora looked vacantly out upon the
central boulevard. The rows of iron benches were filled with people.
Groups of children in charge of governesses were playing gaily about in
the soft, golden splendor of the afternoon.

"I read in the papers this morning that don Rafael Brull, 'of the
Finance Commission,' if you please, would undertake to speak for the
Ministry on the matter of the budget; so I got down on my knees to an
old friend of mine, the secretary of the English embassy, and begged him
to come and take me to the session. This coach is his.... Poor fellow!
He doesn't know you, but the moment he saw you stand up to speak, he
took to his heels.... He missed something though; for really, you
weren't half bad. I'm quite impressed. Say, Rafael, where do you dig up
all those things?"

But Rafael looked uneasily at her cruel smile and refused to accept her
praise. Besides, what did he care about his speech? It seemed to him
that he had been for years and years in that coach; that a whole
lifetime had gone by since he left the halls of the Congress. His gaze
was fixed on her in admiration, and his astonished eyes were drinking in
the beauty of her face, and of her figure.

"How beautiful you are!" he murmured in impulsive enchantment. "The same
as you were then. It seems impossible that eight years can have flown
by."

"Yes; I admit that I bear up well. Time seems not to touch me. A little
longer at the dressing table--that's all. I'm one of the people who die
in harness, so to speak, making no concessions, so far as looks go, to
old age. Rather than surrender, I'd kill myself. I intend to put Ninon
de Lenclos in the shade!"

It was true. Eight years had made not the slightest impression on her.
The same freshness, the same robust, energetic slenderness, the
identical flames of arrogant vitality in her green eyes. Instead of
withering under the incessant parching of passion's flame, she seemed to
grow stronger, hardier, in the crucible.

She measured the deputy with sarcastic playfulness.

"Poor Rafael! I'm sorry I can't say as much for you. How you've changed!
You look almost like a Knight of the Crown. You're fat! You're bald! And
those eyeglasses! Why, I could hardly recognize you in the Chamber. How
my romantic Moor has aged! You poor dear! You even have wrinkles!..."

And she laughed, as if it filled her with intense joy, the joy of
vengeance, to see her former lover so crestfallen at her portrayal of
his decrepitude.

"You're not happy, are you! I can see that. And yet, you ought to be.
You must have married that girl your mother picked for you. You
doubtless have children.... Don't try to fib to me, just to seem more...
what shall I say ... more interesting! I can see it from the looks of
you. You are the _pater familias_ all over. I am never mistaken in such
things!... Well, why aren't you happy? You have all the requisites for a
personage of note, and you will shortly be one. I'll bet you wear that
sash to hold your paunch in! You are rich, you make speeches in that
horrid, gloomy, cave. Your friends back home will go into ecstasies when
they read the oration their honorable deputy has delivered; and I
imagine they're already preparing fireworks and music for a reception
to you. What more could you ask for?"

And with her eyes half-closed, smiling maliciously, she waited for his
reply, knowing in advance what it would be.

"What more can I ask for? Love; Leonora, the love I once had ... with
you."

And with the vehemence of other days, as if they were still among the
orange-trees of the old Blue House, the deputy gave way to his eight
years of longing.

He told her of the image he nourished in his sadness. Love! The Love
that passes but once in a lifetime, crowned with flowers, and followed
by a retinue of kisses and laughter. And whosoever follows him in
obedience, finds happiness at the end of the joyous pathway; but
whosoever, through pride or selfishness, lags by the wayside, comes to
lament his folly and to expiate his cowardice in an everlasting life of
tedium and sorrow! He had sinned, grievously. That he would confess! But
could she not forgive him? He had paid for his deliquency with eight
long, monotonous, crushing, meaningless years, one suffocating stifling
night that never broke into morning. But they had met again! There was
still time, Leonora! They could still call back the Springtime of their
lives, make it burgeon anew, compel Love to retrace his footsteps, pass
their way again, stretching forth his sweet hands of youth to them!

The actress was listening with a smile upon her lips, her eyes closed,
her head thrown back in the carriage. It was an expression of intense
pleasure, as if she were tasting with delight the fire of love that was
still burning in Rafael, and that, to her, meant vengeance.

The horses were proceeding at a walk along la Castellana. Other
carriages were going by and the people in them peered back at the coach
with that beautiful, unknown woman.

"What is your answer, Leonora? We can still be happy! Forget the past
and the wrong I did you! Imagine it was only yesterday that we said
good-bye in the orchard, and that we are meeting again today to begin
our lives over again from the beginning, to live together always,
always."

"No," she replied coldly. "You yourself just said so: Love passes but
once in a lifetime. I know that from cruel experience. I have done my
best to forget. No, Love has passed us by! It would be sheer folly for
us to ask him to hunt us up again. He never comes back! Our most
desperate effort could revive barely the shadow of him. You let him
escape. Well, you must weep for your loss, just as I had to weep for
your baseness ... Besides, you don't realize the situation we are in
now! Don't you remember what we talked about on our first night there in
the moonlight? 'The arrogant month of May, the young warrior in an armor
of flowers, seeks out his beloved, Youth.' Well, where is our youth now?
Quite frankly, you can find mine on my dressing-table! I buy it at the
perfumer's; and though that gentleman is quite skilled at disguising me,
there's an oldness of the spirit underneath, a terrible thing I don't
dare think about, because it frightens me so. And yours, poor
Rafael--you just haven't any, not even the kind you can buy! Take a good
look at yourself! You're ugly, to put it mildly, my dear boy! You're
lost that attractive slimness of your younger days. Your dreams make me
laugh! A passion at this late date! The idyll of a middle-aged siren and
a bald-headed father of a litter of children, with a paunch, with a
paunch, with a paunch! Oh, Rafael! Ha, ha, ha!"

The cruel mocker! How she laughed! How she was avenging herself. Rafael
grew angry at this cutting, ironic resistance. He began to flame with a
more excited passion.... The ravages of time made no difference. Could
not Love work miracles! He loved her more than he had ever loved her in
the olden days. He felt a mad hunger for her. Passion would give them
back the fires of youth. Love was like a springtime that brings new sap
to branches grown numb in the winter's cold. Let her say "Yes," and on
the instant she would behold the miracle, the resurrection of their
slumbering past, the awakening of their souls to the future of love!

"And your wife? And your children?" Leonora asked, brutally, as if she
wished to bring him back to realities, with a smarting lash from a whip.

But Rafael was now beside himself, drunk with the nearness of all that
beauty, and with the waves of perfume that filled the interior of the
carriage.

Wife? Family? He would leave everything for her: family, future,
position. It was she he needed to live and be happy!

"I will go with you; everybody is a stranger to me when I think of you.
You, you alone, are my life, my love!"

"Many thanks," Leonora answered curtly. "I could not accept such a
sacrifice.... Besides, all that sanctity of the home you were just
talking about a few moments ago in the Chamber? And all that Christian
morality, without which civilization would go to the damnation bow wows!
How I laughed when I heard you say that. How you were stuffing those
poor ninkampoops!..."

And again she laughed cruelly, at the contrast between his pious words
in Congress and his mad idea of forsaking everything to follow her
around the world. Oh, the hypocrite! She had felt, as she sat listening
to him, that his speech was a pack of lies, a mess of conventional
trumpery and platitudes! The only one there who had spoken with any real
sincerity, any real virtue, was that little old man, whom she had
listened to with veneration because he had been one of her father's
idols!

Rafael was crushed with bitter shame. Leonora's flat refusal, her
pitiless mockery of his speech, had brought him to realize the enormity
of his baseness. She was avenging herself by bringing him face to face
with the abjectness of his mad, hopeless passion, which made him capable
of committing the lowest deeds!

Dusk was gathering. Leonora ordered the driver to the Plaza de Oriente.
She was stopping in one of the houses near the Opera where many
theatrical people lodged. She was in a hurry! She had a dinner
engagement with that young man from the Embassy, and two musical critics
were to be introduced to her.

"And I, Leonora? Are we not to see each other any longer?"

"As far as my door, if you wish, and then ... till we meet again!"

"Oh, please, Leonora, stay here a few days! Let me see you! Let me have
the consolation of talking to you, of feeling the bitter pleasure of
your ridicule, at least!"

Stay a few days!... Her days did not belong to her. She traveled from
one end of the world to the other, with her life marked off to the tick
of the clock. From Madrid to Lisbon--an engagement at the San
Carlos--three performances of Wagner! Then, a jump to Stockholm! After
that she was not quite sure where she would go; to Odessa, or to Cairo.
She was the Wandering Jew, the Valkyrie galloping along on the clouds of
a musical tempest, from frontier to frontier, from pole to pole,
arrogant, victorious, suffering not the slightest harm to health or
beauty.

"Oh, if you only would! If you would let me follow you! As your friend,
nothing more! As your servant, if necessary!"

And he grasped her hand, passionately, thrusting his fingers up her
sleeve, fondling the delicate arm underneath her glove. She did not
resist.

"There! Do you see, Rafael?" she said, smiling coldly. "You have touched
me, and it's useless; not the slightest thrill. You're as good as dead
to me. My flesh does not tingle at your fondling. In fact, I find it all
decidedly annoying!"

Rafael realized that it was true. She had once trembled madly under his
caresses. Now she was quite insensible, quite cold!

"Don't worry, Rafael. It's over, spelled with a capital _O_. It's not
worth wasting a moment's thought on. As I look at you now I feel the way
I do when I see one of my old dresses that, in its time, I went mad
over. I see nothing but the defects--the absurdities of the fashion that
is out of date. Our passion died as it should properly have died.
Perhaps your deserting me was for the best. It was better for you to
default in the full splendor of our honeymoon than to have broken with
me afterwards, when I should have moulded my nature forever to your
caresses. We were brought together ... oh, by the orange perfume, by
that cursed Springtime; but you were not meant for me, nor was I ever
meant for you. We are of different breeds. You were born a bourgeois. I
am an out-and-out bohemian! Love and the novelty of my kind quite,
dazzled you. You struggled hard, you beat your wings, to follow me, but
you fell to earth from the very weight of your inherited traits. You
have the appetites and the ambitions of people like you! Now you imagine
you are unhappy! But you'll find you're not when you see yourself become
a personage,' when you count the acreage of your orchards over, when you
see your children growing up to inherit papa's power and fortune. This
business of love for love's sake, mocking at law and morality, scorning
life and peacefulness, that is our privilege, the privilege of us
bohemians--the sole blessing left to us mad creatures whom society looks
upon--quite properly, I suppose--with disdainful mistrust. Each to his
own! The poultry to their quiet roost, where they can fatten in the sun;
the birds of passage to their wandering life of song, sometimes in a
flowering garden, sometimes in the cold and storm!"

And smiling again, as if those words, uttered with such gravity and
conviction, had been too cruel in their effective summary of the whole
story of their love, she added in a jesting tone:

"That was a fine little paragraph, wasn't it? What a pity you didn't
hear it in time to tack it on at the end of your speech!"

The carriage had entered the _Plaza de Oriente_; and was drawing up in
front of Leonora's house.

"May I go in with you?" the deputy asked anxiously, much as a child
might beg for a toy.

"Why? You'll only be bored. It will be the same as here. Upstairs there
is no moon, and there are no orange-trees in bloom. You can't expect two
nights like that in a life like yours. Besides, I don't want Beppa to
see you. She has a vivid recollection of that afternoon in the Hôtel de
Roma when I got your note. I'd lose prestige with her if she saw me in
your company."

With a commanding gesture she motioned him to the sidewalk. When the
carriage had gone they stood there together for a moment looking at each
other for the last time.

"Farewell, Rafael. Take good care of yourself, and try not to grow old
so rapidly. I believe it's been a real pleasure, though, to see you
again. I needed just this to convince myself it was really all over!"

"But are you going like this!... Is this the way you let a passion end
that still fills my life!... When shall we see each other again?"

"I don't know: never ... perhaps when you least expect it. The world is
large, but when a person gads about it the way I do, you never can tell
whom you are going to meet."

Rafael pointed to the Opera nearby.

"And if you should come to sing ... here?... If I were actually to see
you again?...."

Leonora smiled haughtily, guessing what he meant.

"In that case, you will be one of my countless friends, I suppose, but
nothing more. Don't imagine that I'm a saint even now. I'm just as I was
before you knew me. The property of everybody--understand--and of
nobody! But of the janitor of the opera, if necessary, sooner than of
you. You are a corpse, in my eyes, Rafael.... Farewell!"

He saw her vanish through the doorway; and he stood for a long time
there on the sidewalk, completely crushed, staring vacantly into the
last glow of twilight that was growing pale beyond the gables of the
Royal Palace.

Some birds were twittering on the trees of the garden, shaking the
leaves with their mischievous playfulness, as if the fires of Springtime
were coursing in their veins. For Spring had come again, faithful and
punctual, as every year.

He staggered off toward the center of the city, slowly, dejectedly, with
the thought of death in his mind, bidding farewell to all his dreams,
which that woman seemed to have destroyed forever in turning her back
implacably upon him. Yes! A corpse, indeed! He was a dead man dragging a
soulless body along under the sad glimmering of the first street-lamps.
Farewell! Farewell to Love! Farewell to Youth! For him Springtime would
never return again. Joyous Folly repelled him as an unworthy deserter.
His future was to grow a fatter and fatter paunch under the frock coat
of a "personage"!

At the corner of the Calle del Arenal he heard his name called. It was
a deputy, a comrade of "the Party" who had just come from the session.

"Let me congratulate you, Brull; you were simply monumental! The Chief
spoke enthusiastically of your speech to the Prime Minister! It's a
foregone conclusion. At the first new deal you'll be made
director-general or undersecretary at least! Again, my congratulations,
old fellow!"

THE END