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 be«n 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."