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 _senoritos_ 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 embarra.s.sment.
"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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sage, 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 dona 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 dona 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!
Dona 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 Andres 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 pa.s.s the day with Leonora, trembling to return home lest his mother should have learned what he had been up to.
Dona 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 dona 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. Dona 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!" dona 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 pa.s.s 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 Andres, 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 dona 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, circ.u.mventing 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, dona 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 Andres 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.