Don Andres and his friends at the Club kept asking him when the wedding would take place. In presence of "the children" dona 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 Ramon 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 att.i.tude 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, pa.s.sive, unresisting, by the current of destiny.
But at times this resignation boiled up into hot, seething ebullitions of angry protest, of raging pa.s.sion. 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 impa.s.sioned 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 s.p.a.ce 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 cl.u.s.ters 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 gla.s.s, the vegetation of one of those fantastic snow-mantled landscapes that quiver sometimes in the gla.s.s 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 s.p.a.cious 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 pa.s.sionate 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 bal.u.s.trades 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 m.u.f.fled 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 ident.i.ty. 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 embarra.s.sment 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 pa.s.sionate 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 s.p.a.ce; 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 n.o.body ever felt the mysterious hidden workings of Nature; and He sang of Springtime as a G.o.d 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.