"What do I care for their gossip" he once said to Leonora. "I love you so much that I"d like to see the whole city worship you in public. I"d like to s.n.a.t.c.h you up in my arms, and appear upon the bridge at high noon, before a concourse stupefied by your beauty: "Am I or am I not your "_quefe_"?" I"d ask. "Well, if I am, adore this woman, who is my very soul and without whom I could not live. The affection which you have for me you must have also for her." And I"d do just as I say if it were possible."
"Silly boy ... adorable child," she had replied, showering him with kisses, brushing his dark beard with her soft, quivering lips.
And it was during one of their meetings--when their words were broken by sudden impulses of affection, and their lips were tightly pressed together--that Leonora had expressed her capricious desire.
"I"m stifling in this house. I hate to caress you inside four walls, as if you were only a pa.s.sing whim. This is unworthy of you. You are Love, who came to seek me out on the most beautiful of nights. I like you better in the open air. You look more handsome to me then, and I feel younger."
And recalling those trips down the river about which Rafael had told her so many times when they were only friends--that islet with its curtains of reeds, the willows bending over the water and the nightingale singing from its hiding-place--she had asked him, eagerly:
"What night are you going to take me there? It"s a whim of mine, a wild idea; but, what does love exist for, if not to make people do the foolish things that sweeten life?... Carry me off in your boat! The bark that bore you there will transport the two of us to your enchanted island; we will spend the whole night in the open air."
And Rafael, who was flattered by the idea of taking his love publicly down the river, through the slumbering countryside, unfastened his boat at midnight under the bridge and rowed it to a canebrake near Leonora"s orchard.
An hour later they emerged through the opening in the hedge, arm in arm, laughing at the mischievous escapade, disturbing the majestic silence of the landscape with noisy, insolent kisses.
They got into the boat, and with a favoring current, began to descend the Jucar, lulled by the murmur of the river as it glided between the high mudbanks covered with reeds that bent low over the water and formed mysterious hiding places.
Leonora clapped her hands with delight. She threw over her neck the silk shawl with which she had covered her head. She unb.u.t.toned her light traveling coat, and inhaled with deep enjoyment the moist, somewhat muggy breeze that was curling along the surface of the river. Her hand trembled as it dipped into the water from time to time.
How beautiful it was! All by themselves, and wandering about, as if the world did not exist; as if all Nature belonged to them, to them alone!
Here they were, slipping past cl.u.s.ters of slumbering houses, leaving the city far behind. And n.o.body had suspected that pa.s.sion, which in its enthusiasm had broken its chains and left its mysterious lair to have the heavens and the fields for sympathetic witnesses. Leonora would have wished that the night should never end; that the waning moon, which seemed to have been slashed by a sword, should stop eternally in the sky to wrap them forever in its feeble, dying light; that the river should be endless, and the boat float on and on until, overwhelmed by so much love, they should breathe the last gasp of life away in a kiss as tenuous as a sigh.
"If you could only know how grateful I am to you for this excursion, Rafael!... I"m happy, so happy. Never have I had such a night as this.
But where is the island? Have we gone astray, as you did the night of the flood?"
No! At last they reached the place. There Rafael had spent many an afternoon hidden in the bushes, cut off by the encircling waters, dreaming that he was an adventurer on the virgin prairies or the vast rivers of America, performing exploits he had read about in the novels of Fenimore Cooper and Mayne Reid.
A tributary joined the Jucar at this point, emptying gently into the main stream from under a thicket of reeds and trees that formed a triumphal arch of foliage. At the confluence rose the island--a tiny piece of land almost level with the water, but as fresh as green and fragrant as an aquatic bouquet. The banks were lined with dense clumps of cane, and a few willows that bent their hairy foliage low over the water, forming dark vaults through which the boat could make its way.
The two lovers entered the shade. The curtain of branches concealed them from the river; a bare tear of moonlight managed to filter through the mane of willows.
Leonora felt a first sense of uneasiness in this dark, damp, cave-like haunt. Invisible animals took to the water with dull splashes as they heard the boat"s bow touch the mud of the bank. The actress clutched her lover"s arm with nervous pleasure.
"Here we are," murmured Rafael. "Hold on to something and get out.
Careful, careful! Don"t you want to hear the nightingale? Here we have him. Listen."
It was true. In one of the willows, at the other side of the island, the mysterious bird was trilling from his hiding place, a dizzying shower of notes, which broke at the crescendo of the musical whirl-pool into a plaint as soft and long-sustained as a golden thread stretched in the silence of the night across the river, that seemed to be applauding with its hushed murmur. To get nearer, the lovers went up through the rushes, stopping, bending over at each step, to keep the branches from crackling underneath their feet.
Favoring moisture had covered the islet with an exuberant undergrowth.
Leonora repressed exclamations of glee as she found her feet caught in meshes of reeds or received the rude caresses of the branches that snapped back, as Rafael went ahead, and brushed against her face. She called for help in a m.u.f.fled voice; and Rafael, laughing also, would hold out his hand to her, taking her finally to the very foot of the tree where the nightingale was singing.
The bird, divining the presence of intruders, ceased his song. Doubtless he had heard the rustle of their clothing as they sat down at the foot of the tree, or the tender words they were murmuring into each other"s ear.
Over all, the silence of slumbering Nature reigned--that silence made up of a thousand sounds, harmonizing and blending in one majestic calm; the murmur of the water, the stirring of the foliage, the mysterious movements of unseen creatures crawling along under the leaves or patiently boring their winding galleries in the creaking trunks.
The nightingale began again to sing, timidly, like an artist afraid of an impending interruption. He uttered a few disconnected notes with anxious rests between them--love sighs they seemed, broken by sobs of pa.s.sion. Then gradually he took courage, regained self-confidence, and entered on his full song, just as a soft breeze rose, swept over the island, and set all the trees and reeds rustling in mysterious accompaniment.
The bird gradually grew intoxicated with the sound of his own trilling, cadenced, voice; one could almost see him up there in the thick darkness, panting, ardent, in the spasm of his musical inspiration, utterly engrossed in his own beautiful little world of song, overwhelmed by the charm of his own artistry.
But the bird had ceased his music when the two lovers awoke in a tight embrace, still in ecstasy from the song of love to which they had fallen asleep. Leonora was resting a dishevelled head on Rafael"s shoulder, caressing his neck with an eager, wearied breathing, whispering in his ear, random, incoherent words that still were vibrant with emotion.
How happy she was there! Everything comes for true love! Many a time, during the days of her unkindness to him, she had looked out from her balcony upon the river winding down through the slumbering countryside; and she had thought with rapture of a stroll some day through that immense garden on Rafael"s arm--of gliding, gliding down the Jucar, to that very island.
"My love is an ancient thing," she murmured. "Do you suppose, I have been loving you only since the other night? No, I have loved you for a long, long time.... But don"t you go and get conceited on that account, _su senoria_! I don"t know how it began: It must have been when you were away in Madrid. When I saw you again I knew that I was lost. If I still resisted, it was because I was a wise woman; because I saw things clearly. Now I"m mad and I"ve thrown my better judgment to the winds.
G.o.d knows what will become of us.... But come what may, love me, Rafael, love me. Swear that you"ll love me always. It would be cruel to desert me after awakening a pa.s.sion like this."
And, in an impulse of dread, she nestled closer against his breast, sank her hands into his hair, lifted her head back to kiss him avidly on the face, the forehead, the eyes, the lips, nibbling playfully, tenderly at his nose and chin, yet with an affectionate vehemence that drew cries of mock protest from Rafael.
"Madcap!" he muttered, smiling. "You"re hurting me."
Leonora looked steadily at him out of her two great eyes that were a-gleam with love.
"I could eat you up," she murmured. "I feel like devouring you, my heaven, my king, my G.o.d.... What have you given me, tell me, little boy?
How have you been able to fascinate me, make me feel a pa.s.sion that I never, never felt before?"
And again they fell asleep.
Rafael stirred in his lover"s arms, and suddenly sat up.
"It must be late. How many hours have we been here, do you suppose?"
"Many, many hours," Leonora answered sadly. "Hours of happiness always go so fast."
It was still dark. The moon had set. They arose and, hand in hand, groping their way along, they reached the boat. The splash of the oars began again to sound along the dark stream.
Suddenly the nightingale again piped gloomily in the willow wood, as if in farewell to a departing dream.
"Listen, my darling," said Leonora. "The poor little fellow is bidding us good-bye. Just hear how plaintively he says farewell."
And in the strange exhiliration that comes from fatigue, Leonora felt the flames of art flaring up within her, seething through her organism from head to foot.
A melody from _Die Meistersinger_ came to her mind, the hymn that the good people of Nuremberg sing when Hans Sachs, their favorite singer, as bounteous and gentle as the Eternal Father, steps out on the platform for the contest in poetry. It was the song that the poet-minstrel, the friend of Albrecht Durer, wrote in honor of Luther when the great Reformation broke; and the prima donna, rising to her feet in the stern, and returning the greeting of the nightingale began:
"_Sorgiam, che spunta il dolce albor, cantar ascolto in mezzo ai fior voluttuoso un usignol spiegando a noi l"amante vol_!..."
Her ardent, powerful voice seemed to make the dark surface of the river tremble; it rolled in harmonious waves across the fields, and died away in the foliage of the distant island, whence the nightingale trilled an answer that was like a fainting sigh. Leonora tried to reproduce with her lips the majestic sonorousness of the Wagnerian chorus, mimicking the rumbling accompaniment of the orchestra, while Rafael beat the water with his oars in time with the pious, exalted melody with which the great Master had turned to popular poetry adequately to greet the outbreak of Reform.
They went on and on up the river against the current, Leonora singing, Rafael bending over the oars, moving his sinewy arms like steel springs.
He kept the boat insh.o.r.e, where the current was not so strong. At times low branches brushed the heads of the lovers, and drops of dew fell on their faces. Many a time the boat glided through one of the verdant archways of foliage, making its way slowly through the lily-pads; and the green overhead would tremble with the harmonious violence of that wonderful voice, as vibrant and as resonant as a great silver bell.
Day had not yet dawned--the _dolce albor_ of Hans Sachs" song--but at any moment the rosy rim of sunrise would begin to climb the sky.
Rafael was hurrying to get back as soon as possible. Her sonorous voice of such tremendous range seemed to be awakening the whole countryside.
In one cottage a window lighted up. Several times along the river-bank, as they rowed past the reeds, Rafael thought he heard the noise of snapping branches, the cautious footsteps of spies who were following them.
"Hush, my darling. You had better stop singing; they"ll recognize you.
They"ll guess who you are."
They reached the bank where they had embarked. Leonora leaped ash.o.r.e.