Not one of them had heard him, but they were all profuse in their flattering remarks. They shook his hand and detained him maddeningly.
Once more he thought he could descry at the end of the corridor, at the foot of the gallery staircase, standing out against the gla.s.s exit-door, those black, waving plumes.
He elbowed his way through the crowds, deaf to all congratulations, brushing aside the hands that were proferred to him.
Near the door he stumbled into two of his a.s.sociates, who were looking out with eyes radiant with admiration.
"What a woman? Eh?"
"She looks like a foreigner. Some diplomat"s wife, I guess!"
III
As he came out of the building he saw her on the sidewalk, about to step into a vehicle. An usher of the Congress was holding the carriage door open, with the demonstrative respect inspired by the goldbraid shining on the driver"s hat. It was an emba.s.sy coach!
Rafael approached, believing, from the carriage, that it still might prove to be a case of an astonishing resemblance. But no; it was she; the same woman she had always been, as if eight hours and not eight years had pa.s.sed:
"Leonora! You here!..."
She smiled, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to see him again.
"I saw you and heard you. You did very well, Rafael: I enjoyed it."
And grasping his hand in a frank, hearty clasp of friendship, she entered the carriage with a rustle of silk and fine linen.
"Come! Won"t you step in too?" she asked, smiling. "Join me for a little drive along the Castellana. It"s a magnificent afternoon; a little fresh air won"t do any harm after that muggy room."
Rafael, to the astonishment of the usher, who was surprised to see him in such seductive company, got in; and the carriage rolled off. There they were, together again, sitting side by side, swaying gently back and forth with the motion of the soft springs.
Rafael was at a loss for words. The cold, ironic smile of his former lover chilled him. He was flushed with shame at the thought of how he had treated that beautiful creature the last time they had seen each other. He wanted to say something, and yet he could not find a way to begin. The ceremonious, formal _usted_ she had employed in inviting him into the carriage embarra.s.sed him. At last he ventured, timidly, also avoiding the intimate _tu_!
"Imagine our meeting here! What a surprise!"
"I got in yesterday; tomorrow I leave for Lisbon. A short stop, isn"t it! Just time for a word with the director of the _Real_; perhaps I"ll come next winter to sing _Die Walkure_ here. But let"s talk about you, ill.u.s.trious orator.... But I may say _tu_ to you, mayn"t I?" she corrected--"for I believe we are still friends."
"Yes, friends, Leonora.... I have never been able to forget you."
But the feeling he put into the words vanished before the cold smile with which she answered.
"Friends; that"s it," she said, slowly. "Friends, and nothing more.
Between us there lies a corpse that prevents us from getting very close to each other again."
"A corpse?" asked Rafael, not catching her meaning.
"Yes; the love you murdered.... Friends, nothing more; comrades united by complicity in a crime."
And she laughed with cruel sarcasm, while the carriage turned into one of the avenues of Recoletos. Leonora looked vacantly out upon the central boulevard. The rows of iron benches were filled with people.
Groups of children in charge of governesses were playing gaily about in the soft, golden splendor of the afternoon.
"I read in the papers this morning that don Rafael Brull, "of the Finance Commission," if you please, would undertake to speak for the Ministry on the matter of the budget; so I got down on my knees to an old friend of mine, the secretary of the English emba.s.sy, and begged him to come and take me to the session. This coach is his.... Poor fellow!
He doesn"t know you, but the moment he saw you stand up to speak, he took to his heels.... He missed something though; for really, you weren"t half bad. I"m quite impressed. Say, Rafael, where do you dig up all those things?"
But Rafael looked uneasily at her cruel smile and refused to accept her praise. Besides, what did he care about his speech? It seemed to him that he had been for years and years in that coach; that a whole lifetime had gone by since he left the halls of the Congress. His gaze was fixed on her in admiration, and his astonished eyes were drinking in the beauty of her face, and of her figure.
"How beautiful you are!" he murmured in impulsive enchantment. "The same as you were then. It seems impossible that eight years can have flown by."
"Yes; I admit that I bear up well. Time seems not to touch me. A little longer at the dressing table--that"s all. I"m one of the people who die in harness, so to speak, making no concessions, so far as looks go, to old age. Rather than surrender, I"d kill myself. I intend to put Ninon de Lenclos in the shade!"
It was true. Eight years had made not the slightest impression on her.
The same freshness, the same robust, energetic slenderness, the identical flames of arrogant vitality in her green eyes. Instead of withering under the incessant parching of pa.s.sion"s flame, she seemed to grow stronger, hardier, in the crucible.
She measured the deputy with sarcastic playfulness.
"Poor Rafael! I"m sorry I can"t say as much for you. How you"ve changed!
You look almost like a Knight of the Crown. You"re fat! You"re bald! And those eyegla.s.ses! Why, I could hardly recognize you in the Chamber. How my romantic Moor has aged! You poor dear! You even have wrinkles!..."
And she laughed, as if it filled her with intense joy, the joy of vengeance, to see her former lover so crestfallen at her portrayal of his decrepitude.
"You"re not happy, are you! I can see that. And yet, you ought to be.
You must have married that girl your mother picked for you. You doubtless have children.... Don"t try to fib to me, just to seem more...
what shall I say ... more interesting! I can see it from the looks of you. You are the _pater familias_ all over. I am never mistaken in such things!... Well, why aren"t you happy? You have all the requisites for a personage of note, and you will shortly be one. I"ll bet you wear that sash to hold your paunch in! You are rich, you make speeches in that horrid, gloomy, cave. Your friends back home will go into ecstasies when they read the oration their honorable deputy has delivered; and I imagine they"re already preparing fireworks and music for a reception to you. What more could you ask for?"
And with her eyes half-closed, smiling maliciously, she waited for his reply, knowing in advance what it would be.
"What more can I ask for? Love; Leonora, the love I once had ... with you."
And with the vehemence of other days, as if they were still among the orange-trees of the old Blue House, the deputy gave way to his eight years of longing.
He told her of the image he nourished in his sadness. Love! The Love that pa.s.ses but once in a lifetime, crowned with flowers, and followed by a retinue of kisses and laughter. And whosoever follows him in obedience, finds happiness at the end of the joyous pathway; but whosoever, through pride or selfishness, lags by the wayside, comes to lament his folly and to expiate his cowardice in an everlasting life of tedium and sorrow! He had sinned, grievously. That he would confess! But could she not forgive him? He had paid for his deliquency with eight long, monotonous, crushing, meaningless years, one suffocating stifling night that never broke into morning. But they had met again! There was still time, Leonora! They could still call back the Springtime of their lives, make it burgeon anew, compel Love to retrace his footsteps, pa.s.s their way again, stretching forth his sweet hands of youth to them!
The actress was listening with a smile upon her lips, her eyes closed, her head thrown back in the carriage. It was an expression of intense pleasure, as if she were tasting with delight the fire of love that was still burning in Rafael, and that, to her, meant vengeance.
The horses were proceeding at a walk along la Castellana. Other carriages were going by and the people in them peered back at the coach with that beautiful, unknown woman.
"What is your answer, Leonora? We can still be happy! Forget the past and the wrong I did you! Imagine it was only yesterday that we said good-bye in the orchard, and that we are meeting again today to begin our lives over again from the beginning, to live together always, always."
"No," she replied coldly. "You yourself just said so: Love pa.s.ses but once in a lifetime. I know that from cruel experience. I have done my best to forget. No, Love has pa.s.sed us by! It would be sheer folly for us to ask him to hunt us up again. He never comes back! Our most desperate effort could revive barely the shadow of him. You let him escape. Well, you must weep for your loss, just as I had to weep for your baseness ... Besides, you don"t realize the situation we are in now! Don"t you remember what we talked about on our first night there in the moonlight? "The arrogant month of May, the young warrior in an armor of flowers, seeks out his beloved, Youth." Well, where is our youth now?
Quite frankly, you can find mine on my dressing-table! I buy it at the perfumer"s; and though that gentleman is quite skilled at disguising me, there"s an oldness of the spirit underneath, a terrible thing I don"t dare think about, because it frightens me so. And yours, poor Rafael--you just haven"t any, not even the kind you can buy! Take a good look at yourself! You"re ugly, to put it mildly, my dear boy! You"re lost that attractive slimness of your younger days. Your dreams make me laugh! A pa.s.sion at this late date! The idyll of a middle-aged siren and a bald-headed father of a litter of children, with a paunch, with a paunch, with a paunch! Oh, Rafael! Ha, ha, ha!"
The cruel mocker! How she laughed! How she was avenging herself. Rafael grew angry at this cutting, ironic resistance. He began to flame with a more excited pa.s.sion.... The ravages of time made no difference. Could not Love work miracles! He loved her more than he had ever loved her in the olden days. He felt a mad hunger for her. Pa.s.sion would give them back the fires of youth. Love was like a springtime that brings new sap to branches grown numb in the winter"s cold. Let her say "Yes," and on the instant she would behold the miracle, the resurrection of their slumbering past, the awakening of their souls to the future of love!
"And your wife? And your children?" Leonora asked, brutally, as if she wished to bring him back to realities, with a smarting lash from a whip.
But Rafael was now beside himself, drunk with the nearness of all that beauty, and with the waves of perfume that filled the interior of the carriage.
Wife? Family? He would leave everything for her: family, future, position. It was she he needed to live and be happy!