III
"Good morning, Rafaelito … we are seeing each other betimes today.... I am up so early not to miss the marketing. I remember that Wednesday was always a great event in my life, as a child. What a crowd!…"
And Leonora, with the great swarming cities far from her mind, was really impressed at the numbers of bustling people crowding the little square, called del Prado, where every Wednesday the "grand market" of the Alcira region was held.
Their sashes bulging with money bags, peasants were coming into town to buy supplies for the whole week out in the orange country. Orchard women were going from one stall to the next, as slender of body and as neatly dressed as the peasant girls of an opera ballet, their hair in señorita style, their skirts of bright batiste gathered up to hold their purchases and showing fine stockings and tight-fitting shoes underneath. Tanned faces and rough hands were the only signs to betray the rustic origin of the girls; because those were prosperous days for the orange growers of the District.
Along the walls hens were clucking, ranged in piles and tied together by the feet. Here and there were pyramids of eggs, vegetables, fruit. In "shops" that were set up in the morning and taken down at night, drygoods dealers were selling colored sashes, strips of cotton cloth and calico, and black woolsey, the eternal garb of every native of the Júcar valley. Beyond the Prado, in El Alborchí, was the hog market; and then came the Hostal Gran where horses were tried out. On Wednesdays all the business of the neighborhood was transacted—money borrowed or paid back, poultry stocks replenished, hogs bought to fatten on the farms, whole families anxiously following their progress; and new cart-horses, especially, the matter of greatest concern to the farmers, secured on mortgage, usually, or with cash saved up by desperate hoarding.
Though the sun had barely risen, the crowd, smelling of sweat and soil, already filled the market place with busy going and coming. The orchard-women embraced as they met, and with their heavy baskets propped on their hips, went into the chocolate shops to celebrate the encounter. The men gathered in groups; and from time to time, to "buck up" a little, would go off in parties to swallow a glass of sweet brandy. In and out among the rustics walked the city people: "petty bourgeois" of set manners, with old capes, and huge hempen baskets, where they would place the provisions they had bought after tenacious hagglings; señoritas, who found in these Wednesday markets a welcome relief from the monotony of their secluded life at home; idlers who spent hour after hour at the stall of some vendor friend, prying into what each marketer carried in his basket, grumbling at the stinginess of some and praising the generosity of others.
Rafael gazed at his friend in sheer astonishment. What a beauty she was! Who could ever have taken her, in that costume, for a world-famous prima donna!
Leonora looked the living picture of an orchard girl: a plain cotton dress, in anticipation of spring; a red kerchief around her neck; her blond hair uncovered, combed back with artful carelessness and hastily knotted low on the back of her head. Not a jewel, not a flower! Only her height and her striking comeliness marked her off from the other girls. Under the curious, devouring glances of the whole market throng, Rafael smilingly greeted her, feasting his eyes on her fresh, pink skin, still radiant from the morning bath, inhaling the subtle, indefinable fragrance that hovered about that strong, healthy, youthful person.
She was constantly smiling, as if bent on dazzling the bumpkins, who were gaping at her from a distance, with the pearly flash of her teeth. The market-place began to buzz with admiring curiosity, or the thrill of scandal. There, face to face, in view of the whole city, the deputy and the opera singer were talking and laughing together like the best of friends!
Rafael's supporters—the chief officials in the city government—who were loitering about the square, could not conceal their satisfaction. Even the humblest of the constables felt a certain pride. That beautiful fairy was talking with "the Chief," smiling at him, even. What an honor for "the Party!" But after all, why not? Everything considered, don Rafael Brull deserved all that, and more! And those men, who were very careful to keep silent when their wives spoke indignantly of the "stranger," admired her with the instinctive fervor that beauty inspires, and envied the deputy his good fortune. The old orchard-women wrapped the couple in caressing glances of approval. There was a handsome pair! What a fine match!
The town ladies in passing by would draw up full height and pretend not to see them. On meeting acquaintances they would make wry faces and say ironically: "Did you see?… here she is, in full sight of everybody, casting her fly for doña Bernarda's son!" What a disgrace! It was getting so a decent woman hardly dared go out of doors!
Leonora, quite unconscious of the interest she was arousing, chattered on about her shopping. Beppa, you see, had decided to stay at home with her aunt that morning; so she had come with her gardener's wife and another woman—there they were over there with the large baskets. She had no end of things to get—and she laughed as she read off the list. A regular housewife she had become, yes, sir! She knew the price of everything and could tell down to a centime just what it was costing her to live. It was like those hard times back in Milan, when she had gone with her music roll under her arm to get macaroni, butter or coffee at the grocer's. And what fun it all was!… However, Leonora observed that, without a doubt, her audience was interpreting her cordial offhand way with Rafael in the worst light possible. She gave him her hand and took leave. It was growing late! If she stood there much longer the best of the market would be carried off by others—if she found anything at all left! "Down to business, then! Good-bye!"
And the young man saw her make her way, followed by the two country women, through the crowds, pausing at the booths, welcomed by the vendors with their best smiles, as a customer who never haggled; interrupting her purchases to fondle the filthy, whining children the poor women were carrying in their arms, and taking the best fruits out of her basket to give to the little ones.
And everywhere general admiration! "Así, siñorita!–Here, my dear young lady!" "Vinga, doña Leonor!–This way, doña Leonora!" the huckstresses cried, calling her by name to show greater intimacy. And she would smile, with a familiar intimate word for everybody, her hand frequently visiting the purse of Russian leather that hung from her wrist. Cripples, blind beggars, men with missing arms or legs, all had learned of the generosity of that woman who scattered small change by the fistful.
Rafael gazed after her, smiling indifferently in acknowledgment of the congratulations the town notables were heaping on him. The alcalde—the most hen-pecked husband in Alcira, according to his enemies—affirmed with sparkling eyes that for a woman like that he was capable of doing almost any crazy thing. And they all joined in a chorus of invidious praise, taking it for granted that Rafael was the artiste's accepted lover; though the youth himself smiled bitterly at the thought of his real status with that wonderful woman.
And she vanished, finally, into the sea of heads at the other end of the market-place; though Rafael, from time to time, thought he could still make out a mass of golden hair rising above the chevelures of the other girls. Willingly he would have followed; but Don Matias was at his side—don Matias, the wealthy orange exporter, father of the wistful Remedios who was spending her days obediently at doña Bernarda's side.
That gentleman, heavy of speech and heavier still of thought, was pestering Rafael with a lot of nonsense about the orange business, giving the young man advice on a new bill he had drawn up and wanted to have introduced in Congress—a protectionist measure for Spanish oranges. "Why, it will be the making of the city, boy! Every mother's son of us swimming in money!" as he guaranteed with his hand upon his heart.
But Rafael's gaze was lost in the distant reaches of the Prado, to catch one more fleeting glimpse of a golden head of hair—proof of Leonora's presence still! He found it hard to be courteous, even, to this man who, according to authentic rumor, was destined to be his father-in-law. Of all the drawling trickling words only a few reached his ears, beating on his brain like monotonous hammer blows. "Glasgow … Liverpool … new markets … lower railroad rates … The English agents are a set of thieves …"
"Very well, let them go hang," Rafael answered mentally. And giving a mechanical "yes, yes!" to propositions he was not even hearing, he gazed away more intently than ever, fearing lest Leonora should already have gone. He felt relieved, however, when a gap opened in the crowd and he could see the actress seated in a chair that had been offered her by a huckstress. She was holding a child upon her knees, and talking with a tiny, wretched, sickly creature who looked to Rafael like the orchard-woman they had met at the hermitage.
"Well, what do you think of my plan?" don Matias asked.
"Excellent, magnificent, and well worthy of a man like you, who knows the question from top to bottom. We'll discuss the matter thoroughly when I return to the Cortes."
And to avoid a second exposition, he patted the wealthy boor on the back, and wondered why in the world Fortune should have picked such a disgusting man to smile on.
The whole city had known don Matias when he went around in peasant's clogs and worked a tiny orchard he had secured on lease. His son, a virtual half-wit, who took advantage of every opportunity to rifle the old man's pockets and spend the money in Valencia with bull-fighters, gamblers and horse-dealers, went barefoot in those days, scampering about the roads with the children of the gipsies encamped in El Alborchi. His daughter—the now well-behaved, the now modest, Remedios, who was passing day after day at complicated needlework under the tutelage of doña Bernarda—had grown up like a wild rabbit of the fields, repeating with shocking fidelity all the oaths and vile language she heard from the carters her father drank with.
"But you have to be an ox to get rich these days!" the barber Cupido would say when don Matias came up for discussion.
Little by little the man had worked his way into the orange export business—to England especially. His first stock he bought on credit; and at once Fortune began to blow upon him with bloated cheeks, and she was still puffing and puffing! His wealth had been accumulated in a few years. In crises where the most powerful vessels foundered, that rude and heavy bark, sailing on without chart or compass, suffered not the slightest harm. His shipments always arrived at the psychological moment. The fancy, carefully-selected oranges of other merchants would land at Liverpool or London when the markets were glutted and prices were falling scandalously. The lucky dolt would send anything at all along, whatever was available, cheap; and circumstances always seemed to favor him with an empty market and prices sky-high regardless of quality. He realized fabulous profits. He had nothing but scorn for all the wiseacres who subscribed to the English papers, received daily bulletins and compared market quotations from year to year, getting, for all their pains, results that made them tear their hair. He was an ignoramus and he was proud of it! He trusted to his lucky star. Whenever he thought it best, he would ship his produce off from the port of Valencia, and—there you are!–it would always turn out that his oranges found no competition on arrival and brought the highest prices. More than once it had happened that rough weather held his vessel up. Well—the market would sell out, and his shipment would have a clear field just the same!
Within two years he had a place in town and had become a "personage." He would smilingly declare that he wouldn't "go to the wall for under eighty thousand duros." Later, ever on the wing, his fortune reached dizzy heights. Folks whispered in superstitious awe the figures he made in net profits at the end of every sailing. He owned warehouses as large as churches in the vicinity of Alcira, employing armies of girls to wrap the oranges and regiments of carpenters to make the crates. He would buy the crop of an entire orchard at a single glance and never be more than a few pounds off. As for the pay he gave, the city was proud of its millionaire. Not even the Bank of Spain enjoyed the respect and confidence his firm had won. No clerks and cashiers! No mahogany furniture! Everything above board! Ask for a hundred thousand; and if don Matías said "yes," he just went in to his bedroom and, God knows from where, he would draw out a roll of bank-notes the size of your body!
And this lucky rustic, this upstart lout, rich without deserving it for any competence he had, was giving himself the airs of an intelligent dealer, presuming to approach Rafael, "his deputy," with a proposal for a freight-rate bill to promote the shipping of oranges into the interior of Spain! As if a little thing like a bill in Congress would make any difference to his way of getting money!
Of his wretched past don Matías preserved but a single trait: his respect for the house of Brull. The rest of the city he treated with a certain uppishness; but he could not conceal the awe which doña Bernarda inspired in him—a feeling that was strengthened by gratitude for her kindness in singling him out (after he had become rich), and for the interest she showed in his "little girl." He cherished a vivid memory of Rafael's father, the "greatest man" he had known in all his life. It seemed as though he could still see don Ramón stopping on his big horse in front of his humble farmhouse and, with the air of a grand lord, leaving orders for what don Matías was to do in the coming elections. He knew the bad state in which the great man had left his affairs upon his death; and more than once he had given money to doña Bernarda outright, proud that she should do him the honor of appealing to him in her straits. But in his eyes, the House of Brull, poor or rich, was always the House of Brull, the cradle of a dynasty whose authority no power could shake. He had money. But those others, the Brulls—ah!–they had, up there in Madrid, friends, influence! If they wanted to they could get the ear of the Throne itself. They were people with a "pull," and if anyone suggested in his presence that Rafael's mother was thinking of Remedios as a daughter-in-law, don Matías would redden with satisfaction and modestly reply:
"I don't know; I imagine it's all talk. My Remedios is only a town girl, you see. The señor deputy is probably thinking of someone from the 'upper crust' in Madrid."
Rafael had for some time been aware of his mother's plans. But he had no use for "that crowd." The old man, despite his boresome habit of suggesting "new bills," he could stand on account of his touching loyalty to the Brull family. But the girl was an utterly insignificant creature, pretty, to be sure, but only as any ordinary young girl is pretty. And underneath that servile gentleness of hers lay an intelligence even more obtuse than her father's, a mind filled with nothing but piety and the religious phrases in which she had been educated.
That morning, followed by an aged servant, and with all the gravity of an orphan who must busy herself with the affairs of her household and act as head of the home, Remedios had walked by Rafael twice. She scarcely looked at him. The submissive smile of the future slave with which she usually greeted him had disappeared. She was quite pale, and her colorless lips were pressed tight together. Without a doubt in the world she had seen him, from a distance, talking and laughing with "the chorus girl." His mother would know all about it within an hour! Really, that young female seemed to think he was her private property! And the angry expression on her face was that of a jealous wife taking notes for a curtain-lecture!
Scenting a danger Rafael took hasty leave of don Matias and his other friends, and left the market place to avoid another meeting with Remedios. Leonora was still there. He would wait for her on the road to the orchard. He must take advantage of the early hour!
The orange country seemed to be quivering under the first kisses of spring. The lithe poplars bordering the road were covered with tender leaves. In the orchards the buds on the orange-trees, filling with the new sap, were ready to burst, as in one grand explosion of perfume, into white fragrant bloom. In the matted herbage on the river-banks the first flowers were growing. Rafael felt the cool caress of the sod as he sat down on the edge of the road. How sweet everything smelled! What a beautiful day it was!
The timorous, odorous violet must be sprouting on the damp ground yonder under the alders! And he went looking along the stream for those little purple flowers that bring dreams of love with their fragrance! He would make a bouquet to offer Leonora as she came by.
He felt thrilled with a boldness he had never known before. His hands burned feverishly. Perhaps it was the emotion from his own sense of daring. He had resolved to settle things that very morning. The fatuity of the man who feels himself ridiculous and is determined to raise himself in the eyes of his admirers, excited him, filling him with a cynical rashness.
What would his friends, who envied him as Leonora's lover, say if they knew she was treating him as an insignificant friend, a good little boy who helped her while away the hours in the solitude of her voluntary exile?
A few kisses—on her hand; a few kind words; many many cruel jests, such as come from a chum conscious of superiority … that was all he had won after months and months and months of assiduous courtship, months of disobedience to his mother, in whose house he had been living like a stranger, without affection, at daggers' points; months of exposure to the criticism of his enemies, who suspected him of a liaison with the "chorus girl" and were raising their brows, horror-stricken, in the name of morality. How they would scoff, if they knew the truth! Those addlepates down at the Club were always boasting of their amorous adventures, which began inevitably with the sudden physical attack and ended in easy triumph.
With the Spaniard's mortal dread of looking ridiculous, Rafael began to assure himself that those brutes were right—that such was the road to a woman's heart. He had been too respectful, too humble, gazing at Leonora, timidly, submissively, from afar, as an idolater might look at an ikon. Bosh! Wasn't he a man, and isn't the man the stronger? Some show of a male authority, that was what she needed! He liked her! Well, that was the end of it! His she must be! Besides, since she treated him so kindly, she surely loved him! A few scruples perhaps! But that would be nothing, before a show of real manhood!
Just as this valorous decision had emerged in the full splendor of its dignity from the mess of vacillation in his weak, irresolute character, Rafael heard voices down the road. He jumped to his feet. Leonora was approaching, followed by the two peasant women, who were bent low under their heavily laden baskets.
"Here, too!" the actress exclaimed with a laugh that rippled charmingly under the white skin of her throat. "You are getting to be my shadow. In the market place, on the road, everywhere! I find you every time I look around!"
She accepted the bouquet of violets from the young man's hand, inhaling their fragrance with evidence of keen enjoyment.
"Thanks, Rafael, they are the first I have seen this season. My beautiful, faithful old friend! Springtime! You have brought her to me this year, though I felt her coming days before! I am so happy—can't you see? I feel as though I'd been a silkworm all winter, coiled up in a cocoon, and had now suddenly grown my wings! And I'm going to fly out over this great green carpet, so sweet with its first perfumes! Don't you feel as I do, Rafael?…"
Rafael, gravely, said he did. He, too, felt a seething in his blood, the nip of life in every one of his pores! And his eyes ran over the bare neck in front of him, a neck of such tempting smoothness, its white beauty set off by the red kerchief; and over the violets resting on that strong, robust bosom. The two orchard women exchanged a shrewd smile, a meaningful wink, at sight of Rafael, and went on ahead of their mistress, with the evident design of not disturbing the couple by their presence; but Leonora caught the look on their faces.
"Yes, go right on," she said. "We'll take our time, but we'll be there soon!"
And when they were out of hearing she resumed, pointing to the women with her closed parasol:
"Did you see that? Didn't you notice their smiles and the winks they exchanged when they saw you on the road?… Oh, Rafael! You are blind as a bat! And no good is going to come of it! If I had any reputation to lose, I'd be mighty careful with a friend like you! What do you suppose they are thinking?"
And she laughed with a pout of condescension, as though for her part, she did not care what people might be saying about her friendship with Rafael.
"On the market-place all the huckstresses talk to me about you, with the idea of flattering me. They assure me we'd make a wonderful couple. My kitchen woman seizes every opportunity to tell me how handsome you are. You ought to thank her.... Even my aunt, my poor aunt, with one leg in the grave, drew it out the other day to say to me: 'Do you notice that Rafael visits us quite frequently? Do you think he wants to marry you?' Marry, you see! Ha, ha, ha! Marry! That's all poor auntie can see in the world for a woman!"
And she went on gaily chattering like a wild bird escaped from a cage and happy at its liberty, though her frank, mocking laughter was in strange contrast with the expression of sinister determination on Rafael's face.
"But how glum and queer you look today! Are you ill?… What's the matter?"
Rafael took advantage of this opening. Ill, yes! Sick with love! He knew the whole place was gossiping about them. But it wasn't his fault. He simply couldn't hide his feelings. If she only realized what that mute adoration was costing him! He had tried to root the thought of her out of his mind, but that had been impossible. He must see her, hear her! He lived for her alone. Study? Impossible! Play, with his friends? They had all become obnoxious to him! His house was a cave, a cellar, a place to eat in and sleep in. He left it the moment he got out of bed, and kept away from the city, too, which seemed stuffy, oppressive, like a jail to him. Off to the fields; to the orchards, to the Blue House where she lived! He would wait and wait for afternoon to come—the time when, by a tacit arrangement neither of them had proposed, he might enter her orchard and find her on the bench under the four dead palms!… Well, he could not go on living that way. Poor folks envied him his power, because he was a deputy, at twenty-five! And yet his one purpose in life was to be … well, she could guess what … that garden bench, for instance, gently, deliciously burdened with her weight for whole afternoons; or that needlework which played about in her soft fingers; or one of her servants, Beppa, perhaps, who could waken her in the morning, bend low over her sleeping head, and smooth the loose tresses spread like rivulets of gold over the white pillow. A slave, an animal, a thing even, provided it should be in continuous contact with her person—that was what he longed to be; not to find himself obliged, at nightfall, to leave her after a parting absurdly prolonged by childish pretexts, and return to his irritating, common, vulgar life at home, to the solitude of his room, where he imagined he could see a pair of green eyes staring at him from every dark corner, tempting him.
Leonora was not laughing. Her gold-spotted eyes had opened wide; her nostrils were quivering with emotion. She seemed deeply moved by the young man's eloquent sincerity.
"Poor Rafael! My poor dear boy!… And what are we going to do?"
Down at the Blue House, Rafael had never dared speak so openly. The presence of Leonora's servants; the nonchalant, mocking air with which she welcomed him at the door; the irony with which she met his every hint at a declaration had always crushed, humiliated him. But there, on the open highway, it was different somehow. He felt free. He would empty his whole heart out.
What anguish! Every day he went to the Blue House trembling with hope, enthralled in his dream of love! "Perhaps it will be today," he would say to himself each time. And his legs would give way at the knees, and he would choke as he swallowed! Then, hours later, at nightfall, he would slink home, downcast, dispirited, desperate, staggering along the road under the star-light as if he were drunk, repressing the tears burning in his eyes, longing for the peace of death, like a weary explorer who must go on and on breaking his way over one ice-field after another. She must have noticed, surely! She must have seen the untiring efforts he made to please her!… Ignorant, humble, recognizing the vast gulf that separated them because of the different lives they had led, how he had worked to raise himself to a level with the men who had loved and won her! If she spoke of the Russian count—a model of stylish elegance—the next day, to the great astonishment of his mother, Rafael would take out his best clothes and, all sweating in the hot sun and nearly strangled by a high collar, he would set out along that same road—his Road to Calvary—walking on his toes like a boarding-school girl in order not to get his shoes dirty. If Hans Keller had come to Leonora's mind, he would run through his histories of music, and dressing up like some artist he had read about in novels, would come to her house fully intending to deliver an oration on the immortal Master, Wagner, whom he knew nothing at all about, but whom he adored as a member of his family.... Good God! All that was ridiculous, he knew very well; it would have been far better to present himself just as he was, undisguised, in all his littleness. He knew that this pretending to equality with the thousand or more figures flitting in Leonora's memory, was grotesque. But there was nothing, absolutely nothing he would not do to stir her heart a little, be loved for a day, a minute, a second—and then die!…
There was a note of such real feeling in the youth's confession that Leonora, more and more deeply moved, unconsciously drew closer to him, almost grazing him as they walked along; and she smiled slightly, as she repeated her previous phrase—a blend of motherly affection and compassion:
"Poor Rafael!… My poor dear boy!"
They had reached the gate to the orchard. The walk inside was deserted. In the little square some hens were scratching about.
Overwhelmed by the strain of that confession, in which he had vented the anguish and dreams of many months, Rafael leaned against the trunk of an old orange-tree. Leonora stood in front of him, listening to his words, with head lowered, making marks on the ground with the tip of her red parasol.
Die, yes; he had often read in novels about people dying for love. And he had always laughed at the absurdity of such a thing. But he understood now. Many a night, tossing in his delirium, he had thought of ending his misery in some tragic manner. The violent, domineering blood of his father seethed in his veins. Once firmly convinced she could never be his, he would kill her, to keep her from belonging to anybody… and then stab himself! They would fall together to the blood-soaked ground, and lie there as on a bed of red damask, and he would kiss her cold lips, without fear of being disturbed; kiss her and kiss her, till the last breath of his life exhaled upon her livid mouth.
He seemed to be saying all that with deadly earnestness. The muscles of his strong face quivered, and his eyes—Moorish eyes—glowed like live coals. Leonora was looking at him passionately now, as if a man were in front of her. She shuddered with a strange fascination as she pictured his barbarous dreams, fraught with blood and death. This was something new! This boy, when he saw that his love was vain, would not gloomily and prosaically slay himself as Macchia, the Italian poet, had done. He would die, but asserting himself, killing the woman, destroying his idol when it would not harken to his entreaties!
And, pleasantly excited by Rafael's tragic demeanor, she gave way to the thrill of it, letting herself be carried along by his anguished rapture. He had taken her arm and was drawing her off the path, out among the low-hanging branches of the orange-trees.
For some time they were both silent. Leonora seemed to be drinking in the virile perfume of that savage passionate adoration.
Rafael thought he had offended her, and was sorry for his violent words.
She must pardon him; he was beside himself, exasperated beyond bounds at her strange resistance. Leonora! Leonora! Why persist in spoiling a perfectly beautiful thing? He was not wholly a matter of indifference in her eyes. She did not dislike him. Otherwise she would not have let him be a friend and have permitted his frequent visits. Love?… Of course she did not love him—poor unhappy wretch that he was, incapable of inspiring passion in a woman like her. But let her just accept him. He would teach her to love him in time, win her by the sheer beauty of his own tenderness and worship. His love alone, alas, was great enough for both of them and for all the famous lovers in history put together! He would be her slave; a carpet for her to tread underfoot; a dog, always at her feet, his eyes burning with the fire of eternal fidelity! She would finally learn to be fond of him, if not out of passion, at least out of gratitude and pity!