VII
They had just finished lunch among the trunks and boxes that occupied a great part of Leonora's room in the Hôtel de Roma in Valencia.
For the first time they were at a table in familiar intimacy, with no other witness than Beppa, who was quite accustomed to every sort of surprise in her mistress's adventurous career. The faithful maid was examining Rafael with a respectful kindliness, as if he were a new idol that must share the unswerving devotion she showed for Leonora.
This was the first moment of tranquillity and happiness the young man had tasted for some days. The old hotel, with its spacious rooms, its high ceilings, its darkened corridors, its monastic silence, seemed to him a veritable abode of delight, a grateful place of refuge where for once he would be free of the gossip and the strife that had been oppressing him like a belt of steel. Besides, he could already feel the exotic charm that lingers around harbors and great railroad terminals. Everything about the place, from the macaroni of the lunch, and the Chianti in its straw-covered, heavy-paunched bottle, to the musical, incorrect Spanish of the hotel-proprietors—fleshy, massive men with huge mustaches in Victor Emmanuel style—spoke of flight, of delightful seclusion in that land so glowingly described by Leonora.
She had made an appointment with him in that hotel, a favorite haunt of artists. Somewhat off the main thoroughfares, the "Roma" occupies one whole side of a sleepy, peaceful, aristocratic square with no noise save the shouting of cab-drivers and the beating of horses' hoofs.
Rafael had arrived on the first morning train—and with no baggage; like a schoolboy playing truant, running off with just the clothes he had on his back. The two days since Leonora left Alcira had been days of torture to him. The singer's flight was the talk of the town. People were scandalized at the amount of luggage she had. Counted over in the imagination of that imaginative city, it eventually came to fill all the carts in the province.
The man who knew the business to the bottom was Cupido, the barber, who had dispatched the trunks and cases for her. He knew where the dangerous woman was bound, and he kept it so secret that everybody found it out before the train started. She was going back to Italy! He himself had checked and labelled the baggage to the Customs' House at the frontier—cases as big as a house, man! Trunks he could have lain down comfortable in, with his two "Chinamen" to boot! And the women, as they listened to his tale, applauded the departure with undissimulated pleasure. They had been liberated from a great danger. Joy go with her!
Rafael kept quite to himself. He was vexed at the curiosity of people, at the scoffing sympathy of his friends who condoled with him that his happiness was ending. For two days he remained indoors, followed by his mother's inquiring glances. Doña Bernarda felt more at ease now that the evil influence of the "chorus girl" promised to be over; but none the less she did not lose her frown. With a woman's instinct, she still scented the presence of danger.
The young man could hardly wait for the time to come. It seemed unbearable for him to be there at home while "she" was away off somewhere, alone, shut up in a hotel, waiting just as impatiently as he was for the moment of reunion.
What a sunrise it had been that day when he set out! Rafael burned with shame as he crept like a burglar in his stockings and on tip-toe, through the room where his mother received the orchard-folk and adjusted all accounts pertaining to the tilling of the land. He groped his way along guided by the light that came in through the chinks in the closed windows. His mother was sleeping in a room close by; he could hear her breathe—the labored respiration of a deep sleep that spelled recovery from the insomnia of the days of his love trysts. He could still feel the criminal shudder that rippled through him at a slight rattle of the keys, which had been left with the confidence of unlimited authority in the lock of an old chest where doña Bernarda kept her savings. With tremulous hands he had collected all the money she had put away in the small boxes there. A thief, a thief! But, after all, he was taking only what belonged to him. He had never asked for his share of his father's estate. Leonora was rich. With admirable delicacy she had refused to talk of money during their preparations for the journey; but he would refuse to live on her! He did not care to be like Salvatti, who had exploited the singer in her youth! That thought it had been which gave him strength to take the money finally and steal out of the house. But even on the train he felt uneasy; and su señoria, the deputy, shivered with an instinctive thrill of fear, every time a tricorne of the Civil Guard appeared at a railroad station. What would his mother say when she got up and found the money gone?
As he entered the hotel his self-confidence returned and his spirits revived. He felt as if he were entering port after a storm. He found Leonora in bed, her hair spread over the pillow in waves of gold, her eyes closed, and a smile on her lips, as if he had surprised her in the middle of a dream, where she had been tasting her memories of love. They ordered lunch in the room early, intending to set out on their journey at once. Circumspection, prudence, until they should be once beyond the Spanish border! They would leave that evening on the Barcelona mail for the frontier. And calmly, tranquilly, like a married couple discussing details of house-keeping in the calm of a quiet home, they ran over the list of things they would need on the train.
Rafael had nothing. He had fled like a fugitive from a fire, with the first clothes he laid hands on as he bounded out of bed. He needed many indispensable articles, and he thought of going out to buy them—a matter of a moment.
"But are you really going out?" asked Leonora with a certain anguish, as if her feminine instinct sensed a danger. "Are you going to leave me alone?…"
"Only a moment. I won't keep you waiting long."
They took leave of each other in the corridor with the noisy, nonchalant joy of passion, indifferent to the chamber-maids who were walking to and fro at the other end of the passageway.
"Good-bye, Rafael.... Another hug; just one more."
And as, with the taste of the last kiss still fresh on his lips, he reached the square, he saw a bejewelled hand still waving to him from a balcony.
Anxious to get back as soon as possible, the young man walked hurriedly along, elbowing his way among the cab-drivers swarming in front of the great Palacio de Dos Aguas, closed, silent, slumbering, like the two giants that guarded its portals, displaying in the golden downpour of sunlight the overdecorated yet graceful sumptuousness of its roccocò facade.
"Rafael! Rafael!…"
The deputy turned around at the sound of his name, and blanched as if he had seen a ghost. It was don Andrés, calling to him.
"Rafael! Rafael!"
"You?… Here?"
"I came by the Madrid express. For two hours I've been hunting for you in all the hotels of Valencia. I knew you were here.... But come, we have a great deal to talk over. This is not just the place to do it."
And the old Mentor glowered hatefully at the Hôtel de Roma, as if he wanted to annihilate the huge edifice with everybody in it.
They walked off, slowly, without knowing just where they were going, turning corners, passing several times through the same streets, their nerves tense and quivering, ready to shout at the top of their lungs, yet using every effort to speak softly, so as not to attract attention from the passers-by who were rubbing against them on the narrow side-walks.
Don Andrés, naturally, was the first to speak:
"You approve of what you've done?"
And seeing that Rafael, like a coward, was trying to pretend innocent astonishment, asking "what" he had done, observing that he had come to Valencia on a matter of business, the old man broke into a rage.
"Now, see here, don't you go lying to me: either we're men or we're not men. If you think you've acted properly, you ought to stand up for it and say so. Don't imagine you're going to pull the wool over my eyes and then run off with that woman to God knows where. I've found you and I'm not going to let you go. I want you to know the truth. Your mother is sick abed; she tipped me off and I caught the first train to get here. The whole house is upside down! At first it was thought a robbery had been committed. By this time the whole city must be agog about you. Come now!… What do you say to that? Do you want to kill your mother? Well, you're going about it right! Good God! And this is what they call a 'boy of talent,' a 'young man of promise'! How much better it would have been if you were a dunce like me or your father—but a dunce at least who knows how to get a woman if he has to, without making a public ass of himself!"
Then he went into detail. Rafael's mother had gone to the old chest to get some money for one of her laborers. Her cry of horror and alarm had thrown the whole house into an uproar. Don Andrés had been hastily summoned. Suspicions against the servants, a "third degree" for the whole lot, all of them protesting and weeping, in outrage! Until finally doña Bernarda sank to a chair in a swoon, whispering into her adviser's ear:
"Rafael is not in the house. He has gone … perhaps never to return. I am sure of it—he took the money!"
While the others were getting the sobbing mother to bed, and sending for the doctor, don Andrés had made for the station to catch the express. He could tell from the way people looked at him that everybody knew what had been going on. Gossip had already connected the excitement in the Brull mansion with Rafael's taking the early train! He had been seen by several persons, in spite of his precautions.
"Well, is the Hon. don Rafael Brull, member from Alcira, satisfied with his morning's work? Don't you think the laugh your enemies have raised deserves an encore!"
For all his bitter sarcasm the old man spoke in a faltering voice, and seemed on the verge of tears. The labor of his entire life, the great victories won with don Ramón, that political power which had been so carefully built up and sustained over decades, was about to crumble to ruins; all because of a light-headed, erratic boy who had handed to the first skirt who came along everything that belonged to him and everything that belonged to his friends as well.
Rafael had gone into the interview in an aggressive mood, ready to answer with plain talk if that sodden idiot should go too far in his recriminations. But the sincere grief of the old man touched him deeply. Don Andrés, who resembled Rafael's father as the cat resembles the tiger, could think of nothing but Brull politics; and he was almost sobbing as he saw the danger which the prestige of the Brull House was running.
With bowed head, crushed by the realization of the scene that had followed his flight, Rafael did not notice where they were going. But soon he became conscious of the perfume of flowers. They were crossing a garden; and as he looked up he saw the figure of Valencia's conqueror on his sinewy charger glistening in the sun.
They walked on. The old man began in wailing accents to describe the situation which the Brull House was facing. That money, which perhaps Rafael still had in his pocket—more than thirty thousand pesetas—represented the final desperate efforts of his mother to rescue the family fortune, which had been endangered by don Ramón's prodigal habits. The money was his, and don Andrés had nothing to say in that regard. Rafael was at liberty to squander it, scatter it to the four winds of heaven; but don Andrés wasn't talking to a child, he was talking to a man with a heart: so he begged him, as his childhood preceptor, as his oldest friend, to consider the sacrifices his mother had been making—the privations she had imposed upon herself, going without new clothes, quarreling with her help over a céntimo, despite all her airs as a grand lady, depriving herself of all the dainties and comforts that are so pleasant to old age—all that her son, her señor hijo, might waste it in gay living on a woman! Thirty thousand! And don Andrés mentioned the sum with bated breath! It had taken so much trouble to hoard it! Come, man! The sight of such things was enough to make a fellow cry like a baby!…
And suppose his father, don Ramón, were to rise from the grave? Suppose he could see how his Rafael were destroying at a single stroke what it had cost him so many years to build up, just because of a woman!…
They were now crossing a bridge. Below, against the background of white gravel in the river-bed the red and blue uniforms of a group of soldiers could be seen; and the drums were beating, sounding in the distance like the humming of a huge bee-hive—worthy accompaniment, Rafael reflected, to the old man's evocation of the youth's father. Rafael thought he could almost see in front of him the massive body, the flourishing mustache, the proud, arrogant brow of don Ramón, a born fighter, an adventurer destined from the cradle to lead men and impose his will upon inferiors.
What would that heroic master of men have said of this? Don Ramón would give a lot of money to a woman—granted—but he wouldn't have swapped all the beauties on earth put together for a single vote!
But his son, the boy on whom he had grounded his fondest hopes—the redeemer destined to raise the House of Brull to its loftiest glory—the future "personage" in Madrid, the fondled heir-apparent, who had found his pathway already cleared for him at birth—was throwing all his father's labors through the window, the way you toss overboard something it has cost you nothing to earn! It was easy to see that Rafael had never known what hard times were—those days of the Revolution, when the Brulls were out of power and held their own just because don Ramón was a bad man with a gun—desperate election campaigns, when you marched to victory over somebody's dead body, bold cross-country rides on election night, never knowing when you would meet the roder in ambush—the outlaw sharpshooter who had vowed to kill don Ramón; then endless prosecutions for intimidation and violence, which had given doña Bernarda and her husband months and months of anxiety, lest a catastrophe from one moment to the next bring prison and forfeiture of all their property! All that his father had gone through, for his boy's sake; to carve out a pedestal for Rafael, pass on to him a District that would be his own, blazing a path over which he might go to no visible limit of glory! And he was just throwing it all away, relinquishing forever a position that had been built up at the cost of years and years of labor and peril! That is what he would be doing, unless that very night he returned home, refuting by his presence there the rumors his scandalized adherents were circulating.
Rafael shook his head. The mention of his father had touched him, and he was convinced by the old man's arguments; but none the less he was determined to resist. No, and again no; his die was cast: he would continue on his way.
They were now under the trees of the Alameda. The carriages were rolling by, forming an immense wheel in the center of the avenue. The harnesses of the horses and the lamps of the drivers' boxes gleamed in the sunlight. Women's hats and the white lace shawls of children could be seen through the coach windows as they passed.
Don Andrés became impatient with the youth's stubbornness. He pointed to all those happy, peaceful-looking families out for their afternoon drive—wealth, comfort, public esteem, abundance, freedom from struggle and toil! Cristo, boy! Was that so bad, after all? Well, that was just the life he could have if he would be good and not turn his back on his plain duty—rich, influential, respected, growing old with a circle of nice children about him. What more could a decent person ask for in this world?
All that bohemian nonsense about pure love, love free from law and restraint, love that scoffs at society and its customs, sufficient unto itself and despising public opinion, that was just bosh, the humbug of poets, musicians and dancers—a set of outcasts like that woman who was taking him away, cutting him off forever from all the ties that bound him to family and country!
The old man seemed to take courage from Rafael's silence. He judged the moment opportune for launching the final attack upon the boy's infatuation.
"And then, what a woman! I have been young, like you, Rafael. It's true I didn't know a stylish woman like this one, but, bah! they're all alike. I have had my weaknesses; but I tell you I wouldn't have lifted a finger for this actress of yours! Any one of the girls we have down home is worth two of her. Clothes, yes, talk, yes, powder and rouge inches deep!… I'm not saying she's bad to look at—not that; what I say is… well, it doesn't take much to turn your head—you're satisfied with the leavings of half the men in Europe...."
And he came to Leonora's past, the lurid, much exaggerated legend of her journey through life—lovers by the dozens; statues and paintings of her in the nude; the eyes of all Europe centered on her beauty; the public property of a continent! "That was virtue to go crazy about, come now! Quite worth leaving house and home for, no doubt of that!"
The old man winced under the flash of anger that blazed in Rafael's eyes. They had just crossed another bridge, and were entering the city again. Don Andrés, wretched coward that he was, sidled away to be within reach of the customs' office if the fist he could already see cleaving the air should come his way.
Rafael, in fact, stopped in his tracks, glaring. But in a second or two he went on his way again, dejected, with bowed head, ignoring the presence of the old man. Don Andrés resumed his place at the boy's side.
The cursed old fox! He had stuck the knife in the right place! Leonora's past! Her favors distributed with mad lavishness over the four corners of the globe! An army of men of every nation owning her for a moment with the appeal of luxury or the enchantment of art! A palace today and a hotel tomorrow! Her lips repeating in all the languages of Babel the very words of love that had fired him as if he had been the first to hear them! He was going to lose everything for that—that refuse, as don Andrés said—a public scandal, a ruined reputation; and a murdered mother perhaps,—for that! Oh, that devil of a don Andrés! How cunningly he had slashed him, and then plunged his fingers into the bleeding gash to make the wound deeper! The old man's plain common-sense had shattered his dream. That man had been the rustic, cunning Sancho at the side of the quixotic don Ramón; and he was playing the same role with Rafael!
Leonora's story came back to the boy in one flash—the frank confession she had made during the days of their mere friendship, when she had told him everything to prevent his continuing to desire her. However much she might adore him, he would be nothing after all but a successor to a Russian count, and a German musician; the latest, simply among those countless ephemeral lovers, whom she had barely mentioned but who must none the less have left some trace in her memory. The last item in a long inventory! The most recent arrival, coming several years late, and content to nibble at the soggy over-ripe fruit which they had known when it was fresh and firm. Her kisses that so deeply disturbed him! What were they but the intoxicating, unhealthful perfume of a whole career of corruptness and licentiousness, the concentrated essence of a world madly dashing at her seductive beauty, as a bird of night breaks its head against the globe of a lighthouse? Give up everything for that! The two of them traveling about the world, free, and proud of their passion!… And out in that world he would encounter many of his predecessors; and they would look at him with curious, ironic eyes, knowing of her all that he would know, able to repeat all the panting phrases she would speak to him in the exaggerations of her insatiable passion! The strange thing about it was that all this had not occurred to him sooner. Blind with happiness, he had never thought an instant of his real place in that woman's life!
How long had they been walking through the streets of Valencia?… His legs were sagging under him! He was faint with weariness. He could hardly see. The gables of the houses were still tipped with sunlight, yet he seemed to be groping about in a deep night.
"I'm thirsty, don Andrés. Let's go in somewhere."
The old man headed him toward the Café de España, his favorite resort. He selected the table in the center of the big square salon under the four clocks supported by the angel of Fame. The walls were covered with great mirrors that opened up fantastic perspectives in the dingy room where the gilded ornaments were blackened by the smoke and a crepuscular light filtered in through the lofty skylight as into a sombre crypt.
Rafael drank, without realizing just what his glass contained—a poison, it felt like, that froze his heart. Don Andrés sat looking at the writing articles on the marble table: a letter-case of wrinkled oil-cloth, and a grimy ink-well. He began to rap upon them with the holder of the public pen—rusty and with the points bent—an instrument of torture well fitted for a hand committed to despair!
"We have just an hour to catch our train! Come, Rafael, be a man! There's still time! Come, let's get out of this mess we're in!"
And he held out the pen, though he had not said a word about writing to anybody.
"I can't, don Andrés. I'm a gentleman. I've given my word; and I will not go back upon it, come what may!"
The old man smiled ironically.
"Very well, be as much of a gentleman as you please. She deserves it! But when you break with her, when she leaves you, or you leave her, don't come back to Alcira. Your mother won't be there to welcome you! I shall be—I don't know where; and those who made you deputy will look upon you as a thief who robbed and killed his mother.... Oh, get mad if you want to—beat me up even; people at the other tables are already looking at us.... Why not top the whole business off with a saloon brawl? But just the same, everything I've been saying to you is gospel truth!…"
In the meantime Leonora was growing impatient in her hotel room. Three hours had gone by. To relieve her nervousness she sat down behind the green curtain at the window watching pedestrians crossing the square.
How like a small piazza of old Florence this place was, with its stately aristocratic residences, shrouded in imposing gloom; it's grass-grown, cobblestone pavements hot from the sun; its sleepy solitude: an occasional woman, or a priest, or a tourist,—and you could hear their footsteps even when they were far away! Here was a curious corner of the Palacio de Dos Agnas—panels of jasper stucco with a leaf design on the mouldings! That talking came from the drivers gathered in the hotel door—the innkeeper and the servants were setting the chairs out on the sidewalk as if they were back at home—in a small Italian town! Behind the roof opposite, the sunlight was gradually fading, growing paler and softer every moment.
She looked at her watch. Six o'clock! Where on earth could that Rafael have gone? They were going to lose the train. In order to waste no time, she ordered Beppa to have everything in readiness for departure. She packed her toilet articles; then closed her trunks, casting an inquiring glance over the room with the uneasiness of a hasty leave-taking. On an armchair near the window she laid her traveling coat, then her hand-bag, and her hat and veil. They would have to run the moment Rafael came in. He would probably be very tired and nervous from returning so late.
But Rafael did not come!… She felt an impulse to go out and look for him; but where? She had not been in Valencia since she was a child. She had forgotten the streets. Then she might actually pass Rafael on the way without knowing it, and wander aimlessly about while he would be waiting for her at the hotel. No. It would be better to stay there!
It was now dusk and the hotel-room was virtually dark. She went to the window again, trembling with impatience, filled with all the gloom of the violet light that was falling from the sky with a few red streaks from the sunset. They would surely lose the train now! They would have to wait until the next day. That was a disappointment! They might have trouble in getting away!
She whirled nervously about as she heard someone calling from the corridor.
"Madame, madame, a letter for you!"
A letter for her!… She snatched it feverishly from the bell-boy's hand, while Beppa, seated on a trunk, looked on vacantly, without expression.
She began to tremble violently. The thought of Hans Keller, the ungrateful artist, suddenly rose in her memory. She looked for a candle on the chiffonier. There was none. Finally she went to the balcony and tried to read the letter in the little light there was.
It was his handwriting on the envelope—but tortuous, labored, as if it were the product of a painful effort. She felt all her blood rush back upon her heart. Madly she tore the letter open, and read with the haste of a person anxious to drain the cup of bitterness at a single draught, skipping a line here and a line there, taking in only the significant words.
"My mother very ill.... I must go home for a day or two … my duty as a son … we'll soon meet again." And then all the cowardly, conventional excuses that chivalry has created to soften the harshness of desertion—the promise to join her again as soon as possible; passionate protestations that she was the only woman in the world he loved.
Her first thought was to go back to Alcira at once, walk there if necessary, find the scamp somewhere, throw the letter into his face, beat him, claw him to pieces!
"Ah, the wretch! The infamous, cowardly, unspeakable wretch!" she cried.
Beppa had found a candle. She lighted it. And there her mistress was—staggering, deathly pale, her eyes wide open, her lips white with anguish! Leonora began to walk up and down the apartment, taut and strained, as if her feet were not moving at all, as if she were being thrust about by an invisible hand.
"Beppa," she groaned finally, "he has gone. He is deserting me."
The maid did not care about the desertion particularly. She had been through that before. She was thinking about Leonora, waiting for the impending crisis, studying the anguished countenance of her mistress with her own placid, bovine eyes.
"The wretch!" Leonora hissed, pacing back and forth in the chamber. "What a fool, what a complete, unconscionable fool I have been! Giving myself to that man, believing in that man, trusting that man, giving up my peace of mind, the last relative I had in the world for that man!… And why would he not let me go off alone? He made me dream of an eternal springtime of love, and now he deserts me.... He has tricked me … he is laughing at me … and I can not hate him. Why did he insist on rousing me when I was there alone, quite peaceful, forgetting everything, sunk in a placid indulgent calm!… The cool fraud that he was!… But what do I care, after all?… It's all over. Come Beppa, cheer up! Hah-hah! Come, Beppa! We're off! We're off! We're going to sing again! Off over the whole globe. Good-bye to this rat-hole forever! I'm through educating children! Now for life again! And we'll drain them dry, the brutes! Kick them about like the selfish donkeys they are! Well, well! I can't believe I've been taken in this way! Isn't it a joke? The best joke you ever heard! Ha, ha, ha! And I thought I knew the world …! Ha, ha! Ha, ha!…"
And her laugh was audible distinctly down in the square. It was a wild, shrill, metallic laughter, that seemed to be rending her flesh! The whole hotel was in commotion, while the actress, with foaming lips, fell to the floor and began to writhe in fury, overturning the furniture and bruising her body on the iron trimmings of her trunks.