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 embassy 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 passed:
"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 embarrassed 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 Walküre here. But let's talk about you, illustrious 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 embassy, 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 passion'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 eyeglasses! 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 passes 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, pass 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 passes but once in a lifetime. I know that from cruel experience. I have done my best to forget. No, Love has passed 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 passion 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 passion.... 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. Passion 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!
"I will go with you; everybody is a stranger to me when I think of you. You, you alone, are my life, my love!"
"Many thanks," Leonora answered curtly. "I could not accept such a sacrifice.... Besides, all that sanctity of the home you were just talking about a few moments ago in the Chamber? And all that Christian morality, without which civilization would go to the damnation bow wows! How I laughed when I heard you say that. How you were stuffing those poor ninkampoops!…"
And again she laughed cruelly, at the contrast between his pious words in Congress and his mad idea of forsaking everything to follow her around the world. Oh, the hypocrite! She had felt, as she sat listening to him, that his speech was a pack of lies, a mess of conventional trumpery and platitudes! The only one there who had spoken with any real sincerity, any real virtue, was that little old man, whom she had listened to with veneration because he had been one of her father's idols!
Rafael was crushed with bitter shame. Leonora's flat refusal, her pitiless mockery of his speech, had brought him to realize the enormity of his baseness. She was avenging herself by bringing him face to face with the abjectness of his mad, hopeless passion, which made him capable of committing the lowest deeds!
Dusk was gathering. Leonora ordered the driver to the Plaza de Oriente. She was stopping in one of the houses near the Opera where many theatrical people lodged. She was in a hurry! She had a dinner engagement with that young man from the Embassy, and two musical critics were to be introduced to her.
"And I, Leonora? Are we not to see each other any longer?"
"As far as my door, if you wish, and then … till we meet again!"
"Oh, please, Leonora, stay here a few days! Let me see you! Let me have the consolation of talking to you, of feeling the bitter pleasure of your ridicule, at least!"
Stay a few days!… Her days did not belong to her. She traveled from one end of the world to the other, with her life marked off to the tick of the clock. From Madrid to Lisbon—an engagement at the San Carlos—three performances of Wagner! Then, a jump to Stockholm! After that she was not quite sure where she would go; to Odessa, or to Cairo. She was the Wandering Jew, the Valkyrie galloping along on the clouds of a musical tempest, from frontier to frontier, from pole to pole, arrogant, victorious, suffering not the slightest harm to health or beauty.
"Oh, if you only would! If you would let me follow you! As your friend, nothing more! As your servant, if necessary!"
And he grasped her hand, passionately, thrusting his fingers up her sleeve, fondling the delicate arm underneath her glove. She did not resist.
"There! Do you see, Rafael?" she said, smiling coldly. "You have touched me, and it's useless; not the slightest thrill. You're as good as dead to me. My flesh does not tingle at your fondling. In fact, I find it all decidedly annoying!"
Rafael realized that it was true. She had once trembled madly under his caresses. Now she was quite insensible, quite cold!
"Don't worry, Rafael. It's over, spelled with a capital O. It's not worth wasting a moment's thought on. As I look at you now I feel the way I do when I see one of my old dresses that, in its time, I went mad over. I see nothing but the defects—the absurdities of the fashion that is out of date. Our passion died as it should properly have died. Perhaps your deserting me was for the best. It was better for you to default in the full splendor of our honeymoon than to have broken with me afterwards, when I should have moulded my nature forever to your caresses. We were brought together … oh, by the orange perfume, by that cursed Springtime; but you were not meant for me, nor was I ever meant for you. We are of different breeds. You were born a bourgeois. I am an out-and-out bohemian! Love and the novelty of my kind quite, dazzled you. You struggled hard, you beat your wings, to follow me, but you fell to earth from the very weight of your inherited traits. You have the appetites and the ambitions of people like you! Now you imagine you are unhappy! But you'll find you're not when you see yourself become a personage,' when you count the acreage of your orchards over, when you see your children growing up to inherit papa's power and fortune. This business of love for love's sake, mocking at law and morality, scorning life and peacefulness, that is our privilege, the privilege of us bohemians—the sole blessing left to us mad creatures whom society looks upon—quite properly, I suppose—with disdainful mistrust. Each to his own! The poultry to their quiet roost, where they can fatten in the sun; the birds of passage to their wandering life of song, sometimes in a flowering garden, sometimes in the cold and storm!"
And smiling again, as if those words, uttered with such gravity and conviction, had been too cruel in their effective summary of the whole story of their love, she added in a jesting tone:
"That was a fine little paragraph, wasn't it? What a pity you didn't hear it in time to tack it on at the end of your speech!"
The carriage had entered the Plaza de Oriente; and was drawing up in front of Leonora's house.
"May I go in with you?" the deputy asked anxiously, much as a child might beg for a toy.
"Why? You'll only be bored. It will be the same as here. Upstairs there is no moon, and there are no orange-trees in bloom. You can't expect two nights like that in a life like yours. Besides, I don't want Beppa to see you. She has a vivid recollection of that afternoon in the Hôtel de Roma when I got your note. I'd lose prestige with her if she saw me in your company."
With a commanding gesture she motioned him to the sidewalk. When the carriage had gone they stood there together for a moment looking at each other for the last time.
"Farewell, Rafael. Take good care of yourself, and try not to grow old so rapidly. I believe it's been a real pleasure, though, to see you again. I needed just this to convince myself it was really all over!"
"But are you going like this!… Is this the way you let a passion end that still fills my life!… When shall we see each other again?"
"I don't know: never … perhaps when you least expect it. The world is large, but when a person gads about it the way I do, you never can tell whom you are going to meet."
Rafael pointed to the Opera nearby.
"And if you should come to sing … here?… If I were actually to see you again?...."
Leonora smiled haughtily, guessing what he meant.
"In that case, you will be one of my countless friends, I suppose, but nothing more. Don't imagine that I'm a saint even now. I'm just as I was before you knew me. The property of everybody—understand—and of nobody! But of the janitor of the opera, if necessary, sooner than of you. You are a corpse, in my eyes, Rafael.... Farewell!"
He saw her vanish through the doorway; and he stood for a long time there on the sidewalk, completely crushed, staring vacantly into the last glow of twilight that was growing pale beyond the gables of the Royal Palace.
Some birds were twittering on the trees of the garden, shaking the leaves with their mischievous playfulness, as if the fires of Springtime were coursing in their veins. For Spring had come again, faithful and punctual, as every year.
He staggered off toward the center of the city, slowly, dejectedly, with the thought of death in his mind, bidding farewell to all his dreams, which that woman seemed to have destroyed forever in turning her back implacably upon him. Yes! A corpse, indeed! He was a dead man dragging a soulless body along under the sad glimmering of the first street-lamps. Farewell! Farewell to Love! Farewell to Youth! For him Springtime would never return again. Joyous Folly repelled him as an unworthy deserter. His future was to grow a fatter and fatter paunch under the frock coat of a "personage"!
At the corner of the Calle del Arenal he heard his name called. It was a deputy, a comrade of "the Party" who had just come from the session.
"Let me congratulate you, Brull; you were simply monumental! The Chief spoke enthusiastically of your speech to the Prime Minister! It's a foregone conclusion. At the first new deal you'll be made director-general or undersecretary at least! Again, my congratulations, old fellow!"