Chapter VII: Part TWO: I (2)

But Leonora could not live away from stageland: the ladies of the rural aristocracy avoided her, and she needed applause and admiration. She induced Selivestroff to move to St. Petersburg, and for a whole winter she sang at the Opera there, like a grand dame turned opera singer out of love for the work.

Once more she became the reigning _belle_. All the young Russian aristocrats who held commissions in the Imperial Guard, or high posts in the Government, spoke enthusiastically of the great Spanish beauty; and they envied Selivestroff. The count yearned moodily for the solitude of his castle, which held so many loving memories for him. In the bustling, competitive life of the capital, he grew jealous, sad, melancholy, irritable at the necessity of defending his love. He could sense the underground warfare that was being waged against him by Leonora's countless admirers.

One morning she was rudely awakened and leapt out of bed to find the count stretched out on a divan, pale, his shirt stained with blood. A number of gentlemen dressed in black were standing around him. They had just brought him in from a carriage. He had been wounded in the chest. The evening before, on leaving the theatre, the count had gone up for a moment to his Club. He had caught an allusion to Leonora and himself in some words of a friend. There had been blows--then hasty arrangements for a duel, which had been fought at sunrise, with pistols. Selivestroff died in the arms of his mistress, smiling, seeking those delicate, powerful, pearly hands for one last time with his bleeding lips. Leonora mourned him deeply, truly. The land where she had been so happy with the first man she had really loved became intolerable to her, and abandoning most of the riches that the count had given her, she went forth into the world again, storming the great theatres in a new fever of travel and adventure.

She was then just twenty-three, but already felt herself an old woman. How she had changed!... More affairs? As she went over that period of her life in her talk with Rafael, Leonora closed her eyes with a shudder of modesty and remorse. Drunk with fame and power she had rushed about the world lavishing her beauty on anyone who interested her for the moment. The property of everybody and of nobody! She could not remember the names, even, of all the men who had loved her during that era of madness, so many had been caught in the wake of her stormy flight across the world! She had returned to Russia once, and been expelled by the Czar for compromising the prestige of the Imperial Family, through an affair with a grand duke who had wanted to marry her. In Rome she had posed in the nude for a young and unknown sculptor out of pure compassion for his silent admiration; and she herself made his "Venus" public, hoping that the world-wide scandal would bring fame to the work and to its author. In Genoa she found Salvatti again, now "retired," and living on usury from his savings. She received him with an amiable smile, lunched with him, treated him as an old comrade; and at dessert, when he had become hopelessly drunk, she seized a whip and avenged the blows she had received in her time of slavery to him, beating him with a ferocity that stained the apartment with gore and brought the police to the hotel. Another scandal! And this time her name bandied about in a criminal court! But she, a fugitive from justice, and proud of her exploit, sang in the United States, wildly acclaimed by the American public, which admired the combative Amazon even more than the artist.

There she made the acquaintance of Hans Keller, the famous orchestra conductor, and a pupil and friend of Wagner. The German _maestro_ became her second love. With stiff, reddish hair, thick-rimmed eyeglasses, an enormous mustache that drooped over either side of his mouth and framed his chin, he was certainly not so handsome as Selivestroff. But he had one irresistible charm, the charm of Art. With the tragic Russian in her mind and on her conscience, she felt the need of burning herself in the immortal flame of the ideal; and she adored the famous musician for the artistic associations that hovered about him. For the first time, the much-courted Leonora descended from her lofty heights to seek a man's attention and came with her amorous advances to disturb the placid calm of that artist so wholly engrossed in the cult of the sublime Master.

Hans Keller noticed the smile that fell like a sunbeam upon his music scrolls. He closed them and let himself be drawn off on the by-paths of love. Leonora's life with the _maestro_ was an absolute rupture with all her past. Her one wish was to love and be loved--to throw a cloak of mystery over her real self, ashamed as she now was of her previous wild career. Her passion enthralled the musician and she in turn felt at once stirred and transfigured by the atmosphere of artistic fervor that haloed the illustrious pupil of Wagner.

The spirit of Him, the Master, as Hans Keller called Wagner with pious adoration, flashed before the singer's eyes like the revealing glory that converted Paul on the road to Damascus. Music, as she now saw clearly for the first time, was not a means of pleasing crowds, displaying physical beauty, and attracting men. It was a religion--the mysterious power that brings the infinite within us into contact with the infinite that surrounds us. She became the sinner awakening to repentance, and yearning for the atoning peace of the cloister, a Magdalen of Art, touched on the high road of worldliness and frivolity by the mystic sublimity of the Beautiful; and she cast herself at the feet of Him, the supreme Master, as the most victorious of men, lord of the mystery that moves all souls.

"Tell me more about Him," Leonora would say. "How much I would give to have known him as you did!... I did see him once in Venice: during his last days ...he was already dying."

And that meeting was, indeed, one of her most vivid and lasting memories. The declining afternoon enlivening the dark waters of the Grand Canal with its opalescent spangles; a gondola passing hers in the opposite direction; and inside, a pair of blue, imperious eyes, shining, under thick eyebrows, with the cold glint of steel--eyes that could never be mistaken for common eyes, for the divine fire of the Elect, of the demi-God, was bright within them! And they seemed to envelop her in a flash of cerulean light. It was He--ill, and about to die. His heart was wounded, bleeding, pierced, perhaps, by the shafts of mysterious melody, as hearts of the Virgin sometimes bleed on altars bristling with swords.

Leonora could still see him as if he were there in front of her. He looked smaller than he really was, dwarfed, apparently, by illness, and by the wrack of pain. His huge head, the head of a genius, was bent low over the bosom of his wife Cosima. He had removed the black felt hat so as to catch the afternoon breeze full upon his loose gray locks. His broad, high curved forehead, seemed to weigh down upon his body like an ivory chest laden full of unseen jewels. His arrogant nose, as strong as the beak of a bird of prey, seemed to be reaching across the sunken mouth toward the sensuous, powerful jaw. A gray beard ran down along the neck, that was wrinkled, wasted with age. A hasty vision it had been, to be sure; but she had seen him; and his venerable figure remained in her memory like a landscape glimpsed at the flare of a lightning-flash. She had witnessed his arrival in Venice to die in the peace of those canals, in that silence which is broken only by the stroke of the oar--where many years before he had thought himself dying as he wrote his _Tristan_--that hymn to the Death that is pure, to the Death that liberates! She saw him stretched out in the dark boat; and the splash of the water against the marble of the palaces echoed in her imagination like the wailing, thrilling trumpets at the burial of Siegfried--the hero of Poetry marching to the Valhalla of immortality and glory upon a shield of ebony--motionless, inert as the young hero of the Germanic legend--and followed by the lamentations of that poor prisoner of life, Humanity, that ever eagerly seeks a crack, a chink, in the wall about it, through which the inspiriting, comforting ray of beauty may penetrate.

And the singer gazed with tearful eyes at the broad _boina_ of black velvet, the lock of gray hair, two broken, rusty steel pens--souvenirs of the Master, that Hans Keller had piously preserved in a glass case.

"You knew him--tell me how he lived. Tell me everything: talk to me about the Poet ... the Hero."

And the musician, no less moved, described the Master as he had seen him in the best of health; a small man, tightly wrapped in an overcoat--with a powerful, heavy frame, however, despite his slight stature--as restless as a nervous woman, as vibrant as a steel spring, with a smile that lightly touched with bitterness his thin, colorless lips. Then came his "genialities," as people said, the caprices of his genius, that figure so largely in the Wagner legend: his smoker, a jacket of gold satin with pearl flowers for buttons; the precious cloths that rolled about like waves of light in his study, velvets and silks, of flaming reds and greens and blues, thrown across the furniture and the tables haphazard, with no reference to usefulness--for their sheer beauty only--to stimulate the eye with the goad of color, satisfy the Master's passion for brightness; and perfumes, as well, with which his garments--always of oriental splendor--were literally saturated; phials of rose emptied at random, filling the neighborhood with the fragrance of a fabulous garden, strong enough to overcome the hardiest uninitiate, but strangely exciting to that Prodigy in his struggle with the Unknown.

And then Hans Keller described the man himself, never relaxed, always quivering with mysterious thrills, incapable of sitting still, except at the piano, or at table for his meals; receiving visitors standing, pacing back and forth in his salon, his hands twitching in nervous uncertainty; changing the position of the armchairs, rearranging the furniture, suddenly stopping to hunt about his person for a snuff-box or a pair of glasses that he never found; turning his pockets inside out, pulling his velvet house-cap now down over one eye, now back over the crown of his head, or again, throwing it into the air with a shout of joy or crumpling it in his hand, as he became excited in the course of a discussion!

And Keller would close his eyes, imagining that he could still hear in the silence, the faint but commanding voice of the Master. Oh, where was he now? On some star, doubtless, eagerly following the infinite song of the spheres, a divine music that only his ears had been attuned to hear! And to choke his emotion, the musician would sit down at the piano, while Leonora, responsive to his mood, would approach him, and standing as rigid as a statue, with her hands lost in the musician's head of rough tangled hair, sing a fragment from the immortal _Tetralogy_.

Worship of Wagner transformed the butterfly into a new woman. Leonora adored Keller as a ray of light gone astray from the glowing star now extinguished forever; she felt the joy of humbleness, the sweetness of sacrifice, seeing in him not the man, but the chosen representative of the Divinity. Leonora could have grovelled at Keller's feet, let him trample on her--make a carpet of her beauty. She willed to become a slave to that lover who was the repository of the Master's thoughts; and who seemed to be magnified to gigantic proportions by the custody of such a treasure.

She tended him with the exquisite watchfulness of an enamored servant, following him, on his trips in the summer, the season of the great concerts, to Leipzig, Geneva, Paris; and she, the most famous living prima donna, would stay behind the scenes, with no jealousy for the applause she heard, waiting for Hans, perspiring and tired, to drop the baton amid the acclamations of the audience and come back-stage to have her dry his forehead with an almost filial caress.

And thus they traveled about Europe, spreading the light of the Master; Leonora, voluntarily in the background, like a patrician of old, dressed as a slave and following the Apostle in the name of the New Word.

The German musician let himself be adored, receiving all her caresses of enthusiasm and love with the absent-mindedness of an artist so preoccupied with sounds that at last he comes to hate words. He taught his language to Leonora that she might some day realize a dream of hers and sing in Bayreuth; and he grounded her in the principles that had guided the Master in the creation of his great characters. And so, when Leonora made her appearance on the stage one winter with the winged helmet and the lance of the Valkyrie, she attained an eminence in Wagnerian interpretation that was to follow her for the remainder of her career. Hans himself was carried away by her power, and could never recover from his astonishment at Leonora's complete assimilation of the spirit of the Master.

"If only He could hear you!" he would say with conviction. "I am sure He would be content."

And the pair traveled about the world together. Every springtime she, as spectator, would watch him directing Wagnerian choruses in the "Mystic Abyss" at Bayreuth. Winters it was he who went into ecstasies under her tremendous "_Hojotoho_!"--the fierce cry of a Valkyrie afraid of the austere father Wotan; or at sight of her awakening among the flames for the spirited Siegfried, the hero who feared nothing in the world, but trembled at the first glance of love!

But artists' passions are like flowers, fragrant, but quickly languishing. The rough German musician was a simple person, unstable, fickle, ready to be amused at any new plaything. Leonora admitted to Rafael that she could have lived to old age submissively at Keller's side, pampering his whims and selfish caprices. But one day Keller deserted her, as she had deserted others, to take up with a sickly, languid contralto, whose best charms could have been hardly comparable to the morbid delicacy of a hot-house flower. Leonora, mad with love and jealousy, pursued him, knocking at his door like a servant. For the first time she felt the voluptuous bitterness of being scorned, discarded, until reaction from despair brought her back to her former pride and self-control!

Love was over. She had had enough of artists; though an interesting sort of folk they were in their way. Far preferable were the ordinary, normal men she had known before Keller's time! The foolisher--the more commonplace--the better! She would never fall in love again!

Wearied, broken in spirit, disillusioned, she went back into her old world. But now the legend of her past beset her. Again men came, passionately besieging her, offering her wealth in return for a little love. They talked of killing themselves if she resisted, as if it were her duty to surrender, as if refusal on her part were treachery. The gloomy Macchia committed suicide in Naples. Why? Because she did not capitulate to his melancholy sonnets! In Vienna there had been a duel, in which one of her admirers was slain. An eccentric Englishman followed her about, looming in her pathway everywhere like the shadow of a fatal Destiny, vowing to kill anybody she should prefer to him.... She had had enough at last! She was wearied of such a life, disgusted at the male voracity that dogged her every step. She longed to fall out of sight, disappear, find rest and quiet in a complete surrender to some boundless dream. And the thought--a comforting, soothing thought, it had been--of the distant land of her childhood came back to her, the thought of her simple, pious aunt, the sole survivor of her family, who wrote to her twice every year, urging her to reconcile her soul with God--to which end the good old Doña Pepa was herself aiding with prayer!

She felt, too, somehow, without knowing just why, that a visit to her native soil would soften the painful memory of the ingratitude that had cost her father's life. She would care for the poor old woman! Her presence would bring a note of cheer into that gray, monotonous existence that had gone on without the slightest change, ever. And suddenly, one night, after an "Isolde" in Florence, she ordered Beppa, the loyal and silent companion of her wandering life, to pack her things!

Home! Home! Off for her native land! And might she find there something to keep her ever from returning to the troubled stirring world she was leaving!

She was the princess of the fairy tales longing to become a shepherdess. There she meant to stay, in the shade of her orange-trees, now and then fondling a memory of her old life, perhaps, but wishing eternally to enjoy that tranquillity, fiercely repelling Rafael, therefore, because he had tried to awaken her, as Siegfried rouses Brunhilde, braving the flames to reach her side.

No; friends, friends, nothing else! She wanted no more of love. She already knew what that was. Besides, he had come too late....

And Rafael tossed sleeplessly in his bed, rehearsing in the darkness the story he had been told. He felt dwarfed, annihilated, by the grandeur of the men who had preceded him in their adoration of that woman. A king, great artists, handsome and aristocratic paladins, Russian counts, potentates with vast wealth at their command! And he, a humble country boy, an obscure junior deputy, as submissive as a child to his mother's despotic ways, forced to beg for the money for his personal expenses even--he was trying to succeed them!

He laughed with bitter irony at his own presumptuousness. Now he understood Leonora's mocking tone, and the violence she had used in repulsing all boorish liberties he had tried to take. But despite the contempt he began to feel for himself, he lacked the strength to withdraw now. He had been caught up in the wake of seduction, the maelstrom of love that followed the actress everywhere, enslaving men, casting them, broken in spirit and in will, to earth, like so many slaves of Beauty.

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!

And as he spoke, he brought his face close to Leonora's, looking for his own image in the depths of her green eyes; and he pressed her arm in a fever of passion.

"Careful, Rafael.... That hurts! Let go, of me."

And as if suddenly sensing a danger in the full of a sweet dream, she shuddered and pulled herself free with a nervous violence.

Then, quite recovered from the intoxication into which she had been led by Rafael's passionate appeal, she began to speak calmly, composedly.

No; what he asked was impossible. Her fate was ordained; she did not want love any more.... Friendship had carried them a bit astray. It was her fault, but she would find a way to remedy that. If she had known him years before--perhaps! She might have learned to love him. He was more worthy of being loved than many of the men she had accepted. But he had come too late. Now she was content with just living. Besides, what a horror! Imagine a "grand passion" in a petty environment such as they were in, a tiny world of gossip-mongers and evil tongues! Imagine having to hide like a criminal to express a noble emotion! No, when she loved, she loved in the open, with the sublime immodesty of the masterpiece that scandalizes bumpkins with its naked beauty! How impossible it would be, finding herself nibbled at constantly by gossiping fools, quite beneath her contempt. She would feel the scorn and the indignation of a whole town about her. They would accuse her of leading an innocent boy astray, alienating him from his own mother. "No, Rafael; a thousand times no; I have a little conscience left! I'm not the irresponsible siren I used to be."

"But what about me?" cried the youth, seizing her arm again with a boyish petulance. "You think of yourself and of other people, but never of me. What am I going to do all along with my suffering?"

"Oh, you? Why ... you will forget," said Leonora gravely. "I have just realized this very moment that it is impossible for me to stay here any longer. We two must separate. I will leave before Spring is over; I'll go ... I don't know where, back to the world at any rate, take up my singing again, where I'll not find men of just your kind. Time, and my absence, will attend to the curing of you."

Leonora winced before the flash of savage desire that gleamed in Rafael's eyes. On her face she felt the ardent breath of lips that were seeking her own, and she heard him murmur with a stifled roar of passion:

"No. You shall not go; I refuse to let you go!"