The Torrent Part 24

Leonora sat silent for a moment, as if waiting to see the effect of that last word; unless, indeed, she were hesitating, out of delicacy, to include her lover's family in her complaint. The young man shrank with a terrible presentiment. Dona Bernarda was not the woman to stand by idle and resigned in the face of opposition, even from him!

"I see ... mother!" he said in a stifled voice. "She has been up to something. Tell me what it is. Don't be afraid. To me you are dearer than anything else in the world."

"Well ... there is auntie ..." Leonora resumed; and Rafael remembered that dona Pepa, remarking his a.s.siduous visits to the Blue House, had thought her niece might be contemplating marriage. In the afternoon, Leonora explained, she had had a _scene_ with her aunt. Dona Pepa had gone into town to confession, and on coming out of church had met dona Bernarda. Poor old woman! Her abject terror on returning home betrayed the intense emotion Rafael's mother had succeeded in wakening in her.

Leonora, her niece, her idol, lay in the dust, stripped of that blind, enthusiastic, affectionate trust her aunt had always had for her. All the gossip, all the echoes of Leonora's adventurous life, that had--heretofore but feebly--come to her ears, the old lady had never believed, regarding them as the work of envy. But now they had been repeated to her by dona Bernarda, by a lady "in good standing," a good Christian, a person incapable of falsehood. And then after rehearsing that scandalous biography, Rafael's mother had come to the shocking effrontery with which her niece and Rafael were rousing the whole city; flaunting their wrong-doing in the face of the public; and turning her home, the respectable, irreproachable home of dona Pepa, into a den of vice, a brothel!

And the poor woman had wept like a child in her niece's presence, adjuring her to "abandon the wicked path of transgression," shuddering with horror at the great responsibility she, dona Pepa, had unwittingly a.s.sumed before G.o.d. All her life she had labored and prayed and fasted to keep her soul clean. She had thought herself almost in a state of grace, only to awaken suddenly and find herself in the very midst of sin through no fault of her own--all on account of her niece, who had converted her holy, her pure, her pious home into an ante-chamber of h.e.l.l! And it was the poor woman's superst.i.tious terror, the conviction of d.a.m.nation that had seized on dona Pepa's simple soul, that wounded Leonora most deeply.

"They've robbed me of all I had in the world," she murmured desperately, "of the affection of the only dear one left after my father died. I am not the child of former days to auntie; that is apparent from the way she looks at me, the way she shuns me, avoiding all contact with me....

And just because of you, because I love you, because I was not cruel to you! Oh, that night! How I shall suffer for it!... How clearly I foresaw how it would all end!"

Rafael was humiliated, crushed, filled with shame and remorse at the suffering that had fallen upon this woman, because she had given herself to him. What was he to do? The time had come to prove himself the strong, the resourceful man, able to protect the beloved woman in her moment of danger. But where should he strike first to defend her?...

Leonora lifted her head from her lover's shoulder, and withdrew from his embrace. She wiped away her tears and rose to her feet with the determination of irrevocable resolution.

"I have made up my mind. It hurts me very much to say what I am going to say; but I can't help it. It will do you no good to say 'no'--I cannot stay under this roof another day. Everything is over between my aunt and me. Poor old woman! The dream I cherished was to care for her lovingly, tenderly till she died in my arms, be to her what I failed to be to father.... But they have opened her eyes. To her I am nothing but a sinner now and my presence upsets everything for her.... I must go away.

I've already told Beppa to pack my things.... Rafael, my love, this is our last night together.... To-morrow ... and you will never see me again."

The youth recoiled as if someone had struck him in the breast.

"Going? Going ...? And you can say that coolly, simply, just like that?

You are leaving me ... this way ... just when we are happiest ...?"

But soon he had himself in hand again. This surely could be nothing more than a pa.s.sing impulse, a notion arrived at in a flash of anger. Of course she did not really mean to go! She must think things over, see things clearly. That was a crazy idea! Desert her Rafaelito? Absurd!

Impossible!

Leonora smiled sadly. She had expected him to talk that way. She, too, had suffered much, ever so much, before deciding to do it! It made her shudder to think that within two days she would be off again, alone, wandering through Europe, caught up again in that wild, tumultuous life of art and love, after tasting the full sweetness of the most powerful pa.s.sion she had ever known--of what she believed was her "first love."

It was like putting to sea in a tempest with destination unknown. She loved him, adored him, wors.h.i.+pped him, more than ever now that she was about to lose him.

"Well, why are you going?" the young man asked. "If you love me, why are you forsaking me?"

"Just because I love you, Rafael.... Because I want you to be happy."

For her to remain would mean ruin for him: a long battle with his mother, who was an implacable, a merciless foe. Dona Bernarda might be killed, but never conquered! Oh, no! How horrible! Leonora knew what filial cruelty was! How had she treated her father? She must not now come between a son and a mother! Was she, perhaps, a creature accursed, born forever to corrupt with her very name the sacredest, purest relations on earth?

"No, you must be good, my heart. I must go away. We can't go on loving each other here. I'll write to you, I'll let you know all I'm doing....

You'll hear from me every day, if I have to write from the North Pole!

But you must stay! Don't drive your mother to despair! Shut your eyes to the poor woman's injustice! For after all, she is doing it all out of her immense love for you.... Do you imagine I am glad to be leaving you--the greatest happiness I have ever known?"

And she threw her arms about Rafael, kissing him over and over again, caressing his bowed, pensive head, within which a tempest of conflicting ideas and resolutions was boiling.

So those bonds which he had come to believe eternal were to be broken?

So he was to lose so easily that beauty which the world had admired, the possession of which had made him feel himself the first among men? She talked of a love from a distance, of a love persisting through years of separation, travel, all the hazards of a wandering life; she promised to write to him every day!... Write to him ... from the arms of another man, perhaps! No! He would never give up such a treasure; never!

"You shall not go," he answered at last decisively. "A love like ours is not ended so easily. Your flight would be a disgrace to me--it would look as if I had affronted you in some way, as if you were tired of me."

Deep in his soul he felt eager to make some chivalrous gesture. She was going away because she had loved him! He should stay behind, sad and resigned like a maid abandoned by a lover, and with the sense of having harmed her on his conscience! _Ira de dios_! He, as a man, could not stand by with folded arms accepting the abnegation of a woman, to stick tied to his mother's ap.r.o.n-strings in b.o.o.bified contentment. Even girls ran away from home and parents sometimes, in the grip of a powerful love; and he, a man, a man "in the public eye" also--was he to let a beautiful girl like Leonora go away sorrowful and in tears, so that he could keep the respect of a city that bored him and the affection of a mother who had never really loved him? Besides, what sort of a love was it that stepped aside in a cowardly, listless way like that, when a woman was at stake, a woman for whom far richer, far more powerful men than he, men bound to life by attractions that he had never dreamed of in his countrified existence, had died or gone to ruin?...

"You shall not go," he repeated, with sullen obstinacy. "I won't give up my happiness so easily. And if you insist on going, we will go together."

Leonora rose to her feet all quivering. She had been expecting that; her heart had told her it was coming. Flee together! Have her appear like an adventuress, drawing Rafael on, tearing him from his mother's arms after crazing him with love? Oh, no! Thanks! She had a conscience! She did not care to burden it with the execration of a whole city. Rafael must consider the matter calmly, face the situation bravely. She must go away alone. Afterwards, later on, she would see. They might chance to meet again; perhaps in Madrid, when the Cortes rea.s.sembled! He would be there, and alone; she could find a place at the _Real_, singing for nothing if that should prove necessary.

But Rafael writhed angrily at her resistance. He could not live without her! A single night without seeing her would mean despair. He would end as Macchia ended! He would shoot himself!

And he seemed to mean it. His eyes were fixed on the floor as if he were staring at his own corpse, lying there on the pavement, motionless, covered with blood, a revolver in its stiffened hand.

"Oh, no! How horrible! Rafael, my Rafael!" Leonora groaned, clasping him around the neck, hanging upon him in terror.

Her lover continued to protest. He was free. Had he been a married man; if, in his flight, he were leaving a wife behind to cry betrayal, or children calling for his help in vain, it would all be a different matter. She could properly feel the repugnance of a kind heart unwilling that love should mean a shattered home! But whom was he abandoning? A mother, who, in a short time, would find consolation in the thought that he was well and happy, a mother jealous of any rivalry in her son's affection, and to that jealousy willing to sacrifice his very happiness!

Any harm an elopement would bring would by no means be irreparable. No, they must go away together, parade their love through the whole world!

But Leonora, lowering her head again, repeated feebly:

"No, my mind is made up. I must go alone. I haven't the strength to face a mother's hatred."

Rafael flushed indignantly:

"Why not say outright that you don't love me. You're tired of me, and of this environment. The hankering for your old life has come over you again; your old world is calling!"

The actress fixed her great, luminous, tear-stained eyes upon him. And they were filled with tenderness and pity.

"Tired of you!... When I have never felt such desperation as tonight!

You say I want my old life back. You don't realize that to leave here seems like entering a den of torture.... Oh, dear heart, you'll never know how much I love you."

"Well, then ...?"

And to tell everything, to spare no detail of the danger he would face after separation, Rafael spoke of the life he would lead alone with his mother in that dull, unspeakable city. Leonora was a.s.suming that affection played some part in his mother's indignant opposition. Well, dona Bernarda did love him--agreed: he was her only son; but ambition was the decisive thing in her schemes, her pa.s.sion for the aggrandizement of the House--the controlling motive of her whole life.

She was openly, frankly, using him as security in an alliance she was planning with a great fortune. She wanted to marry him to money: and if Leonora were to go, if he were left alone, forsaken, then despair--and time, which can do all things--would break his will; and eventually he would succ.u.mb, like a victim at the altar, who, in his terror and abas.e.m.e.nt, does not sense the real significance of the sacrifice forced upon him.

The words reached a jealous spot in Leonora's heart. All the scattered rumors that had come to her ears in former days now echoed in her memory. She knew that Rafael was telling the truth. The man she loved, given away by his mother--to another woman!... Lost forever if she lost him now!... And her eyes opened wide with horror and revulsion.

"And I refuse, Leonora, do you understand? I refuse!" continued her lover with unaffected resolution. "I belong to you, you are the only woman I love. I shall follow you all over the world, even against your wishes, to be your servant, see you, speak to you, and there are not millions enough in the world to stop me!"

"Oh, my darling! My darling! You love me, you love me--as I love you!"

And in a frenzy of pa.s.sion she fell impetuously, madly upon him, clutching him in her arms like a fury. In her caresses Rafael felt an intensity that almost frightened him. The room seemed to be whirling about him. Trembling, limp and weak, he sank to the divan, overwhelmed, pounded to pieces, it seemed, by that vehement adoration, that caught him up and carried him away like a tumultuous avalanche. His senses left him in that trembling confusion, and he closed his eyes.

When he opened them, the room was dark. Around his neck he could feel a gentle arm that was tenderly sustaining him, and Leonora was whispering in his ear.

Agreed! They would go together: to continue their love duct in some charming place, where n.o.body knew them, where envy and vulgarity would not disturb. Leonora knew every nook in the world. She would have none of Nice and the other cities of the Blue Coast, pretty places, coquettish, bepowdered and rouged like women fresh from their dressing tables! Besides there would be too many people there. Venice was better.

They would thread the narrow, solitary silent ca.n.a.ls there, stretched out in a gondola, kissing each other between smiles, pitying the poor unfortunate mortals crossing the bridges over them, unaware of how great a love was gliding beneath their feet!

But no, Venice is a sad place after all: when it rains, it rains and rains! Naples rather; Naples! _Viva Napoli_! And Leonora clapped her hands in glee! Live in perpetual suns.h.i.+ne, freedom, freedom, freedom to love openly, as nakedly as the _lazzaroni_ walk about the streets! She owned a house in Naples,--at Posilipo, that is--a _villino_, in pink stucco, a dainty little place with fig trees, nopals and parasol pines, that ran in a grove down a steep promontory to the sea I They would fish in the bay there--it was as smooth and blue as a looking-gla.s.s! And afternoons he would row her out to sea, and she would sing, looking at the waters ablaze with the sunset, at the plume of smoke curling up from Vesuvius, at the immense white city with its endless rows of windows flaming like plaques of gold in the afterglow. Like gipsies they would wander through the countless towns dotting the sh.o.r.es of the miraculous Bay; kissing on the open sea among the fisherboats, to the accompaniment of pa.s.sionate Neapolitan boat-songs; spending whole nights in the open air, lying in each other's arms on the sands, hearing the pearly laughter of mandolins in the distance, just as that night on the island, they had heard the nightingale! "Oh, Rafael, my G.o.d, my king! How wonderful!"

When day dawned, they were still sitting there weaving fanciful plans for the future, arranging all the details of their elopement. She would leave Alcira as soon as possible. He would join her two days later, when all suspicion had been quieted, when everybody would imagine she was far, far away. Where would they meet? At first they thought of Ma.r.s.eilles, but that was a long way off! Then they thought of Barcelona.

But that, too, meant hours of travel, when hours, minutes, counted for so much. It seemed utterly incredible that they could live two days without each other! No, the sooner they met again the better! And, bargaining with time like peasants in a market, at last they chose the nearest city possible, Valencia.

For love--true love--is fond of brazenness!