The Torrent Part 9

A wild cheer, a shout of joy and triumph, shook the mult.i.tude.

"_Vitol el pare San Bernat_!..." Now would the people of the neighboring towns dare dispute his immense power?... There was the proof! Two days of incessant downpour, and then, the moment the Saint showed his face out of doors--fair weather! Excuse me!

In fervent thanksgiving weeping women rushed upon the saint and began to kiss whatever part of the image was within reach--the handles of the litter, the decorations of the pedestal, the bronze body itself. The tottering structure of wood and metal began to stagger and reel like a frail bark tossing over a sea of shrieking heads and extended arms that trembled with exaltation.

The procession marched on for more than an hour still along the river.

Then the priest, who was dripping wet and had exhausted more than a dozen "horses" under him, forbade it to continue. Leave it to those peasants, and the nonsense would go on till dawn! So the curate observed that the Saint had already done what was required of him. Now it was time to go home!

Rafael handed his taper to one of his henchmen and stopped on the bridge with a number of experienced observers, who were lamenting the damage done by the flood. At every moment, no one could say just how, alarming reports of the destruction wrought by the river were coming in. Now a mill had been isolated by the waters, and the people there had taken refuge on the roof, firing their shotguns as signals of distress. Many orchards had been completely submerged. The few boats available in the city were doing the best they could in the work of rescue. The valley had become one vast lake. Rowboats caught in the s.h.i.+fting currents were in danger of smas.h.i.+ng against hidden obstructions; and it was practically impossible to push a punt upstream with oars.

Yet the people spoke with relative calmness. They were accustomed to this almost annual visitation, and accepted it resignedly as an inevitable evil. Besides, they referred hopefully to telegrams received by the _alcalde_. By dawn help would be coming in. The governor in Valencia was sending a detachment of marines, and the lagoon would be filled with navy boats. Everything would be all right in a few hours.

But if the water got much higher meanwhile ...!

They consulted stakes and other water marks along the river, and violent disputes arose. Rafael, for his part, could see the flood was still rising, though but slowly.

The peasants refused to believe it. How could the river rise after Father San Bernardo had gone into it? No, sir! it was _not_ rising. That was all a lie intended to discredit the patron. And a st.u.r.dy youth with flas.h.i.+ng eyes threatened to disembowel with one stroke of his knife--like that!--a certain scoffer who maintained that the river would go on rising if only for the pleasure of refuting that charlatan of a friar.

Rafael approached the brawlers, and by the dim lantern light recognized Cupido--the barber--a sarcastic fellow, with curly side-whiskers and an aquiline nose, who took great pleasure in poking fun at the barbarous, unshakable faith of the illiterate peasants.

Brull knew the barber very well. The man was one of his childhood favorites. Fear of his mother was the only thing that had kept him from frequenting Cupido's shop--the rendezvous of the city's gayest set, a hotbed of gossip and practical jokes, a school of guitar playing and love songs that kept the whole neighborhood astir. Besides, Cupido was the freak of the city, the sharp-tongued but irresponsible practical joker, who was forgiven everything in advance, and could enjoy his idiosyncrasies and speak his mind about people without starting a riot against him. He was, for instance, the one person in Alcira who scoffed at the tyranny of the Brulls without thereby losing entrance to the Party Club, where the young men admired his wit and his eccentric way of dressing.

Rafael was still fond of Cupido, though not very intimate with him. In all the sedate, conservative world around him, the barber seemed the only person really worth while talking with. Cupido was almost an artist. In winter he would go to Valencia to hear the operas praised by the newspapers, and in one corner of his shop he had heaps of novels and ill.u.s.trated magazines, much mildewed and softened by the damp, and their leaves worn through from continual thumbing by customers.

He had very little to do with Rafael, guessing that the youth's mother would not regard such a friends.h.i.+p with any too much favor; but he displayed a certain liking for the boy; and addressed him familiarly, having known him as a child. Of Rafael he said everywhere:

"He's the best one in the family; the only Brull with more brains than crookedness."

Nothing too small for Cupido to notice ever happened in Alcira. Every weakness, every foible of the city's celebrities was made public by him in his barbershop, to the delight of the Opposition, whose members gathered there to read their party organ. The gentlemen of the _Ayuntamiento_ feared the barber more than any ten newspapers combined, and whenever some famous Conservative minister referred in parliament to a "revolutionary hydra" or a "hotbed of anarchy," they pictured to themselves a barbershop like that of Cupido, but much larger perhaps, scattering a poisonous atmosphere of cruel gibe and perverse effrontery all through the nation.

The barber was inevitably on hand where anything was going on. It might be at the very end of the suburbs, or away out in the country. In a few moments Cupido would put in an appearance to learn all about it, give advice to those who might need it, arbitrate between disputants and afterward tell the whole story with a thousand embellishments.

He had plenty of time on his hands for leading such a life. Two young fellows, as crazy as their employer, tended shop. Cupido paid them with music-lessons and meals--better or worse these latter, according to the day's receipts, which were divided fraternally among the three. And if the "boss" sometimes astonished the city by going out for a walk in midwinter in a suit of white duck, they, not to be outdone, would shave off their hair and eyebrows and show heads as smooth as billiard-b.a.l.l.s behind the shop windows, to the great commotion of the city, which would flock _en ma.s.se_ to see "Cupido's Chinamen."

A flood was always a great day for the barber. He closed shop and planted himself out on a bridge, oblivious to wind and rain, haranguing the crowds of spectators, terrifying the stupid with his exaggerations and inventions, and announcing hair-raising news which he a.s.serted he had just received from the Governor by telegraph, and according to which, in two hours, there would not be a cellar-hole left of the place.

Even the miracle-working San Bernardo would be washed into the sea!

When Rafael found him upon the bridge that night, after the procession, Cupido was on the point of coming to blows with several rustics, who had grown indignant at his heresies.

Stepping aside from the crowd, the two began a conversation about the dangers of the flood. Cupido, as usual, was well-informed. He had been told a poor old man had been cut off in an orchard and drowned. That was probably not the only accident that had taken place. Horses and pigs in large numbers had drifted past under the bridge, early in the afternoon.

The barber talked earnestly and with some sadness, it seemed. Rafael listened in silence, scanning his face anxiously, as if looking for a chance to speak of something which he dared not broach.

"And how about the Blue House," he ventured finally, "that farm of dona Pepa's where you go sometimes? Will anything be wrong down there?"

"It's a good solid place," the barber replied, "and this isn't the first flood it's been through.... But it's right on the river, and by this time the garden must be a lake; the water will surely be up to the second story. I'll bet dona Pepa's poor niece is scared out of her wits... Just imagine--coming from so far away and from such pretty places, and running into a mess like this ..."

Rafael seemed to meditate for a moment. Then as if an idea that had been dancing about in his head all day had just occurred to him, he said:

"Suppose we take a run down there!... What do you say, Cupido?"

"Down there!... And how'll we get there?"

But the proposal, from its very rashness, was bound to appeal to a man like the barber, who at length began to laugh, as if the adventure were a highly amusing one.

"You're right! We could get through! It will look funny, all right! Us two paddling up like a couple of Venetian gondoliers to serenade a celebrated prima donna in her fright ... I've a good mind to run home and fetch my guitar along ..."

"What the devil, Cupido! No guitar business! What a josher you are! Our job is to get those women out of there. They'll get drowned if we don't."

The barber, insisting on his romantic idea, fixed a pair of shrewd eyes on Rafael.

"I see! So you're interested in the ill.u.s.trious _artiste_, too ... You rascal! You're smitten on her reputation for good looks ... But no ... I remember ... you've seen her; she told me so herself."

"She!... She spoke to you about me?"

"Oh, nothing important! She told me she saw you one afternoon up at the Hermitage."

Cupido kept the rest to himself. He did not say that Leonora, on mentioning Rafael's name, had added that he looked like an "idiot."

Rafael's heart leaped with joy! She had talked of him! She had not forgotten that meeting which had left such a painful memory in him!...

What was he doing, then, standing like a fool there on that bridge, when down at the Blue House they might be needing a man's help?

"Listen, Cupido; I have my boat right handy here; you know, the boat father had made to order in Valencia as a present for me. Steel frame; hard wood; safe as a wars.h.i.+p. You know the river ... I've seen you handle an oar more than once; and I've got a pair of arms myself ...

What do you say?"

"I say, let's go," the barber answered resolutely.

They asked for a torch, and with the help of several men dragged Rafael's boat toward a stairway on the riverbank.

Above, through the crowds on the bridge, the news of the expedition flashed, but exaggerated and much idealized by the curious. The men were going to save a poor family that had taken refuge on the roof of a house--poor devils in danger of being swept off at any moment. Rafael had learned of their plight, and he was starting to save them at the risk of his own skin. And a wealthy, powerful man like him, with so much to live for! d.a.m.n it, those Brulls were all men, anyhow!... And yet see how people talked against them! What a heart! And the peasants followed the blood-red glow of the torch in the boat as it mirrored across the waters, gazing adoringly at Rafael, who was sitting in the stern. Out of the dark entreating voices called. Many loyal followers of the Brulls were eager to go with the chief--drown with him, if need be.

Cupido protested. No; for a job like that, the fewer the better; the boat had to be light; he would do for the oars and Rafael could steer.

"Let her go! Let her go!" called Rafael.

And the boat, after hesitating a second, shot off on the current.

In the narrow gorge between the Old City and the New, the swollen torrent swept them along like lightning. The barber used his oars just to keep the boat away from the sh.o.r.e. Submerged rocks sent great whirlpools to the surface and pulled the boat this way and that. The light of the torch cast a dull reddish glow out over the muddy eddies.

Tree trunks, refuse, dead animals, went floating by, shapeless ma.s.ses with only a few dark points visible above the surface, as though some dead man covered with mud were swimming under water. Out on that swirling current, with the slimy vapors of the river rising to his nostrils and the eddies sucking and boiling all around, Rafael thought himself the victim of a weird nightmare and began even to repent of his rashness. Cries kept coming from houses close to the river; windows were suddenly lighted up; and from them great shadowy arms like the wings of a windmill waved in greeting to that red flame which people saw gliding past along the river, bringing the outlines of the boat and the two men into distinct view. The news of their expedition had spread throughout the city and people were on the watch for them as they sped by: "_Viva_ don Rafael! _Viva_ Brull!"

But the hero who was risking his life to save a family of poor folks out there in the darkness of that sticky, murky, sepulchral night, had in mind only one thing--a blue house, into which he was to penetrate at last, in so strange and romantic a fas.h.i.+on.

From time to time a sc.r.a.ping sound or a jolt of the boat would bring him back to reality.

"Your tiller there!" Cupido would shout, without, however, taking his eyes from the water ahead. "Look out, Rafaelito, or we'll get smashed!"

The boat was indeed a good one, for any other, would long before have come to grief in those rapids jammed with rocks and debris.

They were around the city in no time. Few lighted windows were now to be seen. High, steep banks of slippery mud--quite unscalable--crested with walls, were slipping past on either hand, with an occasional palisade, the piles just emerging from the water. Somewhat ahead, the open river, where the two arms that girt the Old City reunited in what was now a vast lake!