A	»	B	»	C	»	D	»	E
F	»	G	»	H	»	I	»	J
K	»	L	»	M	»	N	»	O
P	»		R	»	S	»		T
U	»		V	»	W	»		Z

Various - "The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction"

Arthur Christopher Benson - "The Silent Isle"

J. J. Bell - "Wee Macgreegor Enlists"

Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby - "Government and Administration of the United States"

Thanksgiving Brings Some Hope to Indies
Moreover Technologies - Premier purveyor of real-time news and RSS feeds from across the Web

Schuster song pokes fun at 'Puke Watson'
Ad - Get Info for Book Publishing from 14 search engines in 1.

Random House Digitising 8000 Books
At Galaxy Bookshop in Hardwick, Vt., owner Linda Ramsdell said she had the best Black Friday in at least five years, with sales double over a year ago. People, especially in Vermont, really get the local thing and are making an effort, Ramsdell said. No

The Torrent by Vicente Blasco Ibanez

V >> Vicente Blasco Ibanez >> The Torrent




"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 Matias 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 Matias 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 dona 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 Ramon stopping on his big horse
in front of his humble farmhouse and, with the air of a grand lord,
leaving orders for what don Matias 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 dona 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 Matias 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 senor 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!"

And she felt his strong arms close about her, swaying her from head to
foot, in a clasp to which madness added strength. Her feet left the
ground, and a brutal thrust threw her to her side at the foot of an
orange-tree.

But, in a flash, the Valkyrie reappeared in Leonora. With a supreme
effort, she struggled free from the encircling vise, sat up, threw
Rafael violently to his back, got to her feet, and stamped a foot
brutally and mercilessly down upon the young man's chest, using her
whole weight as though bent on crushing the very framework of his body.

Her face was an inspiring thing to look upon. She seemed to have gone
mad! Her blond hair had fallen awry and was flecked with leaves and
grass and bark. Her green eyes flashed with metallic glints, like
daggers. Her lips were pale from emotion. And in that wild posture,
whether through force of habit, or the suggestiveness of the effort she
had made, she raised her warcry--a piercing, savage "_Hojotoho!_" that
rent the calm of the orchard, frightening the hens and sending them
scampering off over the paths. Her parasol she brandished as if it were
the lance of Wotan's daughter, and several times she aimed it at
Rafael's eyes, as if she intended to spear him blind.

The youth seemed to have collapsed less from the violence of the
struggle than from an overpowering sense of shame. He lay motionless on
the ground, without protesting, and as if not caring ever to rise
again--longing to die under the pressure of that foot which was so
heavily weighing down upon him, taking away his breath.

Leonora regained her composure, and slowly stepped back. Rafael sat up,
and reached for his hat.

It was a painful moment. They stood there cold, as if the sun had gone
out and a glacial wind were blowing through the orchard.

Rafael kept his eyes to the ground, afraid to look up and meet her gaze,
ashamed at the thought of his disordered clothes, which were soiled with
dirt; humiliated at having been beaten and pummeled like a robber caught
by a victim he had expected to find powerless.

He heard Leonora's voice addressing him with the scornful "_tu_" a lady
might use toward her lowest inferiors.

"Go!"

He raised his head and found Leonora looking at him, her eyes ablaze
with anger and offended dignity.

"I'm never taken by force," she said coldly. "I give myself ... if I
feel like it."

And in the gesture of scorn and rage with which she dismissed him,
Rafael thought he caught a trace of loathing at some memory of
Boldini--that repugnant lecher, who had been the only person in the
world to win her by violence.