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The Torrent by Vicente Blasco Ibanez

V >> Vicente Blasco Ibanez >> The Torrent




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 assuming 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 passion 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 succumb, like a victim at the altar, who, in his terror and
abasement, 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 passion 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 nobody 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 canals 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 sunshine, 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-glass! 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 shores of the miraculous
Bay; kissing on the open sea among the fisherboats, to the accompaniment
of passionate 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 god, 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
Marseilles, 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!




VII


They had just finished lunch among the trunks and boxes that occupied a
great part of Leonora's room in the _Hotel de Roma_ in Valencia.

For the first time they were at a table in familiar intimacy, with no
other witness than Beppa, who was quite accustomed to every sort of
surprise in her mistress's adventurous career. The faithful maid was
examining Rafael with a respectful kindliness, as if he were a new idol
that must share the unswerving devotion she showed for Leonora.

This was the first moment of tranquillity and happiness the young man
had tasted for some days. The old hotel, with its spacious rooms, its
high ceilings, its darkened corridors, its monastic silence, seemed to
him a veritable abode of delight, a grateful place of refuge where for
once he would be free of the gossip and the strife that had been
oppressing him like a belt of steel. Besides, he could already feel the
exotic charm that lingers around harbors and great railroad terminals.
Everything about the place, from the macaroni of the lunch, and the
Chianti in its straw-covered, heavy-paunched bottle, to the musical,
incorrect Spanish of the hotel-proprietors--fleshy, massive men with
huge mustaches in Victor Emmanuel style--spoke of flight, of delightful
seclusion in that land so glowingly described by Leonora.

She had made an appointment with him in that hotel, a favorite haunt of
artists. Somewhat off the main thoroughfares, the "Roma" occupies one
whole side of a sleepy, peaceful, aristocratic square with no noise save
the shouting of cab-drivers and the beating of horses' hoofs.

Rafael had arrived on the first morning train--and with no baggage; like
a schoolboy playing truant, running off with just the clothes he had on
his back. The two days since Leonora left Alcira had been days of
torture to him. The singer's flight was the talk of the town. People
were scandalized at the amount of luggage she had. Counted over in the
imagination of that imaginative city, it eventually came to fill all the
carts in the province.

The man who knew the business to the bottom was Cupido, the barber, who
had dispatched the trunks and cases for her. He knew where the dangerous
woman was bound, and he kept it so secret that everybody found it out
before the train started. She was going back to Italy! He himself had
checked and labelled the baggage to the Customs' House at the
frontier--cases as big as a house, man! Trunks he could have lain down
comfortable in, with his two "Chinamen" to boot! And the women, as they
listened to his tale, applauded the departure with undissimulated
pleasure. They had been liberated from a great danger. Joy go with her!

Rafael kept quite to himself. He was vexed at the curiosity of people,
at the scoffing sympathy of his friends who condoled with him that his
happiness was ending. For two days he remained indoors, followed by his
mother's inquiring glances. Dona Bernarda felt more at ease now that the
evil influence of the "chorus girl" promised to be over; but none the
less she did not lose her frown. With a woman's instinct, she still
scented the presence of danger.

The young man could hardly wait for the time to come. It seemed
unbearable for him to be there at home while "she" was away off
somewhere, alone, shut up in a hotel, waiting just as impatiently as he
was for the moment of reunion.

What a sunrise it had been that day when he set out! Rafael burned with
shame as he crept like a burglar in his stockings and on tip-toe,
through the room where his mother received the orchard-folk and adjusted
all accounts pertaining to the tilling of the land. He groped his way
along guided by the light that came in through the chinks in the closed
windows. His mother was sleeping in a room close by; he could hear her
breathe--the labored respiration of a deep sleep that spelled recovery
from the insomnia of the days of his love trysts. He could still feel
the criminal shudder that rippled through him at a slight rattle of the
keys, which had been left with the confidence of unlimited authority in
the lock of an old chest where dona Bernarda kept her savings. With
tremulous hands he had collected all the money she had put away in the
small boxes there. A thief, a thief! But, after all, he was taking only
what belonged to him. He had never asked for his share of his father's
estate. Leonora was rich. With admirable delicacy she had refused to
talk of money during their preparations for the journey; but he would
refuse to live on her! He did not care to be like Salvatti, who had
exploited the singer in her youth! That thought it had been which gave
him strength to take the money finally and steal out of the house. But
even on the train he felt uneasy; and _su senoria_, the deputy, shivered
with an instinctive thrill of fear, every time a tricorne of the Civil
Guard appeared at a railroad station. What would his mother say when she
got up and found the money gone?

As he entered the hotel his self-confidence returned and his spirits
revived. He felt as if he were entering port after a storm. He found
Leonora in bed, her hair spread over the pillow in waves of gold, her
eyes closed, and a smile on her lips, as if he had surprised her in the
middle of a dream, where she had been tasting her memories of love. They
ordered lunch in the room early, intending to set out on their journey
at once. Circumspection, prudence, until they should be once beyond the
Spanish border! They would leave that evening on the Barcelona mail for
the frontier. And calmly, tranquilly, like a married couple discussing
details of house-keeping in the calm of a quiet home, they ran over the
list of things they would need on the train.

Rafael had nothing. He had fled like a fugitive from a fire, with the
first clothes he laid hands on as he bounded out of bed. He needed many
indispensable articles, and he thought of going out to buy them--a
matter of a moment.

"But are you really going out?" asked Leonora with a certain anguish, as
if her feminine instinct sensed a danger. "Are you going to leave me
alone?..."

"Only a moment. I won't keep you waiting long."

They took leave of each other in the corridor with the noisy,
nonchalant joy of passion, indifferent to the chamber-maids who were
walking to and fro at the other end of the passageway.

"Good-bye, Rafael.... Another hug; just one more."

And as, with the taste of the last kiss still fresh on his lips, he
reached the square, he saw a bejewelled hand still waving to him from a
balcony.

Anxious to get back as soon as possible, the young man walked hurriedly
along, elbowing his way among the cab-drivers swarming in front of the
great _Palacio de Dos Aguas_, closed, silent, slumbering, like the two
giants that guarded its portals, displaying in the golden downpour of
sunlight the overdecorated yet graceful sumptuousness of its roccoco
facade.

"Rafael! Rafael!..."

The deputy turned around at the sound of his name, and blanched as if he
had seen a ghost. It was don Andres, calling to him.

"Rafael! Rafael!"

"You?... Here?"

"I came by the Madrid express. For two hours I've been hunting for you
in all the hotels of Valencia. I knew you were here.... But come, we
have a great deal to talk over. This is not just the place to do it."

And the old Mentor glowered hatefully at the _Hotel de Roma_, as if he
wanted to annihilate the huge edifice with everybody in it.

They walked off, slowly, without knowing just where they were going,
turning corners, passing several times through the same streets, their
nerves tense and quivering, ready to shout at the top of their lungs,
yet using every effort to speak softly, so as not to attract attention
from the passers-by who were rubbing against them on the narrow
side-walks.

Don Andres, naturally, was the first to speak:

"You approve of what you've done?"

And seeing that Rafael, like a coward, was trying to pretend innocent
astonishment, asking "what" he had done, observing that he had come to
Valencia on a matter of business, the old man broke into a rage.

"Now, see here, don't you go lying to me: either we're men or we're not
men. If you think you've acted properly, you ought to stand up for it
and say so. Don't imagine you're going to pull the wool over my eyes and
then run off with that woman to God knows where. I've found you and I'm
not going to let you go. I want you to know the truth. Your mother is
sick abed; she tipped me off and I caught the first train to get here.
The whole house is upside down! At first it was thought a robbery had
been committed. By this time the whole city must be agog about you. Come
now!... What do you say to that? Do you want to kill your mother? Well,
you're going about it right! Good God! And this is what they call a 'boy
of talent,' a 'young man of promise'! How much better it would have been
if you were a dunce like me or your father--but a dunce at least who
knows how to get a woman if he has to, without making a public ass of
himself!"

Then he went into detail. Rafael's mother had gone to the old chest to
get some money for one of her laborers. Her cry of horror and alarm had
thrown the whole house into an uproar. Don Andres had been hastily
summoned. Suspicions against the servants, a "third degree" for the
whole lot, all of them protesting and weeping, in outrage! Until finally
dona Bernarda sank to a chair in a swoon, whispering into her adviser's
ear:

"Rafael is not in the house. He has gone ... perhaps never to return. I
am sure of it--he took the money!"

While the others were getting the sobbing mother to bed, and sending for
the doctor, don Andres had made for the station to catch the express. He
could tell from the way people looked at him that everybody knew what
had been going on. Gossip had already connected the excitement in the
Brull mansion with Rafael's taking the early train! He had been seen by
several persons, in spite of his precautions.

"Well, is the Hon. don Rafael Brull, member from Alcira, satisfied with
his morning's work? Don't you think the laugh your enemies have raised
deserves an _encore_!"

For all his bitter sarcasm the old man spoke in a faltering voice, and
seemed on the verge of tears. The labor of his entire life, the great
victories won with don Ramon, that political power which had been so
carefully built up and sustained over decades, was about to crumble to
ruins; all because of a light-headed, erratic boy who had handed to the
first skirt who came along everything that belonged to him and
everything that belonged to his friends as well.

Rafael had gone into the interview in an aggressive mood, ready to
answer with plain talk if that sodden idiot should go too far in his
recriminations. But the sincere grief of the old man touched him deeply.
Don Andres, who resembled Rafael's father as the cat resembles the
tiger, could think of nothing but Brull politics; and he was almost
sobbing as he saw the danger which the prestige of the Brull House was
running.

With bowed head, crushed by the realization of the scene that had
followed his flight, Rafael did not notice where they were going. But
soon he became conscious of the perfume of flowers. They were crossing a
garden; and as he looked up he saw the figure of Valencia's conqueror on
his sinewy charger glistening in the sun.

They walked on. The old man began in wailing accents to describe the
situation which the Brull House was facing. That money, which perhaps
Rafael still had in his pocket--more than thirty thousand
_pesetas_--represented the final desperate efforts of his mother to
rescue the family fortune, which had been endangered by don Ramon's
prodigal habits. The money was his, and don Andres had nothing to say in
that regard. Rafael was at liberty to squander it, scatter it to the
four winds of heaven; but don Andres wasn't talking to a child, he was
talking to a man with a heart: so he begged him, as his childhood
preceptor, as his oldest friend, to consider the sacrifices his mother
had been making--the privations she had imposed upon herself, going
without new clothes, quarreling with her help over a _centimo_, despite
all her airs as a grand lady, depriving herself of all the dainties and
comforts that are so pleasant to old age--all that her son, her _senor
hijo_, might waste it in gay living on a woman! Thirty thousand! And
don Andres mentioned the sum with bated breath! It had taken so much
trouble to hoard it! Come, man! The sight of such things was enough to
make a fellow cry like a baby!...

And suppose his father, don Ramon, were to rise from the grave? Suppose
he could see how his Rafael were destroying at a single stroke what it
had cost him so many years to build up, just because of a woman!...

They were now crossing a bridge. Below, against the background of white
gravel in the river-bed the red and blue uniforms of a group of soldiers
could be seen; and the drums were beating, sounding in the distance like
the humming of a huge bee-hive--worthy accompaniment, Rafael reflected,
to the old man's evocation of the youth's father. Rafael thought he
could almost see in front of him the massive body, the flourishing
mustache, the proud, arrogant brow of don Ramon, a born fighter, an
adventurer destined from the cradle to lead men and impose his will upon
inferiors.

What would that heroic master of men have said of this? Don Ramon would
give a lot of money to a woman--granted--but he wouldn't have swapped
all the beauties on earth put together for a single vote!

But his son, the boy on whom he had grounded his fondest hopes--the
redeemer destined to raise the House of Brull to its loftiest glory--the
future "personage" in Madrid, the fondled heir-apparent, who had found
his pathway already cleared for him at birth--was throwing all his
father's labors through the window, the way you toss overboard
something it has cost you nothing to earn! It was easy to see that
Rafael had never known what hard times were--those days of the
Revolution, when the Brulls were out of power and held their own just
because don Ramon was a bad man with a gun--desperate election
campaigns, when you marched to victory over somebody's dead body, bold
cross-country rides on election night, never knowing when you would meet
the _roder_ in ambush--the outlaw sharpshooter who had vowed to kill don
Ramon; then endless prosecutions for intimidation and violence, which
had given dona Bernarda and her husband months and months of anxiety,
lest a catastrophe from one moment to the next bring prison and
forfeiture of all their property! All that his father had gone through,
for his boy's sake; to carve out a pedestal for Rafael, pass on to him a
District that would be his own, blazing a path over which he might go to
no visible limit of glory! And he was just throwing it all away,
relinquishing forever a position that had been built up at the cost of
years and years of labor and peril! That is what he would be doing,
unless that very night he returned home, refuting by his presence there
the rumors his scandalized adherents were circulating.

Rafael shook his head. The mention of his father had touched him, and he
was convinced by the old man's arguments; but none the less he was
determined to resist. No, and again no; his die was cast: he would
continue on his way.

They were now under the trees of the Alameda. The carriages were rolling
by, forming an immense wheel in the center of the avenue. The harnesses
of the horses and the lamps of the drivers' boxes gleamed in the
sunlight. Women's hats and the white lace shawls of children could be
seen through the coach windows as they passed.

Don Andres became impatient with the youth's stubbornness. He pointed to
all those happy, peaceful-looking families out for their afternoon
drive--wealth, comfort, public esteem, abundance, freedom from struggle
and toil! _Cristo_, boy! Was that so bad, after all? Well, that was just
the life he could have if he would be good and not turn his back on his
plain duty--rich, influential, respected, growing old with a circle of
nice children about him. What more could a decent person ask for in this
world?

All that bohemian nonsense about pure love, love free from law and
restraint, love that scoffs at society and its customs, sufficient unto
itself and despising public opinion, that was just bosh, the humbug of
poets, musicians and dancers--a set of outcasts like that woman who was
taking him away, cutting him off forever from all the ties that bound
him to family and country!

The old man seemed to take courage from Rafael's silence. He judged the
moment opportune for launching the final attack upon the boy's
infatuation.

"And then, what a woman! I have been young, like you, Rafael. It's true
I didn't know a stylish woman like this one, but, bah! they're all
alike. I have had my weaknesses; but I tell you I wouldn't have lifted a
finger for this actress of yours! Any one of the girls we have down home
is worth two of her. Clothes, yes, talk, yes, powder and rouge inches
deep!... I'm not saying she's bad to look at--not that; what I say
is... well, it doesn't take much to turn your head--you're satisfied
with the leavings of half the men in Europe...."

And he came to Leonora's past, the lurid, much exaggerated legend of her
journey through life--lovers by the dozens; statues and paintings of her
in the nude; the eyes of all Europe centered on her beauty; the public
property of a continent! "That was virtue to go crazy about, come now!
Quite worth leaving house and home for, no doubt of that!"

The old man winced under the flash of anger that blazed in Rafael's
eyes. They had just crossed another bridge, and were entering the city
again. Don Andres, wretched coward that he was, sidled away to be within
reach of the customs' office if the fist he could already see cleaving
the air should come his way.

Rafael, in fact, stopped in his tracks, glaring. But in a second or two
he went on his way again, dejected, with bowed head, ignoring the
presence of the old man. Don Andres resumed his place at the boy's side.

The cursed old fox! He had stuck the knife in the right place! Leonora's
past! Her favors distributed with mad lavishness over the four corners
of the globe! An army of men of every nation owning her for a moment
with the appeal of luxury or the enchantment of art! A palace today and
a hotel tomorrow! Her lips repeating in all the languages of Babel the
very words of love that had fired him as if he had been the first to
hear them! He was going to lose everything for that--that refuse, as don
Andres said--a public scandal, a ruined reputation; and a murdered
mother perhaps,--for that! Oh, that devil of a don Andres! How cunningly
he had slashed him, and then plunged his fingers into the bleeding gash
to make the wound deeper! The old man's plain common-sense had shattered
his dream. That man had been the rustic, cunning Sancho at the side of
the quixotic don Ramon; and he was playing the same role with Rafael!