V
"But my dear child, when are we getting to this island of yours?... It bores me to be here sitting on this seat, so far away from my little boy, watching his arms get tired from all that rowing. I must kiss him.. even if he says no! It will rest him, I am sure."
And rising to her feet, Leonora took two steps forward in the white boat, though threatening to upset it, and kissed Rafael several times. He lay aside the oars and laughingly defended himself.
"Madcap! We'll never get there at this rate. With rests like this we make very little progress, and I've promised to take you to my island."
Once again he bent to the oars, heading out toward midstream over the moonlit water, as if to vouchsafe the groves on either bank an equal pleasure in the romantic escapade.
It had been one of her caprices—a desire repeated during his visits to the Blue House on some afternoons, in the presence of doña Pepa and the maid, and on every night, as he passed through the opening in the hedge where Leonora's bare arms were waiting for him in the darkness.
For more than a week Rafael had been living in a sweet dream. Never had he imagined that life could be so beautiful. It was a mood of delicious abstraction. The city no longer existed for him. The people that moved about him seemed like so many spectres: his mother and Remedios were invisible beings. Their words he would hear and answer without taking the trouble to look up.
He spent his days in feverish impatience for night to come—that the family might finish supper and leave him free to go to his room, whence he would cautiously tip-toe, as soon as the house was silent and everybody was asleep.
Indifferent to everything foreign to his love, he did not realize the effect his conduct was having on his mother. She had noticed that his door was locked all morning while he slept off the fatigue of a sleepless night. She had already tired of asking him whether he was ill, and of getting the same reply:
"No, mama; I've been working nights; an important study I'm preparing."
It was all his mother could do on such occasions to restrain herself from shouting "Liar!" Two nights she had gone up to his room, to find the door locked and the keyhole dark. Her son was not inside. She would lie awake for him now; and every morning, somewhat before dawn, she would hear him softly open the outside door and tip-toe up the stairs, perhaps in his stocking-feet.
The female Spartan said nothing however, hoarding her indignation in silence, complaining only to don Andrés of the recrudescence of a madness that was upsetting all her plans. Through his numerous henchmen the counselor kept watch upon the young man. His spies followed Rafael cautiously through the night, up to the gate of the Blue House.
"What a scandal!" exclaimed doña Bernarda. "At night, too! He'll wind up by bringing her into this house! Can it be that that simpleton of a doña Pepita is blind to all this?"
And there was Rafael, unaware of the storm that was gathering about his head, no longer deigning even to speak to Remedios, or look at her, as with her head bowed like a sulky goat, she went around stifling her tears at the memory of those happy strolls in the orchard under doña Bernarda's surveillance.
The deputy had eyes for nothing outside of the Blue House; his happiness had blinded him. The one thing that annoyed him was the necessity of hiding his joy—his inability to make his good fortune public, so that all his admirers might learn of it.
He would willingly have gone back to the days of the Roman decadence, when the love affairs of the powerful became matters of national adoration.
"What do I care for their gossip" he once said to Leonora. "I love you so much that I'd like to see the whole city worship you in public. I'd like to snatch you up in my arms, and appear upon the bridge at high noon, before a concourse stupefied by your beauty: 'Am I or am I not your "quefe"?' I'd ask. 'Well, if I am, adore this woman, who is my very soul and without whom I could not live. The affection which you have for me you must have also for her.' And I'd do just as I say if it were possible."
"Silly boy ... adorable child," she had replied, showering him with kisses, brushing his dark beard with her soft, quivering lips.
And it was during one of their meetings—when their words were broken by sudden impulses of affection, and their lips were tightly pressed together—that Leonora had expressed her capricious desire.
"I'm stifling in this house. I hate to caress you inside four walls, as if you were only a passing whim. This is unworthy of you. You are Love, who came to seek me out on the most beautiful of nights. I like you better in the open air. You look more handsome to me then, and I feel younger."
And recalling those trips down the river about which Rafael had told her so many times when they were only friends—that islet with its curtains of reeds, the willows bending over the water and the nightingale singing from its hiding-place—she had asked him, eagerly:
"What night are you going to take me there? It's a whim of mine, a wild idea; but, what does love exist for, if not to make people do the foolish things that sweeten life?... Carry me off in your boat! The bark that bore you there will transport the two of us to your enchanted island; we will spend the whole night in the open air."
And Rafael, who was flattered by the idea of taking his love publicly down the river, through the slumbering countryside, unfastened his boat at midnight under the bridge and rowed it to a canebrake near Leonora's orchard.
An hour later they emerged through the opening in the hedge, arm in arm, laughing at the mischievous escapade, disturbing the majestic silence of the landscape with noisy, insolent kisses.
They got into the boat, and with a favoring current, began to descend the Júcar, lulled by the murmur of the river as it glided between the high mudbanks covered with reeds that bent low over the water and formed mysterious hiding places.
Leonora clapped her hands with delight. She threw over her neck the silk shawl with which she had covered her head. She unbuttoned her light traveling coat, and inhaled with deep enjoyment the moist, somewhat muggy breeze that was curling along the surface of the river. Her hand trembled as it dipped into the water from time to time.
How beautiful it was! All by themselves, and wandering about, as if the world did not exist; as if all Nature belonged to them, to them alone! Here they were, slipping past clusters of slumbering houses, leaving the city far behind. And nobody had suspected that passion, which in its enthusiasm had broken its chains and left its mysterious lair to have the heavens and the fields for sympathetic witnesses. Leonora would have wished that the night should never end; that the waning moon, which seemed to have been slashed by a sword, should stop eternally in the sky to wrap them forever in its feeble, dying light; that the river should be endless, and the boat float on and on until, overwhelmed by so much love, they should breathe the last gasp of life away in a kiss as tenuous as a sigh.
"If you could only know how grateful I am to you for this excursion, Rafael!... I'm happy, so happy. Never have I had such a night as this. But where is the island? Have we gone astray, as you did the night of the flood?"
No! At last they reached the place. There Rafael had spent many an afternoon hidden in the bushes, cut off by the encircling waters, dreaming that he was an adventurer on the virgin prairies or the vast rivers of America, performing exploits he had read about in the novels of Fenimore Cooper and Mayne Reid.
A tributary joined the Júcar at this point, emptying gently into the main stream from under a thicket of reeds and trees that formed a triumphal arch of foliage. At the confluence rose the island—a tiny piece of land almost level with the water, but as fresh as green and fragrant as an aquatic bouquet. The banks were lined with dense clumps of cane, and a few willows that bent their hairy foliage low over the water, forming dark vaults through which the boat could make its way.
The two lovers entered the shade. The curtain of branches concealed them from the river; a bare tear of moonlight managed to filter through the mane of willows.
Leonora felt a first sense of uneasiness in this dark, damp, cave-like haunt. Invisible animals took to the water with dull splashes as they heard the boat's bow touch the mud of the bank. The actress clutched her lover's arm with nervous pleasure.
"Here we are," murmured Rafael. "Hold on to something and get out. Careful, careful! Don't you want to hear the nightingale? Here we have him. Listen."
It was true. In one of the willows, at the other side of the island, the mysterious bird was trilling from his hiding place, a dizzying shower of notes, which broke at the crescendo of the musical whirl-pool into a plaint as soft and long-sustained as a golden thread stretched in the silence of the night across the river, that seemed to be applauding with its hushed murmur. To get nearer, the lovers went up through the rushes, stopping, bending over at each step, to keep the branches from crackling underneath their feet.
Favoring moisture had covered the islet with an exuberant undergrowth. Leonora repressed exclamations of glee as she found her feet caught in meshes of reeds or received the rude caresses of the branches that snapped back, as Rafael went ahead, and brushed against her face. She called for help in a muffled voice; and Rafael, laughing also, would hold out his hand to her, taking her finally to the very foot of the tree where the nightingale was singing.
The bird, divining the presence of intruders, ceased his song. Doubtless he had heard the rustle of their clothing as they sat down at the foot of the tree, or the tender words they were murmuring into each other's ear.
Over all, the silence of slumbering Nature reigned—that silence made up of a thousand sounds, harmonizing and blending in one majestic calm; the murmur of the water, the stirring of the foliage, the mysterious movements of unseen creatures crawling along under the leaves or patiently boring their winding galleries in the creaking trunks.
The nightingale began again to sing, timidly, like an artist afraid of an impending interruption. He uttered a few disconnected notes with anxious rests between them—love sighs they seemed, broken by sobs of passion. Then gradually he took courage, regained self-confidence, and entered on his full song, just as a soft breeze rose, swept over the island, and set all the trees and reeds rustling in mysterious accompaniment.
The bird gradually grew intoxicated with the sound of his own trilling, cadenced, voice; one could almost see him up there in the thick darkness, panting, ardent, in the spasm of his musical inspiration, utterly engrossed in his own beautiful little world of song, overwhelmed by the charm of his own artistry.
But the bird had ceased his music when the two lovers awoke in a tight embrace, still in ecstasy from the song of love to which they had fallen asleep. Leonora was resting a dishevelled head on Rafael's shoulder, caressing his neck with an eager, wearied breathing, whispering in his ear, random, incoherent words that still were vibrant with emotion.
How happy she was there! Everything comes for true love! Many a time, during the days of her unkindness to him, she had looked out from her balcony upon the river winding down through the slumbering countryside; and she had thought with rapture of a stroll some day through that immense garden on Rafael's arm—of gliding, gliding down the Júcar, to that very island.
"My love is an ancient thing," she murmured. "Do you suppose, I have been loving you only since the other night? No, I have loved you for a long, long time.... But don't you go and get conceited on that account, su señoria! I don't know how it began: It must have been when you were away in Madrid. When I saw you again I knew that I was lost. If I still resisted, it was because I was a wise woman; because I saw things clearly. Now I'm mad and I've thrown my better judgment to the winds. God knows what will become of us.... But come what may, love me, Rafael, love me. Swear that you'll love me always. It would be cruel to desert me after awakening a passion like this."
And, in an impulse of dread, she nestled closer against his breast, sank her hands into his hair, lifted her head back to kiss him avidly on the face, the forehead, the eyes, the lips, nibbling playfully, tenderly at his nose and chin, yet with an affectionate vehemence that drew cries of mock protest from Rafael.
"Madcap!" he muttered, smiling. "You're hurting me."
Leonora looked steadily at him out of her two great eyes that were a-gleam with love.
"I could eat you up," she murmured. "I feel like devouring you, my heaven, my king, my god.... What have you given me, tell me, little boy? How have you been able to fascinate me, make me feel a passion that I never, never felt before?"
And again they fell asleep.
Rafael stirred in his lover's arms, and suddenly sat up.
"It must be late. How many hours have we been here, do you suppose?"
"Many, many hours," Leonora answered sadly. "Hours of happiness always go so fast."
It was still dark. The moon had set. They arose and, hand in hand, groping their way along, they reached the boat. The splash of the oars began again to sound along the dark stream.
Suddenly the nightingale again piped gloomily in the willow wood, as if in farewell to a departing dream.
"Listen, my darling," said Leonora. "The poor little fellow is bidding us good-bye. Just hear how plaintively he says farewell."
And in the strange exhiliration that comes from fatigue, Leonora felt the flames of art flaring up within her, seething through her organism from head to foot.
A melody from Die Meistersinger came to her mind, the hymn that the good people of Nuremberg sing when Hans Sachs, their favorite singer, as bounteous and gentle as the Eternal Father, steps out on the platform for the contest in poetry. It was the song that the poet-minstrel, the friend of Albrecht Dürer, wrote in honor of Luther when the great Reformation broke; and the prima donna, rising to her feet in the stern, and returning the greeting of the nightingale began:
"Sorgiam, che spunta il dolce albor,
cantar ascolto in mezzo ai fior
voluttuoso un usignol
spiegando a noi l'amante vol!..."
Her ardent, powerful voice seemed to make the dark surface of the river tremble; it rolled in harmonious waves across the fields, and died away in the foliage of the distant island, whence the nightingale trilled an answer that was like a fainting sigh. Leonora tried to reproduce with her lips the majestic sonorousness of the Wagnerian chorus, mimicking the rumbling accompaniment of the orchestra, while Rafael beat the water with his oars in time with the pious, exalted melody with which the great Master had turned to popular poetry adequately to greet the outbreak of Reform.
They went on and on up the river against the current, Leonora singing, Rafael bending over the oars, moving his sinewy arms like steel springs. He kept the boat inshore, where the current was not so strong. At times low branches brushed the heads of the lovers, and drops of dew fell on their faces. Many a time the boat glided through one of the verdant archways of foliage, making its way slowly through the lily-pads; and the green overhead would tremble with the harmonious violence of that wonderful voice, as vibrant and as resonant as a great silver bell.
Day had not yet dawned—the dolce albor of Hans Sachs' song—but at any moment the rosy rim of sunrise would begin to climb the sky.
Rafael was hurrying to get back as soon as possible. Her sonorous voice of such tremendous range seemed to be awakening the whole countryside. In one cottage a window lighted up. Several times along the river-bank, as they rowed past the reeds, Rafael thought he heard the noise of snapping branches, the cautious footsteps of spies who were following them.
"Hush, my darling. You had better stop singing; they'll recognize you. They'll guess who you are."
They reached the bank where they had embarked. Leonora leaped ashore. They must separate there; for she insisted on going home alone. And their parting was sweet, slow, endless.
"Good-bye, my love; one kiss. Until tomorrow ... no, later—today."
She walked a few steps up the bank, and then suddenly ran back to snuggle again in her lover's arms.
"Another, my prince ... the last."
Day was breaking, announced not by the song of the lark, as in the garden of Shakespere's lovers at Verona, but by the sound of carts, creaking over country roads in the distance, and by a languid, sleepy melody of an orchard boy.
"Good-bye, Rafael.... Now I must really go. They'll discover us."
Wrapping her coat about her she hurried away, waving a final farewell to him with her handkerchief.
Rafael rowed upstream toward the city. That part of the trip—he reflected—alone, tired, and struggling against the current, was the one bad part of the wonderful night. When he moored his boat near the bridge it was already broad day. The windows of the river houses were opening. Over the bridge carts laden with produce for the market were rumbling, and orchard women were going by with huge baskets on their heads. All these people looked down with interest on their deputy. He must have spent the night fishing. And this news passed from one to the other, though not a trace of fishing tackle was visible in the boat. How they envied rich folks, who could sleep all day and spend their time just as they pleased!
Rafael jumped ashore. All that curiosity he was attracting annoyed him. His mother would know everything by the time he got home!
As he climbed slowly and wearily, his arms numb from rowing, to the bridge, he heard his name called.
Don Andrés was standing there, gazing at him out of those yellow eyes of his, scowling through his wrinkles with an expression of stern authority.
"You've given me a fine night, Rafael. I know where you've been. I saw you row off last night with that woman; and plenty of my friends were on hand to follow you and find out just where you went. You've been on the island all night; that woman was singing away like a lunatic.... God of Gods, boy! Aren't there any houses in the world? Do you have to play the band when you're having an affair, so that everybody in the Kingdom can come and look?"
The old man was truly riled; all the more because he was himself the secretive, the dexterous, libertine, adopting every precaution not to be discovered in his "weaknesses." Was it anger or envy that he felt on seeing a couple enough in love with each other to be fearless of gossip and indifferent to danger, to throw prudence to the winds, and flaunt their passion before the world with the reckless insolence of happiness?
"Besides, your mother knows everything. She's discovered what you've been up to, these nights past. She knows you haven't been in your room. You're going to break that woman's heart!"
And with paternal severity he went on to speak of doña Bernarda's despair, of the danger to the future of the House, of the obligations they were under to don Matías, of the solemn promise given, of that poor girl waiting to be married!
Rafael walked along in silence and like an automaton. That old man's chatter brought down around his head, like a swarm of pestering mosquitoes, all the provoking, irritating obligations of his life. He felt like a man rudely awakened by a tactless servant in the middle of a sweet dream. His lips were still tingling with Leonora's kisses! His whole body was aglow with her gentle warmth! And here was this old curmudgeon coming along with a sermon on "duty," "family," "what they would say"—as if love amounted to nothing in this life! It was a plot against his happiness, and he felt stirred to the depths with a sense of outrage and revolt.
They had reached the entrance to the Brull mansion. Rafael was fumbling about for the key-hole with his key.
"Well," growled the old man. "What have you got to say to all this? What do you propose to do? Answer me! Haven't you got a tongue in your head?"
"I," replied the young man energetically—"will do as I please."
Don Andrés jumped as though he had been stung. My, how this Rafael had changed!... Never before had he seen that gleam of aggressiveness, arrogance, belligerency in the eye of the boy!
"Rafael, is that the way you answer me,—a man who has known you since you were born? Is that the tone of voice you use toward one who loves you as your own father loved you?"
"I'm of age, if you don't mind my saying so!" Rafael replied. "I'm not going to put up any longer with this comedy of being a somebody on the street and a baby in my own house. Henceforth just keep your advice to yourself until I ask for it. Good day, sir!"
As he went up the stairs he saw his mother on the first landing, in the semi-darkness of the closed house, illumined only by the light that entered through the window gratings. She stood there, erect, frowning, tempestuous, like a statue of Avenging Justice.
But Rafael did not waver. He went straight on up the stairs, fearless and without a tremor, like a proprietor who had been away from home for some time and strides arrogantly back Into a house that is all his own.