The Torrent Part 5

The beautiful stranger was plainly affected at the pitiful sight. Her maid had knelt and was following the sing-song rhythm of the chant, with prayers in a language that Rafael recognized at last. It was Italian.

"What a great thing faith is!" the lady murmured with a sigh.

"Yes, _senora_; a beautiful thing!"

Rafael tried to think of something "brilliant" on the grandeur of faith, from Saint Thomas, or one of the other "sound" authors he had studied.

But he ransacked his memory in vain. Nothing! That charming woman had filled his mind with thoughts far other than quotations from the Fathers!

The couplets to the Virgin came to an end. With the last stanza the wild singer disappeared; and the sick woman, after several abortive efforts, rose painfully to her feet. The recluse approached her with the solicitude of a shopkeeper concerned for the quality of his wares. Were things going any better? Were the visits to the Virgin doing good?...

The unfortunate woman did not dare to answer, for fear of offending the miraculous Lady. She did not know!... Yes ... she really must be a little better ... But that climb!... This offering had not had such good results as the previous ones, she thought; but she had faith: the Virgin would be good to her and cure her in the end. At the church door she collapsed from pain. The recluse placed her on his chair and ran to the cistern to get a gla.s.s of water. The Italian maid, her eyes bulging with fright, leaned over the poor woman, petting her:

"_Poverina! Poverina!... Coraggio_!" The invalid, rallying from her swoon, opened her eyes and gazed vacantly at the stranger, not understanding her words but guessing their kindly intention.

The lady stepped out to the _plazoleta_, deeply moved, it seemed, by what she had been witnessing. Rafael followed, with affected absent-mindedness, somewhat ashamed of his insistence, yet at the same time looking for an opportunity to renew their conversation.

On finding herself once more in the presence of that wonderful panorama, where the eye ran un.o.bstructed to the very limit of the horizon, the charming creature seemed to breathe more freely.

"Good G.o.d!" she exclaimed, as if speaking to herself. "How sad and yet how wonderful! This view is ever so beautiful. But that woman!... That poor woman!"

"She's been that way for years, to my personal knowledge," Rafael remarked, pretending to have known the invalid for a long time, though he had scarcely ever deigned to notice her before. "Our peasants are queer people. They despise doctors, and refuse their help, preferring to kill themselves with these barbarous prayers and devotions, which they expect will do them good."

"But they may be right, after all!" the lady replied. "Disease is often incurable, and science can do for it about as much as faith--sometimes, even less.... But here we are laughing and enjoying ourselves while suffering pa.s.ses us by, rubs elbows with us even, without our noticing!"...

Rafael was at a loss for reply. What sort of woman was this? What a way she had of talking! Accustomed as he was to the commonplace chatter of his mother's friends, and still under the influence of this meeting, which had so deeply disturbed him, the poor boy imagined himself in the presence of a sage in skirts--a philosopher under the disguise of female beauty come from beyond the Pyrenees, from some gloomy German alehouse perhaps, to upset his peace of mind.

The stranger was silent for a time, her gaze fixed upon the horizon.

Then around her attractive sensuous lips, through which two rows of s.h.i.+ning, dazzling teeth were gleaming, the suggestion of a smile began to play, a smile of joy at the landscape.

"How beautiful this all is!" she exclaimed, without turning toward her companion. "How I have longed to see it again!"

At last the opportunity had come to ask the question he had been so eager to put: and she herself had offered the opportunity!

"Do you come from here?" he asked, in a tremulous voice, fearing lest his inquisitiveness be scornfully repelled.

"Yes," the lady replied, curtly.

"Well, that's strange. I have never seen you...."

"There's nothing strange about that. I arrived only yesterday."

"Just as I said!... I know everyone in the city. My name is Rafael Brull. I'm the son of don Ramon, who was mayor of Alcira many times."

At last he had let it out! The poor fellow had been dying to reveal his name, tell who he was, p.r.o.nounce that magic word so influential in the District, certain it would be the "Open Sesame" to that wonderful stranger's grace! After that, perhaps, she would tell him who she was!

But the lady commented on his declaration with an "Ah!" of cold indifference. She did not show that his name was even known to her, though she did sweep him with a rapid, scrutinizing, half-mocking glance that seemed to betray a hidden thought:

"Not bad-looking, but what a dunce!"

Rafael blushed, feeling he had made a false step in volunteering his name with the pompousness he would have used toward some b.u.mpkin of the region.

A painful silence followed. Rafael was anxious to get out of his plight.

That glacial indifference, that disdainful courtesy, which, without a trace of rudeness, still kept him at a distance, hurt his vanity to the quick. But since there was no stopping now, he ventured a second question:

"And are you thinking of remaining in Alcira very long?..."

Rafael thought the ground was giving way beneath his feet. Another glance from those green eyes! But, alas, this time it was cold and menacing, a livid flash of lightning refracted from a mirror of ice.

"I don't know ..." she answered, with a deliberateness intended to accentuate unmistakable scorn. "I usually leave places the moment they begin to bore me." And looking Rafael squarely in the face she added, with freezing formality, after a pause:

"Good afternoon, sir."

Rafael was crushed. He saw her turn toward the doorway of the sanctuary and call her maid. Every step of hers, every movement of her proud figure, seemed to raise a barrier in front of him. He saw her bend affectionately over the sick orchard-woman, open a little pink bag that her maid handed her, and, rummaging about among some sparkling trinkets and embroidered handkerchiefs, draw out a hand filled with s.h.i.+ning silver coins. She emptied the money into the ap.r.o.n of the astonished peasant girl, gave something as well to the recluse, who was no less astounded, and then, opening her red parasol, walked off, followed by her maid.

As she pa.s.sed Rafael, she answered the doffing of his hat with a barely perceptible inclination of her head; and, without looking at him, started on her way down the stony mountain path.

The young man stood gazing after her through the pines and the cypresses as her proud athletic figure grew smaller in the distance.

The perfume of her presence seemed to linger about him when she had gone, obsessing him with the atmosphere of superiority and exotic elegance that emanated from her whole being.

Rafael noticed finally that the recluse was approaching, unable to restrain a desire to communicate his admiration to someone.

"What a woman!" the man cried, rolling his eyes to express his full enthusiasm.

She had given him a _duro_, one of those white discs which, in that atheistic age, so rarely ascended that mountain trail! And there the poor invalid sat at the door of the Hermitage, staring into her ap.r.o.n blankly, hypnotized by the glitter of all that wealth! _Duros, pesetas_, two-_pesetas_, dimes! All the money the lady had brought! Even a gold b.u.t.ton, which must have come from her glove!

Rafael shared in the general astonishment. But who the devil was that woman?

"How do I know!" the rustic answered. "But judging from the language of the maid," he went on with great conviction: "I should say she was some Frenchwoman ... some Frenchwoman ... with a pile of money!"

Rafael turned once more in the direction of the two parasols that were slowly winding down the slope. They were barely visible now. The larger of the two, a mere speck of red, was already blending into the green of the first orchards on the plain ... At last it had disappeared completely.

Left alone, Rafael burst into rage! The place where he had made such a sorry exhibition of himself seemed odious to him now. He fumed with vexation at the memory of that cold glance, which had checked any advance toward familiarity, repelled him, crushed him! The thought of his stupid questions filled him with hot shame.

Without replying to the "good-evening" from the recluse and his family, he started down the mountain, in hopes of meeting the woman again, somewhere, some time, he knew not when nor how. The heir of don Ramon, the hope of the District, strode furiously on, his arms aquiver with a nervous tremor. And aggressively, menacingly, addressing his own ego as though it were a henchman cringing terror-stricken in front of him, he muttered:

"You imbecile!... You lout!... You peasant! You provincial a.s.s! You ...

rube!"

IV

Dona Bernarda did not suspect the reason why her son rose on the following morning pale, and with dark rings under his eyes, as if he had spent a bad night. Nor could his political friends guess, that afternoon, why in such fine weather, Rafael should come and shut himself up in the stifling atmosphere of the Club.

When he came in, a crowd of noisy henchmen gathered round him to discuss all over again the great news that had been keeping "the Party" in feverish excitement for a week past: the Cortes were to be dissolved!

The newspapers had been talking of nothing else. Within two or three months, before the close of the year at the latest, there would be a new election, and therewith, as all averred, a landslide for don Rafael Brull. The intimate friend and lieutenant of the House of Brull was the best informed. If the elections took place on the date indicated by the newspapers, Rafael would still be five or six months short of his twenty-fifth birth-day. But don Andres had written to Madrid to consult the Party leaders. The prime minister was agreeable--"there were precedents!"--and even though Rafael should be a few weeks short of the legal age, the seat would go to him just the same. They would send no more "foundlings" from Madrid! Alcira would have no more "unknowns"

foisted upon her! And the whole Tribe of Brull dependents was preparing for the contest with the enthusiasm of a prize-fighter sure of victory beforehand.