III

When doña Bernarda found herself alone, and absolute mistress of her

home, she could not conceal her satisfaction.

Now they would see what a woman could do.

She counted on the advice and experience of don Andrés, who was closer

than ever to her now; and on the prestige of Rafael, the young lawyer,

who bade fair to sustain the reputation of the Brulls.

The power of the family continued unchanged. Don Andrés, who, at the

death of his master, had succeeded to the authority of a second father

in the Brull house, saw to the maintenance of relations with the

authorities at the provincial capital and with the still bigger fish in

Madrid. Petitions were heard in the _patio_ the same as ever. Loyal

party adherents were received as cordially as before and the same favors

were done, nor was there any decline of influence in places that don

Andrés referred to as "the spheres of public administration."

There came an election for Parliament, and as usual, doña Bernarda

secured the triumph of the individual whose nomination had been dictated

from Madrid. Don Ramón had left the party machine in perfect condition;

all it needed was enough "grease" to keep it running smoothly; and there

his widow was besides, ever alert at the slightest suggestion of a creak

in the gearing.

At provincial headquarters they spoke of the District with the usual

confidence:

"It's ours. Brull's son is as powerful as the old man himself."

The truth was that Rafael took little interest in "the Party." He looked

upon it as one of the family properties, the title to which no one could

dispute. He confined his personal activities to obeying his mother. "Go

to Riola with don Andrés. Our friends there will be happy to see you."

And he would go on the trip, to suffer the torment of an interminable

rally, a _paella_, during which his fellow partisans would bore him with

their uncouth merriment and ill-mannered flattery. "You really ought to

give your horse a couple of days' rest. Instead of going out for a ride,

spend your afternoon at the Club! Our fellows are complaining they never

get a sight of you." Whereupon Rafael would give up his rides--his sole

pleasure practically--and plunge into a thick smoke-laden atmosphere of

noise and shouting, where he would have to answer questions of the most

illustrious members of the party. They would sit around, filling their

coffee-saucers with cigar-ash, disputing as to which was the better

orator, Castelar or Canovas, and, in case of a war between France and

Germany, which of the two would win--idle subjects that always provoked

disagreements and led to quarrels.

The only time he entered into voluntary relations with "the Party" was

when he took his pen in hand and manufactured for the Brull weekly a

series of articles on "Law and Morality" and "Liberty and Faith,"--the

rehashings of a faithful, industrious plodder at school, prolix

commonplaces seasoned with what metaphysical terminology he remembered,

and which, from the very reason that nobody understood them, excited

the admiration of his fellow partisans. They would blink at the articles

and say to don Andrés:

"What a pen, eh? Just let anyone dare to argue with him.... Deep, that

noodle, I tell you!"

Nights, when his mother did not oblige him to visit the home of some

influential voter who must be kept content, he would spend reading, no

longer, however, as in Valencia, books lent him by the canon, but works

that he bought himself, following the recommendations of the press, and

that his mother respected with the veneration always inspired in her by

printed paper sewed and bound, an awe comparable only to the scorn she

felt for newspapers, dedicated, every one of them, as she averred, to

the purpose of insulting holy things and stirring up the brutal passions

of "the rabble."

These years of random reading, unrestrained by the scruples and the

fears of a student, gradually and quietly shattered many of Rafael's

firm beliefs. They broke the mould in which the friends of his mother

had cast his mind and made him dream of a broader life than the one

known to those about him. French novels transported him to a Paris that

far outshone the Madrid he had known for a moment in his graduate days.

Love stories awoke in his youthful imagination an ardor for adventure

and involved passions in which there was something of the intense love

of indulgence that had been his father's besetting sin. He came to dwell

more and more in the fictitious world of his readings, where there were

elegant, perfumed, clever women, practicing a certain art in the

refinement of their vices.

The uncouth, sunburned orchard-girls inspired him with revulsion as if

they had been women of another race, creatures of an inferior genus. The

young ladies of the city seemed to him peasants in disguise, with the

narrow, selfish, stingy instincts of their parents. They knew the exact

market price of oranges and just how much land was owned by each

aspirant to their hand; and they adjusted their love to the wealth of

the pretender, believing it the test of quality to appear implacable

toward everything not fashioned to the mould of their petty life of

prejudice and tradition.

For that reason he was deeply bored by his colorless, humdrum existence,

so far removed from that other purely imaginative life which rose from

the pages of his books and enveloped him with an exotic, exciting

perfume.

Some day he would be free, and take flight on his own wings; and that

day of liberation would come when he got to be deputy. He waited for his

coming of age much as an heir-apparent waits for the moment of his

coronation.

From early boyhood he had been taught to look forward to the great event

which would cut his life in two, opening out new pathways for a "forward

march" to fame and fortune.

"When my little boy gets to be deputy," his mother would say in her rare

moments of affectionate expansiveness, "the girls will fight for him

because he is so handsome! And he'll marry a millionairess!"

Meanwhile, in long years of impatient anticipation, his life went on,

with no special circumstance to break its dull monotony--the life of an

aspirant certain of his lot, "killing time" till the call should come

to enter on his heritage. He was like those noble youngsters of bygone

centuries who, graced in their cradles by the rank of colonel from the

monarch, played around with hoop and top till they were old enough to

join their regiments. He had been born a deputy, and a deputy he was

sure to be: for the moment, he was waiting for his cue in the wings of

the theatre of life.

His trip to Italy on a pilgrimage to see the Pope was the one event that

had disturbed the dreary course of his existence. But in that country of

marvels, with a pious canon for a guide, he visited churches rather than

museums. Of theatres he saw only two--larks permitted by his tutor,

whose austerity was somewhat mollified in those changing scenes.

Indifferently they passed the famous artistic works of the Italian

churches, but paused always to venerate some relic with miracles as

famous as absurd. Even so, Rafael managed to catch a confused and

passing glimpse of a world different from the one in which he was

predestined to pass his life. From a distance he sensed something of the

love of pleasure and romance he had drunk in like an intoxicating wine

from his reading. In Milan he admired a gilded, adventurous bohemia of

opera; in Rome, the splendor of a refined, artistic aristocracy in

perpetual rivalry with that of Paris and London; and in Florence, an

English nobility that had come in quest of sunlight and a chance to air

its straw hats, show off the fair hair of its ladies, and chatter its

own language in gardens where once upon a time the somber Dante dreamed

and Boccaccio told his merry tales to drive fear of plague away.

That journey, of impressions as rapid and as fleeting as a reel of

moving-pictures, leaving in Rafael's mind a maze of names, buildings,

paintings and cities, served to give greater breadth to his thinking, as

well as added stimulus to his imagination. Wider still became the gulf

that separated him from the people and ideas he met in his common

everyday life. He felt a longing for the extraordinary, for the

original, for the adventuresomeness of artistic youth; and political

master of a county, heir of a feudal dominion virtually, he nevertheless

would read the name of any writer or painter whatsoever with the

superstitious respect of a rustic churl. "A wretched, ruined lot who

haven't even a bed to die on," his mother viewed such people; but Rafael

nourished a secret envy for all who lived in that ideal world, which he

was certain must be filled with pleasures and exciting things he had

scarcely dared to dream of. What would he not give to be a bohemian like

the personages he met in the books of Murger, member of a merry band of

"intellectuals," leading a life of joy and proud devotion to higher

things in a bourgeois age that knew only thirst for money and prejudice

of class! Talent for saying pretty things, for writing winged verses

that soared like larks to heaven! A garret underneath the roof, off

there in Paris, in the Latin Quarter! A Mimí poor but spiritual, who

would love him, and--between one kiss and another--be able to

discuss--not the price of oranges, like the girls who followed him with

tender eyes at home--but serious "elevated" things! In exchange for all

that he would gladly have given his future deputyship and all the

orchards he had inherited, which, though encumbered by mortgages not to

mention moral debts left by the rascality of his father and

grandfather--still would bring him a tidy annuity for realizing his

bohemian dreams.

Such preoccupations made life as a party leader, tied down to the petty

interests of a constituency, quite unthinkable! At the risk of angering

his mother, he fled the Club, to court the solitude of the hills and

fields. There his imagination could range in greater freedom, peopling

the roads, the meadows, the orange groves with creatures of his fancy,

often conversing aloud with the heroines of some "grand passion,"

carried on along the lines laid down by the latest novel he had read.

One afternoon toward the close of summer Rafael climbed the little

mountain of San Salvador, which lies close to the city. From the

eminence he was fond of looking out over the vast domains of his family.

For all the inhabitants of that fertile plain were--as don Andrés said

whenever he wished to emphasize the party's greatness--like so many

cattle branded with the name of Brull.

As he went up the winding, stony trail, Rafael thought of the mountains

of Assisi, which he had visited with his friend the canon, a great

admirer of the Saint of Umbria. It was a landscape that suggested

asceticism. Crags of bluish or reddish rock lined the roadway on either

side, with pines and cypresses rising from the hollows, and extending

black, winding, snaky roots out over the fallow soil. At intervals,

white shrines with tiny roofs harbored mosaics of glazed tiles depicting

the Stations on the _Via Dolorosa_. The pointed green caps of the

cypresses, as they waved, seemed bent on frightening away the white

butterflies that were fluttering about over the rosemary and the

nettles. The parasol-pines projected patches of shade across the burning

road, where the sun-baked earth crackled and crumbled to dead dust under

every footstep.

Reaching the little square in front of the Hermitage, he rested from the

ascent, stretching out full length on the crescent of rubblework that

formed a bench near the sanctuary. There silence reigned, the silence of

high hill-tops. From below, the noises of the restless life and labor of

the plain came weakened, softened, by the wind, like the murmuring of

waves breaking on a distant shore. Among the prickly-pears that grew in

close thicket behind the bench, insects were buzzing about, shining in

the sun like buds of gold. Some hens, belonging to the Hermitage, were

pecking away in one corner of the square, clucking, and dusting their

feathers in the gravel.

Rafael surrendered to the charm of the exquisite scene. With reason had

it been called "Paradise" by its ancient owners, Moors from the magic

gardens of Bagdad, accustomed to the splendors of _The Thousand and One

Nights_, but who went into ecstacies nevertheless on beholding for the

first time the wondrous _ribera_ of Valencia!

Throughout the great valley, orange groves, extending like shimmering

waves of velvet; hedges and enclosures of lighter green, cutting the

crimson earth into geometric figures; clumps of palms spurting like jets

of verdure upward toward the sky, and falling off again in languorous

swoons; villas blue and rose-colored, nestling in flowering gardens;

white farmhouses half concealed behind green swirls of forest; spindling

smokestacks of irrigation engines, with yellow sooty tops; Alcira, its

houses clustered on the island and overflowing to the opposite bank, all

of whitish, bony hue, pock-marked with tiny windows; beyond, Carcagente,

the rival city, girdled in its belt of leafy orchards; off toward the

sea, sharp, angular mountains, with outlines that from afar suggested

the fantastic castles imagined by Doré; and inland, the towns of the

upper _ribera_ floating in an emerald lake of orchard, the distant

mountains taking on a violet hue from the setting sun that was creeping

like a bristly porcupine of gold into the hot vapors of the horizon.

Behind the Hermitage all the lower _ribera_ stretched, one expanse of

rice-fields drowned under an artificial flood; then, Sueca and Cullera,

their white houses perched on those fecund lagoons like towns in

landscapes of India; then, Albufera, with its lake, a sheet of silver

glistening in the sunlight; then, Valencia, like a cloud of smoke

drifting along the base of a mountain range of hazy blue; and, at last,

in the background, the halo, as it were, of this apotheosis of light and

color, the Mediterranean--the palpitant azure Gulf bounded by the cape

of San Antonio and the peaks of Sagunto and Almenara, that jutted up

against the sky-line like the black fins of giant whales.

As Rafael looked down upon the towers of the crumbling convent of La

Murta, almost hidden in its pine-groves, he thought of all the tragedy

of the Reconquest; and almost mourned the fate of those farmer-warriors

whose white cloaks he could imagine as still floating among the groves

of those magic trees of Asia's paradise. It was the influence of the

Moor in his Spanish ancestry. Christian, clerical even, though he was,

he had inherited a melancholy, dreamy turn of mind from the very Arabs

who had created all that Eden.

He pictured to himself the tiny kingdoms of those old _walis_; vassal

districts very like the one his family ruled. But instead of resting on

influence, bribery, intimidation, and the abuse of law, they lived by

the lances of horsemen as apt at tilling the soil as at capering in

tournaments with an elegance never equalled by any chevaliers of the

North. He could see the court of Valencia, with the romantic gardens of

Ruzafa, where poets sang mournful strophes over the wane of the

Valencian Moor, while beautiful maidens listened from behind the

blossoming rose-bushes. And then the catastrophe came. In a torrent of

steel, barbarians swept down from the arid hills of Aragon to appease

their hunger in the bounty of the plain--the _almogávares_--naked, wild,

bloodthirsty savages, who never washed. And as allies of this horde,

bankrupt Christian noblemen, their worn-out lands mortgaged to the

Israelite, but good cavalrymen, withal, armored, and with dragonwings on

their helmets; and among the Christians, adventurers of various tongues,

soldiers of fortune out for plunder and booty in the name of the Cross

--the "black sheep" of every Christian family. And they seized the great

garden of Valencia, installed themselves in the Moorish palaces, called

themselves counts and marquises, and with their swords held that

privileged country for the King of Aragon, while the conquered Saracens

continued to fertilize it with their toil.

"Valencia, Valencia, Valencia! Thy walls are ruins, thy gardens

grave-yards, thy sons slaves unto the Christian ..." groaned the poet,

covering his eyes with his cloak. And Rafael could see, passing like

phantoms before his eyes, leaning forward on the necks of small, sleek,

sinewy horses, that seemed to fly over the ground, their legs

horizontal, their nostrils belching smoke, the Moors, the real people of

Valencia, conquered, degenerated by the very abundance of their soil,

abandoning their gardens before the onrush of brutal, primitive

invaders, speeding on their way toward the unending night of African

barbarism. At this eternal exile of the first Valencians who left to

oblivion and decay a civilization, the last vestiges of which today

survive in the universities of Fez, Rafael felt the sorrow he would have

experienced had it all been a disaster to his family or his party.

While he was thinking of all these dead things, life in its feverish

agitation surrounded him. A cloud of sparrows was darting about the roof

of the Hermitage. On the mountain side a flock of dark-fleeced sheep was

grazing; and when any of them discovered a blade of grass among the

rocks, they would begin calling to one another with a melancholy

bleating.

Rafael could hear the voices of some women who seemed to be climbing the

road, and from his reclining position he finally made out two parasols

that were gradually rising to view over the edge of his bench. One was

of flaming red silk, skilfully embroidered and suggesting the filigreed

dome of a mosque; the second, of flowered calico, was apparently keeping

at a respectful distance behind the first.

Two women entered the little square, and as Rafael sat up and removed

his hat, the taller, who seemed to be the mistress, acknowledged his

courtesy with a slight bow, went on to the other end of the esplanade,

and stood, with her back turned toward him, looking at the view. The

other sat down some distance off, breathing laboriously from the

exertion of the climb.

Who were those women?... Rafael knew the whole city, and had never seen

them.

The one seated near him was doubtless the servant of the other--her maid

or her companion. She was dressed in black, simply but with a certain

charm, like the French soubrettes he had seen in illustrated novels. But

rustic origin and lack of cultivation were evident from the stains on

the backs of her unshapely hands; from her broad, flat, finger-nails;

and from her large ungainly feet, quite out of harmony with the pair of

stylish boots she was wearing--cast-off articles, doubtless, of the

lady. She was pretty, nevertheless, with a fresh exuberance of youth.

Her large, gray, credulous eyes were those of a stupid but playful lamb;

her hair, straight, and a very light blond, hung loosely here and there

over a freckled face, dark with sunburn. She handled her closed parasol

somewhat awkwardly and kept looking anxiously at the doubled gold chain

that drooped from her neck to her waist, as if to reassure herself that

a gift long-coveted had not been lost.

Rafael's interest drifted to the lady. His eyes rested on the back of a

head of tightly-gathered golden hair, as luminous as a burnished helmet;

on a white neck, plump, rounded; on a pair of broad, lithe shoulders,

hidden under a blue silk blouse, the lines tapering rapidly, gracefully

toward the waist; on a gray skirt, finally, falling in harmonious folds

like the draping of a statue, and under the hem the solid heels of two

shoes of English style encasing feet that must have been as agile and as

strong as they were tiny.

The lady called to her maid in a voice that was sonorous, vibrant,

velvety, though Rafael could catch only the accented syllables of her

words, that seemed to melt together in the melodious silence of the

mountain top. The young man was sure she had not spoken Spanish. A

foreigner, almost certainly!...

She was expressing admiration and enthusiasm for the view, talking

rapidly, pointing out the principal towns that could be seen, calling

them by their names,--the only words that Rafael could make out clearly.

Who was this woman whom he had never seen, who spoke a foreign language

and yet knew the _ribera_ well? Perhaps the wife of one of the French or

English orange-dealers established in the city! Meanwhile his eyes were

devouring that superb, that opulent, that elegant beauty which seemed to

be challenging him with its indifference to his presence.

The keeper of the Hermitage issued cautiously from the house--a peasant

who made his living from visitors to the heights. Attracted by the

promising appearance of the strange lady, the hermit came forward to

greet her, offering to fetch water from the cistern, and to unveil the

image of the miraculous virgin, in her honor.

The woman turned around to answer the man, and that gave Rafael an

opportunity to study her at his leisure. She was tall, ever so tall, as

tall as he perhaps. But the impression her height of stature made was

softened by a grace of figure that revealed strength allied to elegance.

A strong bust, sculpturesque, supporting a head that engaged the young

man's wrapt attention. A hot mist of emotion seemed to cloud his vision

as he looked into her large eyes, so green, so luminous! The golden hair

fell forward upon a forehead of pearly whiteness, veined at the temples

with delicate lines of blue. Viewed in profile her gracefully moulded

nose, quivering with vitality at the nostrils, filled out a beauty that

was distinctly modern, piquantly charming. In those lineaments, Rafael

thought he could recognize any number of famous actresses. He had seen

her before. Where?... He did not know. Perhaps in some illustrated

weekly! Perhaps in some album of stage celebrities! Or maybe on the

cover of some match-box--a common medium of publicity for famous

European belles. Of one thing he was certain: at sight of that wonderful

face he felt as though he were meeting an old friend after a long

absence.

The recluse, in hopes of a perquisite, led the two women toward the door

of the hermitage, where his wife and daughter had appeared, to feast

their eyes on the huge diamonds sparkling at the ears of the strange

lady.

"Enter, _siñorita_" the rustic invited. "I'll show you the Virgin, the

Virgin _del Lluch_, you understand, the only genuine one. She came here

alone all the way from Majorca. People down in Palma claim they have the

real Virgin. But what can they say for themselves? They are jealous

because our Lady chose Alcira; and here we have her, proving that she's

the real one by the miracles she works."

He opened the door of the tiny church, which was as cool and gloomy as a

cellar. At the rear, on a baroque altar of tarnished gold, stood the

little statue with its hollow cloak and its black face.

Rapidly, by rote almost, the good man recited the history of the image.

The Virgin _del Lluch_ was the patroness of Majorca. A hermit had been

compelled to flee from there, for a reason no one had been able to

discover--perhaps to get away from some Saracen girl of those exciting,

war-like days! And to rescue the Virgin from profanation he brought her

to Alcira, and built this sanctuary for her. Later people from Majorca

came to return her to their island. But the celestial lady had taken a

liking to Alcira and its inhabitants. Over the water, and without even

wetting her feet, she came gliding back. Then the Majorcans, to keep

what had happened quiet, counterfeited a new statue that looked just

like the first. All this was gospel truth, and as proof, there lay the

original hermit buried at the foot of the altar; and there was the

Virgin, too, her face blackened by the sun and the salt wind on her

miraculous voyage over the sea.

The beautiful lady smiled slightly, as she listened. The maid was all

ears, not to lose a word of a language she but half understood, her

credulous peasant eyes traveling from the Virgin to the hermit and from

the hermit to the Virgin, plainly expressing the wonder she was feeling

at such a portentous miracle. Rafael had followed the party into the

shrine and taken a position near the fascinating stranger. She, however,

pretended not to see him.

"That is only a legend," he ventured to remark, when the rustic had

finished his story. "You understand, of course, that nobody hereabouts

accepts such tales as true."

"I suppose so," the lady answered coldly.

"Legend or no legend, don Rafael," the recluse grumbled, somewhat

peeved, "that's what my grandfather and all the folk of his day used to

say; and that's what people still believe. If the story has been handed

down so long, there must be something to it."

The patch of sunlight that shone through the doorway upon the flagstones

was darkened by the shadow of a woman. It was a poorly clad orchard

worker, young, it seemed, but with a face pale, and as rough as wrinkled

paper, all the crevices and hollows of her cranium showing, her eyes

sunken and dull, her unkempt hair escaping from beneath her knotted

kerchief. She was barefoot, carrying her shoes in her hand. She stood

with her legs wide apart, as if in an effort to keep her balance. She

seemed to feel intense pain whenever she stepped upon the ground.

Illness and poverty were written on every feature of her person.

The recluse knew her well; and as the unfortunate creature, panting with

the effort of the climb, sank upon a little bench to rest her feet, he

told her story briefly to the visitors.

She was ill, very, very ill. With no faith in doctors, who, according to

her, "treated her with nothing but words"; she believed that the Virgin

_del Lluch_ would ultimately cure her. And, though at home she could

scarcely move from her chair and was always being scolded by her husband

for neglecting the housework, every week she would climb the steep

mountain-side, barefoot, her shoes in her hand.

The hermit approached the sick woman, accepting a copper coin she

offered. A few couplets to the Virgin, as usual, he supposed!

"Visanteta, a few _gochos_!" shouted the rustic, going to the door. And

his daughter came into the chapel--a dirty, dark-skinned creature with

African eyes, who might just have escaped from a gipsy band.

She took a seat upon a bench, turning her back upon the Virgin with the

bored ill-humored expression of a person compelled to do a dull task day

after day; and in a hoarse, harsh, almost frantic voice, which echoed

deafeningly in that small enclosure, she began a drawling chant that

rehearsed the story of the statue and the portentous miracles it had

wrought.

The sick woman, kneeling before the altar without releasing her hold

upon her shoes, the heels of her feet, which were bruised and bleeding

from the stones, showing from under her skirts, repeated a refrain at

the end of each stanza, imploring the protection of the Virgin. Her

voice had a weak and hollow sound, like the wail of a child. Her sunken

eyes, misty with tears, were fixed upon the Virgin with a dolorous

expression of supplication. Her words came more tremulous and more

distant at each couplet.

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, _señora_; 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 glass 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 unobstructed to the very limit of the horizon, the

charming creature seemed to breathe more freely.

"Good God!" 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 passes 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

shining, 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 Ramón, 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, pronounce 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 bumpkin 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 shining

silver coins. She emptied the money into the apron 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 passed 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 apron

blankly, hypnotized by the glitter of all that wealth! _Duros, pesetas_,

two-_pesetas_, dimes! All the money the lady had brought! Even a gold

button, 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 Ramón,

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 ass! You ...

rube!"