As he came out of the building he saw her on the sidewalk, about to step
into a vehicle. An usher of the Congress was holding the carriage door
open, with the demonstrative respect inspired by the goldbraid shining
on the driver's hat. It was an embassy coach!
Rafael approached, believing, from the carriage, that it still might
prove to be a case of an astonishing resemblance. But no; it was she;
the same woman she had always been, as if eight hours and not eight
years had passed:
"Leonora! You here!..."
She smiled, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to see him
again.
"I saw you and heard you. You did very well, Rafael: I enjoyed it."
And grasping his hand in a frank, hearty clasp of friendship, she
entered the carriage with a rustle of silk and fine linen.
"Come! Won't you step in too?" she asked, smiling. "Join me for a little
drive along the Castellana. It's a magnificent afternoon; a little fresh
air won't do any harm after that muggy room."
Rafael, to the astonishment of the usher, who was surprised to see him
in such seductive company, got in; and the carriage rolled off. There
they were, together again, sitting side by side, swaying gently back and
forth with the motion of the soft springs.
Rafael was at a loss for words. The cold, ironic smile of his former
lover chilled him. He was flushed with shame at the thought of how he
had treated that beautiful creature the last time they had seen each
other. He wanted to say something, and yet he could not find a way to
begin. The ceremonious, formal _usted_ she had employed in inviting him
into the carriage embarrassed him. At last he ventured, timidly, also
avoiding the intimate _tu_!
"Imagine our meeting here! What a surprise!"
"I got in yesterday; tomorrow I leave for Lisbon. A short stop, isn't
it! Just time for a word with the director of the _Real_; perhaps I'll
come next winter to sing _Die Walküre_ here. But let's talk about you,
illustrious orator.... But I may say _tu_ to you, mayn't I?" she
corrected--"for I believe we are still friends."
"Yes, friends, Leonora.... I have never been able to forget you."
But the feeling he put into the words vanished before the cold smile
with which she answered.
"Friends; that's it," she said, slowly. "Friends, and nothing more.
Between us there lies a corpse that prevents us from getting very close
to each other again."
"A corpse?" asked Rafael, not catching her meaning.
"Yes; the love you murdered.... Friends, nothing more; comrades united
by complicity in a crime."
And she laughed with cruel sarcasm, while the carriage turned into one
of the avenues of Recoletos. Leonora looked vacantly out upon the
central boulevard. The rows of iron benches were filled with people.
Groups of children in charge of governesses were playing gaily about in
the soft, golden splendor of the afternoon.
"I read in the papers this morning that don Rafael Brull, 'of the
Finance Commission,' if you please, would undertake to speak for the
Ministry on the matter of the budget; so I got down on my knees to an
old friend of mine, the secretary of the English embassy, and begged him
to come and take me to the session. This coach is his.... Poor fellow!
He doesn't know you, but the moment he saw you stand up to speak, he
took to his heels.... He missed something though; for really, you
weren't half bad. I'm quite impressed. Say, Rafael, where do you dig up
all those things?"
But Rafael looked uneasily at her cruel smile and refused to accept her
praise. Besides, what did he care about his speech? It seemed to him
that he had been for years and years in that coach; that a whole
lifetime had gone by since he left the halls of the Congress. His gaze
was fixed on her in admiration, and his astonished eyes were drinking in
the beauty of her face, and of her figure.
"How beautiful you are!" he murmured in impulsive enchantment. "The same
as you were then. It seems impossible that eight years can have flown
by."
"Yes; I admit that I bear up well. Time seems not to touch me. A little
longer at the dressing table--that's all. I'm one of the people who die
in harness, so to speak, making no concessions, so far as looks go, to
old age. Rather than surrender, I'd kill myself. I intend to put Ninon
de Lenclos in the shade!"
It was true. Eight years had made not the slightest impression on her.
The same freshness, the same robust, energetic slenderness, the
identical flames of arrogant vitality in her green eyes. Instead of
withering under the incessant parching of passion's flame, she seemed to
grow stronger, hardier, in the crucible.
She measured the deputy with sarcastic playfulness.
"Poor Rafael! I'm sorry I can't say as much for you. How you've changed!
You look almost like a Knight of the Crown. You're fat! You're bald! And
those eyeglasses! Why, I could hardly recognize you in the Chamber. How
my romantic Moor has aged! You poor dear! You even have wrinkles!..."
And she laughed, as if it filled her with intense joy, the joy of
vengeance, to see her former lover so crestfallen at her portrayal of
his decrepitude.
"You're not happy, are you! I can see that. And yet, you ought to be.
You must have married that girl your mother picked for you. You
doubtless have children.... Don't try to fib to me, just to seem more...
what shall I say ... more interesting! I can see it from the looks of
you. You are the _pater familias_ all over. I am never mistaken in such
things!... Well, why aren't you happy? You have all the requisites for a
personage of note, and you will shortly be one. I'll bet you wear that
sash to hold your paunch in! You are rich, you make speeches in that
horrid, gloomy, cave. Your friends back home will go into ecstasies when
they read the oration their honorable deputy has delivered; and I
imagine they're already preparing fireworks and music for a reception
to you. What more could you ask for?"
And with her eyes half-closed, smiling maliciously, she waited for his
reply, knowing in advance what it would be.
"What more can I ask for? Love; Leonora, the love I once had ... with
you."
And with the vehemence of other days, as if they were still among the
orange-trees of the old Blue House, the deputy gave way to his eight
years of longing.
He told her of the image he nourished in his sadness. Love! The Love
that passes but once in a lifetime, crowned with flowers, and followed
by a retinue of kisses and laughter. And whosoever follows him in
obedience, finds happiness at the end of the joyous pathway; but
whosoever, through pride or selfishness, lags by the wayside, comes to
lament his folly and to expiate his cowardice in an everlasting life of
tedium and sorrow! He had sinned, grievously. That he would confess! But
could she not forgive him? He had paid for his deliquency with eight
long, monotonous, crushing, meaningless years, one suffocating stifling
night that never broke into morning. But they had met again! There was
still time, Leonora! They could still call back the Springtime of their
lives, make it burgeon anew, compel Love to retrace his footsteps, pass
their way again, stretching forth his sweet hands of youth to them!
The actress was listening with a smile upon her lips, her eyes closed,
her head thrown back in the carriage. It was an expression of intense
pleasure, as if she were tasting with delight the fire of love that was
still burning in Rafael, and that, to her, meant vengeance.
The horses were proceeding at a walk along la Castellana. Other
carriages were going by and the people in them peered back at the coach
with that beautiful, unknown woman.
"What is your answer, Leonora? We can still be happy! Forget the past
and the wrong I did you! Imagine it was only yesterday that we said
good-bye in the orchard, and that we are meeting again today to begin
our lives over again from the beginning, to live together always,
always."
"No," she replied coldly. "You yourself just said so: Love passes but
once in a lifetime. I know that from cruel experience. I have done my
best to forget. No, Love has passed us by! It would be sheer folly for
us to ask him to hunt us up again. He never comes back! Our most
desperate effort could revive barely the shadow of him. You let him
escape. Well, you must weep for your loss, just as I had to weep for
your baseness ... Besides, you don't realize the situation we are in
now! Don't you remember what we talked about on our first night there in
the moonlight? 'The arrogant month of May, the young warrior in an armor
of flowers, seeks out his beloved, Youth.' Well, where is our youth now?
Quite frankly, you can find mine on my dressing-table! I buy it at the
perfumer's; and though that gentleman is quite skilled at disguising me,
there's an oldness of the spirit underneath, a terrible thing I don't
dare think about, because it frightens me so. And yours, poor
Rafael--you just haven't any, not even the kind you can buy! Take a good
look at yourself! You're ugly, to put it mildly, my dear boy! You're
lost that attractive slimness of your younger days. Your dreams make me
laugh! A passion at this late date! The idyll of a middle-aged siren and
a bald-headed father of a litter of children, with a paunch, with a
paunch, with a paunch! Oh, Rafael! Ha, ha, ha!"
The cruel mocker! How she laughed! How she was avenging herself. Rafael
grew angry at this cutting, ironic resistance. He began to flame with a
more excited passion.... The ravages of time made no difference. Could
not Love work miracles! He loved her more than he had ever loved her in
the olden days. He felt a mad hunger for her. Passion would give them
back the fires of youth. Love was like a springtime that brings new sap
to branches grown numb in the winter's cold. Let her say "Yes," and on
the instant she would behold the miracle, the resurrection of their
slumbering past, the awakening of their souls to the future of love!
"And your wife? And your children?" Leonora asked, brutally, as if she
wished to bring him back to realities, with a smarting lash from a whip.
But Rafael was now beside himself, drunk with the nearness of all that
beauty, and with the waves of perfume that filled the interior of the
carriage.
Wife? Family? He would leave everything for her: family, future,
position. It was she he needed to live and be happy!
"I will go with you; everybody is a stranger to me when I think of you.
You, you alone, are my life, my love!"
"Many thanks," Leonora answered curtly. "I could not accept such a
sacrifice.... Besides, all that sanctity of the home you were just
talking about a few moments ago in the Chamber? And all that Christian
morality, without which civilization would go to the damnation bow wows!
How I laughed when I heard you say that. How you were stuffing those
poor ninkampoops!..."
And again she laughed cruelly, at the contrast between his pious words
in Congress and his mad idea of forsaking everything to follow her
around the world. Oh, the hypocrite! She had felt, as she sat listening
to him, that his speech was a pack of lies, a mess of conventional
trumpery and platitudes! The only one there who had spoken with any real
sincerity, any real virtue, was that little old man, whom she had
listened to with veneration because he had been one of her father's
idols!
Rafael was crushed with bitter shame. Leonora's flat refusal, her
pitiless mockery of his speech, had brought him to realize the enormity
of his baseness. She was avenging herself by bringing him face to face
with the abjectness of his mad, hopeless passion, which made him capable
of committing the lowest deeds!
Dusk was gathering. Leonora ordered the driver to the Plaza de Oriente.
She was stopping in one of the houses near the Opera where many
theatrical people lodged. She was in a hurry! She had a dinner
engagement with that young man from the Embassy, and two musical critics
were to be introduced to her.
"And I, Leonora? Are we not to see each other any longer?"
"As far as my door, if you wish, and then ... till we meet again!"
"Oh, please, Leonora, stay here a few days! Let me see you! Let me have
the consolation of talking to you, of feeling the bitter pleasure of
your ridicule, at least!"
Stay a few days!... Her days did not belong to her. She traveled from
one end of the world to the other, with her life marked off to the tick
of the clock. From Madrid to Lisbon--an engagement at the San
Carlos--three performances of Wagner! Then, a jump to Stockholm! After
that she was not quite sure where she would go; to Odessa, or to Cairo.
She was the Wandering Jew, the Valkyrie galloping along on the clouds of
a musical tempest, from frontier to frontier, from pole to pole,
arrogant, victorious, suffering not the slightest harm to health or
beauty.
"Oh, if you only would! If you would let me follow you! As your friend,
nothing more! As your servant, if necessary!"
And he grasped her hand, passionately, thrusting his fingers up her
sleeve, fondling the delicate arm underneath her glove. She did not
resist.
"There! Do you see, Rafael?" she said, smiling coldly. "You have touched
me, and it's useless; not the slightest thrill. You're as good as dead
to me. My flesh does not tingle at your fondling. In fact, I find it all
decidedly annoying!"
Rafael realized that it was true. She had once trembled madly under his
caresses. Now she was quite insensible, quite cold!
"Don't worry, Rafael. It's over, spelled with a capital _O_. It's not
worth wasting a moment's thought on. As I look at you now I feel the way
I do when I see one of my old dresses that, in its time, I went mad
over. I see nothing but the defects--the absurdities of the fashion that
is out of date. Our passion died as it should properly have died.
Perhaps your deserting me was for the best. It was better for you to
default in the full splendor of our honeymoon than to have broken with
me afterwards, when I should have moulded my nature forever to your
caresses. We were brought together ... oh, by the orange perfume, by
that cursed Springtime; but you were not meant for me, nor was I ever
meant for you. We are of different breeds. You were born a bourgeois. I
am an out-and-out bohemian! Love and the novelty of my kind quite,
dazzled you. You struggled hard, you beat your wings, to follow me, but
you fell to earth from the very weight of your inherited traits. You
have the appetites and the ambitions of people like you! Now you imagine
you are unhappy! But you'll find you're not when you see yourself become
a personage,' when you count the acreage of your orchards over, when you
see your children growing up to inherit papa's power and fortune. This
business of love for love's sake, mocking at law and morality, scorning
life and peacefulness, that is our privilege, the privilege of us
bohemians--the sole blessing left to us mad creatures whom society looks
upon--quite properly, I suppose--with disdainful mistrust. Each to his
own! The poultry to their quiet roost, where they can fatten in the sun;
the birds of passage to their wandering life of song, sometimes in a
flowering garden, sometimes in the cold and storm!"
And smiling again, as if those words, uttered with such gravity and
conviction, had been too cruel in their effective summary of the whole
story of their love, she added in a jesting tone:
"That was a fine little paragraph, wasn't it? What a pity you didn't
hear it in time to tack it on at the end of your speech!"
The carriage had entered the _Plaza de Oriente_; and was drawing up in
front of Leonora's house.
"May I go in with you?" the deputy asked anxiously, much as a child
might beg for a toy.
"Why? You'll only be bored. It will be the same as here. Upstairs there
is no moon, and there are no orange-trees in bloom. You can't expect two
nights like that in a life like yours. Besides, I don't want Beppa to
see you. She has a vivid recollection of that afternoon in the Hôtel de
Roma when I got your note. I'd lose prestige with her if she saw me in
your company."
With a commanding gesture she motioned him to the sidewalk. When the
carriage had gone they stood there together for a moment looking at each
other for the last time.
"Farewell, Rafael. Take good care of yourself, and try not to grow old
so rapidly. I believe it's been a real pleasure, though, to see you
again. I needed just this to convince myself it was really all over!"
"But are you going like this!... Is this the way you let a passion end
that still fills my life!... When shall we see each other again?"
"I don't know: never ... perhaps when you least expect it. The world is
large, but when a person gads about it the way I do, you never can tell
whom you are going to meet."
Rafael pointed to the Opera nearby.
"And if you should come to sing ... here?... If I were actually to see
you again?...."
Leonora smiled haughtily, guessing what he meant.
"In that case, you will be one of my countless friends, I suppose, but
nothing more. Don't imagine that I'm a saint even now. I'm just as I was
before you knew me. The property of everybody--understand--and of
nobody! But of the janitor of the opera, if necessary, sooner than of
you. You are a corpse, in my eyes, Rafael.... Farewell!"
He saw her vanish through the doorway; and he stood for a long time
there on the sidewalk, completely crushed, staring vacantly into the
last glow of twilight that was growing pale beyond the gables of the
Royal Palace.
Some birds were twittering on the trees of the garden, shaking the
leaves with their mischievous playfulness, as if the fires of Springtime
were coursing in their veins. For Spring had come again, faithful and
punctual, as every year.
He staggered off toward the center of the city, slowly, dejectedly, with
the thought of death in his mind, bidding farewell to all his dreams,
which that woman seemed to have destroyed forever in turning her back
implacably upon him. Yes! A corpse, indeed! He was a dead man dragging a
soulless body along under the sad glimmering of the first street-lamps.
Farewell! Farewell to Love! Farewell to Youth! For him Springtime would
never return again. Joyous Folly repelled him as an unworthy deserter.
His future was to grow a fatter and fatter paunch under the frock coat
of a "personage"!
At the corner of the Calle del Arenal he heard his name called. It was
a deputy, a comrade of "the Party" who had just come from the session.
"Let me congratulate you, Brull; you were simply monumental! The Chief
spoke enthusiastically of your speech to the Prime Minister! It's a
foregone conclusion. At the first new deal you'll be made
director-general or undersecretary at least! Again, my congratulations,
old fellow!"