The Torrent | Page 4

pious, and puritanic woman
became when she found out that her son had been calling down at the
Blue House and was on friendly terms with a strange lady, an outsider,
whom the respectable folk of the city would have nothing to do with,
and of whom not a good word was ever heard except from the men at
the Club, when they were sure their wives were not in hearing distance!
Tempestuous scenes they had been! He was running for Congress at the
time. Was he trying--she wanted to know--to dishonor the family and
compromise his political future? Was that what his poor father had
lived for--a life of sacrifice and struggle, of service to "the Party,"
which, many a time, had meant shouldering a gun? And a loose woman

was to be allowed to ruin the House of Brull, which for thirty years had
been putting every cent it owned into politics, for the benefit of My
Lords up in Madrid! And just when a Brull was about to reap the
reward of so many sacrifices at last, and become a deputy--the means
perhaps of clearing off the property, which was lousy with attachments
and mortgages!...
Rafael had been no match for that energetic mother, the soul of "the
Party." Meekly he had promised never to return to the Blue House,
never to call again on that "loose woman"--doña Bernarda actually
hissed as she said the word.
However, the upshot of it all had been that Rafael simply discovered
how weak he was. Despite his promise, he returned to the Blue House
often, but by round-about ways and over long detours, skulking from
cover to cover, as he had done in childhood days when stealing oranges
from the orchards. There he was, a man whose name was on the lips of
the whole county, and who at any moment might be invested with
authority from the people, thus realizing the life-long dream of his
father! But the sight of a woman in the fields, a child, a beggar, would
make him blanch with terror! And that was not the worst of it!
Whenever he entered the Blue House now he had to pretend he came
openly, without any fear whatever. And so things had gone on down to
the very eve of his departure for Madrid.
As Rafael reached this point in his reminiscences, he asked himself
what hope had led him to disobey his mother and brook her truly
formidable wrath.
In that blue house he had found only frank, disinterested friendship,--a
somewhat ironic comradeship, the condescending tolerance of a person
compelled by solitude to choose as her comrade the least repulsive
among a host of inferiors. Alas! How clearly he remembered and could
again foresee the sceptical, cold smile with which his words were
always received, though he was sure he had crammed them with
burning passion! What a laugh she had given,--as insolent and as
cutting as a lash,--the day he had dared to declare his love!

"Now the soft-pedal on slush, eh, Rafaelito?... If you want us to go on
being friends, all right, but it's on condition you treat me as a man.
Comrades, eh, and nothing more."
And with a look at him through those green, luminous, devilish eyes of
hers, she had taken her seat at the piano and begun one of her divine
songs, as if she thought the magic of her art might raise a barrier
between them.
On another occasion, she was irritable rather; Rafael's appealing eyes,
his words of amorous adoration, seemed to provoke her, and she had
said with brutal frankness:
"Don't waste your breath, please! I am through with love. I know men
too well! But even if anyone were to upset me again, it would not be
you, Rafaelito dear."
And yet he had persisted, insensible to the irony and the scorn of this
terrible amigo in skirts, and indifferent as well to the conflicts that his
blind passion might provoke at home if his mother knew.
He tried to free himself from his infatuation, but unsuccessfully. With
that in view he fixed his attention on the woman's past; it was said that
despite her beauty, her aristrocratic manners, the brilliancy of mind
with which she had dazzled him--a poor country boy--she was only an
adventuress who had made her way over half the globe from one pair of
arms to another. Well, in that case, it would be a great exploit to win a
woman whom princes and celebrated men had loved! But since that
was impossible, why go on, why continue endangering his career and
having trouble with his mother all the time?
To forget her, he stressed, before his own mind, words and attitudes of
hers that might be judged defects; and he