The Torrent | Page 6

the open space in front of the house and once more found
there the same murmuring palms, the same rubblework benches with
seats and backs of flowered tile that he knew so well. There, in fact, she
had so often laughed at his feverish protestations.
The door was closed; but through a half-opened window he could see a
patch of silk; a woman's back, bending slightly forward over the music.
As Rafael came up a dog began to bark at the end of the garden. Some
hens that had been scratching about in sand of the drive, scampered off
cackling with fright. The music stopped. A chair scraped as it was
pushed back. The lady was rising to her feet.
At the balcony a flowing gown of blue appeared; but all that Rafael saw
was a pair of eyes--green eyes, that seemed to fill the entire window
with a flood of light.
"Beppa! Beppina!" cried a firm, a warm, a sonorous, soprano voice.
"Apri la porta. Open the door."
And with a slight inclination of her splendid head of thick auburn hair
that seemed to crown her with a helmet of old gold, she smiled to him
with a friendly, somewhat mocking, intimacy:
"Welcome, Rafaelito. I don't know why, but I was expecting you this
afternoon. We have heard all about your triumphs; the music and the
tumult reached even to our desert. My congratulations to the Honorable
don Rafael Brull. Come right in, I su señoría."

II
From Valencia to Játiva, in all that immense territory covered with
rice-fields and orange groves which Valencians embrace under the

general and rather vague designation of La Ribera, there was no one
unfamiliar with the name of Brull and the political power it stood for.
As if national unity had not yet been effected and the country were still
divided into taifas and waliatos as in the days when one Moorish King
reigned over Carlet, another over Denia, and a third over Játiva, the
election system maintained a sort of inviolable rulership in every
district; and when the Administration people came to Alcira in
forecasting their political prospects, they always said the same thing:
"We're all right there. We can rely on Brull."
The Brull dynasty had been bossing the district for thirty years, with
ever-increasing power.
The founder of this sovereign house had been Rafael's grandfather, the
shrewd don Jaime, who had established the family fortune by fifty
years of slow exploitation of ignorance and poverty. He began life as a
clerk in the Ayuntamiento of Alcira; then he became secretary to the
municipal judge, then assistant to the city clerk, then assistant-registrar
of deeds. There was not a subordinate position in those offices where
the poor come in contact with the law that he did not get his hands on;
and from such points of vantage, by selling justice as a favor and using
power or adroitness to subdue the refractory, he felt his way along,
appropriating parcel after parcel of that fertile soil which he adored
with a miser's covetousness.
A brazen charlatan he was, every moment talking of "Article Number
So-and-So" of the law that applied to the case. The poor orchard
workers came to have as much awe for his learning as fear of his
malice, and in all their controversies they sought his advice and paid
for it, as if he were a lawyer.
When he had gotten a small fortune together, he continued holding his
menial posts in the city administration to retain the superstitious respect
which is inspired in peasant-folk by all who are on good terms with the
law; but not content with playing the eternal beggar, dependent on the
humble gratuities of the poor, he took to pulling them out of their

financial difficulties, lending them money on the collateral of their
future harvests.
But six per cent seemed too petty a profit for him. The real plight of
these folk came when a horse died and they had to buy another. Don
Jaime became a dealer in dray horses, buying more or less defective
animals from gypsies in Valencia, praising their virtues to the skies,
and reselling them as thoroughbreds. And no sale on the instalment
plan! Cash down! The horses did not belong to him--as he vowed with
his hand pressed solemnly to his bosom--and their owners wished to
realize on their value at once. The best he could do in the circumstances
prompted by his greatness of heart, which always overflowed at the
sight of poverty was to borrow money for the purchase from a friend of
his.
The peasant in his desperate need would fall into the snare, and carry
off the horse after signing all kinds of notes and mortgages to cover the
loan of money he had