The Torrent Part 3

Never did a Prince of Wales grow up amid the respect and the adulation heaped upon little Brull. At school, the children regarded him as a superior being who had condescended to come down among them for his education. A well-scribbled sheet, a lesson fluently repeated, were enough for the teacher, who belonged to "the Party" (just to collect his wages on time and without trouble,) to declare in prophetic tones:

"Go on working like that, senor de Brull. You are destined to great things."

At the _tertulias_ his mother attended evenings in his company, it was enough for him to recite a fable or get off some piece of learning characteristic of a studious child eager to bring his school work into the conversation, for the women to rush upon him and smother him with kisses.

"But how much that child knows!... How brilliant he is!"

And some old woman would add, sententiously:

"Bernarda, take good care of the child; don't let him use his brain so much. It's bad for him. See how peaked he looks!..."

He finished his preparatory education with the Dominicans, taking the leading role in all the plays given in the tiny theatre of the friars, and always with a place in the first line on prize days. The Party organ dedicated an annual article to the scholastic prodigies of the "gifted son of our distinguished chief don Ramon Brull, the country's hope, who already merits t.i.tle as the shining light of the future!"

When Rafael, escorted by his mother and half a dozen women who had witnessed the exercises, would come home, gleaming with medals and his arms full of diplomas, he would stoop and kiss his father's hard, bristly hand; and that claw would caress the boy's head and absent-mindedly sink into the old man's vest pocket--for don Ramon expected to pay for all welcome favors.

"Very good," the hoa.r.s.e voice would murmur. "That's the way I like to see you do ...Here's a _duro_."

And not till the following year would the boy again know what a caress from his father meant. On certain occasions, playing in the _patio_, he had surprised the austere old man gazing at him fixedly, as if trying to foresee his future.

Don Andres took charge of settling Rafael in Valencia when he began his university studies. The dream of old don Jaime, disillusioned in the son, would be fulfilled in the third generation!

"This one at least will be a lawyer!" said dona Bernarda, who in the old days had imbibed don Jaime's eagerness for the university degree, which to her seemed like a t.i.tle of n.o.bility for the family.

And lest the corruption of the city should lead the son astray as it had done Ramon in his student days, she would send don Andres frequently to the capital, and write letter after letter to her Valencian friends, particularly to a canon of her intimate acquaintance, asking them not to lose sight of the boy.

But Rafael was good behavior itself; a model boy, a "serious" young man, the good canon a.s.sured the mother. The distinctions and the prizes that came to him in Alcira continued to pursue him in Valencia; and besides, don Ramon and his wife learned from the papers of the triumphs achieved by their son in the debating society, a nightly gathering of law students in a university hall, where future Solons wrangled on such themes as "Resolved: that the French Revolution was more of a good than an evil," or "Resolved, that Socialism is superior to Christianity."

Some terrible youths, who had to get home before ten o'clock to escape a whipping, declared themselves rabid socialists and frightened the beadles with curses on the inst.i.tution of property--all rights reserved, of course, to apply, as soon as they got out of college, for some position under the government as registrar of deeds or secretary of prefecture! But Rafael, ever sane and a congenital "moderate," was not of those fire-brands; he sat on "the Right" of the august a.s.sembly of Wranglers, maintaining a "sound" att.i.tude on all questions, thinking what he thought "with" Saint Thomas and "with" other orthodox sages whom his clerical Mentor pointed out to him.

These triumphs were announced by telegraph in the Party papers, which, to garnish the chief's glory and avoid suspicion of "inspiration,"

always began the article with: "According to a despatch printed in the Metropolitan press ..."

"What a boy!" the priests of Alcira would say to dona Bernarda. "What a silver tongue! You'll see; he'll be a second Manterola!"

And whenever Rafael came home for the holidays or on vacation, each time taller than before, dressed like a fashion-plate and with mannerisms that she took for the height of distinction, the saintly mother would say to herself with the satisfaction of a woman who knows what it means to be homely:

"What a handsome chap he's getting to be. All the rich girls in town will be after him. He'll have his pick of them."

Dona Bernarda felt proud of her Rafael, a tall youth, with delicate yet powerful hands, large eyes, an aquiline nose, a curly beard and a certain leisurely, undulating grace of movement that suggested one of those young Arabs of the white cloak and elegant babooshes, who const.i.tute the native aristocracy of Spain's African colonies.

Every time the student came home, his father gave him the same silent caress. In course of time the _duro_ had been replaced by a hundred _peseta_ note; but the rough claw that grazed his head was falling now with an energy ever weaker and seemed to grow lighter with the years.

Rafael, from long periods of absence, noted his father's condition better than the rest. The old man was ill, very ill. As tall as ever, as austere and imposing, and as little given to words. But he was growing thinner. His fierce eyes were sinking deeper into their sockets. There was little left to him now except his ma.s.sive frame. His neck, once as st.u.r.dy as a bull's, showed the tendons and the arteries under the loose, wrinkled skin; and his mustache, once so arrogant, but now withering with each successive day, drooped dispiritedly like the banner of a defeated army wet with rain.

The boy was surprised at the gestures and tears of anger with which his mother welcomed expression of his fears.

"Well, I hope he'll die as soon as possible ... Lot's of use he is to us!... May the Lord be merciful and take him off right now."

Rafael said nothing, not caring to pry into the conjugal drama that was secretly and silently playing its last act before his eyes.

Don Ramon, that somber libertine of insatiable appet.i.tes, prey to a sinister, mysterious inebriation, was tossing in a last whirlwind of tempestuous desire, as though the blaze of sunset had set fire to what remained of his vitality.

With a deliberate, determined l.u.s.tfulness, he went scouring the District like a wild satyr, and his brutish a.s.saults, his terrorism and abuse of authority, were reported back by scurrilous tongues to the seignorial mansion, where his friend don Andres was trying in vain to pacify the wife.

"That man!" dona Bernarda would stammer in her rage. "That man is going to ruin us! Doesn't he see he's compromising his son's future?"

His most enthusiastic adherents, without losing their traditional respect for him, would speak smilingly of his "weaknesses"; but at night, when don Ramon, exhausted by his struggle with the insatiable demon gnawing at his spirit, would be snoring painfully away, with a disgusting rattle that made it impossible for people in the house to sleep, dona Bernarda would sit up in her bed with her thin arms folded across her bosom, and pray to herself:

"My Lord, My G.o.d! May this man die as soon as possible! May all this come to an end soon, oh Lord!"

And Bernarda's G.o.d must have heard her prayer, for her husband got rapidly worse.

"Take care of yourself, don Ramon," his curate friends would say to him.

They were the only ones who dared allude to his disorderly life. "You're getting old, and boyish pranks at your age are invitations to Death!"

The _cacique_ would smile, proud, at bottom, that all men should know that such exploits were possible for a man at his age.

He had enough strength left for one more caress the day when, escorted by don Andres, Rafael entered with his degree as a Doctor of Law. He gave the boy his shotgun--a veritable jewel, the admiration of the entire District--and a magnificent horse. And as if he had been waiting around just to see the realization of old Don Jaime's ambition, which he himself had not been able to fulfill, he pa.s.sed away.

All the bells of the city tolled mournfully.

The Party weekly came out with a black border a palm wide; and from all over the District folks came in droves to see whether the powerful don Ramon Brull, who had been able to rain upon the just and unjust alike on this earth, could possibly have died the same as any other human being.

III

When dona 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 Andres, 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 Andres, 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. Pet.i.tions 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 Andres referred to as "the spheres of public administration."

There came an election for Parliament, and as usual, dona Bernarda secured the triumph of the individual whose nomination had been dictated from Madrid. Don Ramon 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 t.i.tle to which no one could dispute. He confined his personal activities to obeying his mother. "Go to Riola with don Andres. 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 n.o.body understood them, excited the admiration of his fellow partisans. They would blink at the articles and say to don Andres: