Chapter VI: Part TWO: I (1)

Hidden in the tall, thick rose-bushes that bounded the _plazoleta_ in front of the Blue House, and under four old dead palms that drooped their branches dry and melancholy under the vigorous tufts of younger trees, were two rubblework benches, white-washed, the backs and armrests of ancient Valencian tiles, the glazed surfaces flecked with arabesques and varicolored fancies inherited from days of Saracen rule--sturdy, but comfortable seats, with the graceful lines of the sofas of the Eighteenth Century; and in them Leonora liked to spend her time in late afternoons especially, when the palm trees covered the little square with a cool, delightful shade.

On that warm March day, doña Pepa was sitting in one of them, her silver-rimmed spectacles on her nose, reading the "Life" of the day's saint. At her side was the maid. A true daughter of the _campagna_ of Rome, Beppa had been trained to piety from her earliest years; and she was listening attentively so as not to miss a word.

On the other bench were Leonora and Rafael. The actress, with lowered head, was following the movements of her hands, busily engaged on some embroidery.

Rafael found Leonora much changed after his months of absence.

She was dressed simply, like any young lady of the city; her face and hands, so white and marble-like before, had taken on the golden transparency of ripened grain under the continued caress of the Valencian sun. Her slender fingers were bare of all rings, and her pink ears were not, as formerly, a-gleam with thick clusters of diamonds.

"I've become a regular peasant, haven't I?" she said, as if she could read in Rafael's eyes his astonishment at the transformation she had undergone. "It's life in the open that works such miracles: today one frill, tomorrow another, and a woman eventually gets rid of everything that was once a part of her body almost. I feel better this way.... Would you believe it? I've actually deserted my dressing-table, and the perfume I used lies all forsaken and forlorn. Fresh water, plenty of fresh water ... that's what I like. I'm a long way from the Leonora who had to paint herself every night like a clown before she could appear before an audience. Take a good look at me! Well ... what do you think? You might mistake me for one of your vassals almost, eh? I'll bet that if I had gone out this morning to join your demonstration at the station you wouldn't have recognized me in the crowd."

Rafael was going to say--and quite seriously, too--that he thought her more beautiful than ever. Leonora seemed to have descended from her height and drawn closer to him. But she guessed what was coming, and to forestall any compliments, hastened to resume control of the conversation.

"Now don't say you like me better this way. What nonsense! Remember, you come from Madrid, from real elegance, a world you did not know before!... But, to tell the truth, I like this simplicity; and the important thing in life is to please yourself, isn't it? It was a slow transformation, but an irresistible one; this country life gradually filled me with its peace and calm; it went to my head like a bland delicious wine. I just sleep and sleep, living the life of a human animal, free from every emotion, and quite willing never to wake up again. Why, Rafaelito! If nothing extraordinary happens and the devil doesn't give an unexpected tug at my sleeve, I can conceive of staying on here forever. I think of the outer world as a sailor must of the sea, when he finds himself all cosy at home after a voyage of continuous tempest."

"That's right, do stay," said Rafael. "You can't imagine how I worried up in Madrid wondering whether or not I'd find you here on my return."

"Don't go telling any fibs," said Leonora, gently, smiling with just a suggestion of gratification. "Do you think we haven't been following your doings in Madrid? Though you never were a friend, exactly, of good old Cupido, you've been writing him frequently--and all sorts of nonsense; just as a pretext for the really important thing--the postscript, with your regards to the 'illustrious artist,' sure to provoke the consoling reply that the 'illustrious artist' was still here. How those letters made me laugh!"

"Anyway, that will prove I wasn't lying that day when I assured you I would not forget, in Madrid. Well, Leonora; I didn't! The separation has made me worse, much worse, in fact."

"Thanks, Rafael," Leonora answered, quite seriously, as if she had lost mastery over the irony of former days. "I know you're telling the truth. And it saddens me, because it really is too bad. You understand, of course, that I can't love you.... So--if you don't mind--let's talk of something else."

And hastily, to shift the conversation from such dangerous ground, she began to chat about her rustic pleasures.

"I have a hen-coop that's too charming for anything. If you could only see me mornings, in a circle of cackling feathers, throwing fusillades of corn about to keep the roosters away. You see they get under my skirts and peck at my feet. It's hard to realize I can be the same woman who, just a few months ago, was brandishing a stage lance and interpreting Wagner's dreams, no less, as finely as you please! You'll soon see _my_ vassals. I have the most astonishing layers you ever saw; and every morning I rummage around in the straw like a thief to get the eggs, and when I find them, they are still warm.... I've forgotten the piano. I hadn't opened it for more than a week, but this afternoon--I don't know why--I just felt like spending a little while in the society of the geniuses. I was thirsty for music ... one of those moody whims of the olden days. Perhaps the presentiment that you were coming: the thought of those afternoons when you were upstairs, sitting like a booby in the corner, listening to me.... But don't jump to the conclusion, my dear deputy, that everything here is mere play--just chickens and the simple life. No, sir! I have turned my leisure to serious account. I have done big things to the house. You would never guess! A bathroom, if you please! And it just scandalizes poor auntie; while Beppa says it's a sin to give so much thought to matters of the body. I could give up many of my old habits, but not my bath; it's the one luxury I have kept, and I sent to Valencia for the plumbers, the marble, and the wood and... well ... it's a gem. I'll show it to you, by and by. If some fine day I should suddenly take it into my head to fly away, that bath will remain here, for my poor aunt to preach about and show how her madcap niece squandered a mint of money on sinful folly, as she calls it."

And she laughed, with a glance at the innocent doña Pepa, who, there on the other bench, was for the hundredth time explaining to the Italian maid the prodigious miracles wrought by the patron of Alcira, and trying to persuade the "foreigner" to transfer her faith to that saint, and waste no more time on the second or third raters of Italy.

"Don't imagine," the actress continued, "that I forgot you during all this time. I am a real friend, you see, and take an interest! I learned through Cupido, who ferrets out everything, just what you were doing in Madrid. I, too, figured among your admirers. That proves what friendship can do! ... I don't know why, but when señor Brull is concerned, I swallow the biggest whoppers, though I know they're lies. When you made your speech in the Chambers on that matter of flood protection, I sent to Alcira for the paper and read the story through I don't know how many times, believing blindly everything said in praise of you. I once met Gladstone at a concert given by the Queen at Windsor Castle; I have known men who got to be presidents of their countries on sheer eloquence--not to mention the politicians of Spain. The majority of them I've had, one time or another, as hangers-on in my dressing-room--once I had sung at the 'Real.' Well, despite all that, I took the exaggerations your party friends printed about you quite seriously for some days, putting you on a level with all the solemn top-notchers I have known. And why, do you suppose? Perhaps from my isolation and tranquillity here, which do make you lose perspective; or perhaps it was the influence of environment! It is impossible to live in this region without being a subject of the Brulls!... Can I be falling in love with you unawares?"

And once more she laughed the gleeful, candid, mocking laugh of other days. At first she had received him seriously, simply, under the influence still of solitude, country life and the longing for rest and quiet. But once in actual contact with him again, the sight, again, of that lovesick expression in eyes which now, however, showed a trace of self-possession, the old teaser had reappeared in her; and her irony cut into the youth's flesh like a steel blade.

"Stranger things than that have happened," Rafael snapped boldly, and imitating her sarcastic smile. "It's humanly conceivable that even you should wind up by falling in love with even me--out of pity, of course!"

"No," answered Leonora bluntly. "It's not even humanly conceivable. I'll never fall in love with you ... And even if I should," she continued in a gentle, almost mothering tone, "you would never know about it. I should keep it jolly well to myself--so as to prevent your going crazy on finding your affections returned. All afternoon I have been trying to evade this explanation. I have brought up a thousand subjects, I have inquired about your life in Madrid--even going into details that haven't the slightest interest for me--all to keep the talk off love. But with you, that's impossible; you always come back to that sooner or later. Very well, so be it ... But I'll never love you--I must not love you. If I had made your acquaintance somewhere else, but under the same romantic circumstances, I don't say it mightn't have happened. But here!... My scruples may make you laugh, but I feel as though I'd be committing a crime to love you. It would be like entering a home and repaying the hospitality by purloining the silverware."

"That's a new kind of nonsense you are talking," Rafael exclaimed. "Just what do you mean? I don't think I understand, exactly."

"Well, you live here, you see, and you hardly realize what it's all like. Love for love's sake alone! That may happen in the world where I come from. There folks aren't scandalized at things. Virtue is broad-minded and tolerant; and people, through a selfish desire to have their own weaknesses condoned, are careful not to censure others too harshly. But here!... Here love is the straight and narrow path that leads to marriage. Now let's see how good a liar you are! Would you be capable of saying that you would marry me?..."

She gazed straight at the youth out of her green, luminous, mocking eyes, and with such frankness that Rafael bowed his head, stuttering as he started to speak.

"Exactly," she went on. "You wouldn't, and you are right. For that would be a piece of solemn, deliberate barbarity. I'm not one of the women who are made for such things. Many men have proposed marriage to me in my time, to prove what fools they were, I suppose. More than once they've offered me their ducal crowns or the prestige of their marquisates, with the idea that title and social position would hold me back when I got bored and tried to fly away. But imagine me married! Could anything be more absurd?"

She laughed hysterically, almost, but with an undertone that hurt Rafael deeply. There was a ring of sarcasm, of unspeakable scorn in it, which reminded the young man of Mephisto's mirth during his infernal serenade to Marguerite.

"Moreover," continued Leonora, recovering her composure, "you don't seem to realize just how I stand in this community. Don't imagine what's said about me in town escapes me ... I just have to notice the way the women look at me the few times I go in there. And I know also what happened to you before you left for Madrid. We find out everything here, Rafaelito. The gossip of these people carries--it reaches even this solitary spot. I know perfectly well how your mother hates me, and I've even heard about the squabbles you've had at home over coming here. Well, we must put a stop to all that! I am going to ask you not to visit me any more. I will always be your friend; but if we stop seeing each other it will be to the advantage of us both."

That was a painful thrust for Rafael. So she knew! But to escape from what he felt to be a ridiculous position, he affected an air of independence.

"Don't you believe such bosh! It's just election gossip spread by my enemies. I am of age, and I daresay I can go where I please, without asking mamma."

"Very well; keep on coming, if you really want to; but all the same, it shows how people feel toward me--a declaration of war, virtually. And if I should ever fall in love with you ... heavens! What would they say then? They'd be sure I had come here for the sole purpose of capturing their don Rafael! You can see how far such a thing is from my mind. It would be the end of the peace and quiet I came here to find. If they talk that way now, when I'm as innocent as a lamb, imagine how their tongues would wag then!... No, I'm not looking for excitement! Let them snap at me as much as they please; but I mustn't be to blame. It must be out of pure envy on their part. I wouldn't stoop to provoking them!"

And with a turn of her head in the direction of the city that was hidden from view behind the rows of orange-trees, she laughed disdainfully.

Then her gleeful frankness returned once more--a candor of which she was always ready to make herself the first victim--and in a low, confidential, affectionate tone she continued:

"Besides, Rafaelito, you haven't had a good look at me. Why, I'm almost an old woman!... Oh, I know it, I know it. You don't have to tell me. You and I are of the same age; but you are a man; and I'm a woman. And the way I've lived has added considerably to my years. You are still on the very threshold of life. I've been knocking about the world since I was sixteen, from one theatre to another. And my accursed disposition, my mania for concealing nothing, for refusing to lie, has helped make me worse than I really am. I have many enemies in this world who are just gloating, I am sure, because I have suddenly disappeared. You can't advance a step on the stage without rousing the jealousy of someone; and that kind of jealousy is the most bloodthirsty of human passions. Can you imagine what my kind colleagues say about me? That I've gotten along as a woman of the _demimonde_ rather than as an artist--that I'm a _cocotte_, using my voice and the stage for soliciting, as it were."

"Damn the liars!" cried Rafael hotly. "I'd like to have someone say that in my hearing."

"Bah! Don't be a child. Liars, yes, but what they say has a grain of truth in it. I have been something of the sort, really; though the blame had not been wholly mine ... I've done crazy foolish things--giving a loose rein to my whims, for the fun of the thing. Sometimes it would be wealth, magnificence, luxury; then again bravery; then again just plain, ordinary, good looks! And I would be off the moment the excitement, the novelty, was gone, without a thought for the desperation of my lovers at finding their dreams shattered. And from all this wild career of mine--it has taken in a good part of Europe--I have come to one conclusion: either that what the poets call love is a lie, a pleasant lie, if you wish; or else that I was not born to love, that I am immune; for as I go back over my exciting and variegated past, I have to recognize that in my life love has not amounted to this!"

And she gave a sharp snap with her pink fingers.

"I am telling you everything, you see," she continued. "During your long absence I thought of you often. Somehow I want you to know me thoroughly, once and for all. In that way perhaps we can get along together better. I can understand now why it is a peasant woman will walk miles and miles, under a scorching sun or a pouring rain, to have a priest listen to her confession. I am in that mood this afternoon. I feel as though I must tell everything. Even if I tried not to, I should not succeed. There's a little demon inside me here urging me, compelling me, to unveil all my past."

"Please feel quite free to do so. To be a confessor even, to deserve your confidence, is some progress for me, at any rate."

"Progress? But why should you care to progress ... into my heart! My heart is only an empty shell! Do you think you'd be getting much if you got me? I'm absolutely, absolutely worthless! Don't laugh, please! I mean it! Absolutely worthless. Here in this solitude I have been able to study myself at leisure, see myself as I really am. I recognize it plain as day: I am nothing, nothing. Good looking?... Well, yes; I confess I am not what you'd call ugly. Even if, with a ridiculous false modesty, I were to say I was, there's my past history to prove that plenty of men have found me beautiful. But, alas, Rafaelito! That's only the outside, my facade, so to speak. A few winter rains will wash the paint off and show the mould that's underneath. Inside, believe me, Rafael, I am a ruin. The walls are crumbling, the floors are giving way. I have burned my life out in gaiety. I have singed my wings in a headlong rush into the candle-flame of life. Do you know what I am? I am one of those old hulks drawn up on the beach. From a distance their paint seems to have all the color of their first voyages; but when you get closer you see that all they ask for is to be let alone to grow old and crumble away on the sand in peace. And you, who are setting out on your life voyage, come gaily asking for a berth on a wreck that will go to the bottom as soon as it strikes deep water, and carry you down with it!... Rafael, my dear boy, don't be foolish. I am all right to have as a friend; but it's too late for me to be anything more ... even if I were to love you. We are of a different breed. I have been studying you, and I see that you are a sensible, honest, plodding sort of fellow. Whereas I--I belong to the butterflies, to the opposite of all you are. I am a conscript under the banner of Bohemia, and I cannot desert the colors. Each of us on his own road then. You'll easily find a woman to make you happy.... The sillier she is, the better.... You were born to be a family man."

It occurred to Rafael that she might be poking fun at him, as she so often did. But no; there was a ring of sincerity in her voice. The forced smile had vanished from her face. She was speaking tenderly, affectionately, as if in motherly counsel to a son in danger of going wrong.

"And don't make yourself over, Rafael. If the world were made up of people like me, life would be impossible. I too have moments when I should like to become a different person entirely--a fowl, a cow, or something, like the folks around me, thinking of money all the time, and of what I'll eat tomorrow; buying land, haggling with farmers on the market, studying fertilizers, having children who'd keep me busy with their colds and the shoes they'd tear, my widest vision limited to getting a good price for the fall crop. There are times when I envy a hen. How good it must be, to be a hen! A fence around me to mark the boundaries of my world, my meals for the trouble of pecking at them, my life-work to sit hour after hour in the sun, balanced on a roost.... You laugh? Well, I've made a good start already toward becoming a hen, and the career suits me to a 't.' Every Wednesday I go to market, to buy a pullet and some eggs; and I haggle with the vendors just for the fun of it, finally giving them the price they ask for; I invite the peasant women to have a cup of chocolate with me, and come home escorted by a whole crowd of them; and they listen in astonishment when I talk to Beppa in Italian! If you could only see how fond they are of me!... They can hardly believe their eyes when they see the _siñorita_ isn't half so black as the city people paint her. You remember that poor woman we saw up at the Hermitage that afternoon? Well, she's a frequent visitor, and I always give her something. She, too, is fond of me.... Now all that is agreeable, isn't it? Peace; the affection of the humble; an innocent old woman, my poor aunt, who seems to have grown younger since I came here! Nevertheless, some fine day, this shell, this rustic bark that has formed around me in the sun and the air of the orchards, will burst, and the woman of old--the Valkyrie--will step out of it again. And then, to horse, to horse! Off on another gallop around the world, in a tempest of pleasure, acclaimed by a chorus of brutal libertines!... I am sure that is bound to happen. I swore to remain here until Spring. Well, Spring is almost here! Look at those rose-bushes! Look at those orange-trees! Bursting with life! Oh, Rafael, I'm afraid of Springtime. Spring has always been a season of disaster for me."

And she was lost in thought for a moment. Doña Pepa and the Italian maid had gone into the house. The good old woman could never keep away from the kitchen long.

Leonora had dropped her embroidery upon the bench and was looking upward, her head thrown back, the muscles of her arching neck tense and drawn. She seemed wrapt in ecstacy, as if visions of the past were filing by in front of her. Suddenly she shuddered and sat up.

"I'm afraid I'm ill, Rafael. I don't know what's the matter with me today. Perhaps it's the surprise of seeing you; this talk of ours that has called me back to the past, after so many months of tranquillity.... Please don't speak! No, not a word, please. You have the rare skill, though you don't know it, of making me talk, of reminding me of things I was determined to forget.... Come, give me your arm; let's walk out through the garden; it will do me good."

They arose, and began to saunter along over the broad avenue that led from the gate to the little square. The house was soon behind them, lost in the thick crests of the orange-trees. Leonora smiled mischievously and lifted a forefinger in warning.

"I took it for granted you had returned from your trip a more serious, a more well-behaved person. No nonsense, no familiarities, eh? Besides, you know already that I'm strong, and can fight--if I have to."

II

Rafael spent a sleepless night tossing about in his bed.

Party admirers had honored him with a serenade that had lasted beyond midnight. The "prominents" among them had shown some pique at having cooled their heels all afternoon at the Club waiting for the deputy in vain. He put in an appearance well on towards evening, and after shaking hands once more all around and responding to speeches of congratulation, as he had done that morning, he went straight home.

He had not dared raise his head in Doña Bernarda's presence. He was afraid of those glowering eyes, where he could read, unmistakably, the detailed story of everything he had done that afternoon. At the same time he was nursing a resolve to disobey his mother, meet her domineering, over-bearing aggressiveness with glacial disregard.

The serenade over, he had hurried to his room, to avoid any chance of an accounting.

Snug in his bed, with the light out, he gave way to an intense, a rapturous recollection of all that had taken place that afternoon. For all the fatigue of the journey and the bad night spent in a sleeping-car, he lay there with his eyes open in the dark, going over and over again in his feverish mind all that Leonora told him during that final hour of their walk through the garden. Her whole, her real life's story it had been, recorded in a disordered, a disconnected way--as if she must unburden herself of the whole thing all at once--with gaps and leaps that Rafael now filled in from his own lurid imagination.

Italy, the Italy of his trip abroad, came back to him now, vivid, palpitant, vitalized, glorified by Leonora's revelations.

The shadowy majestic Gallery of Victor Emmanuel at Milan! The immense triumphal arch, a gigantic mouth protended to swallow up the Cathedral! The double arcade, cross-shaped, its walls covered with columns, set with a double row of windows under a vast crystal roof. Hardly a trace of masonry on the lower stories; nothing but plate glass--the windows of book-shops, music shops, cafés, restaurants, jewelry stores, haberdasheries, expensive tailoring establishments.

At one end, the Duomo, bristling with a forest of statues and perforated spires; at the other, the monument to Leonardo da Vinci, and the famous _Teatro de la Scala_! Within the four arms of the Gallery, a continuous bustle of people, an incessant going and coming of merging, dissolving crowds: a quadruple avalanche flowing toward the grand square at the center of the cross, where the Café Biffi, known to actors and singers the world over, spreads its rows of marble tables! A hubbub of cries, greetings, conversations, footsteps, echoing in the galleries as in an immense cloister, the lofty skylight quivering with the hum of busy human ants, forever, day and night, crawling, darting this way and that, underneath it!

Such is the world's market of song-birds; the world's Rialto of Music; the world's recruiting office for its army of voices. From that center, march forth to glory or to the poorhouse, all those who one fine day have touched their throats and believed they have some talent for singing. In Milan, from every corner of the earth, all the unhappy aspirants of art, casting aside their needles, their tools or their pens, foregather to eat the macaroni of the _trattoria_, trusting that the world will some day do them justice by strewing their paths with millions. Beginners, in the first place, who, to make their start, will accept contracts in any obscure municipal theatre of the Milan district, in hopes of a paragraph in a musical weekly to send to the folks at home as evidence of promise and success; and with them, overwhelming them with the importance of their past, the veterans of art--the celebrities of a vanished generation: tenors with gray hair and false teeth; strong, proud, old men who cough and clear their throats to show they still preserve their sonorous baritone; retired singers who, with incredible niggardliness, lend their savings at usury or turn shopkeepers after dragging silks and velvets over world famous "boards."

Whenever the two dozen "stars," the stars of first magnitude that shine in the leading operas of the globe, pass through the Gallery, they attract as much admiring attention as monarchs appearing before their subjects. The _pariahs_, still waiting for a contract, bow their heads in veneration; and tell, in bated breath, of the castle on Lake Como that the great tenor has bought, of the dazzling jewels owned by the eminent soprano, of the graceful tilt at which the applauded baritone wears his hat; and in their voices there is a tingle of jealousy, of bitterness against destiny--the feeling that they are just as worthy of such splendor--the protest against "bad luck," to which they attribute failure. Hope forever flutters before these unfortunates, blinding them with the flash of its golden mail, keeping them in a wretched despondent inactivity. They wait and they trust, without any clear idea of how they are to attain glory and wealth, wasting their lives in impotence, to die ultimately "with their boots on," on some bench of the Gallery.

Then, there is another flock, a flock of girls, victims of the Chimera, walking with a nimble, a prancing step, with music scores under their arms, on the way to the _maestro's_; slender, light-haired English _misses_, who want to become prima donnas of comic opera; fair-skinned, buxom Russian _parishnas_ who greet their acquaintances with the sweeping bow of a dramatic soprano; Spanish _señoritas_ of bold faces and free manners, preparing for stage careers as Bizet's cigarette-girl--frivolous, sonorous song-birds nesting hundreds of leagues away, and who have flown hither dazzled by the tinsel of glory.

At the close of the Carnival season, singers who have been abroad for the winter season appear in the Gallery. They come from London, St. Petersburg, New York, Melbourne, Buenos Aires, looking for new contracts. They have trotted about the globe as though the whole world were home to them. They have spent a week in a train or a month on a steamer, to get back to their corner in the Gallery. Nothing has changed, for all of their distant rambles. They take their usual table. They renew their old intrigues, their old gossip, their old jealousies, as if they had been gone a day. They stand around in front of the show-windows with an air of proud disdain, like princes traveling incognito, but unable quite to conceal their exalted station. They tell about the ovations accorded them by foreign audiences. They exhibit the diamonds on their fingers and in their neckties. They hint at affairs with great ladies who offered to leave home and husband to follow them to Milan. They exaggerate the salaries they received on their trip, and frown haughtily when some unfortunate "colleague" solicits a drink at the nearby Biffi. And when the new contracts come in, the mercenary nightingales again take wing, indifferently, they care not whither. Once more, trains and steamers distribute them, with their conceits and their petulances, all over the globe, to gather them in again some months later and bring them back to the Gallery, their real home--the spot to which they are really tied, and on which they are fated to drag out their old age.

Meantime, the _pariahs_, those who never arrive, the "bohemians" of Milan--when they are left alone console themselves with tales of famous comrades, of contracts they themselves refused to accept, pretending uncompromising hauteur toward impresarios and composers to justify their idleness; and wrapped in fur coats that almost sweep the ground, with their "garibaldis" on the backs of their heads, they hover around Biffi's, defying the cold draughts that blow at the crossing of the Gallery, talking and talking away to quiet the hunger that is gnawing at their stomachs; despising the humble toil of those who make their living by their hands, continuing undaunted in their poverty, content with their genius as artists, facing misfortune with a candor and an endurance as heroic as it is pathetic, their dark lives illumined by Hope, who keeps them company till she closes their eyes.

Of that strange world, Rafael had caught a glimpse, barely, during the few days he had spent in Milan. His companion, the canon, had run across a former chorister from the cathedral of Valencia, who could find nothing to do but loiter night and day about the Gallery. Through him Brull had learned of the life led by these journeymen of art, always on hand in the "marketplace", waiting for the employer who never comes.

He tried to picture the early days of Leonora in that great city, as one of the girls who trot gracefully over the sidewalks with music sheets under their arms, or enliven the narrow side streets with all those trills and cadences that come streaming out through the windows.

He could see her walking through the Gallery at Doctor Moreno's side: a blonde beauty, svelte, somewhat thin, over-grown, taller than her years, gazing with astonishment through those large green eyes of hers at the cold, bustling city, so different from the warm orchards of her childhood home; the father, bearded, wrinkled, nervous, still irritated at the ruin of his Republican hopes; a veritable ogre to strangers who did not know his lamb-like gentleness. Like exiles who had found a refuge in art, they two went their way through that life of emptiness, of void, a world of greedy teachers anxious to prolong the period of study, and of singers incapable of speaking kindly even of themselves.

They lived on a fourth floor on the _Via Passarella_--a narrow, gloomy thoroughfare with high houses, like the streets of old Alcira, preempted by music publishers, theatrical agencies and retired artists. Their janitor was a former chorus leader; the main floor was rented by an agency exclusively engaged from sun to sun in testing voices. The others were occupied by singers who began their vocal exercises the moment they got out of bed, setting the house ringing like a huge music-box from roof to cellar. The Doctor and his daughter had two rooms in the house of _Signora Isabella_, a former ballet-dancer who had achieved notorious "triumphs" in the principal courts of Europe, but was now a skeleton wrapped in wrinkled skin, groping her way through the corridors, quarreling over money in foul-mouthed language with the servants, and with no other vestiges of her past than the gowns of rustling silk, and the diamonds, emeralds and pearls that took their turns in her stiff, shrivelled ears. This harpy had loved Leonora with the fondness of the veteran for the new recruit.

Every day Doctor Moreno went to a café of the Gallery, where he would meet a group of old musicians who had fought under Garibaldi, and young men who wrote _libretti_ for the stage, and articles for Republican and Socialist newspapers. That was his world: the only thing that helped him endure his stay in Milan. After a lonely life back there in his native land, this corner of the smoke-filled café seemed like Paradise to him. There, in a labored Italian, sprinkled with Spanish interjections, he could talk of Beethoven and of the hero of Marsala; and for hour after hour he would sit wrapt in ecstasy, gazing, through the dense atmosphere, at the red shirt and the blond, grayish locks of the great Giuseppe, while his comrades told stories of this, the most romantic, of adventurers.

During such absences of her father, Leonora would remain in charge of _Signora Isabella_; and bashful, shrinking, half bewildered, would spend the day in the salon of the former ballet-dancer, with its coterie of the latter's friends, also ruins surviving from the past, burned-out "flames" of great personages long since dead. And these witches, smoking their cigarettes, and looking their jewels over every other moment to be sure they had not been stolen, would size up "the little girl," as they called her, to conclude that she would "go very far" if she learned how to "play the game."

"I had excellent teachers," said Leonora, in speaking of that period of her youth. "They were good souls at bottom, but they had very little still to learn about life. I don't remember just when I began to see through them. I don't believe I was ever what they call an 'innocent' child."

Some evenings the Doctor would take her to his group in the café, or to some second balcony seat under the roof of _La Scala_, if a couple of complimentary tickets happened to come his way. Thus she was introduced to her father's friends, bohemians with whom music went hand in hand with the ideas and the ideals of revolution, curious mixtures of artist and conspirator; aged, bald-headed, near-sighted "professors," their backs bent by a lifetime spent leaning over music stands; and swarthy youths with fiery eyes, stiff, long hair and red neckties, always talking about overthrowing the social order because their operas had not been accepted at _La Scala_ or because no _maestro_ could be found to take their musical dramas seriously. One of them attracted Leonora. Leaning back on a side-seat in the cafe, she would sit and watch him for hours and hours. He was a fair-haired, extremely delicate boy. His tapering goatee and his fine, silky hair, covered by a sweeping, soft felt hat, made her think of Van Dyck's portrait of Charles I of England that she had seen in print somewhere. They called him "the poet" at the café, and gossip had it that an old woman, a retired "star," was paying for his keep--and his amusements--until his verses should bring him fame. "Well," said Leonora, simply, with a smile, "he was my first love--a calf-and-puppy love, a schoolgirl's infatuation which nobody ever knew about"; for though the Doctor's daughter spent hours with her green golden eyes fixed upon the poet, the latter never suspected his good fortune; doubtless because the beauty of his patroness, the superannuated _diva_, had so obsessed him that the attractions of other women left him quite unmoved. How vividly Leonora remembered those days of poverty and dreams!... Little by little the modest capital the Doctor owned in Alcira vanished, what with living expenses and music lessons. Doña Pepa, at her brother's instance, sold one piece of land after another; but even such remittances were often long delayed; and then, instead of eating in the _trattoria_, near _la Scala_, with dancing students and the more successful of the young singers, they would stay at home; and Leonora would lay aside her scores and take a turn at cooking, learning mysterious recipes from the old _danseuse_. For weeks at a time they would live on nothing but macaroni and rice served _al burro_, a diet that her father abhorred, the Doctor, meanwhile, pretending illness to justify his absence from the café. But these periods of want and poverty were endured by father and daughter in silence. Before their friends, they still maintained the pose of well-to-do people with plenty of income from property in Spain.

Leonora underwent a rapid transformation. She had already passed her period of growth--that preadolescent "awkward age" when the features are in constant change before settling down to their definitive forms and the limbs seem to grow longer and longer and thinner and thinner. The long-legged spindling "flapper," who was never quite sure where to stow her legs, became the reserved, well-proportioned girl with the mysterious gleam of puberty in her eyes. Her clothes seemed, naturally, willingly, to curve to her fuller, rounding outlines. Her skirts went down to her feet and covered the skinny, colt-like appendages that had formerly made the denizens of the Gallery repress a smile.

Her singing master was struck with the beauty of his pupil. As a tenor, Signor Boldini had had his hour of success back in the days of the _Statuto_, when Victor Emmanuel was still king of Piedmont and the Austrians were in Milan. Convinced that he could rise no higher, he had come to earth, stepping aside to let those behind him pass on, turning his stage experience to the advantage of a large class of girl-students whom he fondled with an affectionate, fatherly kindliness. His white goatee would quiver with admiring enthusiasm, as, playfully, lightly, he would touch his fingers to those virgin throats, which, as he said, were his "property." "All for art, and art for all!" And this motto, the ideal of his life, he called it, had quite endeared him to Doctor Moreno.

"That fellow Boldini could not be fonder of my Leonora if she were his own daughter," the Doctor would say every time the _maestro_ praised the beauty and the talent of his pupil and prophesied great triumphs for her.

And Leonora went on with her lessons, accepting the light, the playful, the innocent caresses of the old singer; until one afternoon, in the midst of a romanza, there was a hateful scene: the _maestro_, despite her horrified struggling, claimed a feudal right--the first fruits of her initiation into theatrical life.

Through fear of her father Leonora kept silent. What might he not do on finding his blind confidence in the _maestro_ so betrayed? She sank into resigned passivity at last, and continued to visit Boldini's house daily, learning ultimately to accept, as a matter of professional course, the repulsive flattery of refined vice.

Poor Leonora entered on a life of wrong through the open door, learning, at a single stroke, all the turpitude acquired by that shrivelled _maestro_ during his long career back-stage. Boldini would have kept her a pupil forever. He could never find her just well enough prepared to make her debut. But hardly any money was coming from Spain now. Poor doña Pepa had sold everything her brother owned and a good deal of her own land besides. Only at the cost of painful stinting could she send him anything at all. The Doctor, through connections with itinerant directors and impresarios _à l'aventure_, "launched" his daughter finally. Leonora began to sing in the small theatres of the Milan district--two or three night engagements at country fairs. Such companies were formed at random in the Gallery, on the very day of the performance sometimes,--troupes like the strolling players of old, leaving at a venture in a third-class compartment on the train with the prospect of returning on foot if the impresario made off with the money.

Leonora began to know what applause was, what it meant to give _encore_ after _encore_ before crowds of rustic landowners, dressed in their Sunday clothes, and ladies with false rings and plated chains; and she had her first thrills of feminine vanity on receiving bouquets and sonnets from subalterns and cadets in small garrison towns. Boldini followed her everywhere, neglecting his lessons, in pursuit of this, his last depraved infatuation. "All for art, art for all!" He must enjoy the fruits of his creation, be present at the triumphs of his star pupil! So he said to Doctor Moreno; and that unsuspecting gentleman, thankful for this added courtesy of the master, would leave her more and more to the old satyr's care.

The escape from that life came when she secured a contract for a whole winter in Padua. There she met the tenor Salvatti, a high and mighty _divo_, who looked down upon all his associates, though tolerated himself, by the public, only out of consideration for his past.

For years now he had been holding his own on the opera stage, less for his voice than for his dashing appearance, slightly repaired with pencil and rouge, and the legend of romantic love affairs that floated like a rainbow around his name--noble dames fighting a clandestine warfare for him; queens scandalizing their subjects by blind passions he inspired; eminent divas selling their diamonds for the money to hold him faithful by lavish gifts. The jealousy of Salvatti's comrades tended to perpetuate and exaggerate this legend; and the tenor, worn out, poor, and a wreck virtually for all of his pose of grandeur, was able to make a living still from provincial publics, who charitably applauded him with the self-conceit of climbers pampering a dethroned prince.

Leonora, playing opposite that famous man, "starring," singing duets with him, clasping hands that had been kissed by the queens of art, was deeply stirred. This, at last, was the world she had dreamed of in her dingy garret in Milan. Salvatti's presence gave her just the illusion of aristocratic grandeur she had longed for. Nor was he slow in perceiving the impression he had made upon that promising young woman. With a cold calculating selfishness, he determined to profit by her naïve admiration. Was it love that thrust her toward him? As, so long afterwards, she analyzed her passion to Rafael, she was vehemently certain it had not been love: Salvatti could never have inspired a genuine feeling in anyone. His egotism, his moral corruptness, were too close to the surface. No, he was a philanderer simply, an exploiter of women. But for her it had been a blinding hallucination nevertheless, fraught, during the first days, at least, with the delicious exhiliration, the voluptuous abandonment of true love. She became the slave of the decrepit tenor, voluntarily, just as she had become her _maestro's_ slave through fear. And so complete had her infatuation been, so overpowering its intoxication, that, in obedience to Salvatti, she fled with him at the end of the season, and deserted her father, who had objected to the intimacy.

Then came the black page in her life, that filled her eyes with anguished tears as she went on with her story. What folks said about her father's end was not true. Poor Doctor Moreno had not committed suicide. He was altogether too proud to confess in that way the deep grief that her ingratitude had caused him.

"Don't talk to me about that woman," he would say fiercely to his landlady at Milan whenever the old _danseuse_ would mention Leonora. "I have no daughter: it was all a mistake."

Unbeknown to Salvatti, who became terribly grasping as he saw his power waning, Leonora would send her father a few hundred francs from London, from Naples, from Paris. The Doctor, though in direst poverty, would at once return the checks "to the sender" and, without writing a word; where-upon Leonora paid an allowance every month to the housekeeper, begging her not to abandon the old man.

The unhappy Doctor needed, indeed, all the care the landlady and her old friends could give him. The _povero signor spagnuolo_--the poor Spanish gentleman--spent his days locked up in his room, his violoncello between his knees, reading Beethoven, the only one "in his family"--as he said--"who had never played him false." When old Isabella, tired of his music, would literally put him out of the house to get a breath of air, he would wander like a phantom through the Gallery, distantly greeted by former friends, who avoided closer contact with that black despondency and feared the explosions of rage with which he received news of his daughter's rising fame.

A rapid rise she was making in very truth! The worldly old women who foregathered in the ballet-dancer's little parlor, could not contain their admiration for their "little girl's" success; and even grew indignant at the father for not accepting things "as things had to be." Salvatti? Just the support she needed! An expert pilot, who knew the chart of the opera world, who would steer her straight and keep her off the rocks.

The tenor had skilfully organized a world wide publicity for his young singer. Leonora's beauty and her artistic verve conquered every public. She had contracts with the leading theatres of Europe, and though critics found defects in her singing, her beauty helped them to forget these, and one and all they contributed loyally to the deification of the young goddess. Salvatti, sheltering his old age under this prestige which he so religiously fostered, was keeping in harness to the very end, and taking leave of life under the protecting shadow of that woman, the last to believe in him and tolerate his exploitation.

Applauded by select publics, courted in her dressing-room by celebrated men and women, Leonora began to find Salvatti's tyranny unbearable. She now saw him as he really was: miserly, petulant, spoiled by praise. Every bit of her money that came into his hands disappeared, she knew not where. Eager for revenge, though really answering the lure of the elegant world she glimpsed in the distance but was not yet a part of, she began to deceive Salvatti in passing adventures, taking a diabolical pleasure in the deceit. But no; as she looked back on that part of her life with the sober eye of experience, she understood that she had really been the one deceived. Salvatti, she remembered, would always retire at the opportune moment, facilitating her infidelities. She understood now that the man had carefully prepared such adventures for her with influential men whom he himself introduced to make certain profits out of the meeting--profits that he never declared.

After three years of this sort of life, when Leonora had reached the full splendor of her beauty, she chanced to become the favorite of fashion for one whole summer at Nice. Parisian newspapers, in their "society columns" referred, in veiled language, to the passion of an aged king, a democratic monarch, who had left his throne, much as a manufacturer of London or a stockbroker of Paris would leave his office, for a vacation on the Blue Coast. This tall, robust gentleman with a patriarchal beard--the very type of the good king in fairy tales--had not hesitated to be seen in public with a beautiful _artiste_.

That conquest, fleeting though it had been, put the finishing touch on Leonora's eminence! "Ah! La Brunna!" people would declare enthusiastically. "The favorite of king Ernesto.... Our greatest artist." And troops of adorers began to besiege her under the keen, mercenary eyes of the tenor Salvatti.

About this time her father died in a hospital at Milan--a very sad end, as Signora Isabella, the former ballet-dancer, explained in her letters. Of what had he died?... The old lady could not say, as the physicians had differed; but her own view of the matter was that the _povero signor spagnuolo_ had simply grown tired of living--a general collapse of that wonderful constitution, so strong, so powerful, in a way, yet strangely susceptible to moral and emotional influences. He was almost blind when admitted to the hospital. He seemed quite to have lost his mind--sunk in an unbreakable silence. Isabella had not dared to keep him in her house after he had fallen into that coma. But the strange thing was, that as death drew near, his memory of the past suddenly cleared, and the nurses would hear him groan for nights at a time, murmuring in Spanish with tenacious persistency:

"Leonora! My darling! Where are you?... Little girl, where are you?"

Leonora wept and wept, and did not leave her hotel for more than a week, to the great disgust of Salvatti, who observed, in addition, that tears were not good for her complexion.

Alone in the world!... Her own wrong-doing had killed her poor father! No one was left now except her good old aunt, who was "existing" far away in Spain, like a vegetable in a garden, her stupid mind entirely on her prayer-book. Leonora vented her anguish in a burst of hatred for Salvatti. He was responsible for her abandonment of her father! She deserted him, taking up with a certain count Selivestroff, a handsome and wealthy Russian, captain in the Imperial Guard.

So she had found her destiny! Her life would always be like that! She would pass from stage to stage, from song to song, belonging to everybody--and to nobody!

That fair Russian, so strong, so manly, so thoroughly a gentleman, had loved her truly, with a passionate humble adoration.

He would kneel submissively at her feet, like Hercules in the presence of Adriadne, resting his chin on her knees, looking up into her face with his gray, kindly, caressing eyes. Timidly, doubtfully, he would approach her every day as if he were meeting her for the first time and feared a repulse. He would kiss her softly, delicately, with hushed reserve, as if she were a fragile jewel that might break beneath his tenderest caress. Poor Selivestroff! Leonora had wept at the thought of him. In Russia and with princely Russian sumptuousness, they had lived for a year in his castle, in the country, among a population of sodden _moujiks_ who worshipped that beautiful woman in the white and blue furs as devotedly as if she had been a Virgin stepping forth from the gilded background of an ikon.