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 Ramón expected to pay for all welcome favors.
"Very good," the hoarse 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 Andrés 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 doña Bernarda, who in the old days had imbibed don Jaime's eagerness for the university degree, which to her seemed like a title of nobility for the family.
And lest the corruption of the city should lead the son astray as it had done Ramón in his student days, she would send don Andrés 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 assured the mother. The distinctions and the prizes that came to him in Alcira continued to pursue him in Valencia; and besides, don Ramón 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 institution 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 assembly of Wranglers, maintaining a "sound" attitude 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 doña 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."
Doña 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 constitute 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 massive frame. His neck, once as sturdy 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 Ramón, that somber libertine of insatiable appetites, 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 lustfulness, he went scouring the District like a wild satyr, and his brutish assaults, his terrorism and abuse of authority, were reported back by scurrilous tongues to the seignorial mansion, where his friend don Andrés was trying in vain to pacify the wife.
"That man!" doña 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 Ramón, 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, doña Bernarda would sit up in her bed with her thin arms folded across her bosom, and pray to herself:
"My Lord, My God! May this man die as soon as possible! May all this come to an end soon, oh Lord!"
And Bernarda's God must have heard her prayer, for her husband got rapidly worse.
"Take care of yourself, don Ramón," 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 Andrés, 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 passed 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 Ramón 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 doña 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 Andrés, 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 Andrés, 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. Petitions 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 Andrés referred to as "the spheres of public administration."
There came an election for Parliament, and as usual, doña Bernarda secured