When day dawned, they were still sitting there weaving
fanciful plans for the future, arranging all the details
of their elopement. She would leave Alcira as
soon as possible. He would join her two days later,
when all suspicion had been quieted, when everybody
would imagine she was far, far away. Where would
they meet? At first they thought of Marseilles,
but that was a long way off! Then they thought
of Barcelona. But that, too, meant hours of travel,
when hours, minutes, counted for so much. It
seemed utterly incredible that they could live two
days without each other! No, the sooner they
met again the better! And, bargaining with time
like peasants in a market, at last they chose the
nearest city possible, Valencia.
For love—true love—is fond of
brazenness!
They had just finished lunch among the trunks and
boxes that occupied a great part of Leonora’s
room in the Hotel de Roma in Valencia.
For the first time they were at a table in familiar
intimacy, with no other witness than Beppa, who was
quite accustomed to every sort of surprise in her
mistress’s adventurous career. The faithful
maid was examining Rafael with a respectful kindliness,
as if he were a new idol that must share the unswerving
devotion she showed for Leonora.
This was the first moment of tranquillity and happiness
the young man had tasted for some days. The old
hotel, with its spacious rooms, its high ceilings,
its darkened corridors, its monastic silence, seemed
to him a veritable abode of delight, a grateful place
of refuge where for once he would be free of the gossip
and the strife that had been oppressing him like a
belt of steel. Besides, he could already feel
the exotic charm that lingers around harbors and great
railroad terminals. Everything about the place,
from the macaroni of the lunch, and the Chianti in
its straw-covered, heavy-paunched bottle, to the musical,
incorrect Spanish of the hotel-proprietors—fleshy,
massive men with huge mustaches in Victor Emmanuel
style—spoke of flight, of delightful seclusion
in that land so glowingly described by Leonora.
She had made an appointment with him in that hotel,
a favorite haunt of artists. Somewhat off the
main thoroughfares, the “Roma” occupies
one whole side of a sleepy, peaceful, aristocratic
square with no noise save the shouting of cab-drivers
and the beating of horses’ hoofs.
Rafael had arrived on the first morning train—and
with no baggage; like a schoolboy playing truant,
running off with just the clothes he had on his back.
The two days since Leonora left Alcira had been days
of torture to him. The singer’s flight
was the talk of the town. People were scandalized
at the amount of luggage she had. Counted over
in the imagination of that imaginative city, it eventually
came to fill all the carts in the province.
