Luna Benamor Part 4

This was another world, where his jealousy and his fury could find no vent. And he would have to lose Luna without a cry of protest, without a gesture of manly rebellion!...Now, upon beholding himself parted from her, he felt for the first time the genuine importance of his love; a love that had been begun as a pastime, through an exotic curiosity, and which was surely going to upset his entire existence... What was he to do?

He recalled the words of one of those inhabitants of Gibraltar who had accompanied him on Royal Street,--a strange mixture of Andalusian sluggishness and British apathy.

"Take my word for it, friend, the chief Rabbi and those of the synagogue have a hand in this. You were scandalizing them; everybody saw you making love in public. You don't realize how important one of these fellows is. They enter the homes of the faithful and run everything, giving out orders that n.o.body dares to disobey."

The following day Aguirre did not leave his street, and either walked up and down in front of the Aboabs' house or stood motionless at the entrance to his hotel, without losing sight for a moment of Luna's dwelling. Perhaps she would come out! After the meeting of the previous day she must have lost her fear. They must have a talk. Here it was three months since he had come to Gibraltar, forgetting his career, in danger of ruining it, abusing the influence of his relatives. And was he going to leave that woman without exchanging a final word, without knowing the cause for the sudden overturn?...

Toward night-fall Aguirre experienced a strange shudder of emotion, similar to that which he had felt in the brokers' shop upon beholding the Jew that had just returned from South America. A woman came out of the Aboabs' house; she was dressed in black. It was Luna, just as he had seen her the day before.

She turned her head slowly and Aguirre understood that she had seen him,--that perhaps she had been watching him for a long time hidden behind the blinds. She began to walk hastily, without turning her head, and Aguirre followed her at a certain distance, on the opposite sidewalk, jostling through the groups of Spanish workmen who, with their bundles in their hands, were returning from the a.r.s.enal to the town of La Linea, before the sunset gun should sound and the place be closed.

Thus he shadowed her along Royal Street, and as she arrived at the Exchange, Luna continued by way of Church Street, pa.s.sing by the Catholic Cathedral. Here there were less people about and the shops were fewer; except at the corners of the lanes where there were small groups of men that had formed on coming from work. Aguirre quickened his gait so as to catch up with Luna, while she, as if she had guessed his intention, slackened her step. As they reached the rear of the Protestant church, near the opening called Cathedral Square, the two met.

"Luna! Luna!..."

She turned her glance upon Aguirre, and then instinctively they made for the end of the square, fleeing from the publicity of the street. They came to the Moorish arcades of the evangelist temple, whose colors were beginning to grow pale, vanis.h.i.+ng into the shade of dusk. Before either of them could utter a word they were enveloped in a wave of soft melody,--music that seemed to come from afar, stray chords from the organ, the voices of virgins and children who were chanting in English with bird-like notes the glory of the Lord.

Aguirre was at a loss for words. All his angry thoughts were forgotten.

He felt like crying, like kneeling and begging something of that G.o.d, whoever He might be, who was at the other side of the walls, lulled by the hymn from the throat of the mystic birds with firm and virginal voices:

"Luna!... Luna!"

He could say nothing else, but the Jewess, stronger than he and less sensitive to that music which was not hers, spoke to him in a low and hurried voice. She had stolen out just to see him; she must talk with him, say good-bye. It was the last time they would meet.

Aguirre heard her without fully understanding her words. All his attention was concentrated upon her eyes, as if the five days in which they had not met were the same as a long voyage, and as if he were seeking in Luna's countenance some effect of the extended lapse of time that had intervened. Was she the same?... Yes it was she. But her lips were somewhat pale with emotion; she pressed her lids tightly together as if every word cost her a prodigious effort, as if every one of them tore out part of her soul. Her lashes, as they met, revealed in the corner of her eyes lines that seemed to indicate fatigue, recent tears, sudden age.

The Spaniard was at last able to understand what she was saying. But was it all true?... To part! Why? Why?... And as he stretched his arms out to her in the vehemence of his entreaty Luna became paler still, huddling together timidly, her eyes dilated with fear.

It was impossible for their love to continue. She must look upon all the past as a beautiful dream; perhaps the best of her life... but the moment of waking had come. She was marrying, thus fulfilling her duty toward her family and her race. The past had been a wild escapade, a childish flight of her exalted and romantic nature. The wise men of her people had clearly pointed out to her the dangerous consequences of such frivolity. She must follow her destiny and be as her mother had been,--like all the women of her blood. Upon the following day she was going to Tangier with her promised husband, Isaac Nunez. He himself and her relatives had counselled her to have one last interview with the Spaniard, so as to put an end to an equivocal situation that might compromise the honor of a good merchant and destroy the tranquility of a peaceful man. They would marry at Tangier, where her fiance's family lived; perhaps they would remain there; perhaps they would journey to South America and resume business there. At any rate, their love, their sweet adventure, their divine dream, was ended forever.

"Forever!" murmured Luis in a m.u.f.fled voice. "Say it again. I hear it from your lips, yet I can't believe my ears. Say it once more. I wish to make sure."

His voice was filled with supplication but at the same time his clenched hand and his threatening glance terrified Luna, who opened her eyes wide and pressed her lips tightly together, as if restraining a sob. The Jewess seemed to grow old in the shadows.

The fiery bird of twilight flashed through the air with its fluttering of red wings. Closely following came a thunderclap that made the houses and ground tremble.... The sunset gun! Aguirre, in his agony, could see in his mind's eye a high wall of crags, flying gulls, the foamy, roaring sea, a misty evening light, the same as that which now enveloped them.

"Do you remember, Luna? Do you remember?"...

The roll of drums sounded from a near-by street, accompanied by the shrill notes of the fife and the deep boom of the ba.s.s drum, drowning with its belligerent sound the mystic, ethereal chants that seemed to filter through the walls of the temple. It was the evening patrol on its way to close the gates of the town. The soldiers, clad in uniforms of greyish yellow, marched by, in time with the tune from their instruments, while above their cloth helmets waved the arms of the gymnast who was deafening the street with his blows upon the drum head.

The two waited for the noisy patrol to pa.s.s. As the soldiers disappeared in the distance the melodies from the celestial choir inside the church returned slowly to the ears of the listeners.

The Spaniard was abject, imploring, pa.s.sing from his threatening att.i.tude to one of humble supplication.

"Luna... Lunita! What you say is not true. It cannot be. To separate like this? Don't listen to any of them. Follow the dictates of your heart. There is still a chance for us to be happy. Instead of going off with that man whom you do not love, whom you surely cannot love, flee with me."

"No," she replied firmly, closing her eyes as though she feared to weaken if she looked at him. "No. That is impossible. Your G.o.d is not my G.o.d. Your people, not my people."

In the Catholic Cathedral, near by, but out of sight, the bell rang with a slow, infinitely melancholy reverberation. Within the Protestant Church the choir of virgins was beginning a new hymn, like a flock of joyous birds winging about the organ. Afar, gradually becoming fainter and fainter and losing itself in the streets that were covered by the shadows of night, sounded the thunder of the patrol and the playful lisping of the fifes, hymning the universal power of England to the tune of circus music.

"Your G.o.d! Your people!" exclaimed the Spaniard sadly. "Here, where there are so many G.o.ds! Here, where everybody is of your people!...

Forget all that. We are all equals in life. There is only one truth: Love."

"Ding, dong!" groaned the bell aloft in the Catholic Cathedral, weeping the death of day. "Lead Kindly Light!" sang the voices of the virgins and the children in the Protestant temple, resounding through the twilight silence of the square.

"No," answered Luna harshly, with an expression that Aguirre had never seen in her before; she seemed to be another woman. "No. You have a land, you have a nation, and you may well laugh at races and religions, placing love above them. We, on the other hand, wherever we may be born, and however much the laws may proclaim us the equals of others, are always called Jews, and Jews we must remain, whether we will or no. Our land, our nation, our only banner, is the religion of our ancestors. And you ask me to desert it,--to abandon my people?... Sheer madness!"

Aguirre listened to her in amazement.

"Luna, I don't recognize you.... Luna, Lunita, you are another woman altogether.... Do you know what I'm thinking of at this moment? I'm thinking of your mother, whom I did not know."

He recalled those nights of cruel uncertainty, when Luna's mother tore her jet-black hair before the bed in which her child lay gasping; how she tried to deceive the demon, the hated _Huerco_, who came to rob her of her beloved daughter.

"Ah! I, too, Luna, feel the simple faith of your mother,--her innocent credulity. Love and despair simplify our souls and remove from them the proud tinsel with which we clothe them in moments of happiness and pride; love and despair render us by their mystery, timid and respectful, like the simplest of creatures. I feel what your poor mother felt during those nights. I shudder at the presence of the _Huerco_ in our midst. Perhaps it's that old fellow with the goat's whiskers who is at the head of your people here; all of you are a materialistic sort, without imagination, incapable of knowing true love; it seems impossible that you can be one of them.... You, Luna! You! Don't laugh at what I say. But I feel a strong desire to kneel down here before you, to stretch out upon the ground and cry: '_Huerco_, what do you wish? Have you come to carry off my Luna?... Luna is not here. She has gone forever. This woman here is my beloved, my wife. She has no name yet, but I'll give her one.' And to seize you in my arms, as your mother did, to defend you against the black demon, and then to see you saved, and mine forever; to confirm your new name with my caresses, and to call you... my Only One, yes, my Only One. Do you like the name?... Let our lives be lived together, with the whole world as our home."

She shook her head sadly. Very beautiful. One dream more. A few days earlier these words would have moved her and would have made her weep.

But now!... And with cruel insistence she repeated "No, no. My G.o.d is not your G.o.d. My race is not your race. Why should we persist in attempting the impossible?..."

When her people had spoken indignantly about the love affair that was being bruited all about town; when the spiritual head of her community came to her with the ire of an ancient prophet; when accident, or perhaps the warning of a fellow Jew, had brought about the return of her betrothed, Isaac Nunez, Luna felt awaking within her something that had up to that time lain dormant. The dregs of old beliefs, hatreds and hopes were stirred in the very depths of her thought, changing her affections and imposing new duties. She was a Jewess and would remain faithful to her race. She would not go to lose herself in barren isolation among strange persons who hated the Jew through inherited instinct. Among her own kind she would enjoy the influence of the wife that is listened to in all family councils, and when she would become old, her children would surround her with a religious veneration. She did not feel strong enough to suffer the hatred and suspicion of that hostile world into which love was trying to drag her,--a world that had presented her people only with tortures and indignities. She wished to be loyal to her race, to continue the defensive march that her nation was realizing across centuries of persecution.

Soon she was inspired with compa.s.sion at the dejection of her former sweetheart, and she spoke to him more gently. She could no longer feign calmness or indifference. Did he think that she could ever forget him?

Ah! Those days had been the sweetest in all her existence; the romance of her life, the blue flower that all women, even the most ordinary, carry within their memories like a breath of poesy.

"Do you imagine that I don't know what my lot is going to be like?...

You were the unexpected, the sweet disturbance that beautifies life, the happiness of love which finds joy in all that surrounds it and never gives thought to the morrow. You are a man that stands out from all the rest; I know that. I'll many, I'll have many children,--many!--for our race is inexhaustible, and at night my husband will talk to me for hour after hour about what we earned during the day. You... you are different. Perhaps I would have had to suffer, to be on my guard lest I'd lose you, but with all that you are happiness, you are illusion."

"Yes, I am all that," said Aguirre "I am all that because I love you....

Do you realize what you are doing, Luna? It is as if they laid thousands and thousands of silver pounds upon the counter before Zabulon, and he turned his back upon them, scorning them and preferring the synagogue.

Do you believe such a thing possible?... Very well, then. Love is a fortune. It is like beauty, riches, power; all who are born have a chance of acquiring one of these boons, but very few actually attain to them. All live and die believing that they have known love, thinking it a common thing, because they confuse it with animal satisfaction; but love is a privilege, love is a lottery of fate, like wealth, like beauty, which only a small minority enjoy.... And when love comes more than half way to meet you, Luna, Lunita,--when fate places happiness right in your hands, you turn your back upon it and walk off!...

Consider it well! There is yet time! Today, as I walked along Royal Street I saw the s.h.i.+p notices. Tomorrow there's a boat sailing for Port Said. Courage! Let us flee!... We'll wait there for a boat to take us to Australia."

Luna raised her head proudly. Farewell to her look of compa.s.sion!

Farewell to the melancholy mood in which she had listened to the youth!... Her eyes shone with a steely glance; her voice was cruel and concise.

"Goodnight!"

And she turned her back upon him, beginning to walk as if taking flight.

Aguirre hastened after her, soon reaching her side.

"And that's how you leave me!" he exclaimed. "Like this, never to meet again... Can a love that was our very life end in such a manner?..."

The hymn had ceased in the evangelical temple; the Catholic bell was silent; the military music had died out at the other end of the town. A painful silence enveloped the two lovers. To Aguirre it seemed as if the world were deserted, as if the light had died forever, and that in the midst of the chaos and the eternal darkness he and she were the only living creatures.

"At least give me your hand; let me feel it in mine for the last time.... Don't you care to?"

She seemed to hesitate, but finally extended her right hand. How lifeless it was! How icy!

"Good-bye, Luis," she said curtly, turning her eyes away so as not to see him.

She spoke more, however. She felt that impulse of giving consolation which animates all women at times of great grief. He must not despair.