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Updated: June 8, 2025
Doña Bernarda was not the woman to stand by idle and resigned in the face of opposition, even from him! "I see ... mother!" he said in a stifled voice. "She has been up to something. Tell me what it is. Don't be afraid. To me you are dearer than anything else in the world."
It was easy to see that Rafael had never known what hard times were those days of the Revolution, when the Brulls were out of power and held their own just because don Ramón was a bad man with a gun desperate election campaigns, when you marched to victory over somebody's dead body, bold cross-country rides on election night, never knowing when you would meet the roder in ambush the outlaw sharpshooter who had vowed to kill don Ramón; then endless prosecutions for intimidation and violence, which had given doña Bernarda and her husband months and months of anxiety, lest a catastrophe from one moment to the next bring prison and forfeiture of all their property!
Doña Bernarda did not suspect the reason why her son rose on the following morning pale, and with dark rings under his eyes, as if he had spent a bad night. Nor could his political friends guess, that afternoon, why in such fine weather, Rafael should come and shut himself up in the stifling atmosphere of the Club.
The austere doña Bernarda, dethroned by her son's resolute rebelliousness, wept as she said this. In her tears of a mother's grief there was something also of the chagrin of the authoritarian on finding in her own home a will rebellious to hers and stronger than hers. Between sobs she told don Andrés how her son had been carrying on since his declaration of independence.
He was vexed at the curiosity of people, at the scoffing sympathy of his friends who condoled with him that his happiness was ending. For two days he remained indoors, followed by his mother's inquiring glances. Doña Bernarda felt more at ease now that the evil influence of the "chorus girl" promised to be over; but none the less she did not lose her frown.
The Cortes were about to adjourn, so, in obedience to repeated urging from his fellow-partisans, and from doña Bernarda, to do something anything at all to show interest in the home town he took the floor one afternoon at the opening of the session, when only the president, the sergeant-at-arms, and a few reporters asleep in the press-gallery, were present, and, with his lunch rising in his throat from emotion, asked the Minister of Internal Affairs to show a little more despatch in the matter of flood protection at Alcira a bill still in its in-fancy, though it had been pending some seventy years.
What had he always said, when doña Bernarda, in the confiding intimacies of that friendship which amounted almost to a senile, a tranquil, a distantly respectful passion, would complain of Rafael's contrariness? That it would all pass; that it was a young man's whim; that youth must have its fling! What was the use? Rafael hadn't studied to be a monk!
But in the end they weary a fellow, doña Bernarda," the old man said sententiously. "She'll be clearing out some fine day. Besides, just let Rafael go to Madrid as deputy, and see the society there! When he comes back he'll have forgotten this woman ever existed!" The faithful lieutenant of the Brulls would have been astonished to know how little Rafael was progressing with his suit.
Rafael had been no match for that energetic mother, the soul of "the Party." Meekly he had promised never to return to the Blue House, never to call again on that "loose woman" doña Bernarda actually hissed as she said the word. However, the upshot of it all had been that Rafael simply discovered how weak he was.
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.
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