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Updated: May 31, 2025
Cautiously the engineer guarded against telling Rafaela that their son had returned. A little while before supper, giving her the excuse that Don Adolfo was waiting for him at the Casino, Zureda left the house and made his way to the inn where Manolo was wont to meet his rough friends. There he found him, indeed, gaming with cards. "I've got something to say to you," said he.
Zureda, afraid of showing the tumultuous rage in his heart, said nothing more. The most ominous memories crowded his mind. A long, long time ago, before he had gone to jail, Don Tomás in the course of an unforgettable conversation had told him that Manolo Berlanga maltreated Rafaela.
"Papa would be furious if he discovered what I have done. But I can manage him." The older man smiled. He had observed the managerial process at work. "But you must not delay," added Rafaela, anxiously. "Even now the firing seems to be farther away. My father keeps many soldiers here. And he is, doubtless, driving away the attacking party.
He liked wine, women and song, and many a time came home in the wee small hours, completely paralyzed. This invariably happened during the absence of the engineer. Next morning he was always very remorseful, and went with contrition to the kitchen, where Rafaela was getting breakfast. "Are you mad at me?" he used to ask.
They had enough for all to live on for a while, with what he had made in prison. They spoke not of the past. You might almost have thought they had forgotten it. Why remember? Zureda had forgiven everything. Rafaela, moreover, was no longer the same. The gay happiness of her eyes had gone dead; the waving blackness of her hair and the girlish quickness of her body had vanished.
It showed him also two women one young and very beautiful, the other wizened and monkey-like, both terrified and speechless. They were Don Fernandez' daughter, Rafaela, and her duenna or chaperone, Donna Ana. "Quiet," hissed Jack in Spanish, waving his weapon threateningly. He listened with strained attention to sounds from outside.
Opposite the Fonda de Rafaela was a long line of infantry barracks, and, consequently, we had plenty of the sort of music fife and drum which naturally accompanies military drill and company movements.
Far in the distance, lighted by the dying sun, the little hamlet was visible; that miserable collection of huts about which Zureda had thought so many times, dreaming that there he should find the sweet refuge of peaceful forgetfulness and of redemption. After Amadeo came to Ecks, Rafaela went no longer to the river. The former engineer was unwilling that his wife should toil.
As soon as he had come by this resolution, his uneasiness grew calm. A sedative feeling of peace took possession of his heart. The engineer passed that day quietly reading, waiting for night to come. Rafaela was sewing in the dining-room, with little Manolo asleep on her lap.
And suppose we had any children, Benjamin! What would they think of us?" "Oh, there's a thousand ways to cover it all up. You just take a shine to me, and I'll fix everything else." Rafaela promised to think it over; and every night when she came home from work, Benjamin jokingly asked her, from his door: "Well, neighbor, how about it?" "I'm still thinking it over," she answered, with a laugh.
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