"Look, auntie! This gentleman is the son of your friend, doña Bernarda. He came over here in a boat to help us out. It was very nice of him, wasn't it?"
The old woman seemed quite to have lost her mind from terror. She looked vacantly at the new arrivals, as if they had been there all their lives. At last she seemed to realize what they were saying.
"Why, it's Rafael!" she exclaimed in surprise. "Rafaelito.... And you came to see us in such weather! Suppose you get drowned? What will your mother say?... Lord, how crazy of you! Lord!"
But it was not madness, and even if it were, it was very sweet of him! That, at least, was what Rafael seemed to read in those clear, luminous eyes of the golden sparkles that caressed him with their velvety touch every time he dared to look at them. Leonora was staring at him: studying him in the lamplight, as if trying to understand the difference between the man in front of her and the boy she had met on her walk to the Hermitage.
Doña Pepa's spirits rallied now that men were in the house; and with a supreme effort of will, the old lady decided to leave her armchair for a look at the flood, which had stopped rising, if, indeed, it were not actually receding.
"How much water, oh Lord our God!... How many terrible things we'll learn of tomorrow! This must be a punishment from Heaven ... a warning to us to think of our many sins."
Leonora meanwhile was bustling busily about, hurrying the refreshments. Those gentlemen couldn't be left like that—she kept cautioning to her maid and the peasant woman. Just imagine, with their clothes wet through! How tired they must be after that all night struggle! Poor fellows! It was enough just to look at them! And she set biscuits on the table, cakes, a bottle of rum—everything, including a box of Russian cigarettes with gilded tips—to the shocked surprise of the gardener's wife.
"Let them come here, auntie," she said to the old lady. "Don't make them talk any more now.... They need to eat and drink a little, and get warm.... I'm sorry I have so little to offer you. What in the world can I get for them? Let's see! Let's see!"
And while the two men were being forced, by that somewhat despotic attentiveness, to take seats at the table, Leonora and her maid went into the adjoining room, where keys began to rattle and tops of chests to rise and fall.
Rafael, in his deep emotion, could scarcely manage a few drops of rum; but the barber chewed away for all he was worth, downing glass after glass of liquor, and talking on and on through a mouth crammed with food while his face grew redder and redder.