"I'm throwing you out," continued the old man. "Get that, too! I'm
throwing you out, because I won't deal with a dog like you. I won't have
one anywhere around! I tell you this not as father to son, but as one
man to another, so you can come back at me if you want to. Understand?
I'm ready for you! That's why I've brought you 'way out here."
As he spoke, slowly, his stern spirit caught fire. His cheeks grew pale,
and in his jacket pockets his fists knotted. Manolo's savage blood began
to boil, as well.
"Don't make me say anything, you!" he flung at his father.
He turned as if to walk away. His voice, his gesture, the scornful shrug
of his shoulders, with which he seemed to underscore his words, all were
those of a ruffian and a bully. Anybody would have said that the tough,
swaggering silversmith lived again, in him. Zureda controlled his anger,
and began once more:
"If you want to fight, you'll be a fool to wait till to-morrow. I'm
ready for it, now."
"Crazy, you?" demanded the youth.
"No!"
"Well, you act it!"
"You're wrong. I know all about _you_--I know you've been beating your
mother. And you can't pay for a thing like that even with every drop of
your blood. No, sir! Not even the last drop of pig's blood you've got in
your body would pay for that!"
Amadeo Zureda was afraid of himself. He had begun to shiver. All the
hate that, long ago, had flung him upon Berlanga, now had burst forth
again in a fresh, strong, overwhelming torrent.
Suddenly Manolo stepped up to his father and seized him by the lapel.
"You going to shut up?" he snarled, in rage. "Or are you bound to drive
me to it?"
Zureda's answer was a smash in the face. Then the two men fell upon each
other, first with their fists, presently with knives. At that moment the
old man saw in the face of the man he had believed his son, the same
expression of hate that twenty years ago had distorted the features of
Manolo Berlanga. Those eyes, that mouth all twisted into a grimace of
ferocity, that slim and feline body now trembling with rage, all were
like the silversmith's. The look of the father came back again in that
of the son, as exactly as if both faces had been poured in the same
mold.
And for the first time, after so long a time, the old engineer clearly
understood everything.
Annihilated by the realization of this new disaster, no longer having
any heart to defend himself, the wretched man let his arms fall. And
just at this moment Manolo, beside himself with rage, plunged the fatal
blade into his breast.
Now with his vengeance complete, the parricide took to flight.
Amadeo Zureda, dying, was carried to the hospital. There, that same
night, Don Adolfo came to see him. The good neighbor's grief was
terrible, even to the point of the grotesque.
"Is it true, what people are saying?" he asked, weeping. "Is it true?"
The wounded man had hardly strength enough to press his hand a very
little.
"Good-by, Adolfo," he stammered. "Now I know what I--had to know. You
told me, but I--couldn't believe it. But now I know you--were right.
Manolo was not--my son----"
* * * * *