A PATRIARCH OF THE PAMPAS
The grand old man of the plains--Don Evaristo Penalva, the Patriarch--
My first sight of his estancia house--Don Evaristo described--A
husband of six wives--How he was esteemed and loved by every one--On
leaving home I lose sight of Don Evaristo--I meet him again after
seven years--His failing health--His old first wife and her daughter,
Cipriana--The tragedy of Cipriana--Don Evaristo dies and I lose sight
of the family.
Patriarchs were fairly common in the land of my nativity: grave,
dignified old men with imposing beards, owners of land and cattle and
many horses, though many of them could not spell their own names;
handsome too, some of them with regular features, descendants of good
old Spanish families who colonized the wide pampas in the seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries. I do not think I have got one of this
sort in the preceding chapters which treat of our neighbours, unless
it be Don Anastacio Buenavida of the corkscrew curls and quaint taste
in pigs. Certainly he was of the old landowning class, and in his
refined features and delicate little hands and feet gave evidence of
good blood, but the marks of degeneration were equally plain; he was
an effeminate, futile person, and not properly to be ranked with the
patriarchs. His ugly grotesque neighbour of the piebald horses was
more like one. I described the people that lived nearest to us, our
next-door neighbours so to speak, because I knew them from childhood
and followed their fortunes when I grew up, and was thus able to give
their complete history. The patriarchs, the grand old gaucho
estancieros, I came to know, were scattered all over the land, but,
with one exception, I did not know them intimately from childhood, and
though I could fill this chapter with their portraits I prefer to give
it all to the one I knew best, Don Evaristo Penalva, a very fine
patriarch indeed.
I cannot now remember when I first made his acquaintance, but I was
not quite six, though very near it, when I had my first view of his
house. In the chapter on "Some Early Bird Adventures," I have
described my first long walk on the plains, when two of my brothers
took me to a river some distance from home, where I was enchanted with
my first sight of that glorious waterfowl, the flamingo. Now, as we
stood on the brink of the flowing water, which had a width of about
two hundred yards at that spot when the river had overflowed its
banks, one of my elder brothers pointed to a long low house, thatched
with rushes, about three-quarters of a mile distant on the other side
of the stream, and informed me that it was the estancia house of Don
Evaristo Penalva, who was one of the principal landowners in that
part.
That was one of the images my mind received on that adventurous day
which have not faded--the long, low, mud built house, standing on the
wide, empty, treeless plain, with three ancient, half-dead, crooked
acacia trees growing close to it, and a little further away a corral
or cattle-enclosure and a sheep-fold. It was a poor, naked, dreary-
looking house without garden or shade, and I dare say a little English
boy six years old would have smiled, a little incredulous, to be told
that it was the residence of one of the principal land-owners in that
part.
Then, as we have seen, I got my horse, and being delivered from the
fear of evil-minded cows with long, sharp horns, I spent a good deal
of my time on the plain, where I made the acquaintance of other small
boys on horseback, who took me to their homes and introduced me to
their people. In this way I came to be a visitor to that lonely-
looking house on the other side of the river, and to know all the
interesting people in it, including Don Evaristo himself, its lord and
master. He was a middle-aged man at that date, of medium height, very
white-skinned, with long black hair and full beard, straight nose,
fine broad forehead, with large dark eyes. He was slow and deliberate
in all his movements, grave, dignified, and ceremonious in his manner
and speech; but in spite of this lofty air he was known to have a
sweet and gentle disposition and was friendly towards every one, even
to small boys who are naturally naughty and a nuisance to their
elders. And so it came about that even as a very small shy boy, a
stranger in the house, I came to know that Don Evaristo was not one to
be afraid of.
I hope that the reader, forgetting all he has learnt about the
domestic life of the patriarchs of an older time, will not begin to
feel disgusted at Don Evaristo when I proceed to say that he was the
husband of six wives, all living with him at that same house. The
first, the only one he had been permitted to marry in a church, was
old as or rather older than himself; she was very dark and was getting
wrinkles, and was the mother of several grown-up sons and daughters,
some married. The others were of various ages, the youngest two about
thirty; and these were twin sisters, both named Ascension, for they
were both born on Ascension Day. So much alike were these Ascensions
in face and figure that one day, when I was a big boy, I went into the
house and finding one of the sisters there began relating something,
when she was called out. Presently she came back, as I thought, and I
went on with my story just where I had left off, and only when I saw
the look of surprise and inquiry on her face did I discover that I was
now talking to the other sister.
How was this man with six wives regarded by his neighbours? He was
esteemed and beloved above most men in his position. If any person was
in trouble or distress, or suffering from a wound or some secret
malady, he would go to Don Evaristo for advice and assistance and for
such remedies as he knew; and if he was sick unto death he would send
for Don Evaristo to come to him to write down his last will and
testament. For Don Evaristo knew his letters and had the reputation of
a learned man among the gauchos. They considered him better than any
one calling himself a doctor. I remember that his cure for shingles, a
common and dangerous ailment in that region, was regarded as
infallible. The malady took the form of an eruption, like erysipelas,
on the middle of the body and extending round the waist till it formed
a perfect zone. "If the zone is not complete I can cure the disease,"
Don Evaristo would say. He would send some one down to the river to
procure a good-sized toad, then causing the patient to strip, he would
take pen and ink and write on the skin in the space between the two
ends of the inflamed region, in stout letters, the words, _In the
name of the Father_, etc. This done, he would take the toad in his
hand and gently rub it on the inflamed part, and the toad, enraged at
such treatment, would swell himself up almost to bursting and exude a
poisonous milky secretion from his warty skin. That was all, and the
man got well!
If it pleased such a man as that to have six wives instead of one it
was right and proper for him to have them; no person would presume to
say that he was not a good and wise and religious man on that account.
It may be added that Don Evaristo, like Henry VIII, who also had six
wives, was a strictly virtuous man. The only difference was that when
he desired a fresh wife he did not barbarously execute or put away the
one, or the others, he already possessed.
I lost sight of Don Evaristo when I was sixteen, having gone to live
in another district about thirty miles from my old home. He was then
just at the end of the middle period of life, with a few grey hairs
beginning to show in his black beard, but he was still a strong man
and more children were being added to his numerous family. Some time
later I heard that he had acquired a second estate a long day's
journey on horseback from the first, and that some of his wives and
children had emigrated to the new esctancia and that he divided his
time between the two establishments. But his people were not wholly
separated from each other; from time to time some of them would take
the long journey to visit the absent ones and there would be an
exchange of homes between them. For, incredible as it may seem, they
were in spirit, or appeared to be, a united family.
Seven years had passed since I lost sight of them, when it chanced
that I was travelling home from the southern frontier, with only two
horses to carry me. One gave out, and I was compelled to leave him on
the road. I put up that evening at a little wayside pulperia, or
public-house, and was hospitably entertained by the landlord, who
turned out to be an Englishman. But he had lived so long among the
gauchos, having left his country when very young, that he had almost
forgotten his own language. Again and again during the evening he
started talking in English as if glad of the opportunity to speak his
native tongue once more; but after a sentence or two a word wanted
would not come, and it would have to be spoken in Spanish, and
gradually he would relapse into unadulterated Spanish again, then,
becoming conscious of the relapse, he would make a fresh start in
English.
As we sat talking after supper I expressed my intention of leaving
early in the morning so as to get over a few leagues while it was
fresh, as the weather was very hot and I had to consider my one horse.
He was sorry not to be able to provide me with another, but at one of
the large estancias I would come to next morning I would no doubt be
able to get one. He then mentioned that in about an hour and a half or
two hours I should arrive at an estancia named La Paja Brava, where
many riding-horses were kept.
This was good news indeed! La Paja Brava was the name of the estate my
ancient friend and neighbour, Don Evaristo, had bought so many years
before: no doubt I should find some of the family, and they would give
me a horse and anything I wanted.
The house, when I approached it next morning, strongly reminded me of
the old home of the family many leagues away, only it was if possible
more lonely and dreary in appearance, without even an old half-dead
acacia tree to make it less desolate. The plain all round as far as
one could see was absolutely flat and treeless, the short grass burnt
by the January sun to a yellowish-brown colour; while at the large
watering-well, half a mile distant, the cattle were gathering in vast
numbers, bellowing with thirst and raising clouds of dust in their
struggles to get to the trough.
I found Don Evaristo himself in the house, and with him his first and
oldest wife, with several of the grown-up children. I was grieved to
see the change in my old friend; he had aged greatly in seven years;
his face was now white as alabaster, and his full beard and long hair
quite grey. He was suffering from some internal malady, and spent most
of the day in the large kitchen and living-room, resting in an easy-
chair. The fire burnt all day in the hearth in the middle of the clay
floor, and the women served mate and did their work in a quiet way,
talking the while; and all day long the young men and big boys came
and went, coming in, one or two at a time, to sip mate, smoke, and
tell the news--the state of the well, the time the water would last,
the condition of the cattle, of horses strayed, and so on.
The old first wife had also aged--her whole dark, anxious face had
been covered with little interlacing wrinkles; but the greatest change
was in the eldest child, her daughter Cipriana, who was living
permanently at La Paja Brava. The old mother had a dash of dark or
negrine blood in her veins, and this strain came out strongly in the
daughter, a tall woman with lustreless crinkled hair of a wrought-iron
colour, large voluptuous mouth, pale dark skin, and large dark sad
eyes.
I remembered that they had not always been sad, for I had known her in
her full bloom--an imposing woman, her eyes sparkling with intense
fire and passion, who, despite her coarse features and dark skin, had
a kind of strange wild beauty which attracted men. Unhappily she
placed her affections on the wrong person, a dashing young gaucho who,
albeit landless and poor in cattle, made a brave appearance,
especially when mounted and when man and horse glittered with silver
ornaments. I recalled how one of my last sights of her had been on a
Sunday morning in summer when I had ridden to a spot on the plain
where it was overgrown with giant thistles, standing about ten feet
high, in full flower and filling the hot air with their perfume.
There, in a small open grassy space I had dismounted to watch a hawk,
in hopes of finding its nest concealed somewhere among the thistles
close by. And presently two persons came at a swift gallop by the
narrow path through the thistles, and bursting out into that small
open spot I saw that it was Cipriana, in a white dress, on a big bay
horse, and her lover, who was leading the way. Catching sight of me
they threw me a "Good morning" and galloped on, laughing gaily at the
unexpected encounter. I thought that in her white dress, with the hot
sun shining on her, her face flushed with excitement, on her big
spirited horse, she looked splendid that morning.
But she gave herself too freely to her lover, and by and by there was
a difference, and he rode away to return no more. It was hard for her
then to face her neighbours, and eventually she went away with her
mother to live at the new estancia; but even now at this distance of
time it is a pain to remember her when her image comes back to my mind
as I saw her on that chance visit to La Paja Brava.
Every evening during my stay, after mate had been served and there was
a long vacant interval before night, she would go out from the gate to
a distance of fifty or sixty yards, where an old log was lying on a
piece of waste ground overgrown with nettles, burdock, and redweed,
now dead and brown, and sitting on the log, her chin resting on her
hand, she would fix her eyes on the dusty road half a mile away, and
motionless in that dejected attitude she would remain for about an
hour. When you looked closely at her you could see her lips moving,
and if you came quite near her you could hear her talking in a very
low voice, but she would not lift her gaze from the road nor seem to
be aware of your presence. The fit or dream over, she would get up and
return to the house, where she would quietly set to work with the
other women in preparing the great meal of the day--the late supper of
roast and boiled meat, when all the men would be back from their work
with the cattle.
That was my last sight of Cipriana; what her end was I never heard,
nor what was done with the Paja Brava after the death of Don Evaristo,
who was gathered to his fathers a year or so after my visit. I only
know that the old place where as a child I first knew him, where his
cattle and horses grazed and the stream where they were watered was
alive with herons and spoonbills, black-necked swans, glossy ibises in
clouds, and great blue ibises with resounding voices, is now possessed
by aliens, who destroy all wild bird life and grow corn on the land
for the markets of Europe.