At harvest time, when old Barret gazed at the various plots into which
his fields were divided, he was unable to restrain a feeling of pride.
As he gazed upon the tall wheat, the cabbage-heads with their hearts of
fleecy lace, the melons showing their green backs on a level with the
earth, the pimentoes and tomatoes, half-hidden by their foliage, he
praised the goodness of the earth as well as the efforts of all his
ancestors for working these fields better than the rest of the _huerta_.
All the blood of his forefathers was here. Five or six generations of
Barrets had passed their lives working this same soil. They had turned
it over and over, taking care that its vital nourishment should not
decrease, combing and caressing it with ploughshare and hoe; there was
not one of these fields which had not been watered by the sweat and
blood of the family.
The farmer loved his wife dearly, and even forgave her the folly of
having given him four daughters and no son, to help him in his work. Not
that he loved his daughters any the less, angels sent from God who
passed the day singing and sewing at the door of their farm-house, and
who sometimes went out into the fields in order to give their poor
father a little rest. But the supreme passion of old Barret, the love of
all his loves, was the land upon which the silent and monotonous history
of his family had unrolled.
Many years ago, many indeed, in those days when old Tomba, an aged man
now nearly blind, who took care of the poor herd of a butcher at
Alboraya, went roaming about in the band of The Friar,[C] shooting at
the French, these lands had belonged to the monks of San Miguel de los
Reyes.
They were good, stout gentlemen, sleek and voluble, who were not in a
hurry to collect their rentals, and appeared to be satisfied if when
they passed the cabin of an evening, the grand-mother, who was a
generous soul, would treat them to deep cups of chocolate, and the first
fruits of the season. Before, long before, the owner of all this land
had been a great lord, who upon dying, had unloaded both his sins and
his estates upon the bosom of the community. Now, alas! they belonged to
Don Salvador, a little, dried-up old man of Valencia, who so tormented
old Barret, that he even dreamed of him at night.
The poor farmer kept his trouble hidden from his family. He was a
courageous man of clean habits. If he went to the tavern of Copa for a
while on Sundays, when all the people of the neighbourhood were gathered
there together, it was in order to watch the card-players, to laugh
heartily at the absurdities and brutalities of Pimentó, and the other
strapping young fellows who played "cock o' the walk" about the
_huerta_; but never did he approach a counter to buy a glass; he always
kept his sash-purse tight around the waist, and if he drank at all, it
was only when one of the winners was treating all the crowd.
Averse to discussing his difficulties, he always seemed to be smiling,
good-natured and calm, with the blue cap which had won for him his
nickname,[D] pulled well down over his ears.
He worked from daylight until dusk. While the rest of the _huerta_ still
slept, he tilled his fields in the uncertain light of dawn, but more and
more convinced, all the time, that he could not go on working them
alone.
It was too great a burden for one man. If he only had a son! When he
sought aid, he took on servants who robbed him, worked but little, and
whom he discharged when he surprised them asleep in the stable during
the sunny hours.
Obsessed with his respect for his ancestors, he would rather have died
in his fields, overcome by fatigue, than rent a single acre to strange
hands. And since he could not manage all the work alone, half of his
fertile land remained fallow and unproductive, while he tried to
maintain his family and pay off his landlord by the cultivation of the
other half.
A silent struggle was this, desperate and obstinate, to earn enough for
the necessities of life and overcome the ebbing of his vitality.
He now had only one wish. It was that his little girls should not know;
that no one should give them an inkling of the worries and troubles
which harassed their father; that the sacred joy of this household, the
joy enlivened at all hours by the songs and laughter of the four
sisters, who had been born in four successive years, should not be
broken.
And they, in the meantime, had already begun to attract the attention of
the young swains of the _huerta_, when they went to the merrymakings of
the village in their new and showy silk handkerchiefs and their rustling
ironed skirts. And while they were getting up at dawn and slipping off
barefooted in their chemises in order to look down, through the cracks
of the little windows, at the suitors who were singing the _albaes_,[E]
or who wooed them with thrummings of the guitar, poor old Barret, trying
harder and harder to balance his accounts, drew out ounce by ounce the
handful of gold which his father had amassed for him farthing by
farthing, and tried in vain to appease Don Salvador, the old miser who
never had enough, and who, not content with squeezing him, kept talking
of the bad times, the scandalous increase in taxes, and the need of
raising his rent.
Barret could not possibly have had a worse landlord. He bore a
detestable reputation throughout the entire _huerta_, since there was
hardly a district where he did not own property. Every evening he passed
over the roads, visiting his tenants, wrapped up even in springtime in
his old cloak, shabby and looking like a beggar, while maledictions and
hostile gestures followed after him. It was the tenacity of avarice
which desired to be in contact with its property at all hours; the
persistency of the usurer, who has pending accounts to settle.
The dogs howled from a distance when they saw him, as though Death
itself were approaching; the children looked after him with frowning
faces; men hid themselves in order to avoid painful excuses, and the
women came to meet him at the door of the cabin with their eyes upon the
ground and the lie ready to entreat him to be patient, while they
answered his blustering threats with tears.
Pimentó who, as the public bully, interested himself in the misfortunes
of his neighbours, and who was the knight-errant of the _huerta_,
muttered something through his teeth which sounded like the promise of a
thrashing, with a cooling-off later in a canal. But the very victims of
the miser held him back, telling him of the influence of Don Salvador,
warning him that he was a man who spent his mornings in court and had
powerful friends. With such, the poor are always losers.
Of all his tenants, the best was Barret, who at the cost of great effort
owed him nothing at all. And the old miser, even while pointing him out
as a model to the other tenants, carried his cruelty toward him to the
utmost extreme. Aroused by the very meekness of the farmer he showed
himself more exacting, and was evidently pleased to find a man upon whom
he could vent without fear all his instincts of robbery and oppression.
Finally he raised the rent of the land. Barret protested, even wept as
he recited to him the merits of the family who had worked the skin from
their hands in order to make these fields the best of the _huerta_. But
Don Salvador was inflexible. Were they the best? Then he ought to pay
more. And Barret paid the increase; he would give up his last drop of
blood before he would abandon those fields which little by little were
taking his very life.
At last he had no money left to tide him over. He could count only upon
the produce from the fields. And completely alone, poor Barret
concealed the real situation from his family. He forced himself to smile
when his wife and daughters begged him not to work so hard, and he kept
on like a veritable madman.
He did not sleep; it seemed to him that his garden-truck was growing
less quickly than that of his neighbours; he made up his mind that he,
and he alone, should cultivate all the land; he worked at night, groping
in the darkness; the slightest threatening cloud would make him tremble,
and be fairly beside himself with fear; and finally, honourable and good
as he was, he even took advantage of the carelessness of his neighbours
and robbed them of their share of water for the irrigation.
But if his family were blind, the neighbouring farmers understood his
situation and pitied him for his meekness. He was a big, good-natured
fellow, who did not know how to put on a bold front before the repellent
miser, who was slowly draining him dry.
And this was true. The poor fellow, exhausted by his feverish existence
and mad labour, became a mere skeleton of skin and bones, bent over like
an octogenarian, with sunken eyes. That characteristic cap, which had
given him his nickname, no longer remained settled upon his ears, but as
he grew leaner, drooped toward his shoulders, like the funereal
extinguisher of his existence.
But the worst of it was that this insufferable excess of fatigue only
served to pay half of what the insatiable monster demanded. The
consequences of his mad labours were not slow in coming. Barret's nag, a
long-suffering animal, the companion of all his frantic toil, tired of
working both day and night, of drawing the cart with loads of
garden-truck to the market at Valencia, and of being hitched to the
plough without time to breathe or to cool off, decided to die rather
than to attempt the slightest rebellion against his poor master.
Then indeed the poor farmer saw himself lost! He gazed with desperation
at his fields which he could no longer cultivate; the rows of fresh
garden-truck which the people in the city devoured indifferently without
suspecting the anxiety the produce had caused the poor farmer, in the
constant battle with his poverty and with the land.
But Providence, which never abandons the poor, spoke to him through the
mouth of Don Salvador. Not vainly do they say that God often derives
good from evil.
The insufferable miser, the voracious usurer, offered his assistance
with touching and paternal kindness on hearing of Barret's misfortune.
How much did he need to buy another beast? Fifty dollars? Then here he
was, ready to aid him, and to show him how unjust was the hatred of
those who despised and spoke ill of him.
And he loaned money to Barret, although with the insignificant detail of
demanding that he place his signature (since business is business), at
the foot of a certain paper in which he mentioned interest, the
accumulation of interest, and security for the debt, listing to cover
this last detail, the furniture, the implements, all that the farmer
possessed on his farm, including the animals of the corral.
Barret, encouraged by the possession of a new and vigorous young horse,
returned to his work with more spirit, to kill himself again over those
lands which were crushing him, and which seemed to grow in proportion as
his efforts diminished until they enveloped him like a red shroud.
All that his fields produced was eaten by his family, and the handful of
copper which he made by his sales in the market of Valencia was soon
scattered; he could never eke out enough to satisfy the avarice of Don
Salvador.
The anguish of old Barret over his struggle to pay his debt and his
failure to do so aroused in him a certain instinct of rebellion which
caused all sorts of confused ideas of justice to surge through his crude
reasoning. Why were not the fields his own? All his ancestors had spent
their lives upon these lands; they were sprinkled with the sweat of his
family; if it were not for them, the Barrets, these lands would be as
depopulated as the sands of the seashore. And now this inhuman old man,
who was the master here, though he did not know how to pick up a hoe and
had never bent his back in toil in his whole life, was putting the
screws on him and crushing him with all his "reminders." Christ! How the
affairs of men are ordered!
But these revolts were only momentary; the resigned submission of the
labourer returned to him; with his traditional and superstitious respect
for property. He must work and be honest.
And the poor man, who considered that failure to pay one's obligation
was the greatest of all dishonours, returned to his work, growing ever
weaker and thinner, and feeling within himself the gradual sagging of
his vitality. Convinced that he would not be able to drag out the
situation much longer, he was yet indignant at the mere possibility of
abandoning a handful of the lands of his forefathers.
When Christmas came, he was able to pay Don Salvador only a small part
of the half-year's rent that fell due; Saint John's day arrived, and he
had not a _centime_; his wife was sick; he had even sold their wedding
jewelry in order to meet expenses; ... the ancient pendant earrings, and
the collar of pearls, which were the family treasure, and the future
possession of which had given rise to discussions among the four
daughters.
The avaricious old miser proved himself to be inflexible. No, Barret,
this could not continue. Since he was kind-hearted (however unwilling
people were to believe it), he would not permit the farmer to kill
himself in his determination to cultivate more land than his efforts
were equal to. No, he would not consent to it; he was too kind-hearted.
And as he had received another offer of rental, he notified Barret to
relinquish the fields as soon as possible. He was very sorry, but he
also was poor. Ah! And at the same time, he reminded him that it would
be necessary to pay back the loan for the purchase of the horse, ... a
sum which with the interest amounted to....
The poor farmer did not even pay attention to the sum of some thousand
reals to which his debt had aggregated with the blessed interest, so
agitated and confused did he become by this order to abandon his lands.
His weakness and the inner erosion produced by the crushing struggle of
two years showed themselves suddenly.
He, who had never wept, now sobbed like a child. All of his pride, his
Moorish gravity, disappeared all at once, and kneeling down before the
old man, he begged him not to forsake him since he looked upon him as a
father.
But a fine father poor Barret had picked! Don Salvador proved to be
relentless. He was sorry, but he could not help it: he himself was poor;
he had to provide a living for his sons. And he continued to cloak his
cruelty with sentences of hypocritical sentimentality.
The farmer grew tired of asking for mercy. He made several trips to
Valencia to the house of the master to remind him of his forefathers, of
his moral right to those lands, begging him for a little patience,
declaring with frenzied hope that he would pay him back. But at last the
miser refused to open his door to him.
Then desperation gave Barret new life. He became again the son of the
_huerta_, proud, spirited, intractable, when he is convinced that he is
in the right. The landlord did not wish to listen to him? He refused to
give him any hope? Very well; he was in his own house; if Don Salvador
desired anything, he would have to seek him there. He would like to see
the bully who could make him leave his farm.
And he went on working, but with misgiving, gazing anxiously about if
any one unknown to him happened to be approaching over the adjoining
roads, as though expecting at any moment to be attacked by a band of
bandits.
They summoned him to court, but he did not appear.
He already knew what this meant: the snares that men set in order to
ruin the honourable. If they were going to rob him, let them seek him
out on these lands which had become a part of his very flesh and blood,
for as such he would defend them.
One day they gave him notice that the court was going to begin
proceedings to expel him from his land that very afternoon; furthermore,
they would attach everything he had in his cabin to meet his debts. He
would not be sleeping there that night.
This news was so incredible to poor old Barret that he smiled with
incredulity. This might happen to others, to those cheats who had never
paid anything; but he, who had always fulfilled his duty, who had even
been born here, who owed only a year's rent,--nonsense! Such a thing
could not happen, even though one were living among savages, without
charity or religion!
But in the afternoon, when he saw certain men in black coming along the
road, big funereal birds with wings of paper rolled under the arm, he no
longer was in doubt. This was the enemy. They were coming to rob him.
And suddenly there was awakened within old Barret the blind courage of
the Moor who will suffer every manner of insult but who goes mad when
his property is touched. Running into the cabin, he seized the old
shot-gun, always hung loaded behind the door, and raising it to his
shoulder, took his stand under the vineyard, ready to put two bullets
into the first bandit of the law to set foot upon his fields.
His sick wife and four daughters came running out, shouting wildly, and
threw themselves upon him, trying to wrest away the gun, pulling at the
barrel with both hands. And such were the cries of the group, as they
struggled and contended for it, reeling from one pillar of the
grape-arbour to the other, that people from the neighbourhood began to
run out, arriving in an anxious crowd, with the fraternal solidarity of
those who live in deserted places.
It was Pimentó who prudently made himself master of the shot-gun and
carried it off to his house. Barret staggered behind, trying to pursue
him but restrained and held fast by the strong arms of some strapping
young fellows, while he vented his madness upon the fool who was keeping
him from defending his own.
"Pimentó,--thief! Give me back my shot-gun!"
But the bully smiled good-naturedly, satisfied that he was behaving both
prudently and paternally with the old madman. Thus he brought him to his
own farm-house, where he and Barret's friends watched him and advised
him not to do a foolish deed. Have a care, old Barret! These people are
from the court, and the poor always lose when they pick a quarrel with
_it_! Coolness and evil design succeed above everything.
And at the same time, the big black birds were writing papers, and yet
more papers in the farm-house of Barret; impassively they turned over
the furniture and the clothing, making an inventory even of the corral
and the stable, while the wife and the daughters wept in despair, and
the terrified crowd, gathering at the door, followed all the details of
the deed, trying to console the poor woman, or breaking out into
suppressed maledictions against the Jew, Don Salvador, and these fellows
who yielded obedience to such a dog.
Toward nightfall, Barret, who was like one overwhelmed, and who, after
the mad crisis, had fallen into a stony stupor, saw some bundles of
clothing at his feet, and heard the metallic sound of a bag which
contained his farming implements.
"Father! Father!" whimpered the tremulous voices of his daughters, who
threw themselves into his arms; behind them the old woman, sick,
trembling with fever, and in the rear, invading the _barraca_ of
Pimentó, and disappearing into the background through the dark door, all
the people of the neighbourhood, the terrified chorus of the tragedy.
He had already been driven away from his farm-house. The men in black
had closed it, taking away the keys; nothing remained to them there
except the bundles which were on the floor; the worn clothing, the iron
implements; this was all which they were permitted to take out of the
house.
Their words were broken by sobs; the father and the daughters embraced
again, and Pepeta, the mistress of the house, as well as other women,
wept and repeated the maledictions against the old miser until Pimentó
opportunely intervened.
There would be time left to speak of what had occurred; now it was time
for supper. What the deuce! Grieve like this because of an old Jew! If
he could but see all this, how his evil heart would rejoice! The people
of the _huerta_ were kind; all of them would help to care for the family
of old Barret, and would share with them a loaf of bread if they had
nothing more.
The wife and daughters of the ruined farmer went off with some
neighbours to pass the night in their houses. Old Barret remained
behind, under the vigilance of Pimentó.
The two men remained seated until ten in their rush-chairs, smoking
cigar after cigar in the candle-light.
The poor old farmer appeared to be crazy. He answered in short
monosyllables the reflections of this bully, who now assumed the rôle of
a good-natured fellow; and when he spoke it was always to repeat the
same words:
"Pimentó! Give me my shot-gun!"
And Pimentó smiled with a sort of admiration. The sudden ferocity of
this little old man, who was considered a good-natured fool by all the
_huerta_, astounded him. Return him the shot-gun! At once! He well
divined by the straight wrinkles which stood out between his eyebrows,
his firm intention of blowing the author of his ruin to atoms.
Barret grew more and more vexed with the young fellow. He went so far as
to call him a thief: he had refused to give him his weapon. He had no
friends; he could see that well enough; all of them were only ingrates,
equal to don Salvador in avarice; he did not wish to sleep here; he was
suffocating. And searching in the bag of implements, he selected a
sickle, shoved it through his sash, and left the farm-house. Nor did
Pimentó attempt to bar his way.
At such an hour, he could do no harm; let him sleep in the open if it
suited his pleasure. And the bully, closing the door, went to bed.
Old Barret started directly toward the fields, and like an abandoned
dog, began to make a détour around his farm-house.
Closed! Closed forever! These walls had been raised by his grandfather
and renovated by himself through all these years. Even in the darkness,
the pallor of the neat whitewash, with which his little girls had coated
them three months before, stood out plainly.
The corral, the stable, the pigsties were all the work of his father;
and this straw-roof, so slender and high, with the two little crosses at
the ends, he had built himself as a substitution for the old, which had
leaked everywhere.
And the curbstone at the well, the post of the vineyard, the cane-fences
over which the pinks and the morning-glories were showing their tufts of
bloom;--these too were the work of his hands. And all this was going to
become the property of another, because--yes, because men had arranged
it so.
He searched in his sash for the pasteboard strip of matches in order to
set fire to the straw-roof. Let the devil fly away with it all; it was
his own, anyway, as God knew, and he could destroy his own property and
would do so before he would see it fall into the hands of thieves.
But just as he was going to set fire to his old house, he felt a
sensation of horror, as if he saw the ghosts of all his ancestors rising
up before him; and he hurled the strip of matches to the ground.
But the longing for destruction continued roaring through his head, and
sickle in hand, he set forth over the fields which had been his ruin.
Now at a single stroke he would get even with the ungrateful earth, the
cause of all his misfortunes.
The destruction lasted for entire hours. Down they came tumbling to his
heels, the arches of cane upon which the green tendrils of the tender
kidney-beans and peas were climbing; parted by the furious sickle, the
beans fell, and the cabbages and lettuce, driven by the sharp steel,
flew wide like severed heads, scattering their rosettes of leaves all
around. No one should take advantage of his labour.
And thus he went on mowing until the break of dawn, trampling under foot
with mad stampings, shouting curses, howling blasphemies, until
weariness finally deadened his fury, and casting himself down upon a
furrow, he wept like a child, thinking that the earth henceforth would
be his real bed, and his only occupation begging in the streets.
He was awakened by the first rays of the sun striking his eyes, and the
joyful twitter of the birds which hopped around his head, availing
themselves of the remnants of the nocturnal destruction for their
breakfast.
Benumbed with weariness and chilled with the dampness, he rose from the
ground. Pimentó and his wife were calling him from a distance, inviting
him to come and take something. Barret answered them with scorn. Thief!
After taking away his shot-gun! And he set out on the road toward
Valencia, trembling with cold, without even knowing where he was going.
He stopped at the tavern of Copa and entered. Some teamsters of the
neighbourhood spoke to him, expressing sympathy for him in his
misfortune, and invited him to have a drink. He accepted gratefully. He
craved something which would counteract this cold, which had penetrated
his very bones. And he who had always been so sober, drank, one after
the other, two glasses of brandy, which fell into his weakened stomach
like waves of fire.
His face flushed, then became deadly pale; his eyes grew bloodshot. To
the teamsters who sympathized with him, he seemed expressive and
confiding, almost like one who is happy. He called them his sons,
assuring them that he was not fretting over so little. Nor had he lost
everything. There still remained in his possession the best thing in his
house, the sickle of his grandfather, a jewel which he would not
exchange, no, not for fifty measures of grain.
And from his sash he drew forth the curved steel, an implement brilliant
and pure, of fine temper and very keen edge, which, as Barret declared,
would cut a cigarette-paper in the air.
The teamsters paid up, and urging on their beasts, set off for Valencia,
filling the air with the creaking of wheels.
The old man stayed in the tavern for more than an hour, talking to
himself, feeling more and more dizzy, until, made ill at ease by the
hard glances of the landlord, who divined his condition, he experienced
a vague feeling of shame, and set out with unsteady steps without saying
good-bye.
But he was unable to dispel from his mind a tenacious remembrance. He
could see, as he closed his eyes, a great orchard of oranges which was
about an hour's distance, between Benimaclet and the sea. There he had
gone many times on business, and there he would go now to see if the
devil would be so good as to let him come across the master, as there
was hardly a day that his avaricious glance did not inspect the
beautiful trees as though he had the oranges counted on every one.
He arrived after two hours of walking, during which he stopped many
times to balance his body, which was swaying back and forth upon his
unsteady legs.
The brandy had now taken complete possession of him. He could no longer
remember for what purpose he had come here, so far from that part of the
_huerta_ in which his own family lived, and finally he let himself fall
into a field of hemp at the edge of the road. In a short time, his
laboured snores of drunkenness sounded among the green straight stalks.
When he awoke, the afternoon was well advanced. He felt heavy of head
and his stomach was faint. There was a humming in his ears, and he had a
horrible taste in his coated mouth. What was he doing here, near the
_huerta_ of the Jew? Why had he come so far? His instinctive sense of
honour arose; he felt ashamed at seeing himself in such a state of
debasement, and he tried to get on his feet to go away. The pressure on
his stomach caused by the sickle which lay crosswise in his sash, gave
him chills.
On standing up, he thrust his head out from among the hemp, and he saw,
in a turn of the road, a little man who was walking slowly along
enveloped in a cape.
Barret felt all his blood suddenly rise to his head; his drunkenness
came back on him again. He stood up, tugging at his sickle. And yet they
say that the devil is not good? Here was his man; here was the one whom
he had been wanting to see since the day before.
The old usurer had hesitated before leaving his house. The affair of old
Barret had pricked his conscience; it was a recent event and the
_huerta_ was treacherous; but the fear that his absence might be taken
advantage of in the _huerta_ was stronger even than his cowardice, and
remembering that the orange estate was distant from the attached
farm-house, he set out on the road.
He was already in sight of the _huerta_, scoffing inwardly at his past
fears, when he saw Barret bound out from the plot of cane-brake: like an
enormous demon he seemed to him with his red face and extended arms,
impeding all flight, cutting him off at the edge of the canal which ran
parallel to the road. He thought he must be dreaming; his teeth
chattered, his face turned green, and his cape fell off, revealing his
old overcoat and the dirty handkerchiefs rolled around his neck. So
great was his terror, his agitation, that he spoke to him in Spanish.
"Barret! My son!" he said, in a broken voice. "The whole thing has been
a joke; never mind. What happened yesterday was only to make you a
little afraid ... nothing more. You may stay on your land; come tomorrow
to my house ... we will talk things over: you shall pay me whenever you
wish."
And he bent backward to avoid the approach of old Barret: he attempted
to sneak away, to flee from that terrible sickle, upon whose blade a ray
of sun broke, and where the blue of the sky was reflected. But with the
canal behind him, he could not find a place to retreat, and he threw
himself backward, trying to shield himself with his clenched hands.
The farmer, showing his sharp white teeth, smiled like a hyena.
"Thief! thief!" he answered in a voice which sounded like a snarl.
And waving his weapon from side to side, he sought for a place where he
might strike, avoiding the thin and desperate hands which the miser held
before him.
"But, Barret, my son! what does this mean? Lower your weapon, do not
jest! You are an honest man ... think of your daughters! I repeat to
you, it was only a joke. Come tomorrow and I will give you the key....
Aaaay!..."
There came a horrible howl; the cry of a wounded beast. The sickle,
tired of encountering obstacles, had lopped off one of the clenched
hands at a blow. It remained hanging by the tendons and the skin, and
from the red stump blood spurted violently, spattering Barret, who
roared as the hot stream struck his face.
The old man staggered on his legs, but before he fell to the ground the
sickle cut horizontally across his neck, and ... zas! severed the
complicated folds of the neckerchief, opening a deep gash which almost
separated the head from the trunk.
Don Salvador fell into the canal; his legs remained on the sloping bank,
twitching, like a slaughtered steer giving its last kicks. And meanwhile
his head, sunken into the mire, poured out all of his blood through the
deep breach, and the waters following their peaceful course with a
tranquil murmur which enlivened the solemn silence of the afternoon,
became tinged with red.
Barret, stupefied, stood stock still on the shore. How much blood the
old thief had! The canal grew red, it seemed more copious! Suddenly the
farmer, seized with terror, broke into a run, as if he feared that the
little river of blood would overflow and drown him.
Before the end of the day, the news had circulated like the report of a
cannon which stirred all the plain. Have you ever seen the hypocritical
gesture, the silent rejoicing, with which a town receives the death of a
governor who has oppressed it? All guessed that it was the hand of old
Barret, yet nobody spoke. The farm-houses would have opened their last
hiding-places for him; the women would have hidden him under their
skirts.
But the assassin roamed like a madman through the fields, fleeing from
people, lying low behind the sloping banks, concealing himself under the
little bridges, running across the fields, frightened by the barking of
the dogs, until on the following day, the rural police surprised him
sleeping in a hayloft.
For six weeks, they talked of nothing in the _huerta_ but old Barret.
Men and women went on Sundays to the prison of Valencia as though on a
pilgrimage, in order to look through the bars at the poor liberator,
who grew thinner and thinner, his eyes more sunken, and his glance more
troubled.
The day of his trial arrived and he was sentenced to death.
The news made a deep impression in the plain; parish priests and mayors
started a movement to avoid such a shame.... A member of the district to
find himself on the scaffold! And as Barret had always been among the
docile, voting as the political bosses ordered him to vote, and
passively obeying as he was commanded, they made trips to Madrid in
order to save his life, and his pardon was opportunely granted.
The farmer came forth from the prison as thin as a mummy, and was
conducted to Ceuta, where he died after a few years.
His family scattered; disappearing like a handful of straw in the wind.
The daughters, one after the other, left the families which had taken
them in, and went to Valencia to earn their living as servants; and the
poor widow, tired of troubling others with her infirmities, was taken to
the hospital, and died there in a short time.
The people of the _huerta_, with that facility which every one displays
in forgetting the misfortune of others, scarcely ever spoke of the
terrible tragedy of old Barret, and then only to wonder what had become
of his daughters.
But nobody forgot the fields and the farm-house, which remained exactly
as on the day when the judge ejected the unfortunate farmer from them.
It was a silent agreement of the whole district; an instinctive
conspiracy which few words prepared but in which the very trees and
roads seemed to have a part.
Pimentó had given expression to it the very day of the catastrophe. We
will see the fine fellow who dares take possession of those lands!
And all the people of the _huerta_, even the women and children, seemed
to answer with their glances of mute understanding. Yes; they would see.
The parasitic plants, the thistles, began to spring up from the accursed
land which old Barret had stamped upon and cut down with his sickle on
that last night, as though he had a presentiment that he would die in
prison through its fault.
The sons of Don Salvador, men as rich and avaricious as their father,
cried poverty because this piece of land remained unproductive.
A farmer who lived in another district of the _huerta_, a man who
pretended to be a bully and never had enough land, was tempted by their
low price, and tackled these fields which inspired fear in all.
He set out to work the land with a gun on his shoulder; he and his
farm-hands laughed among themselves at the isolation in which the
neighbours left them; the farm-houses were closed to them as they
passed, and hostile glances followed from a distance.
The tenant, having the presentiment of an ambush, was vigilant. But his
caution served him to no purpose. As he was leaving the fields alone one
afternoon, before he had even finished breaking up the ground, two
musket-shots were fired at him by some invisible aggressor, and he came
forth miraculously uninjured by the handful of birdshot which passed
close to his ear.
No one was found in the fields,--not even a fresh foot-print. The
sharpshooter had fired from some canal, hidden behind the cane-brake.
With enemies such as these, one has no chance to fight, and on the same
night, the Valencian delivered the keys of the farm-house to its
masters.
One should have heard the sons of Don Salvador. Was there no law or
security for property, ... nor for anything?
No doubt Pimentó was the instigator of this attack. It was he who was
preventing these fields from being cultivated. So the rural police
arrested the bully of the _huerta_, and took him off to prison.
But when the moment of taking oath arrived, all of the district filed by
before the judge declaring the innocence of Pimentó, and from these
cunning rustics not one contradictory word could be forced.
One and all told the same story. Even failing old women who never left
their farm-houses declared that on that day, at the very hour when the
two reports were heard, Pimentó was in a tavern of Alboraya, enjoying a
feast with his friends.
Nothing could be done with these people of imbecile expression and
candid looks, who lied with such composure as they scratched the back of
their heads. Pimentó was set free, and a sigh of triumph and of
satisfaction came from all the houses.
Now the proof was given: now it was known that the cultivation of these
lands was paid for with men's lives.
The avaricious masters would not yield. They would cultivate the land
themselves. And they sought day-labourers among the long-suffering and
submissive people, who, smelling of coarse sheep-wool and poverty, and
driven by hunger, descended from the ends of the province, from the
mountainous frontiers of Aragon, in search of work.
The _huerta_ pitied the poor _churros_.[F] Unfortunate men! They wanted
to earn a day's pay; what guilt was theirs? And at night, as they were
leaving with their hoes over the shoulder, there was always some good
soul to call to them from the door of the tavern of Copa. They made them
enter, drink, talked to them confidentially with frowning faces but with
the paternal and good-natured tone of one who counsels a child to avoid
danger; and the result was that on the following day these docile
_churros_, instead of going to the field, presented themselves en masse
to the owners of the land.
"Master: we have come to get our pay."
All the arguments of the two old bachelors, furious at seeing themselves
opposed in their avarice, were useless.
"Master," they responded to everything, "we are poor, but we were not
born like dogs behind a barn."
And not only did they leave their work, but they passed the warning on
to all their countrymen, to avoid earning a day's wages in those fields
of Barret's as they would flee from the devil.
The owners of the land even asked for protection in the daily papers.
And the rural police went out over the _huerta_ in pairs, stopping along
the roads to surprise gestures and conversations, but always without
results.
Every day they saw the same thing. The women sewing and singing under
the vine-arbours; the men bending over in the fields, their eyes upon
the ground, their active arms never resting; Pimentó, stretched out like
a grand lord under the little wands of bird-lime, waiting for the birds,
or torpidly and lazily helping Pepeta; in the tavern of Copa, a few old
men, sunning themselves or playing cards. The countryside breathed forth
peace, and honourable stolidity; it was a Moorish Arcadia. But those of
the "_Union_" were on their guard; not a farmer wanted the land, not
even gratuitously; and at last, the owners had to abandon their
undertaking, let the weeds cover the place and the house fall into
decay, while they hoped for the arrival of some willing man, capable of
buying or working the farm.
The _huerta_ trembled with satisfaction, seeing how this wealth was
lost, and the heirs of Don Salvador were being ruined.
It was a new and intense pleasure. Sometimes, after all, the will of the
poor must triumph, and the rich must get the worst of it. And the hard
bread seemed more savoury, the wine better, the work less burdensome, as
they thought of the fury of the two misers, who with all their money had
to endure the rustics of the _huerta_ laughing at them.
Furthermore, this patch of desolation and misery in the midst of the
_vega_, served to make the other landlords less exacting. Taking this
neighbourhood as an example, they did not increase their rents and even
agreed to wait when the half year's rent was late in being paid.
Those desolate fields were the talisman which kept the dwellers of the
_huerta_ intimately united, in continuous contact: a monument which
proclaimed their power over the owners; the miracle of the solidarity of
poverty against the laws and the wealth of those who were the lords of
the land without working it or sweating over their fields.
All this, which they thought out confusedly, made them believe that on
the day when the fields of old Barret should be cultivated, the _huerta_
would suffer all manner of misfortunes. And they did not expect, after a
triumph of ten years, that any person would dare to enter those
abandoned fields except old Tomba, a blind and gibbering shepherd, who
in default of an audience daily related his deeds of prowess to his
flock of dirty sheep.
Hence the exclamations of astonishment, the gestures of wrath, over all
the _huerta_, when Pimentó published the news from field to field, from
farm-house to farm-house, that the lands of Barret now had a tenant, a
stranger, and that he ... he ... (whoever he might be), was here with
all his family, installing himself without any warning, ... as if they
were his own!