But when her glance met Febrer's, seeing his pale face, tense with

emotion, she turned white also. He seemed a different man; she saw a Don

Jaime she had never known before. Instinctively, impelled by fear, she

took a step backward. She remained on the defensive, leaning against the

slender trunk of a small tree, which grew beside the path, its tiny

sickly colored leaves almost loosened by the autumn wind.

She could still smile--a forced smile, pretending to believe it one of

the senor's jokes.

"No," replied Febrer with energy, "I am speaking seriously. Tell me,

Margalida, Almond Blossom, what if I should become one of your lovers;

and if I should come to the courting, what would you answer me?"

She shrunk back against the yielding tree trunk, making herself smaller,

as if she would escape those ardent eyes. Her instinctive backward step

shook the flexible tree and a shower of yellow leaves, like flakes of

amber, fell roundabout her, clinging to her hair. Pale, her lips

compressed and blue, she murmured words scarcely more audible than a

gentle sigh. Her eyes, enlarged and deep, bore the agonized expression

of the humble of spirit who think many things, but who find no words to

express them. He, the heir of the Febrers, a gran senor, to marry a

peasant girl? Was he crazy?

"No; I am not a great senor; I am an unfortunate creature. You are

richer than I, who am living off your charity. Your father wishes your

husband to be a man who shall cultivate his lands. Will you marry me,

Margalida? Do you love me, Almond Blossom?"

With bowed head, avoiding a glance that seemed to burn her, she

continued speaking without listening to him. Madness! It could not be

true! The senor to say such things! He must be dreaming!

Suddenly she felt on one of her hands a light, caressing touch. She

looked at him again. She saw an unfamiliar face that thrilled her. She

experienced a sensation of grave danger--the nervous start which gives a

warning. Her knees shook, they contracted as if she were about to faint

with fear.

"Do you think me too old?" he murmured in a supplicating voice. "Can you

never come to love me?"

The voice was sweet and caressing, but those eyes seemed to devour her!

That pale face, like that of men who kill! She longed to speak, to

protest at his last words. She had never thought of Don Jaime's age; he

was something superior, like the saints, who grow in beauty with the

years. But fear held her silent. She freed herself from the caressing

hand, she felt moved by the prodigious rebound of her nerves, as if her

life were in danger, and she fled from Febrer as if he were an assassin.

"Heaven help me!"

Murmuring this supplication she sprang away, and began to run with the

agility of the country girl, disappearing round a turn in the path.

Jaime did not follow her. He stood motionless in the solitude of the

pine forest, erect in the pathway, unconscious of his surroundings, like

the hero of a legend subjected to an enchantment. Then he passed a hand

over his face, as if awakening from a dream, collecting his thoughts.

His audacious words stung him with remorse, Margalida's alarm, the

terrified flight which had terminated the interview. How stupid of him!

It was the result of his going to the city; the return to civilized

life which, had upset his bachelor calm, arousing passions of long ago;

the conversation of the young soldiers, who lived with their thoughts

ever fixed on women. But no; he did not repent what he had done. It was

important for Margalida to know what he had so often vaguely thought in

the isolation of his tower.

He continued slowly along his way to avoid meeting the family from Can

Mallorqui. Margalida had joined her mother and brother. He saw them from

a rise of ground, when they were journeying through the valley in the

direction of the farmhouse.

Febrer changed his route, avoiding Can Mallorqui. He directed his steps

toward the Pirate's Tower, but when he gained it he passed on, not

stopping until he reached the sea.

The rock-bound coast, which seemed to overhang the waters, was broken by

their incessant lashing for century upon century. The waves, like

furious blue bulls, charged, frothing with anger, against the rock,

wearing deep caverns, which were prolonged upward in the form of

vertical cracks. This age-long battle was destroying the coast,

shattering its stony armor, scale by scale. Colossal wall-like fragments

loosened. They first separated by forming an imperceptible crevice which

grew and grew with the passing of centuries. The natural wall leaned for

years and years above the waves, which beat furiously at its base, until

it would lose its balance some stormy night and topple like the rampart

of a besieged citadel, crumbling into blocks, peopling the sea with new

reefs soon to be covered with slimy vegetation, while the winding

passages would seethe with foam and sparkle with the metallic gleam of

fish.

Febrer seated himself on the edge of a great projecting rock, a ledge

loosened from the coast that inclined boldly over the reefs. His

fatalism impelled him to sit there. Would that the inevitable

catastrophe might take place at that moment, and that his body, dragged

down by the collapsing rock, might disappear in the bottom of the sea,

having for its sarcophagus this mass, equal to the pyramid of a Pharaoh!

What had he to look forward to in life?

Before sinking out of sight the setting sun peeped through an opening of

stormy sky lying between riven clouds. It was a gory sphere, a wafer of

purple which lightened the immensity of the sea with a fiery glare. The

dark masses closing in the horizon were fringed with scarlet. A restless

triangle of flames spread over the dark green waters. The foam turned

red and the coast looked for an instant like molten lava.

In the glow of this stormy light Jaime contemplated the fluctuation of

the waters at his feet, hurling their boisterous swirls into the hollows

of the rock, roaring and writhing, frothing with anger in the winding

passages between the reefs. In the depths of this greenish mass,

illuminated by the setting sun with transparencies of opal, he saw

strange vegetation growing on the rocks, diminutive forests among whose

clinging fronds moved animals of fantastic form, nervous and swift or

torpid and sedentary, with hard carapaces, gray and pinkish, bristling

with defenses, armed with tentacles, with lances and with horns, making

war among themselves and persecuting the weaker creatures which passed

like white exhalations, flashing like crystal in the rapidity of their

flight.

Febrer felt belittled by the solitude. Faith in his human importance

destroyed, he considered himself no bigger than one of those tiny

creatures swarming about in the vegetation of the submarine

abyss--perhaps even smaller. Those animals were armed for life, they

could sustain themselves by their own strength, never knowing the

discouragement, the humiliations and the sorrows which afflicted him.

The grandeur of the sea, unconscious of man, cruel and implacable in its

anger, overwhelmed Febrer, arousing in his memory an endless chain of

ideas which were perhaps new, but which he accepted as vague

reminiscences of a former existence, as something which he had thought

before, he knew not where nor when.

A thrill of respect, of instinctive devotion, swept over him, making him

forget the event of a short time before, submerging him in religious

contemplation. The sea! He thought, he knew not why, of the most remote

ancestors of humanity, of primitive man, miserable, scarcely emerged

from original animalism, tormented and repelled on every side by a

nature hostile in its exhuberance, as a young and vigorous body conquers

or throws off the parasites which endeavor to live at the cost of its

organism. On the shore of the sea, in the presence of the divine

mystery, green and immense, man should experience his most restful

moments. The earliest gods sprung from the bosom of the waters;

contemplating the fluctuation of the waves, and soothed by their murmur,

man should feel that within him is born something new and powerful--a

soul. The sea! The mysterious organisms which people it also live, as do

those of the land, subjected to the tyranny of fear, immovable in their

primitive existence, repeating themselves throughout the centuries as if

ever the same entity. There also do the dead command! The strong pursue

the weak, and are in their turn devoured by others more powerful, as in

the times of their remote progenitors, when the waters were yet warm

from the formation of the globe--ever the same, repeating themselves

throughout hundreds of millions of years. A monster of prehistoric ages

who might return to swim in these waters would find on all sides, in the

dark chasms, and along the coasts, the same life and the identical

struggles as in his youth. The animal of combat with his green carapace,

armed with curving claws and with forceps for torture, implacable

warrior of the dark submarine caverns, has never united with the

graceful fish, swift and weak, which trails its rose and silver tunic

through the transparent waters. His destiny is to devour, to be strong,

and, if he should find himself disarmed, his defenses broken, to give

himself up to misfortune without protest and to perish. Death is

preferable to abdicating one's primal rights, the noble fatality of

birth. For the strong of the land or of the sea there is no satisfaction

nor life outside one's own sphere; they are slaves of their own

greatness; birth brings them misfortunes as well as honors, and it will

ever be the same! The dead are the only ones who rule the living. The

first beings who initiated a plan for living wrought with their acts the

cage in which succeeding generations must be imprisoned.

The tranquil mollusks which he now saw in the depths of the waters,

clinging to the rocks like dark buttons, seemed to him divine beings who

guard the mystery of creation in their stupid quiet. He imagined them

great and imposing like those monsters worshipped by savages for their

impassivity, and in whose rigidity they believe they divine the majesty

of the gods. Febrer recalled his jests of other times, on nights of

feasting, seated before a plate of fresh oysters, in the fashionable

Parisian restaurants. His elegant companions thought him mad as they

listened to the nonsensical ideas aroused by wine, the sight of the

shell fish and the recollection of certain fragmentary reading in his

youth. "We're going to eat our grandfathers like the merry cannibals

that we are." The oyster is one of the primitive manifestations of life

on the planet--one of the earlier forms of organic matter, still

resting, uncertain and aimless in its evolution in the immensity of the

waters. The sympathetic and slandered monkey only has the importance of

a first cousin who has failed to make a career for himself, of an

unfortunate and absurd relative whom one leaves outside the door,

feigning ignorance of his family name, denying him a welcome. The

mollusk is the venerable grandfather, the chief of the house, the

creator of the dynasty, the ancestor crowned with a nobility of millions

of centuries. These thoughts came back to Febrer's mind now with the

vividness of indisputable truths.

Humanity is faithful to its sources. Nobody denies the traditions of

those venerable ancestors who seemed to be asleep in the immense

catacomb of the sea. Man thinks himself free because he can move from

one side of the planet to the other; because his organism is mounted

upon two agile and articulate columns which permit of his springing over

the ground by the mechanism of walking--but, it is an error! One more of

many illusions which deceptively gladden our lives, making us bearers of

its misery and its triviality! Febrer was convinced that we are all born

shut in between two valves of prejudices, of scruple, and of pride, an

inheritance from those who proceeded us, and although man stirs about,

he never manages to tear himself from the same rock to which his

predecessors clung and vegetated. Activity, incidents of life,

independence of character, all are illusions, the vanity of the mollusk

which dreams while adhering to the rock, and imagines he is swimming

through all the seas on the globe, while his valves continue fastened

to the stone!

All creatures are as those who have gone before, and as those yet to

come. They change in shape, but the soul remains stationary and

immutable like that of those rudimentary beings, eternal witnesses of

the first palpitation of life on the planet, which seemed to be sleeping

the heaviest of sleeps; and thus will it ever be. Vain are great efforts

to free oneself from this fatal environment, from the heritage of fear,

from the circle in which we are forced to move, until at last comes

death. Then other animals like ourselves appear, and begin whirling

around the same circle, imagining themselves free because ever before

their footsteps they have new space in which to run.

"The dead command!" Jaime once more declared to himself. It seemed

impossible that men do not realize this great truth; that they dwell in

eternal night, believing that they make new things in the glow of

illusions which rise daily, as rises the great deception of the sun to

accompany us through the infinite, which is dark, but which seems to us

blue and radiant with light.

When Febrer thought this, the sun had already set. The sea was almost

black, the sky a leaden gray, and in the fog on the horizon the

lightning quivered and flashed. Jaime felt on his face and on his hands

the moist kiss of drops of rain. A storm was about to break which

perhaps would last throughout the night. The lightning flashes were

coming nearer, a distant crashing was heard, as if two hostile fleets

were cannonading beyond the curtain of fog on the horizon, and

approaching each other behind its screen. The sheet of quiet water,

glossy as crystal between reefs and coast, began to tremble with the

widening undulations of the raindrops.

In spite of this he did not stir. He remained seated on the rock,

experiencing a fierce anger against fate, rebelling with all the

strength of his nature at the tyranny of the past. Why should the dead

command? Why should they darken the atmosphere with the dust of their

souls, like powdered bone lodging in the brains of the living, imposing

the old ideas?

Suddenly Febrer experienced an overwhelming impression, as if he beheld

an extraordinary light, never before seen. His brain seemed to dilate,

to expand like a mass of water bursting an encompassing vessel of stone.

At that instant a lightning flash colored the sea with livid light, and

a thunder clap burst above his head, its echoes rattling with awesome

reverberation over the expanse of the sea, in the caverns, and over the

hilltops along the shore.

No, the dead do not command! The dead do not rule! As if he were a

different man, Jaime ridiculed his recent thoughts. Those rudimentary

animals which he had seen among the rocks, and with them all creatures

of the sea and of the earth, suffer the slavery of fear. The dead rule

them because they do the same things which their ancestors did, the same

things their descendants will do. But man is not the slave of fear; he

is its collaborator and sometimes its master. Man is a progressive and

reasoning being, and can change his condition to suit his desires. Man

was a slave to his surroundings in former times, in remote ages, but

when he conquered nature and exploited her, he burst the fatal bondage

in which other created things still remain prisoners. What matters to

him the fear in which he has been born? He can make himself over anew if

he will.

Jaime could not continue his reflections. Rain was streaming over the

brim of his hat, running down his back. Night had suddenly come. By the

glare of the lightning he saw the glazed surface of the sea trembling

with the beating of the rain.

Febrer made all haste toward his tower, but he was happy, eager to run,

with the overflowing joy of one emerging from long imprisonment and who

has not before him space enough for his repressed activity.

"I will do what I please!" he shouted, rejoicing at the sound of his own

voice, which was lost in the clamor of the storm. "Neither dead nor

living shall rule me! What do I care for my noble forefathers, for my

moth-eaten prejudices, for all the Febrers?"

Suddenly he was enveloped in a carmine light, and a cannon-shot burst

above his head, as if the coast had been rent asunder by the shock of an

immense catastrophe.

"That must have struck near here," said Jaime, referring to the electric

flash.

His mind occupied with the Febrers, he thought of his ancestor the

knight commander Don Priamo. The explosion of thunder recalled to his

mind the combats of the diabolical hero, the religious cavalier of the

Cross, a mocker of God and of the devil who always followed his

sovereign will, fighting on the side of his kindred, or living among the

enemies of the Faith, according to his caprices or his affections.

No! Febrer did not repudiate him. He adored the valorous knight

commander; he was his true forbear, the best of them all, the rebel, the

demon of the family!

Jaime entered the tower and struck a light; he flung around his

shoulders the Arabian haik of coarse weave that served him for his

nocturnal excursions, and taking a book he tried to distract himself

until Pepet should bring his supper.

The storm seemed to be centered on the island. The rain fell on the

fields, converting them, into marshes; it rushed down the declivities of

the roadways, overflowing like rivers; it soaked the mountains like

great sponges through the porous soil of the pine forest and thickets.

The flare of the lightning gave hasty glimpses, like visions in a dream,

of the blackish sea, the fretting foam, and flooded fields, which seemed

filled with fiery fish, the trees glistening beneath their watery

mantles.

In the kitchen of Can Mallorqui Margalida's suitors stood in a group, in

damp, steaming clothing and muddy sandals. Tonight the courting lasted

longer. Pep, with a paternal air, had allowed the youths to remain after

the time for the wooing had passed; he felt sorry for the poor boys who

must walk home through the rain. He had been a suitor himself once upon

a time. They might wait; perhaps the storm would soon pass; and if it

did not they should stay and sleep wherever they could, in the kitchen,

on the porch. "One wouldn't turn out a dog on such a night."

The youths, rejoicing in the event, which added more time to their

courting, gazed at Margalida arrayed in her gala dress, seated in the

center of the room, a vacant chair beside her. Each one had taken his

turn at sitting upon it during the course of the evening, and now all

looked at it eagerly, but lacked courage to occupy it again.

The Ironworker, wishing to outshine the others, was twanging a guitar,

singing in low tones, accompanied by the rolling of the thunder. The

Minstrel, sitting in a corner, was meditating new verses. Some boys

hailed with mocking words the lightning flashes, which filtered through

the cracks of the door, and the Little Chaplain smiled, sitting on the

floor, his chin in his hands.

Pep was dozing in a low chair, overcome by weariness, and his wife

screamed with terror whenever a loud thunder clap shook the house,

interjecting between her groans fragments of prayers, murmured in

Castilian for greater efficacy: "_Santa Barbara bendita, que en el cielo

estas escrita_----" Margalida, heedless of the glances of her suitors,

seemed half dead with fright.

Suddenly there came two taps upon the door. The dog, who had scrambled

to his feet scenting the presence of someone on the porch, stretched his

neck, but instead of barking he wagged his tail in welcome.

Margalida and her mother glanced fearfully toward the door. Who could it

be, at that time, on that night, in the solitude of Can Mallorqui? Had

anything happened to the senor?

Aroused by the knocking, Pep sat up straight in his chair. "Come in,

whoever you are!" He gave the invitation with the dignity of a Roman

paterfamilias, absolute master of his house. The door was not locked.

It opened, giving passage to a gust of rain-laden wind, which made the

candle flicker, and refreshed the dense atmosphere of the kitchen. The

dark rectangle of the doorway was lighted by the splendor of a lightning

flash, and all saw in it, against the livid sky, a kind of penitent,

with half-concealed face, a hooded figure, dripping rain.

He entered with firm tread, with no word of greeting, followed by the

dog sniffing at his legs with affectionate growls. He strode directly

toward the vacant chair beside Margalida, the place reserved for the

suitors.

As he took his seat he flung back his hood and fixed his eyes on the

girl.

"Ah!" she gasped, turning pale, her eyes widening in surprise.

So great was her emotion, so violent, her impulse to draw away from him,

that she nearly fell to the floor.

PART THIRD

CHAPTER I

THE INTRUDER

Two days later, when Don Jaime was awaiting his dinner in the tower,

having returned from a fishing excursion, Pep presented himself and

deposited the basket upon the table with an air of solemnity.

The rustic tried to make excuse for this extraordinary visit. His wife

and Margalida had gone to the hermitage of the Cubells again, and the

boy had accompanied them.

Febrer began to eat with a lusty appetite after having been on the sea

since daybreak, but the serious air of the peasant at last claimed his

attention.

"Pep, you want to say something to me, but you are afraid," said Jaime,

in the Ivizan dialect.

"That is true, senor."

Like all timid persons who doubt and vacillate before speaking, but rush

into it impetuously when fear is overcome, Pep bluntly unburdened his

mind.

Yes, he had something to say; something very important! He had been

thinking the matter over for two whole days, and he could keep silent no

longer. He had taken it upon himself to bring the senor's dinner merely

for the sake of speaking. Why did Don Jaime make fun of those who were

so fond of him? What did he mean?

"Make fun of you!" exclaimed Febrer.

"Yes, make fun of us!" Pep declared sadly. "How about what happened that

stormy night? What caprice impelled the senor to present himself at the

courting, taking the chair beside Margalida, as if he were a suitor? Ah,

Don Jaime! The 'festeigs' are solemn occasions; men kill one another on

account of them. I knew that fine gentlemen laugh at all this, and

consider the peasants of the island about the same as savages; but the

poor should be left to their customs, and they should not be disturbed

in their few pleasures."

Now it was Febrer who assumed a serious countenance.

"But I am not making fun of you, my dear Pep! It's all true! Listen! I

am one of Margalida's suitors, like the Minstrel, like the detested

Ironworker, like all other boys who gather in your kitchen to court her.

I came the other night because I could bear no more, because I suddenly

realized the cause of all that I have been suffering, because I love

Margalida, and I will marry her if she will accept me."

His sincere and impassioned accent banished all doubt from the peasant's

mind.

"Then it is really true!" he exclaimed. "The girl had told me something

of this, weeping, when I asked her the motive of the senor's visit. I

could not believe her at first. Girls are so pretentious! They imagine

that every man is running mad after them; so it is really true!"

This knowledge caused him to smile, as at something unexpected and

amusing.

"What a strange man you are, Don Jaime! It is very kind of you to make

demonstrations of esteem for the household of Can Mallorqui; but it is

not good for the girl, for she was giving herself airs, imagining

herself worthy of a prince, and will not accept any of the peasants.

"It cannot be, senor. Don't you understand that it cannot be? I was

young myself once, and I know what it is; how one takes a notion to

chase after any girl who is not ugly; but later on one reflects, he

thinks about what is good and what is not good, what is proper, and in

the end he does not commit a foolish deed. Have you thought it over,

really, senor? That was a joke the other night, a caprice----"

Febrer shook his head energetically. No, neither a joke nor a caprice.

He loved Margalida, the graceful Almond Blossom; he was convinced of his

passion, and he would follow wherever she might lead. He intended in

future to do as he pleased, laying aside scruples and prejudices. He had

been a slave to them long enough. No; he would have no regret. He loved

Margalida, he was one of her suitors, with the same right as any island

youth. He meant every word he said.

Pep, scandalized at these words, wounded in his most conventional and

ancient ideas, raised his hands, while his simple soul showed in his

eyes full of fear and surprise.

"Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!"

He was compelled to call upon the ruler of heaven to give expression to

his perturbation and astonishment. A Febrer wishing to marry a peasant

of Can Mallorqui! The world was no longer the same; it seemed as if all

the laws of the universe were turned upside down, as if the sea were

about to cover the island, and that in future the almond trees would put

forth their flowers above the waves; but had Don Jaime realized what

this desire of his signified?

All the respect engendered in the soul of the peasant during long years

of servitude to the noble family, the religious veneration his parents

had infounded in him when, in his childhood, he saw the gentlemen from

Majorca arrive at the island, was now revived, protesting at this

absurdity, as something contrary to human custom and to the divine will.

Don Jaime's father had been a powerful personage, one of those who made

laws over there in Madrid; he had even lived in the royal palace. He

still saw him in his memory, just as he had imagined him in the

credulous illusions of boyhood, bending men to his will; able to send

some to the gallows and pardoning others according to his caprice;

seated at the table of monarchs and playing cards with them, just as Pep

himself might do with a crony in the tavern at San Jose; addressing one

another by the familiar "thou"; and when he was not in the court city,

he was an absolute seignior in vessels of iron--the kind that spit smoke

and cannon balls. How about Jaime's grandfather, Don Horacio? Pep had

seen him but few times, and yet he still trembled with respect as he

recalled his regal appearance, his grave, unsmiling face, and the

imposing gesture which accompanied his benevolent acts. He was a king

after the ancient style, one of those kings who are good and just

fathers of the poor, offering bread with one hand and holding a rod in

the other.

"And do you wish to have Pep, the poor peasant of Can Mallorqui, become

a relative of your father and of your grandfather and of all those great

lords who were masters in Majorca and rulers of the world? Come, Don

Jaime, I can't help thinking it all a joke; your seriousness does not

deceive me. Don Horacio also used to say the funniest things without

losing his judge's face."

Jaime swept his eyes around the interior of the tower, smiling at his

poverty.

"But I am poor, Pep! You are rich, compared to me. Why think of my

family, when I am living on your generosity? If you were to cast me out

I would not know where to go."

The gesture of incredulity with which Pep always received such humble

declarations, was renewed.

Poor? But was not this tower his? Febrer replied with a smile. Bah! Four

old stones that were falling apart; an unproductive hill, which would be

worth something only if the peasant should cultivate it. But the latter

insisted; there was the property in Majorca, which, even though it were

somewhat encumbered, was much--much!

And he extended his arms with a gesture indicating immensity, as if no

one could measure the fortune of Jaime, adding convincingly:

"A Febrer is never poor. You can never be that. Better days will come."

Jaime ceased trying to make him realize his poverty. If he thought him

rich so much the better. Thus those youths, who knew no broader horizon

than that of the island, could not say that he was a ruined man seeking

to marry into Pep's family in order to recover the lands of Can

Mallorqui.

Why should the peasant be so surprised at his desire to marry Margalida?

In the end it was nothing more than the repetition of an eternal

history, that of the disguised and vagabond king falling in love with

the shepherdess and giving her his hand. He was no king, neither was he

in disguise, but in a situation of absolute need.

"I have heard that story," said Pep. "It was often told me when I was a

child, and I have told it to my own children. I won't say that it never

happened so, but that was in other times--other times, very long ago,

when animals had speech."

According to Pep, the most remote antiquity, and also the elysian state

of man, was always that joyous time "when the animals had speech."

But now--now he, although he could not read, informed himself of the

doings in the world when he went to San Jose on Sundays and talked with

the secretary of the pueblo, and other lettered persons who read the

newspapers. Now-a-days kings married queens, and shepherdesses married

shepherds; everyone with his kind. The good old times were over.

"But do you know whether or not Margalida loves me? Are you sure that

all this seems to her a wild dream as it does to you?"

Pep maintained a long silence, one hand beneath his hat and the silk

kerchief, which he wore in womanish manner, scratching his crisp gray

curls. He smiled knavishly, with an expression of scorn, as if rejoicing

over the inferiority in which dwells the woman of the fields.

"Women! How can one tell what they think, Don Jaime! Margalida is like

all the rest of them, fond of vanities and strange things. At her age

they all dream that some count or marquis is coming to take them, away

in his golden chariot, and that all her friends will die of envy. I,

too, when I was a boy, used often to think that the richest girl in

Iviza would come to seek my hand in marriage, some girl, I did not know

who, but beautiful as the Virgin and with fields as big as half the

island--dreams of youth."

Then ceasing to smile, he added:

"Yes, maybe she does care for you without realizing it. Youth and love

are so strange. She cries when anything is said to her about the other

night; she declares it was madness, but she won't say a word against

you. Ah, would that I could see into her heart!"

Febrer received these words with a smile of joy, but the peasant quickly

dispelled it, adding energetically:

"It cannot be, and it must not be! Let her think as she pleases, but I

am opposed because I am her father and I desire her welfare. Ah, Don

Jaime, everyone with his kind! All this reminds me of a priest who used

to lead a hermit's life at Cubells, a wise man, and like many wise men,

half crazy; he was trying to raise a brood from, a rooster and a

seagull; a gull the size of a goose."

With the interest which the rustic displays for the breeding of animals,

he described the eagerness of the peasants when they went to Cubells,

gathering curiously around the great cage, where the rooster and the

gull were kept beneath the vigilance of the friar.

"The good man's work lasted for years--but--not a chick! Man's efforts

avail nothing against the impossible. They were of different blood and

of different breed; they lived together tranquilly, but they were not of

the same sort, nor could they become so. Everyone with his kind!"

As he said this, Pep gathered the plates and the remnants of the dinner

from the table and put them into the basket, preparing to take his

leave.

"We are agreed, Don Jaime," he said with his rustic tenacity, "that it

was all a joke, and that you will not bother the girl any more with your

notions."

"No, Pep, we are agreed that I love Margalida, and that I am going to

her courting with the same right as any of the island boys. The old

customs must be respected."

He smiled at the peasant's ill-humored expression. Pep shook his head in

sign of protest. No; he repeated, that would be impossible. The girls

of the district would laugh at Margalida, rejoicing over this strange

suitor who broke the order of customs; the malicious would perhaps lie

about Can Mallorqui, which had as honorable a past as the best family on

the island; even his own friends, when he should go to mass at San Jose,

and all gathered in the cloister of the church, would imagine him an

ambitious man who desired to convert his daughter into a fine senorita.

And this was not all. There was the anger of the rivals to be reckoned

with, the jealousy of those youths, dumb with surprise when he came in

that stormy night and sat down beside Margalida. Certainly by this time

they had recovered from their astonishment and were talking about him,

and would all join to oppose the stranger. The men of the island were as

they were. They took life among themselves without disturbing the man

from the outside world because they considered him foreign to their

circle, and indifferent to their passions; but if the stranger meddled

in their affairs, and especially if he were a Majorcan, what would

happen? When had people of other lands ever disputed a sweetheart with

an Ivizan?

"Don Jaime, for the sake of your father, for the sake of your noble

grandfather! It is Pep who begs you, Pep who has known you ever since

you were a boy. The farmhouse is at your service; everyone who lives in

it is eager to serve you--but do not persist in this caprice! It will

bring some dire misfortune upon us all!"

Febrer, who had at first listened with deference, straightened his

figure when he heard Pep's predictions. His rude nature rebelled, as if

the peasant's fears were an insult. He afraid! He felt equal to fighting

all the young men of the island. Not a man in Iviza could force him to

change his mind. To the belligerent passion of the lover was joined the

pride of race, that ancestral hatred which separated the inhabitants of

the two islands. He would go to the courting; he had good companions to

defend him in case of need; and he glanced at the gun hanging on the

wall; then his eyes descended to his belt where his revolver was hidden.

Pep bowed his head in despair. He had been just like this when he was

young. For women the wildest deeds are done. It was useless to make

further effort to convince the senor, who was determined and proud like

all his kindred.

"Do as you please, Don Jaime; but remember what I tell you. A great

misfortune awaits us--a great misfortune!"

The peasant left the tower, and Jaime watched him walking down toward

the farmhouse, the points of his kerchief and the womanish mantle he

wore over his shoulders fluttering in the breeze.

Pep disappeared behind the fence of Can Mallorqui. Febrer was about to

step away from the door when he saw rise from among the groups of

tamarisks on the hillside a boy, who, after glancing cautiously about to

convince himself that he was not observed, ran toward him. It was the

Little Chaplain. He sprang up the stairway to the tower, and when he

stood before Febrer he burst out laughing, displaying his ivory teeth,

surrounded by a dark rose color.

Ever since that night when Febrer had presented himself at the farmhouse

the Little Chaplain had treated him with greater confidence, as if he

already considered him one of the family. He did not protest at the

strangeness of the event. It seemed to him quite natural that Margalida

should like the senor and that he should wish to marry her.

"But didn't you go to Cubells?" asked Febrer.

The boy began to laugh again. He had left his mother and sister half way

on the road and had hidden among the tamarisks waiting for his father to

leave the tower. No doubt the old man wished to have a serious talk with

Don Jaime, and so he had sent them all away, and had taken it upon

himself to bring him his dinner. For two days he had talked of nothing

but this interview. His timidity, and his respect for the master, had

made him vacillate, but at last he had decided. He was in ill humor over

Margalida's courting. Had the old man scolded very hard?

Evading these questions, Febrer asked the boy with a certain anxiety,

"How is Almond Blossom? What did she say when you talked to her about

me?"

The boy straightened himself petulantly, happy in being able to defend

the senor. His sister had not said anything; sometimes she smiled when

she heard Don Jaime's name mentioned, again her eyes moistened, and she

almost always brought the conversation to a close, advising the Little

Chaplain not to meddle in this affair and to please his father by going

back to his studies in the Seminary.

"It will turn out all right, senor," continued the boy, possessed of a

fresh sense of his own importance. "It will turn out all right, I tell

you. I am sure that my sister loves you dearly--only she is rather

afraid of you--she feels a kind of respect. Who would ever have thought

that you would notice her! At home everybody seems to be crazy; father

looks cross and goes around grumbling to himself; mother sighs and calls

on the Virgin, and meantime people imagine that we are rejoicing. But it

will all come out right, Don Jaime, I promise you.

"But be careful, senor, be on your guard," added the boy, thinking of

his former friends, the youths who were courting Almond Blossom. It

seemed that the boys had lost confidence in him, and were cautious of

speaking in his presence; but they were certainly plotting something. A

week ago they seemed to hate one another and each kept to himself, but

now they had joined forces in hatred of the stranger. They said nothing;

they were merely taciturn; but their silence was disquieting. The

Minstrel was the only one who shouted and displayed anger like an

infuriated lamb, straightened his wasted figure, and declaring, between

cruel fits of coughing, his intention of killing the Majorcan.

"They have lost respect for you, Don Jaime," continued the boy. "When

they saw you come in and sit down beside my sister they were astounded.

Even I could hardly believe my eyes, although for some time I knew that

you were not indifferent to Margalida; you asked too many questions

about her. But now they have waked up, and they are planning something.

They have good reason, too. Who ever heard of such a thing as a stranger

coming to San Jose and getting a sweetheart away from a crowd of the

boys, the very bravest on the island?"

Local pride spurred the Little Chaplain to adopt for a moment the

opinions of the others, but soon his gratitude and affection for Febrer

were revived.

"Never mind. You love her and that is sufficient. Why should my sister

have to wear out her life digging in the ground when a senor like

yourself pays attention to her? Besides," here the young rascal smiled

mischievously, "this marriage suits me. You are not going to till the

fields, you will take Margalida away with you, and the old man, having

no one to leave Can Mallorqui to, will let me marry and become a

farmer, and, adios to the priesthood! I tell you, Don Jaime, you'll win.

Here am I, the Little Chaplain, to fight half the island in your

defense."

He glanced about as if expecting to encounter the severe eyes and the

mustaches of the Civil Guard, and then, after a moment's hesitation,

like that of a great but modest man trying to conceal his importance, he

drew from his belt a knife the brilliancy and glitter of which seemed to

hypnotize him.

"See that?" he asked, admiring the smoothness of the virgin steel, and

looking at Febrer.

It was the knife which Jaime had presented him the day before. Jaime had

been in a good humor and he had made the Little Chaplain kneel. Then,

with jesting gravity, he had struck him with the weapon, proclaiming him

invincible knight of the district of San Jose, of the whole island, and

of the channels and cliffs adjacent. The little rascal, tremulous with

emotion at the gift, had taken the act with all gravity, thinking it an

indispensable ceremony among gentlemen.

"See that?" he asked again, looking a Don Jaime as if protecting him

with all the immensity of his valor.

He passed a finger lightly along the edge, pressing the fleshy tip

against the point, delighting in the sharp prick. What a jewel!

Febrer nodded his head. Yes, he recognized the weapon; it was the one he

had brought from Iviza.

"Well, with this," continued the boy, "not a brave will dare to face us.

The Ironworker? He is a fraud! The Minstrel and all the rest? Frauds

also. I'm only waiting for a chance to use this! Anybody who attempts

anything against you is sentenced to death."

Finally, with the sadness of a great man who is wasting his time

without an opportunity to display his valor, he said, lowering his eyes:

"When my grandfather was my age they say that he had already killed his

man, and that half the island stood in fear of him."

The Little Chaplain spent part of the afternoon in the tower talking of

Don Jaime's supposed enemies, whom he now considered as his own, putting

up his knife and drawing it forth again, as if he enjoyed contemplating

his disfigured image in the polished blade, dreaming of tremendous

battles which always terminated by the flight or death of the

adversaries, and by his valorously rescuing the embattled Don Jaime, who

took as a jest his appetite for conflict and destruction.

In the evening Pepet went down to the farmhouse to get Don Jaime's

supper. He had found the suitors who came from a distance sitting on the

porch awaiting the beginning of the festeig. "See you later, Don Jaime!"

As soon as night closed in, Febrer made his preparations, his face set,

his mien hostile, his hands thrilling with an imperceptible homicidal

twitch, like a primitive warrior starting on an expedition from the

mountain top to the valley. Before throwing his haik over his shoulders,

he drew his revolver from his belt, scrupulously examining the

cartridges, and the working of the trigger. Everything all right! The

first man to make an attempt against him would get all six shots in the

head. He felt like a savage, implacable, like one of those Febrers,

lions of the sea, who landed on hostile shores, killing to avoid being

killed.

With one hand in his belt fondling the butt of his revolver, he walked

down the hill among the clusters of tamarisks, which waved their

undulating masses in the darkness. He found the porch of Can Mallorqui

full of young men standing about, or seated on the benches, waiting

while the family finished supper in the kitchen. Febrer detected them in

the dim light by the odor of hemp emanating from their new sandals, and

from the coarse wool of their mantles and Arabian capes. The red sparks

of cigarettes at the lower end of the porch indicated other waiting

groups.

"Bona nit!" called Febrer in greeting.

They responded only with a careless grunt. The low-toned conversations

ceased, and a painful and hostile silence seemed to settle around each

man.

Jaime leaned against a pillar of the porch, his head held high, his

bearing arrogant, his figure standing erect against the horizon, and it

seemed as if he could feel the hostile eyes fixed on him under cover of

the darkness.

He felt a certain emotion, but it was not fear. He almost forgot the

enemies who surrounded him. He was thinking uneasily of Margalida. He

experienced the thrill of the enamored man when he divines the proximity

of the beloved woman and is in doubt as to his fate, fearing and at the

same time desiring her approach. Certain memories of the past returned,

causing him to smile. What would Mary Gordon say if she could see him

surrounded by this rustic crowd, tremulous and vacillating as he thought

of the proximity of a peasant girl? How his women friends in Madrid and

in Paris would laugh if they should come upon him engaged in this rustic

project, ready to take life over the conquest of a woman almost on a

level with their servants!

A door opened, outlining in its rectangle of ruddy light the silhouette

of Pep.

"Come in, men!" he said, like a patriarch who understands the desires of

youth and laughs good-naturedly at them.

The young men entered one after the other, greeting Senor Pep and his

family, taking their seats on benches or chairs like schoolboys.

As the peasant of Can Mallorqui recognized the senor he started in

surprise. Don Jaime there, waiting like the others, like an ordinary

suitor, without venturing to enter this house, which was his own! Febrer

replied with a shrug of the shoulders. He preferred to do as did the

others. He imagined that thus it would be easier to accomplish his

purpose. He did not wish to have his former condition recalled--he was a

suitor, nothing more.

Pep forced him to sit beside him, and tried to entertain him with

conversation, but Febrer did not take his eyes off Almond Blossom, who,

faithful to the ritual of such occasions, was seated in a chair in the

center of the room, receiving the admiration of her suitors with the

demeanor of a timid queen.

One after another took his place beside Margalida, who responded to

their words in a low voice. She pretended not to see Don Jaime; she

almost turned her back upon him. The suitors, awaiting their turns, were

silent, not keeping up the merry chattering with which they had whiled

away the time on other nights. Gloom seemed to weigh upon them,

compelling them to silence, with lowered gaze and compressed lips, as if

a dead man were lying in the adjoining room. It was the presence of the

stranger, the intruder, foreign to their class and to their customs.

Accursed Majorcan!

When all the youths had sat in the seat beside Margalida, the senor

arose. He was the last one to present himself as a suitor, and,

according to rule, it was his turn. Pep, who had been talking to him

ceaselessly to distract his attention, suddenly remained open-mouthed in

surprise at seeing him move away.

He sat down beside Margalida, who seemed not to see him, her head bowed

and her eyes lowered. The young men remained silent in order to catch

the stranger's faintest words, but Pep, realizing their plan, began to

speak in a loud voice to his wife and son about some work to be done the

next day.

"Margalida! Almond Blossom!"

Febrer's voice sounded like a caressing whisper in the girl's ear. He

had come to convince her that what she had considered a caprice was

love, true love. Febrer hardly knew how it had come about. He had felt

ill at ease in his solitude, experiencing a vague desire for better

things, which perhaps lay within his reach, but which he in his

blindness could not recognize, until suddenly he had seen clearly where

joy was to be found. That joy was herself. Margalida! Almond Blossom! He

was not young, he was poor, but he loved her so much! Only a word, some

sign to dissipate his uncertainty!

But the girl gently shook her head. "No; no. Go! I am afraid!" She

raised her eyes and glanced uneasily at all the brown youths with their

tragic mien, who seemed to scorch the pair with their blazing eyes.

Afraid! This word sufficed to arouse Febrer from his beseeching attitude

and to cause him to stare defiantly at the rivals seated before him.

Afraid? Of whom? He felt equal to fighting all those rustics and their

innumerable relatives. Afraid! No, Margalida! She need not fear either

for herself or for him. He begged her to answer his question. Could he

hope? What did she intend to reply?

Margalida remained silent, her lips colorless, her cheeks a livid

pallor, winking her eyes to conceal her tears. She was going to cry. Her

efforts to restrain her tears were apparent; she sighed with anguish.

Tears, suddenly bursting forth in this hostile atmosphere, might be a

sign for battle; they would bring about the explosion of all that

restrained anger which she divined around her. No, no! This effort of

her will served only to enhance her misery, compelling her to bow her

head like those sweet and gentle animals who think to save themselves

from danger by hiding their heads.

Her mother who sat in a corner weaving baskets, grew alarmed. With

feminine intuition she realized Margalida's suffering. Her husband,

seeing the anxiety in her sad, resigned eyes, intervened opportunely.

"Half past nine!" There was a movement of surprise and protest from the

youths. It was early yet; it lacked many minutes of the hour; the

agreement should rule. But Pep, with the stubbornness of the rustic,

would not listen. Repeating the words, he arose and strode toward the

door, opening it wide. "Half past nine!" Every man was master of his own

house, and he did as he thought best in his. He had to get up early the

next morning. "Bona nit!"

He spoke courteously to each of the suitors as they filed out of the

house. As Jaime passed, gloomy and crestfallen, Pep grasped his arm. He

must remain; Pep would accompany him to the tower. He glanced uneasily

at the Ironworker, who was behind him, the last to take his leave.

The senor did not reply, freeing his arm with a brusque movement.

Accompany him! He was furious on account of Margalida's silence, which

he considered crushing; on account of the hostile attitude of the young

men; on account of the strange way in which the evening had been brought

to a close.

The young suitors dispersed in the darkness, without shouts, or

whistling, or songs, as if returning from a funeral. Something tragic

seemed to be floating on the dark wings of night.

Febrer walked on until he arrived at the foot of the hill, where the

tamarisk shrubs were thickest; then he turned, and stood motionless. His

silhouette stood out against the whiteness of the path in the pale light

of the stars. He held his revolver in his right hand, nervously

clutching the breech, caressing the trigger with a feverish finger,

eager to fire. Was no one following him? Did not the Ironworker or any

of his other enemies lurk behind him?

Time passed, and no one appeared. The wild vegetation around him,

enlarged by shadow and by mystery, seemed to laugh sarcastically at his

anger. At last the fresh serenity of drowsy Nature seemed to penetrate

his soul. He shrugged his shoulders scornfully, and holding his revolver

before him walked on until he locked himself in his tower.

He spent the whole of the next day on the sea with Tio Ventolera.

Returning to his dwelling he found the supper, which the Little Chaplain

had brought him, cold on the table.

The following day the boy of Can Mallorqui appeared with a mysterious

air. He had important things to tell Don Jaime. The afternoon before,

when he had been hunting a certain bird in the pine forest near the

Ironworker's forge, he had seen the man from a distance talking with the

Minstrel beneath the porch of the blacksmith shop.

"And what else?" asked Febrer, wondering that the boy had no more to

say.

Nothing else. Did that seem unimportant? The Minstrel was not fond of

the mountains, for climbing made him cough. He always traveled through

the valleys, sitting under the almond and fig trees to compose his

verses. If he had gone up to the blacksmith shop it was undoubtedly

because the Ironworker had sent for him. The two were talking with great

animation. The Ironworker seemed to be giving advice, and the sick boy

was listening with affirmative gestures.

"And what of that?" Febrer asked.

The Little Chaplain seemed to pity the senor's simplicity.

"Be careful, Don Jaime. You don't know the men of the island. This

conversation at the forge means something. This is Saturday, courting

night. I am sure they are plotting to do you harm if you come down to

Can Mallorqui."

Febrer received these words with a gesture of scorn. He would be there,

in spite of everything. Did they imagine they could frighten him? The

only thing he regretted was that they delayed so long in attacking him.

He spent the rest of the day in a state of nervous anger, eager for

night to come. He avoided approaching Can Mallorqui in his walks, gazing

at it from a distance, in the hope of catching a glimpse of the slender

figure of Margalida. Since he had become a suitor he could not present

himself as a friend. A visit from him might prove embarrassing for Pep's

family, and also he feared that the girl might conceal herself on seeing

him approach.

As soon as the sun had set and the stars appeared in the clear winter

sky with the keenness of points of ice, Febrer descended from the tower.

During his brief walk to the farmhouse, recollections of the past

returned again with ironic precision, as they had done on the former

courting night.

"If Mary Gordon should see me!" he thought. "Perhaps she would compare

me to a rustic Siegfried going forth to slay the dragon, which guards

the treasure of Iviza. If certain cynical women I have known should see

me!"

But his love immediately effaced these recollections. What if they

should see him! Margalida was better than all the women he had ever

known; she was the first, the only one. All his past life seemed to him

false, artificial, like the life presented on the stage, painted and

covered with tinsel beneath a deceptive light. He would never return to

that world of fiction. The present was reality.

Arrived at the porch, he found all the suitors, who seemed to be talking

in smothered voices. When they saw him they instantly became silent.

"Bona nit!"

No one replied. They did not even receive him with the grunt of the

other night.

When Pep, opening the door, gave them entrance to the kitchen, Febrer

saw that the Minstrel had a small drum hanging from one arm and was

carrying the drum stick in his right hand.

It was to be an evening of music. Some of the youths smiled with a

wicked expression when they took their places, as if rejoicing in

advance over something extraordinary. Others, more serious, showed in

their faces the noble disgust of those who fear to witness an inevitable

evil deed. The Ironworker remained impassive in one of the farthest

corners, shrinking down so as to remain unnoticed among his comrades.

A few of the youths had talked with Margalida, when suddenly, the

Minstrel, seeing the chair unoccupied, approached and took his seat in

it, holding the drum between his knee and his elbow, and resting his

forehead in his left hand. He slowly beat the drum, while a prolonged

hissing demanded silence. It was a new song; every Saturday the Minstrel

came with fresh verses in honor of the daughter of the house. The charm

of wild and barbarous music, admired since childhood, compelled all to

listen. The sacred emotion of poesy made these simple souls thrill in

advance.

The poor consumptive began to sing, accompanying each verse with a final

clucking which shook his chest and reddened his cheeks. Tonight,

however, the Minstrel seemed to have more strength than usual; his eyes

had an extraordinary brilliancy.

An outburst of laughter greeted the first verses, hailing the sarcastic

cleverness of the rural poet.

Febrer did not understand much of it. When he heard this monotonous and

neighing music, which seemed to recall the primitive songs scattered

over the Mediterranean by the Semitic sailors, he took refuge within his

thoughts to pass away the time, and to be less bored by the

extraordinary length of the ballad.

The loud laughter of the young men attracted his attention as something

which he vaguely comprehended as directed against himself with hostile

intent. What was that angry lamb saying? The singer's voice, his rustic

pronunciation, and the continual clucking with which he ended the

verses, were scarcely intelligible to Jaime, but he gradually began to

realize that the ballad was directed at young women who desired to

abandon the field, to marry caballeros, and who longed to wear the same

ornaments as city ladies. The singer described feminine fashions in

extravagant terms, which made the peasants laugh.

The simple Pep also laughed at these jests, which flattered both his

rural pride and his masculine vanity, which was inclined to see in the

female nothing but a sharer of his burdens. "True! True!" And he joined

his laughter to that of the boys. What an amusing fellow was that

Minstrel!

After a few verses the improvisatore no longer sang of young women in

general, but of a particular one, ambitious and heartless. Febrer

glanced instinctively at Margalida, who remained motionless, with

lowered eyes, her cheeks colorless, as if frightened, not at what she

had already heard, but at what was undoubtedly yet to come.

Jaime began to stir uneasily in his chair. The idea of that rustic

annoying her like that! A louder and more insolent outburst of laughter

again attracted his attention to the verses. The singer was making fun

of the girl, who, in order to become a lady, wished to marry a poor

ruined man possessed of neither home nor family; a foreigner, who had no

lands to cultivate.

The effect of this was instantaneous. Pep, in the denseness of his dull

brain, saw something like a spark of light, a luminous divination, and

he extended his hands imperatively, while at the same instant he arose.

"Enough! Enough!"

But it was too late; a form interposed between himself and the candle

light; it was Febrer, who had leaped forward.

He grasped the drum from the singer's knees and hurled it at his head

with such force that the parchment gave way and the frame fitted itself

down over the bleeding forehead like a shapeless cap.

The youths sprang impulsively from their seats, their hands reaching

into their girdles. Margalida, screaming, took refuge at her mother's

side, and the Little Chaplain felt that the time had come to draw his

knife. His father, with the authority of his years, shouted:

"Outside! Outside!"

They all obeyed, and went out into the fields in front of the farmhouse.

Febrer went also, in spite of the resistance of Pep.

The young men seemed to be divided among themselves, and were carrying

on a heated discussion. Some were protesting. The idea of striking the

poor Minstrel, an unfortunate sick boy who could not defend himself!

Others shook their heads. They had been expecting it. A man could not be

insulted gratuitously without something happening. They had opposed the

singing; they believed that when a man had something to say to another

man he should say it face to face.

In the heat of their contrary opinions and in their jealous rivalry they

were about to resort to blows when their attention was distracted by the

Minstrel. He had removed the drum from his head and was wiping the blood

from his forehead, weeping with the fury of a weak man who longs to

wreak direct vengeance, and yet realizes himself a slave to his

impotence.

"I'll settle with him!" he cried. Suddenly stooping to pick up stones in

the darkness, he began to throw them at Febrer, each time receding a few

steps as if to defend himself against a new aggression. The stones,

flung by his forceless arms, fell into the shadows or rebounded against

the porch.

The Minstrel's friends surrounded him and led him away. His cries could

be heard in the distance, shouting defiance, swearing vengeance. He

would kill the stranger! He alone would put an end to the Majorcan!

Jaime stood motionless among his enemies, with one hand in his belt. He

was overcome with shame at having lost his temper, and having struck the

poor consumptive. To stifle his remorse he muttered arrogant threats.

He only wished it had been another man who had done the singing. His

eyes sought the Ironworker, as if defying him; but the dreaded

man-slayer had disappeared.

Half an hour afterward, when the tumult had subsided and Febrer returned

to his tower, he stopped on the way several times, revolver in hand, as

if expecting someone.

Nobody!

CHAPTER II

LOVE AND PISTOLS

The next morning just after sunrise the Little Chaplain ran in search of

Don Jaime, revealing in his manner as he entered the tower, the

importance of the news which he was bearing.

In Can Mallorqui they had all passed a bad night. Margalida wept; her

mother lamented the occurrence; what would the people of the district

think of them when they heard that men had come to blows in her house as

in a tavern? What would the girls say about her daughter? But Margalida

gave little heed to the opinion of her friends. Something else seemed to

worry her, something of which she said nothing, but which caused her to

shed copious tears. Senor Pep, after closing the door on the suitors,

had paced up and down the kitchen for an hour muttering to himself and

clenching his fists. "That Don Jaime! Why should he persist in trying to

obtain the impossible? Obstinate, like all his kindred!"

The Little Chaplain had not slept either. In the mind of the young

savage, astute and sagacious, a suspicion tad gradually assumed the

reality of fact.

On entering the tower he immediately communicated his thoughts to Don

Jaime. Whom did he imagine had conceived the offensive song? The

Minstrel? No, senor; it was the Ironworker! The Minstrel had made the

rhymes, but the theme originated with the malicious man-slayer. He it

was who had conceived the idea of insulting Don Jaime in the presence of

all the suitors, relying on the certainty that he would not let the

affront pass unheeded. Now the boy understood the reason for the

interview between the two suitors which he had surprised in the

mountain.

Febrer received this news, to which the Little Chaplain attached great

importance, with a gesture of indifference. What of that? He had already

punished the insolent Minstrel, and as for the man-slayer, he had

sneaked off when he had challenged him at the door of the farmhouse. He

was a coward.

Pepet shook his head incredulously.

"Be careful, Don Jaime! You do not know the ways of the braves around

here, the cunning they employ to avoid being caught when wreaking

vengeance. You must be on your guard now more than ever. You know what

the jail-bird is, and he doesn't want to get sent back to prison. What

he has just done is a trick which other man-slayers have played before."

Jaime lost patience at the boy's mysterious air and confused words.

"Why don't you speak out? Come!"

At last the Little Chaplain gave voice to his suspicions. Now the

Ironworker could attempt anything he liked against Don Jaime; he could

lie in ambush for him among the tamarisks at the foot of the tower and

shoot him as he passed. Suspicion would at once be directed against the

Minstrel, in view of the quarrel at the farmhouse and his threats of

vengeance. With this, and with the man-slayer establishing an alibi by

taking a short cut to some distant place where he could be seen by many

persons, it would be easy for him to avenge himself with impunity.

"Ah!" exclaimed Febrer seriously, as if suddenly realizing the

importance of these words.

The boy, delighting in his superior knowledge, continued giving advice.

Don Jaime must be more careful; he must lock the door of his tower and

pay no attention to calls from outside after dark. Surely the man-slayer

would try to induce him to come out by challenging cries, with howls of

defiance.

"If you hear any cries of challenge during the night, Don Jaime, you

must keep still. I know their ways," continued the Little Chaplain with

the importance of a hardened man-slayer. "They hide in the bushes, with

weapon aimed, and if their man comes out, they fire without ever showing

themselves. You must stay in after dark."

This advice was for the night. By day the senor could go abroad without

fear.

"Here am I to accompany you wherever you wish."

The boy straightened himself with an aggressive air, moving one hand to

his belt to convince himself that his knife had not disappeared, but he

was immediately undeceived by Febrer's mocking expression of gratitude.

"Laugh, Don Jaime; make fun of me if you will; but I can be of some use

to you. See how I warn you of danger! You must be on your guard. The

Ironworker planned that singing with evil intent."

He glanced about like a chieftain preparing for a long siege. His eyes

encountered the gun hanging on the wall among the decorations of shells.

Very good; both barrels must be loaded with ball, and on top of this a

good handful of lead slugs or coarse bird-shot. It would be no more than

prudent. Thus his glorious grandfather had done. Seeing Jaime's revolver

lying on the table, he frowned.

"Very bad! Small arms should be worn on one's person at all hours. I

sleep with my knife on my breast. What if an enemy should rush in

suddenly without giving a man time to look for his weapon?"

The tower, which, in former centuries, had been the scene of executions

and battles between pirates, a stone vault suggestive of tragedies, the

walls covered by gleaming whitewash, then claimed the boy's attention.

He cautiously made his way to the door as if an enemy were lying in wait

for him at the foot of the stairway, and concealing his body behind the

thick wall, he advanced, nothing but an eye and part of his forehead

being visible. Then he shook his head with despair. If one looked out at

night, even with these precautions, the enemy, lying in ambush below,

could see him, could aim at him with the greatest facility, resting his

arms on a branch or on a stone with no fear of missing him. It would be

even worse to step outside the door and venture to go down. No matter

how dark the night, the enemy could point his gun at a cluster of

leaves, at a star on the horizon, at anything standing out conspicuously

in the dusk near the stairway, and when a dark form should pass before

it, momentarily obscuring the object sighted at--bang! It was sure game!

He had heard grave men tell of having spent whole months crouching

behind a hillock or a tree trunk, the butt-end of a musket close to the

cheek and the eyes fixed on the end of the barrel, from sunset till

daybreak, lying in wait for some old-time enemy.

No, the Little Chaplain did not like this door with its stairway in the

open. He must find another exit, and he inspected the window, opened it,

and looked out. With simian agility, laughing with joy at his discovery,

he sprang over the embrasure and disappeared, seeking with feet and

hands the irregularities of the rubble-work, the deep, stair-like

sockets left by the stones when they had fallen loose from the mortar.

Febrer looked out and saw him picking up his hat and waving it with a

triumphant expression. Then the boy ran around the base of the tower,

and soon his steps resounded, trotting noisily up the wooden stairs.

"That's easy enough!" he shouted, as he entered the room, red with

excitement over his discovery. "That's a stairway fit for a gentleman!"

Realizing the importance of his discovery, he assumed a grand air of

mystery. This must be kept between them--not a word to anyone. It was a

precious means of exit, the secret of which must be jealously guarded.

The Little Chaplain envied Don Jaime. How he longed to have an enemy

himself to come and call a challenge to him in the tower during the

night! While the Ironworker lay howling in ambush, his eyes glued upon

the stairway, he would descend by means of the window, at the rear of

the tower, and, creeping cautiously around, he would hunt the hunter.

What a stroke! He laughed with savage glee, as if on his dark red lips

trembled the ferocity of his glorious ancestors who considered the

hunting of man the most noble of exercises.

Febrer seemed to be infected by the boy's exhilaration. He would try

going down by the window route himself! He flung his legs over the sill,

and carefully, clumsily, began feeling with his toes for the

irregularities in the wall until he found the holes which served as

steps. He slowly made his way down, loose stones slipping beneath his

feet, until he reached the ground, giving a sigh of satisfaction. Very

good! The descent was easy; after a few more trials he would be able to

get down as nimbly as the Little Chaplain. Pepet, who had followed him

agilely, almost hanging over his head, smiled, like a master pleased at

the lesson, and repeated his advice. Don Jaime must not forget! When he

heard the challenge he must climb out of the window and down the wall,

getting around behind his adversary.

At noon when Febrer was left alone he felt himself possessed of a

warlike ferocity, of an aggressiveness which caused him to look long at

the wall on which hung his gun.

At the foot of the promontory, from the shore where Tio Ventolera's boat

was beached, rose the voice of the old fisherman singing mass. Febrer

looked out the door, carrying both hands to his mouth in the form of a

trumpet.

Tio Ventolera, with the help of a boy, was shoving his boat into the

water. The furled sail trembled aloft on the mast. Jaime did not accept

the invitation. "Many thanks, Tio Ventolera!" The old fisherman insisted

in his puny voice, which, wafted in on the wind, sounded like the

plaintive crying of a child. The afternoon was fine; the wind had

changed; they would catch fish in abundance near the Vedra. Febrer

shrugged his shoulders. No, no, many thanks; he was busy.

He had scarcely ceased speaking when the Little Chaplain presented

himself at the tower for the second time, carrying the dinner. The boy

seemed gloomy and sad. His father, choleric over the scene of the

previous night, had chosen him as the victim on whom to vent his

displeasure. An injustice, Don Jaime! Pep had been striding up and down

the kitchen, while the women, with tearful eyes and cringing air, shrank

away from his gaze. Everything that had happened he attributed to the

weakness of his character, to his good nature, but he intended to apply

a remedy at once. The courting was to be suspended; he would no longer

receive suitors nor visits. And as for the Little Chaplain--this bad

son, disobedient and rebellious, he was to blame for everything!

Pep did not know for a certainty how the presence of his son had brought

on the scandal of the night before, but he remembered his resistance

against becoming a priest, his running away from the Seminary, and the

recollection of these annoyances inflamed his anger and caused it to be

concentrated on the boy. Monday next he was going to take him back to

the seminary. If he tried to resist, and if he should run away again, it

would be better for him to embark as a cabin boy and forget that he had

a father, for in case he returned home Pep would break his two legs with

the iron bar which fastened the door. To let off steam, to get his hand

in, and to give a sample of his future temper, he gave him a few blows

and kicks, getting even in this way for the wrath he had felt when he

saw the boy appear as a fugitive from Iviza.

The Little Chaplain, submissive and shrinking through habit, took refuge

in a corner behind the defense of skirts and petticoats which his

weeping mother opposed to Pep's fury; but now, up in the tower,

recalling the event with glaring eyes, livid cheeks and clenched fists,

he gnashed his teeth.

What injustice! Should a man stand being beaten like that, for no reason

whatever except that his father might work off his ill humor! The idea

of his having to take a beating, he who carried a knife in his belt, and

was not afraid of anyone on the island. Paternity and filial respect

seemed to the Little Chaplain at the moment the inventions of cowards,

created only to crush and mortify brave-hearted men. Added to the

blows, humiliating to his dignity as a man of mettle, the thought of

being shut up in the Seminary, dressed in a black cassock, like a woman

in petticoats, with shaven head, losing forever those curls which peeped

arrogantly beneath his hat brim; having a tonsure which would make the

girls laugh, and--farewell to dancing and courting! Farewell to the

knife!

Soon Jaime would see him no more. Within a week the trip to Iviza was to

be taken. Others would bring his dinner up to the tower. Febrer saw a

ray of hope. Perhaps then Margalida would come as in former days! The

Little Chaplain, in spite of his grief, smiled maliciously. No, not

Margalida; anyone but her. Pep was in no mood to consent to that. When

the poor mother, to plead her son's cause, had timidly suggested that

the boy was needed in the house to wait on the senor, Pep burst forth

into fresh raving. He would carry Don Jaime's meals up to the tower

every day himself, or else his wife should do so, and if need be they

would get a girl to act as servant for the senor since he was determined

to live near them.

The Little Chaplain said no more, but Febrer guessed the words which the

good peasant had doubtless hurled against him, forgetting all respect in

his anger, enraged over the trouble brought upon the family by his

presence.

The boy returned to the ranchhouse with his basket, muttering revenge,

swearing that he would not return to the Seminary, although he knew no

means of avoiding it. His resistance took the turn of knightly valor.

Abandon his friend Don Jaime now that he was surrounded by dangers! Go

and shut himself up in that house of gloom, among black-skirted

gentlemen who spoke a strange language, now that out in the open, in

the light of the sun, or in the mystery of night, men were going to

kill one another! Should such extraordinary events occur, and he not

witness them!

When Febrer was left alone he took down his gun, and stood near the door

for a long time examining it absent-mindedly. His thoughts were far

away, much farther than the ends of the barrels, which seemed to point

toward the mountain. That miserable Ironworker! That insufferable bully!

Something had stirred within him, an irresistible antipathy, the first

time he had seen him. Nobody in the island aroused his ire as did that

gloomy jail-bird.

The cold steel weapon in his hand brought him back to reality. He

resolved to go into the mountains hunting. But what should he hunt? He

extracted two cartridges from the barrels, cartridges loaded with small

shot, suitable for the birds which crossed the island returning from

Africa. He introduced two other cartridges into the double barrel and

filled his pockets with more, which he took from a pouch. They were

loaded with buckshot. He was going hunting for big game!

Slinging his gun over his shoulder, he walked with arrogant step down

the stairway of the tower building, as if his resolution filled him with

satisfaction.

As he passed Can Mallorqui the dog leaped out to meet him, barking

joyously. No one peeped out of the door, as in the past. Surely he had

been seen, but no one came out of the kitchen to greet him. The dog

followed for some time, but turned back when he saw him take the road to

the mountain.

Febrer strode hurriedly between the stone walls which retained the

sloping terraces, following the walks paved with blue pebbles, converted

by the winter rains into high-banked ravines. Then he passed beyond the

lands furrowed by the plow. The compact soil was covered with wild and

spiny vegetation. Fruit trees, the tall almonds and the spreading fig

trees, were succeeded by junipers and pines, twisted by the winds

blowing from the sea. As Febrer stopped for a moment and looked behind,

he saw at his feet the buildings of Can Mallorqui, like white dice

shaken from the great rocks by the sea. The Pirate's Tower stood like a

fortress on its hill. His ascent had been swift, almost at full speed,

as if he feared to arrive too late at some meeting-place with which he

was unfamiliar. He continued on his way. Two wild doves rose from the

shrubbery with the feathery swish of an opening fan, but the hunter

seemed not to see them. Stooping black figures in the bushes caused him

to lift his right hand to the stock of his gun to sling it from his

shoulder. They were charcoal burners piling wood. As Febrer passed near

them they stared at him with fixed eyes, in which he thought he noticed

something extraordinary, a mixture of astonishment and curiosity.

"Good afternoon!"

The grimy men replied, but they followed him a long time with their

eyes, which shone with a transparency of water in their soot-blackened

faces. Evidently the lonely mountain dwellers had heard of the events of

the evening before at Can Mallorqui and were surprised at seeing the

senor of the tower alone, as if defying his enemies and believing

himself invulnerable.

Now he no longer met people along his path. Suddenly, above the murmur

of dry leaves caressed by the wind, he heard the faint ring of beaten

iron. A slender column of smoke was rising from among the verdure. It

was the blacksmith's forge.

Jaime, with his gun half supported on his shoulder, as if the weapon

were about to slip off, stepped into a clearing, which formed a broad

square in front of the smithy. It was a miserable little adobe hut of a

single story, blackened by smoke and covered by a hip roof, which, in

places, sunk in as if about to collapse. Beneath a shed gleamed the

flaming eye of a forge and near it stood the Ironworker beside the

anvil, beating with his hammer on a bar of red-hot iron, which looked

like the barrel of a carbine.

Febrer was not displeased with his theatrical entrance into the open

square. The man-slayer raised his eyes on hearing the sound of steps in

the interval between two blows. He stood motionless, with raised hammer

as he recognized the senor of the tower, but his cold eyes conveyed no

impression.

Jaime passed by the forge, staring at the Ironworker, giving a look of

challenge which the other seemed not to understand. Not a word, not a

greeting! The senor walked on, but once outside the square he stopped

near one of the first trees and sat down on a projecting root, holding

the gun between his knees.

The pride of virile arrogance invaded the soul of Febrer. He was

rejoiced at his own assurance. That bully could easily see that he had

come to seek him in the solitude of the mountain, at his own house; he

must be convinced that he was not afraid of him.

To better demonstrate his serenity, he drew his tobacco box from his

belt and began to roll a cigarette.

The hammer had begun to ring upon the metal again. From his seat on the

tree trunk Jaime saw the Ironworker, his back turned with careless

confidence, as if ignorant of his presence and intent on nothing but his

work. This calmness disconcerted Febrer somewhat. _Vive Dios!_ Had the

man not guessed his intention?

The Ironworker's coolness was exasperating, but at the same time his

calmly turning his back, confident that the senor of the tower was

incapable of taking advantage of this situation to fire a treacherous

shot, inspired a vague gratitude.

The hammer ceased ringing. When Febrer looked again in the direction of

the shed he did not see the Ironworker. This caused him to pick up his

gun, fingering the trigger. Undoubtedly he was coming with a weapon,

annoyed by this provocation of one who came to seek him in his own

house. Perhaps he was going to shoot out of one of the miserable windows

which gave light to the blackened dwelling. He must be prepared against

stratagem, and he arose, trying to conceal his body behind a tree trunk,

leaving nothing but an eye visible.

Someone was stirring inside the hut; something black cautiously peeped

out. The enemy was coming forth. Attention! He grasped his gun,

intending to fire as soon as the muzzle of the hostile weapon should

appear, but he stood motionless and confused on seeing that it was a

black skirt, terminated by naked feet in worn and tattered sandals, and

above it a withered bust, bent and bony, a head coppery and wrinkled,

with but one eye, and thin gray hair, which allowed the gloss of

baldness to shine between its locks.

Febrer recognized the old woman. She was the Ironworker's aunt, the

one-eyed woman of whom the Little Chaplain had told him, the sole

companion of the Ironworker in his wild solitude. The woman stood near

the forge, her arms akimbo, thrusting forward her abdomen, bulky with

petticoats, focusing her single eye, inflamed by anger, on the intruder

who came to provoke a good man in the midst of his work. She stared at

Jaime with the fiery aggressiveness of the woman who, secure in the

respect produced by sex, is more audacious and impetuous than a man. She

muttered threats and insults which the senor could not hear, furious

that anyone would venture to oppose her nephew, the beloved whelp on

whom, in her sterility, she had lavished all the ardor of frustrated

motherhood.

Jaime suddenly realized the odiousness of his behavior in coming to

antagonize another in his own house in broad daylight. The old woman was

right in insulting him. It was not the Ironworker who was the bully; it

was himself, the senor of the tower, the descendant of so many

illustrious dons, he, so proud of his origin.

Shame intimidated him, overcoming him with stupid confusion. He did not

know how to get away, nor which way to escape. At last he flung his gun

across his shoulder, and, gazing aloft, as if pursuing a bird which

sprang from branch to branch, wandered among the trees and through

thickets, avoiding the forge.

He walked down toward the valley, escaping from the forest to which a

homicidal impulse had drawn him, ashamed of his former purpose. Again he

passed the grimy men making charcoal.

"Good afternoon!"

They replied to his greeting, but in their eyes which shone peculiarly

white in their blackened faces, Febrer felt something like hostile

mockery of objectionable strangeness, as if he were of a different race

and had committed an unheard of deed which forever placed him beyond

friendly contact with the islanders.

Pines and junipers were left behind on the skirt of the mountain. Now he

walked between terraces of ploughed ground. In some fields he saw

peasants at work; on a sloping bank he met several girls stooping over

the ground gathering herbs; coming along a path he met three old men

traveling slowly beside their burros.

Febrer, with the humility of one who feels repentant for an evil deed,

greeted them pleasantly.

"Good afternoon!"

The peasants who were working in the field responded to him with a low

grunt; the girls turned away their faces with a gesture of annoyance so

as not to see him; the three old men replied to his greeting gloomily,

looking at him with searching eyes, as if they found something

extraordinary about him.

Under a fig tree, a black umbrella of interlaced boughs, he saw a number

of peasants listening intently to someone in the center of the group. As

Febrer approached there was a movement among them. A man arose with

angry impulse, but the others held him back, grasping his arms and

trying to restrain him. Jaime recognized him by the white kerchief under

his hat. It was the Minstrel. The robust peasants easily overpowered the

sickly boy, but, although he could not get away, he vented his fury by

shaking his fist in the direction of the roadway, while threats and

insults gurgled from his mouth. No doubt he had been telling his friends

of the events of the night before when Febrer appeared. The Minstrel

shouted and threatened. He swore that he would kill the stranger; he

promised to come to the Pirate's Tower some night and set it on fire and

rend its owner into shreds.

Bah! Jaime shrugged his shoulders with a scornful gesture and continued

on his way, but he felt depressed and almost desperate on account of the

atmosphere of repulsion and hostility, growing steadily more apparent

round about him. What had he done? Where had he thrust himself? Was it

possible that he had fallen so low as to fight with these islanders,

he, a foreigner, and, moreover, a Majorcan?

In his gloomy mood he thought that the entire island, together with all

things inanimate, had joined in this mortal protest. When he passed

houses they seemed to become depopulated, their inhabitants concealing

themselves in order not to greet him; the dogs rushed into the road,

barking furiously, as if they had never seen him before.

The mountains seemed more austere and frowning on their bare, rocky

crests; the forest more dark, more black; the trees of the valleys more

barren and shriveled; the stones in the road rolled beneath his feet as

if fleeing from his touch; the sky contained something repellant; even

the air of the island would finally shrink away from his nostrils. In

his desperation Febrer realized that he stood alone. Everyone was

against him. Only Pep and his family were left to him, and even they

would finally draw away under the necessity of living at peace with

their neighbors.

The foreigner did not intend to rebel against his fate. He was

repentant, ashamed of his aggressiveness of the night before and of his

recent excursion to the mountain. For him there was no room on the

island. He was a foreigner, a stranger, who, by his presence, disturbed

the traditional life of these people. Pep had taken him in with the

respect of an old time retainer, and he paid for his hospitality by

disturbing his house and the peace of his family. The people had

received him with a somewhat glacial courtesy, but tranquil and

immutable, as if he were a foreign gran senor, and he responded to this

respect by striking the most unfortunate one among them, the one who, on

account of his illness, was looked upon with a certain paternal

benevolence by all the peasants in the district. Very well, scion of

the Febrers! For some time he had wandered about like a mad man, talking

nothing but nonsense. All this for what reason? On account of the absurd

love for a girl who might be his daughter; for an almost senile caprice,

for he, despite his relative youth, felt old and forlorn in the presence

of Margalida and the rustic girls who fluttered about her. Ah, this

atmosphere! This accursed atmosphere!

In his days of prosperity, when he still dwelt in the palace in Palma,

had Margalida been one of his mother's servants, no doubt he would have

felt for her only the appetite inspired by the freshness of her youth,

experiencing nothing which resembled love. Other women dominated him

then with the seduction of their artifices and refinements, but here, in

his loneliness, seeing Margalida surrounded by the brown and rural

prettiness of her companions, beautiful as one of those white goddesses

which inspire religious veneration among peoples of coppery skin, he

felt the dementia of desire, and all his acts were absurd, as if he had

completely lost his reason.

He must leave; there was no place on the island for him. Perhaps his

pessimism deceived him in rating so high the importance of the affection

which had drawn him to Margalida. Then again perhaps it was not desire,

but love, the first real love of his life; he was almost sure of it, but

even if it were, he must forget and go. He must go at once!

Why should he remain here? What hope held him? Margalida, as if overcome

by surprise on learning of his love, avoided him, concealed herself, and

did nothing but weep, yet tears were not an answer. Her father,

influenced by a lingering sentiment of traditional veneration, tolerated

in silence this caprice of the gran senor, but at any moment he might

openly rebel against the man who had so disarranged his life. The

island, which had accepted him courteously, seemed to rise up now

against the foreigner who had come from afar to disturb their

patriarchal isolation, their narrow existence, the pride of a people

apart, with the same fierceness with which it had risen in former

centuries against the Norman, the Arab, or the Berber, when disembarking

on their shores.

It was impossible to resist; he would go. His eyes lovingly beheld the

enormous belt of sea lying between two hills, as if it were a blue

curtain concealing a rent in the earth. This strip of sea was the saving

path, the hope, the unknown, which opens to us its arms of mystery in

the most difficult moments of existence. Perhaps he would return to

Majorca, to lead the life of a respectable beggar beside the friends who

still remembered him; perhaps he would pass on to the Peninsula and go

to Madrid in search of employment; perhaps he would take passage for

America. Anything was preferable to staying here. He was not afraid; he

was not intimidated by the hostility of the island and its inhabitants;

his keenest feeling was remorse, shame over the trouble he had caused.

Instinctively his feet led him toward the sea, which was now his love

and his hope. He avoided passing Can Mallorqui, and on reaching the

shore he walked along the beach where the last palpitation of the waves

was lost like a slender leaf of crystal among the tiny pebbles mixed

with potsherds.

At the foot of the promontory of the tower he climbed up the loose rocks

and seated himself on the wave-worn and almost detached cliff. There he

had sat lost in thought one stormy night, the same on which he had

presented himself as suitor at the house of Margalida.

The afternoon was calm. The sea had an extraordinary and deep

transparency. The sandy bottoms were reflected like milky spots; the

submarine reefs and their dark vegetation seemed to tremble with the

movement of mysterious life. The white clouds floating on the horizon

traced great shadows as they passed before the sun. One portion of the

blue expanse was a glossy black, while beyond the floating mantle the

luminous waters seemed to be seething with golden bubbles. Now and again

the sun, concealed behind these curtains, flung beneath its border a

visible strip of light, like a lantern ray, a long triangle of hoary

splendor, resembling a Holland landscape.

Nothing in this appearance of the sea reminded Febrer of that stormy

night, and yet, from the association which forgotten ideas form in our

minds with old places when we return to them, he began to think the same

thoughts, only that now, in place of progressing, they passed in an

inverse direction with a confusion of defeat.

He laughed bitterly at his optimism then, at the confidence which had

caused him to scorn all his ideas of the past. The dead command; their

power and authority are indisputable. How had it been possible for him,

impelled by the enthusiasm of love, to repudiate this tremendous and

discouraging truth? Clearly do the dark tyrants of our lives make

themselves felt with all the overwhelming weight of their power. What

had he done that this corner of the earth, his ultimate refuge, should

look upon him as an alien? The innumerable generations of men whose dust

and whose souls were mingled with the soil of their native isle had left

as a heritage to the present the hatred of the stranger, the fear and

the repulsion of the foreigner with whom they had lived at war. He who

came from other lands was received with a repellant isolation, decreed

by those who no longer exist.

When, scorning his old-time prejudices, he had thought to join his life

with that of a native woman, the woman had shrunk away, mysterious,

frightened at the idea, while her father, in the name of servile

respect, opposed such an unheard of union. Febrer's idea was that of a

mad man; the mingling of the rooster and the gull, the vagary of the

extravagant friar which so amused the peasants. Thus had men willed in

former times when they founded society and divided it into classes, and

thus it must ever be. It is useless to rebel against the established

order. The life of man is short, and it is not enough to contend with

hundreds of thousands of lives before it and which spy upon it unseen,

crushing it between material fabrications which are tokens of their

passage over the earth, weighting it down with their thoughts, which

fill the atmosphere, and are taken advantage of by all those who are

born without will power to invent something new.

The dead command, and it is useless for the living to refuse obedience.

All rebellions to escape this servitude, to break the chain of

centuries, all are lies! Febrer recalled the sacred wheel of the

Hindoos, the Buddhist symbol which he had seen in Paris once when he

attended an oriental religious ceremony in a museum. The wheel is the

symbol of our lives. We think we advance because we move; we think we

progress because we go forward, but when the wheel makes the complete

turn we find ourselves in the same place. The life of humanity, history,

are but an interminable "recommencement of things." Peoples are born,

they grow, they progress; the cabin is converted into a castle and

afterward into a mart; enormous cities of millions of men are formed;

then catastrophes come, the wars for bread which people lack, the

protests of the dispossessed, the great massacres; then the cities are

depopulated and are laid waste. Weeds invade the proud monuments; the

metropoli gradually sink into the earth and sleep beneath hills for

centuries and centuries. The untamed forest covers the capital of remote

epochs; the savage hunter stalks over ground where in other times

conquering chieftains were received with the pomp of demigods; sheep

graze and the shepherd blows his reed above ruins which were tribunes of

dead laws; men group together again, and the cabin rises, the village,

the castle, the mart, the great city, and the round is repeated over and

over, with a difference of hundreds of centuries, as identical gestures,

ideas, conceptions, are repeated in man succeeding man throughout the

course of time. The wheel! The eternal recommencement of things! And all

the creatures of the human flock though changing the sheep-fold, never

change shepherds; the shepherds are ever the same, the dead, the first

to think, whose primordial thought was like the handful of snow which

rolls and rolls down the hill-slopes, growing larger, bearing along

everything which clings to it in its descent!

Men, proud of their material progress, of the mechanical toys invented

for their well-being, imagine themselves free, superior to the past,

emancipated from original servitude, yet all that they say has been said

hundreds of centuries before in different words; their passions are the

same; their thoughts, which they consider original, are scintillations

and reflections of other remote thoughts; and all acts which were held

to be good or bad are considered as such because they have been thus

classified by the dead, the tyrannical dead, those whom man would have

to kill again if he desired to be really free!

Who would be courageous enough, to accomplish this great liberating act?

What paladin would there be with sufficient strength to kill the monster

which weighs upon humanity, as the enormous and overwhelming dragons of

legend guarded useless treasures beneath their mighty forms?

Febrer remained motionless on the rock for a long time, his elbows on

his knees and his forehead in his hands, lost in thought, his eyes

appearing hypnotized by the gentle rise and fall of the fluctuating

waters.

When he aroused himself from this meditation the afternoon was waning.

He would fulfill his destiny! He could live only on the heights,

although it might be as a proud mendicant. All descending paths he found

barred. Farewell to happiness which might be found by retrocession to a

natural and primitive life! Since the dead did not wish him to be a man,

he would be a parasite.

His eyes, wandering over the horizon, became fixed on the white clouds

massed above the rim of the sea. When he was a little lad and Mammy

Antonia used to accompany him in his walks along the beach at Soller,

they had often amused themselves by indulging their imagination in

giving form and name to the clouds which met or scattered in an

incessant variety of shapes, seeing in them now a black monster with

flaming jaws, now a virgin surrounded by blue rays.

A group of clouds, dense and snowy as white fleece, attracted his

attention. This luminous whiteness resembled the polished bones of a

cranium. Loose tufts of dark vapor floated in the mist. Febrer's

imagination pictured in it two frightful, black holes; a dark triangle

like that which the wasted nose leaves in the skull of the dead; and

below it an immense gash, tragic, identical with the mute grin of a

mouth devoid of lips and teeth.

It was Death, the great mistress, empress of the world, displaying

herself to him in broad daylight in her white and dazzling majesty,

defying the splendor of the sun, the blue of the sky, the luminous green

of the sea. The reflection of the sinking orb imparted a spark of

malignant life to the bony countenance of wafer-like pallor, to the

gloom of her dark eye-sockets, to her terrifying grin. Yes, it was she!

The mist clinging to the surface of the sea was as plaits and folds of a

garment which concealed her enormous frame; and other clouds which

floated higher formed the ample sleeve from which escaped vapors more

subtle and vague, making a bony arm terminating in an index finger, dry

and crooked, like that of a bird of prey, pointing out far, far away, a

mysterious destiny.

The vision disappeared with the rapid movement of the clouds,

obliterating the hideous figure, assuming other capricious forms, but as

it vanished from his sight Febrer did not awake from his hallucination.

He accepted the command without rebellion; he would go! The dead

command, and he was their helpless slave! The late afternoon light

brought out objects in strange relief. Strong shadows seemed to

palpitate with life, imparting animation and giving animal shapes to the

rocks along the coast. In the distance a promontory resembled a lion

crouching above the waves, glaring at Jaime with silent hostility. The

rocks on a level with the water raised and lowered their black heads,

crowned with green hair, like giant amphibia of a monstrous humanity. In

the direction of Formentera he saw an immense dragon which slowly

advanced across the horizon, with a long tail of clouds, to

treacherously swallow the dying sun.

When the red sphere, fleeing from this danger, sank into the waters,

enlarged by a spasm of terror, the depressing gray of twilight aroused

Febrer from his hallucination.