Their words were broken by sobs; the father and the daughters embraced again, and Pepeta, the mistress of the house, as well as other women, wept and repeated the maledictions against the old miser until Pimento opportunely intervened.
There would be time left to speak of what had occurred; now it was time for supper. What the deuce! Grieve like this because of an old Jew! If he could but see all this, how his evil heart would rejoice! The people of the _huerta_ were kind; all of them would help to care for the family of old Barret, and would share with them a loaf of bread if they had nothing more.
The wife and daughters of the ruined farmer went off with some neighbours to pa.s.s the night in their houses. Old Barret remained behind, under the vigilance of Pimento.
The two men remained seated until ten in their rush-chairs, smoking cigar after cigar in the candle-light.
The poor old farmer appeared to be crazy. He answered in short monosyllables the reflections of this bully, who now a.s.sumed the role of a good-natured fellow; and when he spoke it was always to repeat the same words:
"Pimento! Give me my shot-gun!"
And Pimento smiled with a sort of admiration. The sudden ferocity of this little old man, who was considered a good-natured fool by all the _huerta_, astounded him. Return him the shot-gun! At once! He well divined by the straight wrinkles which stood out between his eyebrows, his firm intention of blowing the author of his ruin to atoms.
Barret grew more and more vexed with the young fellow. He went so far as to call him a thief: he had refused to give him his weapon. He had no friends; he could see that well enough; all of them were only ingrates, equal to don Salvador in avarice; he did not wish to sleep here; he was suffocating. And searching in the bag of implements, he selected a sickle, shoved it through his sash, and left the farm-house. Nor did Pimento attempt to bar his way.
At such an hour, he could do no harm; let him sleep in the open if it suited his pleasure. And the bully, closing the door, went to bed.
Old Barret started directly toward the fields, and like an abandoned dog, began to make a detour around his farm-house.
Closed! Closed forever! These walls had been raised by his grandfather and renovated by himself through all these years. Even in the darkness, the pallor of the neat whitewash, with which his little girls had coated them three months before, stood out plainly.
The corral, the stable, the pigsties were all the work of his father; and this straw-roof, so slender and high, with the two little crosses at the ends, he had built himself as a subst.i.tution for the old, which had leaked everywhere.
And the curbstone at the well, the post of the vineyard, the cane-fences over which the pinks and the morning-glories were showing their tufts of bloom;--these too were the work of his hands. And all this was going to become the property of another, because--yes, because men had arranged it so.
He searched in his sash for the pasteboard strip of matches in order to set fire to the straw-roof. Let the devil fly away with it all; it was his own, anyway, as G.o.d knew, and he could destroy his own property and would do so before he would see it fall into the hands of thieves.
But just as he was going to set fire to his old house, he felt a sensation of horror, as if he saw the ghosts of all his ancestors rising up before him; and he hurled the strip of matches to the ground.
But the longing for destruction continued roaring through his head, and sickle in hand, he set forth over the fields which had been his ruin.
Now at a single stroke he would get even with the ungrateful earth, the cause of all his misfortunes.
The destruction lasted for entire hours. Down they came tumbling to his heels, the arches of cane upon which the green tendrils of the tender kidney-beans and peas were climbing; parted by the furious sickle, the beans fell, and the cabbages and lettuce, driven by the sharp steel, flew wide like severed heads, scattering their rosettes of leaves all around. No one should take advantage of his labour.
And thus he went on mowing until the break of dawn, trampling under foot with mad stampings, shouting curses, howling blasphemies, until weariness finally deadened his fury, and casting himself down upon a furrow, he wept like a child, thinking that the earth henceforth would be his real bed, and his only occupation begging in the streets.
He was awakened by the first rays of the sun striking his eyes, and the joyful twitter of the birds which hopped around his head, availing themselves of the remnants of the nocturnal destruction for their breakfast.
Benumbed with weariness and chilled with the dampness, he rose from the ground. Pimento and his wife were calling him from a distance, inviting him to come and take something. Barret answered them with scorn. Thief!
After taking away his shot-gun! And he set out on the road toward Valencia, trembling with cold, without even knowing where he was going.
He stopped at the tavern of Copa and entered. Some teamsters of the neighbourhood spoke to him, expressing sympathy for him in his misfortune, and invited him to have a drink. He accepted gratefully. He craved something which would counteract this cold, which had penetrated his very bones. And he who had always been so sober, drank, one after the other, two gla.s.ses of brandy, which fell into his weakened stomach like waves of fire.
His face flushed, then became deadly pale; his eyes grew bloodshot. To the teamsters who sympathized with him, he seemed expressive and confiding, almost like one who is happy. He called them his sons, a.s.suring them that he was not fretting over so little. Nor had he lost everything. There still remained in his possession the best thing in his house, the sickle of his grandfather, a jewel which he would not exchange, no, not for fifty measures of grain.
And from his sash he drew forth the curved steel, an implement brilliant and pure, of fine temper and very keen edge, which, as Barret declared, would cut a cigarette-paper in the air.
The teamsters paid up, and urging on their beasts, set off for Valencia, filling the air with the creaking of wheels.
The old man stayed in the tavern for more than an hour, talking to himself, feeling more and more dizzy, until, made ill at ease by the hard glances of the landlord, who divined his condition, he experienced a vague feeling of shame, and set out with unsteady steps without saying good-bye.
But he was unable to dispel from his mind a tenacious remembrance. He could see, as he closed his eyes, a great orchard of oranges which was about an hour"s distance, between Benimaclet and the sea. There he had gone many times on business, and there he would go now to see if the devil would be so good as to let him come across the master, as there was hardly a day that his avaricious glance did not inspect the beautiful trees as though he had the oranges counted on every one.
He arrived after two hours of walking, during which he stopped many times to balance his body, which was swaying back and forth upon his unsteady legs.
The brandy had now taken complete possession of him. He could no longer remember for what purpose he had come here, so far from that part of the _huerta_ in which his own family lived, and finally he let himself fall into a field of hemp at the edge of the road. In a short time, his laboured snores of drunkenness sounded among the green straight stalks.
When he awoke, the afternoon was well advanced. He felt heavy of head and his stomach was faint. There was a humming in his ears, and he had a horrible taste in his coated mouth. What was he doing here, near the _huerta_ of the Jew? Why had he come so far? His instinctive sense of honour arose; he felt ashamed at seeing himself in such a state of debas.e.m.e.nt, and he tried to get on his feet to go away. The pressure on his stomach caused by the sickle which lay crosswise in his sash, gave him chills.
On standing up, he thrust his head out from among the hemp, and he saw, in a turn of the road, a little man who was walking slowly along enveloped in a cape.
Barret felt all his blood suddenly rise to his head; his drunkenness came back on him again. He stood up, tugging at his sickle. And yet they say that the devil is not good? Here was his man; here was the one whom he had been wanting to see since the day before.
The old usurer had hesitated before leaving his house. The affair of old Barret had p.r.i.c.ked his conscience; it was a recent event and the _huerta_ was treacherous; but the fear that his absence might be taken advantage of in the _huerta_ was stronger even than his cowardice, and remembering that the orange estate was distant from the attached farm-house, he set out on the road.
He was already in sight of the _huerta_, scoffing inwardly at his past fears, when he saw Barret bound out from the plot of cane-brake: like an enormous demon he seemed to him with his red face and extended arms, impeding all flight, cutting him off at the edge of the ca.n.a.l which ran parallel to the road. He thought he must be dreaming; his teeth chattered, his face turned green, and his cape fell off, revealing his old overcoat and the dirty handkerchiefs rolled around his neck. So great was his terror, his agitation, that he spoke to him in Spanish.
"Barret! My son!" he said, in a broken voice. "The whole thing has been a joke; never mind. What happened yesterday was only to make you a little afraid ... nothing more. You may stay on your land; come tomorrow to my house ... we will talk things over: you shall pay me whenever you wish."
And he bent backward to avoid the approach of old Barret: he attempted to sneak away, to flee from that terrible sickle, upon whose blade a ray of sun broke, and where the blue of the sky was reflected. But with the ca.n.a.l behind him, he could not find a place to retreat, and he threw himself backward, trying to shield himself with his clenched hands.
The farmer, showing his sharp white teeth, smiled like a hyena.
"Thief! thief!" he answered in a voice which sounded like a snarl.
And waving his weapon from side to side, he sought for a place where he might strike, avoiding the thin and desperate hands which the miser held before him.
"But, Barret, my son! what does this mean? Lower your weapon, do not jest! You are an honest man ... think of your daughters! I repeat to you, it was only a joke. Come tomorrow and I will give you the key....
Aaaay!..."
There came a horrible howl; the cry of a wounded beast. The sickle, tired of encountering obstacles, had lopped off one of the clenched hands at a blow. It remained hanging by the tendons and the skin, and from the red stump blood spurted violently, spattering Barret, who roared as the hot stream struck his face.
The old man staggered on his legs, but before he fell to the ground the sickle cut horizontally across his neck, and ... zas! severed the complicated folds of the neckerchief, opening a deep gash which almost separated the head from the trunk.
Don Salvador fell into the ca.n.a.l; his legs remained on the sloping bank, twitching, like a slaughtered steer giving its last kicks. And meanwhile his head, sunken into the mire, poured out all of his blood through the deep breach, and the waters following their peaceful course with a tranquil murmur which enlivened the solemn silence of the afternoon, became tinged with red.
Barret, stupefied, stood stock still on the sh.o.r.e. How much blood the old thief had! The ca.n.a.l grew red, it seemed more copious! Suddenly the farmer, seized with terror, broke into a run, as if he feared that the little river of blood would overflow and drown him.
Before the end of the day, the news had circulated like the report of a cannon which stirred all the plain. Have you ever seen the hypocritical gesture, the silent rejoicing, with which a town receives the death of a governor who has oppressed it? All guessed that it was the hand of old Barret, yet n.o.body spoke. The farm-houses would have opened their last hiding-places for him; the women would have hidden him under their skirts.
But the a.s.sa.s.sin roamed like a madman through the fields, fleeing from people, lying low behind the sloping banks, concealing himself under the little bridges, running across the fields, frightened by the barking of the dogs, until on the following day, the rural police surprised him sleeping in a hayloft.
For six weeks, they talked of nothing in the _huerta_ but old Barret.
Men and women went on Sundays to the prison of Valencia as though on a pilgrimage, in order to look through the bars at the poor liberator, who grew thinner and thinner, his eyes more sunken, and his glance more troubled.
The day of his trial arrived and he was sentenced to death.