But Roseta, either stronger or more furious, succeeded in disengaging herself, and was going to drag her enemy to her, perhaps to give her a spanking, for she was trying to take off her slipper with her free hand, when there occurred an irritating, brutal, unheard-of scene.
Without any spoken agreement, as if all the hatred of their families, all the words and maledictions heard in their homes, had surged up in them at a bound, all threw themselves together upon the daughter of Batiste.
"Thief! Thief!"
In the twinkling of an eye, Roseta disappeared under the wrathful arms.
Her face was covered with scratches; she was carried down by the shower of blows, though unable to fall, for the very crush of her enemies impeded her; but driven from one side to the other, she ended by rolling down head-long on the slippery stones, striking her forehead on an angle of the stone.
Blood! It was like the casting of a stone into a tree covered with sparrows. They flew away, all of them, running in different directions, with their pitchers on their heads, and in a short time no one could be seen in the vicinity of the fountain of the Queen but poor Roseta, who with loosened hair, skirts torn, face dirty with dust and blood, went crying home.
How her mother screamed when she saw her come in! How she protested upon being told of what had occurred! Those people were worse than Jews!
Lord! Lord! Could such crimes occur in a land of Christians?
It was impossible to live. They had not done enough already with the men attacking poor Batiste, persecuting him and slandering him before the Tribunal, and imposing unjust fines upon him. Now here were these girls persecuting her poor Roseta, as though that unfortunate child had done anything wrong. And why was it all? Because they wished to earn a living and work, without offending anybody, as G.o.d commanded.
Batiste turned pale as he looked at his daughter. He took a few steps toward the road, looking at Pimento"s farm-house, whose roof stood out behind the canes.
But he stopped and finally began to reproach his daughter mildly. What had occurred would teach her not to go walking about the _huerta_. They must avoid all contact with others: live together and united in the farm-house and never leave these lands which were their life.
His enemies would take good care not to seek him out in his own home.
VI
A wasp-like buzzing, the murmur of a bee-hive, was what the dwellers in the _huerta_ heard as they pa.s.sed before the Cadena mill by the road leading to the sea.
A thick curtain of poplar-trees closed in the little square formed by the road as it widened before the heap of old tiled roofs, cracked walls and small black windows of the mill, the latter an old and tumble-down structure erected over the ca.n.a.l and based on thick b.u.t.tresses, between which poured the water"s foaming cascade.
The slow, monotonous noise that seemed to issue from between the trees came from Don Joaquin"s school, situated in a farm-house hidden by the row of poplar-trees.
Never was knowledge worse-lodged, though wisdom does not often, to be sure, dwell in palaces.
An old farm-house, with no other light than from the door and that which filtered in through the cracks of the roofs: the walls of doubtful whiteness, for the master"s wife, a stout lady who lived in her rush-chair, pa.s.sed the day listening to her husband and admiring him; a few benches, three grimy alphabets, torn at the ends, fastened to the wall with bits of chewed bread, and in the room adjoining the school some few old pieces of furniture which seemed to have knocked about half of Spain.
In the whole _barraca_ there was one new object: the long cane which the master kept behind the door and which he renewed every couple of days from the nearby cane-brake; it was very fortunate that the material was so cheap, for it was rapidly used up on the hard, close-clipped heads of those small savages.
Only three books could be seen in the school; the same primer served for all. Why should there be more? There reigned the Moorish method; sing-song and repet.i.tion, till with continual pounding you got things into their hard heads.
Hence from morning to night the old farm-house sent from its door a wearisome sing-song which all the birds of the neighbourhood made fun of.
"Our ... fa ... ther, who ... art ... in heaven."
"Holy ... Mary ..."
"Two times two ... fo ... up...."
And the sparrows, the linnets, and the calendar larks who fled from the youngsters when they saw them in a band on the roads, alighted with the greatest confidence on the nearest trees, and even hopped up and down with their springy little feet before the door of the school, laughing scandalously at their fierce enemies on seeing them thus caged up, under the threat of the rattan, condemned to gaze at them sideways, without moving, and repeating the same wearisome and unlovely song.
From time to time the chorus stilled and the voice of Don Joaquin rose majestically, pouring out his fund of knowledge in a stream.
"How many works of mercy are there?"
"Two times seven are how many?"
And rarely was he satisfied with the answers.
"You are a lot of dunces. You sit there listening as though I were talking Greek. And to think that I treat you with all courtesy, as in a city college, so you may learn good forms and know how to talk like persons of breeding!... In short, you have some one to imitate. But you are as rough and ignorant as your parents, who are also dishonest: they have money left to go to the tavern and they invent a thousand excuses to avoid giving me Sat.u.r.days the two coppers that are due me."
And he walked up and down indignant as he always was when he complained of the Sat.u.r.day omissions. You could see it in his hair and in his figure, which seemed to be divided into two parts.
Below, his torn hempen-sandals always stained with mud: his old cloth trousers; his rough, scaly hands, which retained in the fissures of the skin the dirt of his little orchard, a square of garden-truck which he owned in front of the school-house, and many times this produce was all that went into his stew.
But from the waist upward his n.o.bility was shown, "the dignity of the priest of knowledge," as he would say; that which distinguished him from all the population of the farm-houses, worms fastened to the glebe; a necktie of loud colours over his dirty shirt-front, a grey and bristly moustache, cutting his chubby and ruddy face, and a blue cap with an oilcloth visor, souvenir of one of the many positions he had filled in his chequered career.
This was what consoled him for his poverty; especially the necktie, which no one else in the whole district wore, and which he exhibited as a sign of supreme distinction, a species of golden fleece, as it were, of the _huerta_.
The people of the farm-houses respected Don Joaquin, though as regards the a.s.sistance of his poverty they were remiss and slothful. What that man had seen! How he had travelled over the world! Several times a railway employe; other times helping to collect taxes in the most remote provinces of Spain; it was even said that he had been a policeman in America. In short, he was a "somebody" in reduced circ.u.mstances.
"Don Joaquin," his stout wife would say, who was always the first to give him his t.i.tle, "has never seen himself in the position he is in today; we are of a good family. Misfortune has brought us to this, but in our time we have made a mint of money."
And the gossips of the _huerta_, despite the fact that they sometimes forgot to send the two coppers for the instruction Sat.u.r.days, respected Don Joaquin as a superior being, reserving the right to make a little sport of his short jacket, which was green and had square tails; and which he wore on holidays, when he sang at high ma.s.s in the choir of Alboraya church.
Driven by poverty, he had landed there with his obese and flabby better-half as he might have landed anywhere else. He helped the secretary of the village with extra work; he prepared with herbs known only to himself certain brews which accomplished wonders in the farm-houses, where they all admitted that that old chap knew a lot; and without the t.i.tle of schoolmaster, but with no fear that any one else would try to take away from him a school which did not bring in enough even to buy bread, he succeeded by much repet.i.tion and many canings, in teaching all the urchins of five or ten, who on holidays threw stones at the birds, stole fruit, and chased the dogs on the roads of the _huerta_, to spell and to keep quiet.
Where had the master come from? All the wives of the neighbours knew, from beyond the _churreria_. And vainly were further explanations asked, for as far as the geography of the _huerta_ was concerned, all those who do not speak Valencian are of the _churreria_.
Don Joaquin had no small difficulty in making his pupils understand him and preventing them from being afraid of Castilian. There were some who had been two months in school and who opened their eyes wide and scratched the backs of their heads without understanding what the master who used words never heard before in his school said to them.
How the good man suffered! He who attributed all the triumphs of his teaching to his refinement, to his distinction of manners, to his use of good language, as his wife declared!
Every word which his pupils p.r.o.nounced badly (and they did not p.r.o.nounce one well), made him groan and raise his hands indignantly till they touched the smoky ceiling of his school-house. Nevertheless he was proud of the urbanity with which he treated his pupils.
"You should look upon this humble school-house," he would say to the twenty youngsters who crowded and pushed one another on the narrow benches, listening to him half-bored and half-afraid of his rattan, "as a temple of courtesy and good-breeding. Temple, did I say? It is the torch that shines and dissolves the barbaric darkness of this _huerta_.
Without me, what would you be? Beasts, and pardon me the word; the same as your worthy fathers whom I do not wish to offend! But with G.o.d"s aid you must leave here educated, able to present yourselves anywhere, since you have had the good fortune to find a master like me. Isn"t that so?"
And the boys replied with furious noddings, some knocking their heads against their neighbours" heads; and even his wife, moved by the temple and the torch, stopped knitting her stocking and pushed back the rush-chair to envelop her husband in a glance of admiration.
He would question all the band of dirty urchins whose feet were bare and whose shirt-tails were in the air, with astonishing courtesy:
"Let"s see, Senor de Lopis; rise."
And Senor de Lopis, a mucker of seven with short knee trousers held up by one suspender, tumbled off his bench and stood at attention before the master, gazing askance at the terrible cane.
"For some time, I"ve been watching you picking your nose and making little b.a.l.l.s of it. An ugly habit, Senor de Lopis. Believe your master.
I will let it pa.s.s this time because you are industrious and know your multiplication table; but knowledge is nothing when good-breeding is lacking; don"t forget that, Senor de Lopis."