But the farther off they got, the less effective became the master"s threat.
They would begin to prance around the three brothers, and laughingly chase each other, a mere malicious pretext, inspired by the instinctive hypocrisy of youth, to push them as they ran by, with the pious desire of landing them in the ca.n.a.l that ran along the road.
Afterwards when this manoeuvre proved unsuccessful, they would resort to slaps on the head and sudden pulls as they ran by at full speed.
"Thieves! Thieves!"
And as they hurled this insult, they would pull their ears and run off, only to turn after a little and repeat the same words.
This calumny, invented by the enemies of their father, made the boys absolutely frantic. The two older ones, abandoning Pascualet, who took refuge weeping behind a tree, would seize stones and a battle would begin in the middle of the road.
The cobbles whistled between the branches, making the leaves fall in showers, and bounce against the trunks and slopes: the dogs drawn by the noise of the battle, would rush out from the farm-houses barking fiercely, and the women from the doors of their houses would raise their arms to heaven, crying indignantly--
"Rascals! Devils!"
These scandals touched Don Joaquin to the quick and gave impetus next day to the relentless cane. What would people say of his school, the temple of good-breeding!
The battle would not end until some pa.s.sing carter would brandish his whip, or until some old chap would come from the farm-houses, cudgel in hand, when the aggressors would flee, and disperse, repenting of their deed on seeing themselves alone, thinking fearfully, with the rapid shifting of impressions characteristic of childhood, of that bird who knew everything and of what Don Joaquin would have in store for them the following day.
And meanwhile, the three brothers would continue on their way, rubbing the bruises they had received in the battle.
One afternoon, Batiste"s poor wife sent up a cry to heaven on seeing the state in which her young ones arrived.
The battle had been a fierce one! Ah! the bandits! The two older ones were bruised as usual; nothing to worry about.
But the little boy, the Bishop, as his mother called him caressingly, was wet from head to foot, and the poor little fellow was crying and trembling from cold and fear.
The savage young rascals had thrown him into a ca.n.a.l of stagnant water and his brothers had fished him out covered with disgusting black mud.
The mother put him to bed, for the poor little chap was still trembling in her arms, clinging around her neck, and murmuring with a voice that sounded like the bleating of a lamb,
"Mother! Mother!"
"Lord G.o.d! give us patience!" All that base rabble, big and little, had resolved to put an end to the whole family.
VII
Sad and frowning as though he were going to a funeral, Batiste started forth one Thursday morning on the road to Valencia. It was horse-market day at the river-bed and the little bag of sackcloth containing the remainder of his savings bulged out his sash.
Misfortunes were pouring on the family in a steady stream. The last and fitting climax now would be that the roof should fall on their heads and crush them to death. What people! What a place had they got into!
The little boy was steadily getting worse, and trembled with fever in his mother"s arms, while the latter wept continually. He was visited twice a day by the doctor; in short, it was a sickness which was going to cost twelve or fifteen dollars,--a mere trifle, so to speak.
The oldest boy, Batistet, could hardly go about. His head was still swathed in bandages and his face crisscrossed with scratches, after a big battle which he had had one morning with other boys of his own age who were going like himself to gather manure in Valencia. All the _fematers_ (manure-gatherers) of the district had banded against Batistet and the poor boy could not show himself upon the road.
The two younger ones had stopped going to school through fear of the fights that would be forced on them on the way home.
And Roseta, poor girl! she was the saddest of all. Her father put on a gloomy countenance in the house, casting severe glances at her to remind her that she must not show her feelings and that her sufferings were an outrage on paternal authority. But when he was alone, the worthy Batiste felt grieved over the poor girl"s sadness. For he had once been young himself and knew how heavy the sufferings of love may be.
Everything had been discovered. After the famous quarrel at the fountain of the Queen, the whole _huerta_ gossiped for days about Roseta"s love-affair with old Tomba"s grandson.
The fat-bellied butcher of Alboraya stormed angrily at his hired-man.
Ah, the big rascal! Now he knew why he forgot all his duties, why he pa.s.sed his afternoons wandering over the _huerta_ like a gipsy. The young gentleman indulged himself in a fiancee, as though he had the means to support her. And what a fiancee, great Heaven! All he had to do was to listen to his customers as they chatted before his butcher"s table. They all said the same: they were surprised that a man like him, religious and respectable, whose only defect was to cheat a little in the weight, should allow his hired-man to keep company with the daughter of the _huerta"s_ enemy, an evil man who, it was said, had been in the penitentiary.
And as all this to the mind of the fat boss was a dishonour to his establishment, he would become furious at every murmur of the gossiping women and threaten his timid hired-man with his knife, or reproach old Tomba as he tried to persuade him to reform his rascally grandson.
Finally the butcher discharged the boy and his grandfather found him a position in Valencia in another butcher-shop, where he asked them not to give him any time off even on holidays, so that he would not be able to wait for Batiste"s daughter on the road.
Tonet departed submissively, his eyes wet like one of the young lambs whom he had so often dragged before the master"s knife. He would not return. The poor girl remained in the farm-house, hiding herself in her bedroom to weep, making efforts not to show her suffering to her mother, who, exasperated by so many vexations, was very intolerant, and before her father, who threatened to kill her if she had another lover and gave their enemies in the district any more chance to talk.
Poor Batiste, who seemed so severe and threatening, was more grieved than by anything else at the girl"s inconsolable sorrow, her lack of appet.i.te, her yellow complexion and hollow eyes, and by the efforts she made to feign indifference, in spite of the fact that she scarcely slept at all: this, however, did not prevent her from trudging off punctually every day to the factory with a vagueness in her eyes which showed that her mind was far afield, and that she lived perpetually in a state of inward dream.
Though they did not succeed in crushing Batiste, they undoubtedly cast on him the evil eye, for his poor Morrut, the old horse who was like a member of the family, who had drawn the poor furniture and the youngsters over the roads in the various peregrinations of poverty, gradually grew weaker and weaker in his new stable, the best lodging he had ever known in his long life of labour.
He had behaved like a respectable equine in the worst period, when the family had just moved to the farm, and he had had to plough up the land accursed and petrified by ten years" neglect; when he had had to plod continuously to Valencia to bring back debris and old boards from buildings being torn down; when the food was not plentiful and the work heavy. And now, when before the little window of the stable there stretched out a large field of gra.s.s, cool, high and waving, all for him; now that he had his table set with that green and juicy covering which smelled gloriously, now that he was growing fat, that his angular haunches and his bony back were rounding out, he died without even a reason, perhaps in the exercise of his perfect right to rest, after having helped the family through its time of trouble and tribulation.
He lay down one day on his straw and refused to go out, gazing at Batiste with gla.s.sy yellow eyes which silenced all angry oaths and threats upon the master"s lips. Poor Morrut seemed to be a human being!
Batiste, remembering his glance, felt like weeping. The farm-house was all upset, and this misfortune for the time being made the family forget poor Pascualet, who was trembling with fever in his bed.
Batiste"s wife was weeping. That poor beast whose gentle face lay there flat on the ground had seen almost all her children come into the world.
She still remembered as though it were yesterday when they bought him in the Sagunto-market, small, dirty, covered with scabs, a nag condemned.
It was a member of the family that was pa.s.sing now. And when some repellent old men came in a cart to take the corpse of the old worker to the "boneyard" where they would convert his skeleton into bones of polished brilliancy and his flesh into fertilizer, the children wept, and called interminable farewells to poor Morrut who was carried away with his feet stretched out stiffly and his head swaying, while the mother, as though she felt some terrible presentiment, threw herself with open arms upon her sick little boy.
She saw her little son when he entered the stable to pull Morrut"s tail, Morrut, who endured all the youngster"s pranks with affectionate submission. She saw the little fellow when his father placed him on the animal"s hard spine, beating his little feet against the shining flanks and crying, "Get up! Get up!" with his stammering child"s voice. And she felt that the death of the poor animal had somehow opened up a way for others. Oh G.o.d! grant that her sorrowful mother"s fears might be mistaken; that only the long-suffering horse should die; and that he should not, on his road to heaven, carry away upon his flanks the poor little fellow now as in other times he used to carry him along the paths of the _huerta_ grasping his mane, walking slowly so as not to make him lose his balance!
And poor Batiste, his mind preoccupied by so many misfortunes, confusing all together in his fancy the sick child, the dead horse, the wounded son and the daughter with her concentrated grief, reached the outskirts of the city and pa.s.sed over the bridge of Serranos.
At the end of the bridge, on the esplanade between the two gardens in front of the octagonal towers whose Gothic arcades, projecting barbicans and n.o.ble crown of battlements rose above the grove, Batiste stopped and pa.s.sed his hands over his face.
He had to visit the masters, the sons of Don Salvador, and ask them to loan him a small sum to make up the necessary amount to buy a horse to take poor Morrut"s place. And as cleanliness is the poor man"s luxury, he sat down on a stone-bench, waiting his turn to have his beard shaved,--a two weeks" growth, stiff and bristly like porcupine-quills, which blackened his whole face.
In the shade of the high plane-trees, the barber-shops of the district, the open-air barbers as they were called, plied their trade. A couple of arm-chairs with rush-seats and arms made shiny by use, a portable furnace on which boiled the pot of water, towels of doubtful colour, and nicked razors which sc.r.a.ped the hard skin of the customers with raspings that made you shiver, const.i.tuted all the stock-in-trade of those open-air establishments.
Clumsy boys who aspired to be apprentices in the barber-shops of the town were there learning how to use their arms; and while they learned by inflicting cuts or by covering the victims" heads with clips and bald-spots, the master conversed with the customers on the promenade-bench or read the newspaper aloud to the group who listened impa.s.sively.
As for those who sat on the chair of torment, a piece of hard soap was nibbed over their jaws, until the lather came. Then the cruel razor, and cuts endured stoically by the customer, whose face was tinged with blood. A little further on resounded the enormous scissors in continuous movement pa.s.sing back and forth over the round head of some vain youth, who was left shaved like a poodle; the height of elegance, with a long lock falling over the brow, and half the head behind carefully cropped.
Batiste, swallowed up in the rush-chair, listened with closed eyes to the head-barber as he read in a nasal and monotonous voice, and commented and glossed like a man well versed in public affairs. His shave resulted quite fortunately: all he got was three sc.r.a.pes and a cut on his ear. Other times there had been more. He paid his half-real and departed; and entered the city through the Serranos gate.
Two hours later he came out again and sat down on the stone-bench among the group of customers to listen to the head-barber until the time of the market arrived.
The masters had just loaned him the small amount he needed to buy the horse. The important thing now was to have a good eye in making his choice; to keep his temper and not let himself be cheated by the cunning gipsies who pa.s.sed before him with their animals and went down the slope to the river-bed.
Eleven o"clock. The horse-market had evidently reached its moment of greatest animation. There came to Batiste"s ears the confused sound of something like an invisible ebullition; the neighs of horses and voices of men rose from the river-bed. He hesitated, hung back, like a man who wants to put off an important resolution, and at last decided to go down to the market.