Part 10

The first gipsy had gone back to his horse again, and was gazing at him from afar, and shaking the halter-rope as though he were calling him. Batiste slowly drew near him, pretending absent-mindedness, looking at the bridges over which passed the parasols of the women of the city, like many-coloured movable cupolas.

It was now noon. The sand of the river-bed grew hot; not the slightest breath of wind passed over the space between the railings. In that hot and sticky atmosphere, the sun beat down vertically penetrating the skin and burning the lips.

The gipsy advanced a few steps toward Batiste, offering him the end of the rope, as a kind of taking of possession.

"Neither your offer nor mine. Thirty, and God knows I get no profit on it. Thirty ... don't say no, or you'll make me wild. Come, put it there!"

Batiste took the rope and offered his hand to the vender who pressed it with much feeling. The bargain was concluded.

The former began to take from his sash all that plethora of savings which swelled out his stomach like an undigested meal: a bank-note that the master had loaned him, a few silver dollars, a handful of small change wrapped up in a paper-cone. When the count was completed, he could not get out of going with the gipsy to the shed to invite him to take a drink, and giving a few pennies to Monote for all his trottings.

"You're carrying off the treasure of the market. It's a lucky day for you, Mist' Bautista: you crossed yourself with your right hand, and the Virgin came out to look at you."

And he had to drink a second glass, the gipsy's treat, but at last, cutting short his torrent of offers and flatteries, he seized the halter of his new horse and helped by the obliging Monote, mounted on the steed's bare back and left the noisy market at a trot.

He departed well satisfied with the animal; he had not lost his day. He scarcely remembered poor Morrut, and he felt the pride of ownership when on the bridge and on the road, some one from the _huerta_ turned around to examine the white steed.

But his greatest satisfaction came when he passed before the house of Copa. He made the beast break into an arrogant little trot as though he were a horse of pedigree, and he saw how Pimentó and all the loafers of the _huerta_ came to the door to look after him; the wretches! Now they would be convinced that it was difficult to crush him, and that by his unaided efforts, he could defend himself. Now they saw that he had a new horse. If only the trouble within the home could be as easily adjusted!

His high, green wheat formed a kind of lake of restless waves by the roadside; the alfalfa-grass grew luxuriantly and had a perfume which made the horse's nostrils dilate. Batiste could not complain of his land, but it was inside the house that he feared to meet misfortune, eternal companion of his existence, waiting to dig its claws into him.

On hearing the trotting of the horse, Batistet came out with his bandaged head, and ran to hold the animal while his father dismounted. The boy waxed enthusiastic over the new animal. He caressed him, put his hands between his lips, and in his eagerness to get on his back, he put one foot on the hook, seized his tail and mounted with the agility of an Arab on his crupper.

Batiste entered the house. As white and clean as usual, with its shining tiles and all the furniture in its place, it seemed to be enveloped in the sadness of a clean and shining sepulchre.

His wife came out to the door of the room, her eyes red and swollen and her hair dishevelled, revealing in her tired aspect the long, sleepless nights she had spent.

The doctor had just gone away: as usual, little hope. His manner was forbidding, he spoke in half-words, and after examining the boy a little, he went out without leaving any new prescription. Only when he mounted his horse, he had said that he would return at night. And the child was the same, with a fever that consumed his little body, which grew thinner and thinner.

It was the same thing every day. They had grown accustomed now to that misfortune; the mother wept automatically, and the others went about their usual occupations with sad faces.

Then Teresa, who had a business head, asked her husband about the result of his journey; she wanted to see the horse; and even sad Roseta forgot her sorrows of love and inquired about the new acquisition.

All, large and small, went to the barnyard to see the horse in his stable; Batistet full of enthusiasm had brought him there. The child remained abandoned in the big bed of the bedroom where he tossed about, his eyes glazed with sickness, bleating weakly: "Mother! Mother!"

Teresa examined her husband's purchase with a grave expression, calculating in detail whether he was worth more than thirty dollars; the daughter sought out the differences between the new horse and Morrut of happy memory, and the two youngsters, with sudden confidence, pulled his tail and stroked his belly, and vainly begged their older brother to put them up on his white back.

Everybody was decidedly pleased with this new member of the family, who sniffed the manger in an odd way as though he found there some trace, some remote odour of his dead companion.

The whole family had dinner, and the excitement and enthusiasm over the new acquisition was such that several times Batistet and the little ones slipped away from the table to go and take a look in the stable, as though they feared the horse had sprouted wings and flown away.

The afternoon passed without anything happening. Batiste had to plough up a part of the land which he was keeping uncultivated, preparing the crop of garden-truck, and he and his son put the horse in harness, proud to see the gentleness with which he obeyed and the strength with which he drew the plough.

At nightfall, when they were about to return, Teresa called them, screaming from the farm-house door, and her voice was like that of one who is crying for help.

"Batiste!--Batiste!--Come quickly!"

And Batiste ran across the field, frightened by the tone of his wife's voice and by her wild actions; for she was tearing her hair and moaning.

The child was dying; you had only to see him to be convinced of it. Batiste entered the bedroom and leaning over the bed, felt a shudder of cold go over him, a sensation as though some one had just thrown a stream of cold water on him from behind. The poor little Bishop scarcely moved; he breathed stertorously and with difficulty; his lips grew purple; his eyes, almost closed, showed the glazed and motionless pupil; they were eyes which saw no more; and his little brown face seemed to be darkened by a mysterious sadness as though the wings of death cast their shadow on it. The only bright thing in that countenance was the blond hair streaming over the pillows like a skein of curly silk; the flame of the candle shone on it strangely.

The mother's groans were desperate; they were like the howlings of a maddened beast. Her son, weeping silently, had to check her, to hold her in order to keep her from throwing herself on the little one or dashing her head against the wall. Outside the youngsters were weeping, not daring to come in, as though the lamentations of the mother frightened them, and by the side of the bed stood Batiste, absorbed, clenching his fists, biting his lips, his eyes fixed on that little body, which it was costing so much anguish, so many shudders, to give up its hold on life. The calm of that giant, his dry eyes winking nervously, his head bent down toward his son, gave an even more painful impression than the lamentations of the mother.

Suddenly, he noticed that Batistet stood by his side; he had followed him, alarmed by his mother's cries. Batiste was angry when he found out that his son had left the horse alone in the middle of the field, and the boy, drying his eyes, ran out to bring the horse back to the stable.

In a short while, new cries awakened Batiste from his stupor.

"Father! Father!"

It was Batistet calling him from the door of the farm-house. The father, foreseeing some new misfortune, ran after him, not understanding his confused words. "The horse ... the poor white horse ... lay on the ground ... blood...."

And after a few steps he saw him lying on his haunches, still harnessed to the plough but trying in vain to rise, stretching out his neck and neighing dolorously, while from his side, near one of his forelegs, a black liquid trickled slowly, soaking the freshly opened furrows.

They had wounded him; perhaps he was going to die. God! A beast that he needed like his own life and which had cost him money borrowed from the master.

He looked around as though seeking the perpetrator of the deed. There was no one on the plain, which was growing purple in the twilight; nothing could be heard but the far-off rumbling of wheels, the rustling noise of the canebrakes, and the cries of people calling from one farm-house to another. In the nearby roads, on the paths, there was not a single soul.

Batistet tried to excuse himself to his father for negligence. While he was running toward the farm-house, he had seen a group of men coming along the road, gay people who were laughing and singing, returning doubtless from the inn. Perhaps it was they.

The father would not listen to anything more.... Pimentó, who else could it be? The hatred of the district had caused his son's death, and now that thief was killing his horse, guessing how much he needed it. God! Was that not enough to make a Christian turn to evil ways?

And he argued no more. Scarcely realizing what he was doing, he returned to the farm-house, seized his musket from behind the door, and ran out, mechanically opening the breech to see if the two barrels were loaded.

Batistet remained near the horse, trying to staunch the blood with the bandage from his own head. He was fear-stricken when he saw his father running along the road with his musket cocked, longing to give vent to his rage by slaying.

It was terrible to see that big, quiet, slow man in whom the wild beast, tired of being daily harassed, was now awakened. In his bloodshot eyes burned a murderous light; all his body trembled with anger, that terrible anger of the peaceful man who, when he passes the boundaries of gentleness, becomes ferocious.

Like a furious wild boar, he entered the fields, trampling down the plants, jumping over the irrigation streams, breaking off the canes; if he diverged from the road, it was only to reach Pimentó's farm more quickly.

Some one was at the door. The blindness of anger and the twilight shadows prevented him from distinguishing if it was a man or a woman, but he saw how the person with one leap sprang in and closed the door suddenly, frightened by that vision on the point of raising his gun and firing.

Batiste stopped before the closed door of the farm-house:

"Pimentó!... Thief! Come out!"

And his voice amazed him as though it was another's.

It was a voice which was trembling and shrill, high-pitched and suffocated by anger.

No one answered. The door remained closed; closed the windows and the three loop-holes at the top which lighted the upper story, the _cambra_, where the crops were kept.

The scoundrel was probably gazing at him through some crack, perhaps even cocking his gun to fire some treacherous shot from one of the high small windows. And instinctively, with that foresight of the Moor always alert in suspecting all kinds of evil tricks of the enemy, he hid behind the trunk of a giant fig-tree which cast its shade over Pimentó's house.

The latter's name resounded ceaslessly in the silence of the twilight accompanied by all kinds of insults.

"Come down! You coward! Come out, you thug!"

And the farm-house remained silent and closed, as though it had been abandoned.

Batiste thought he heard a woman's stifled cries; the noise of a struggle; something which made him suppose a fight was going on between poor Pepeta and Pimentó, whom she was trying to prevent from going out to answer the insults; but after that he heard nothing, and his insults reverberated in a silence which made him desperate.

This infuriated him more than if the enemy had shown himself. He felt himself going mad. It seemed to him that the mute house was mocking him, and abandoning his hiding-place, he threw himself against the door, striking it with the butt of his gun.

The timbers trembled with the pounding of the infuriated giant. He wished to vent his rage on the dwelling, since he could not annihilate the master, and not only did he beat the door, but he also struck his gun against the walls, dislodging enormous pieces of plaster. Several times, he even raised the weapon to his face, wishing to fire his two shots at the two little windows of the _cambra_, and was deferred from this only by his fear that he would remain disarmed.

His anger increased; he roared forth insults; his bloodshot eyes could scarcely see; he staggered like a drunken man. He was almost on the point of falling to the ground in a fit of apoplexy, agonized with anger, choked by fury, when suddenly the red clouds which surrounded him tore themselves apart, his fury gave way to weakness, he saw all his misfortune, felt himself crushed; his anger, broken by the terrible tension, vanished, and Batiste, amidst the torrent of insults, felt his voice grow stifled till it became a moan, and at last he burst out crying.

And he stopped insulting Pimentó. He began gradually to retreat, till he reached the road, and sat down on a bank, his musket at his feet. There he wept and wept, feeling a great relief, caressed by the shadows of night which seemed to share his sorrow, for they became deeper, deeper, hiding his childish weeping.

How unfortunate he was! Alone against all! He would find the little fellow dead when he returned to the farm; the horse which was his livelihood made useless by those traitors; trouble coming on him from every direction, surging up from the roads, from the houses, from the cane-brakes, profiting by all occasions to wound him and his; and he defenceless, could not protect himself from these enemies who vanished the moment, weary of suffering, he tried to turn on them.

Lord! what had he done to deserve such sufferings? Was he not an honest man?

He felt himself more and more crushed by grief. Unable to move he remained seated on the bank; his enemies might come; he had not even the strength to pick up the musket that lay at his feet.

Over the road resounded the slow tolling of a bell which filled the darkness with mysterious vibrations. Batiste thought of his little boy, of the poor "Bishop" who probably had died by now. Perhaps that sweet chime was made by the angels who came down from heaven to bear the child's soul away; and who unable to find his farm were flying over the _huerta_. If only the others did not remain, those who needed the strength of his arm to support them!... The poor man longed for annihilation; he thought of the happiness of leaving down there on that bank, that ugly body, the life of which it cost him so much to sustain, and embracing the innocent little soul of his boy, of flying away like the blessed ones whom he had seen guided by angels in the paintings of the church.

The chimes seemed to approach and dark figures which his tear-wet eyes could not distinguish passed by on the road. He felt some one touch him with the end of a stick and, raising his head, he saw a solitary figure, a kind of spectre leaning toward him.

And he recognized old Tomba, the only one of the _huerta_ to whom he owed no suffering.

The shepherd, considered as a sorcerer, possessed the amazing intuition of the blind. Scarcely had he recognized Batiste when he seemed to understand all his misfortune. He felt with his stick the musket lying at his feet, and turned his head, as though looking for Pimentó's farm in the darkness.

He spoke slowly, with a quiet sadness, like a man accustomed to the miseries of a world which he must soon leave. He divined that Batiste was weeping.

"My son ... my son...."

He had expected everything that had occurred. He had warned him the first day when he saw him settled on the accursed lands. They would bring him misfortune.

He had just passed by Batiste's farm and had seen lights through the open door ... he had heard cries of despair; the dog was howling ... the little boy had died, hadn't he? And he yonder, thinking he was seated on a bank, when in reality he sat with one foot in prison. Thus men are lost and their families broken up. He would end with some mad and foolish murder, like poor Barret, and would die like him, in prison. It was inevitable; those lands were cursed by the poor and could give forth only accursed fruits.

And muttering his terrible prophecies, the shepherd went his way behind his sheep on the village road, advising poor Batiste to leave also, and go away, very far away, where he could earn his bread without having to struggle against the hatred of the poor. And now invisible, shrouded in the shadows, Batiste still heard his slow, sad voice which made him shudder:

"Believe me, my son ... they will bring you misfortune!"

VIII

Batiste and his family did not realize how the unheard-of, unexpected event began; who was the first who decided to pass the bridge that joined the road to the hated fields.

In the farm-house they were in no condition to notice such details. Exhausted with suffering, they saw that the people of the _huerta_ had suddenly begun to come to them, and they did not protest, for misfortune needs counsel, nor did they offer thanks for the unexpected impulse to approach.

The news of the little boy's death had been transmitted through all the neighbourhood with the strange swiftness with which all news spreads in the _huerta_, flying from farm to farm on the wings of scandal, which is the swiftest of all telegraphs.

Many slept poorly that night. It seemed as though the little boy, as he departed, had left a thorn fixed in the consciences of the neighbours. More than one woman tossed about in bed, disturbing with her restlessness her husband's sleep, making him protest indignantly. "But curse you! will you go to sleep?..." No, she couldn't; that child prevented her from sleeping. Poor little fellow! What would he tell the Lord when he reached Heaven?

All shared the responsibility of that death, but each one with hypocritical egotism attributed to his neighbour the chief blame for the bitter persecution whose consequences had fallen on the little fellow's head; each gossiping woman blamed her enemy for the deed. And at last she went to sleep with the intention of undoing all the evil done, of going in the morning to offer her aid to the family, of weeping over the poor child; and amid the mists of sleep they thought they saw Pascualet, as white and resplendent as an angel, looking with reproachful eyes at those who had been so hard with him and his family.

All the people of the neighbourhood rose meditating as to how they could approach and enter Batiste's house. It was an examination of conscience, an explosion of repentance which burst on the poor farm-house from every end of the plain.

It had scarcely dawned when two old women who lived in a neighbouring farm-house entered Batiste's home. The family, crushed with grief, felt almost no wonder at seeing those two women appear in the house which no one had entered for more than six months. They wanted to see the child, the poor little "Bishop," and entering the bedroom they gazed at him still lying there in the bed; the edge of the sheet pulled up to his chin scarcely outlining the shape of his body, his blond head inert and heavy on the pillow. The mother could only weep in her corner, all shrunken and crouched together, as small as a child, as though she were trying to annihilate herself and disappear.

After these women came others and still others; it was a stream of weeping old women who arrived from all parts of the plain; surrounding the bed, they kissed the little corpse and seemed to take possession of him as their own, leaving Teresa and her daughter aside; the latter, exhausted by lack of sleep and weeping, seemed imbecile as they hung their red and tear-wet faces on their breasts.

Batiste, seated in a rush-chair, in the middle of the farm-house, gazed stupidly at that procession of people who had so ill-treated him. He did not hate them, but neither did he feel gratitude. He had come forth from the crisis of the day before crushed, and he gazed at all this with indifference, as though the farm-house were not his, as though the poor little fellow on the bed were not his son.

Only the dog curling up at his feet seemed to remember and feel hatred: he sniffed hostilely at all the procession of petticoats that came and went, and growled as though he wanted to bite and only refrained from doing so in order not to displease his masters.

The young people shared the dog's resentment. Batistet scowled at all those old women who had made fun of him so often when he passed before their houses, and he took refuge in the stable so as not to lose sight of the poor horse, whom he was curing according to the instructions of the veterinary, called in the night before. He was very fond of his little brother; but death has no remedy, and what he was anxious about now was that the horse should not be permanently lame.

The two little ones, pleased in their hearts at a misfortune which attracted to their house the attention of the whole plain, kept watch over the door, barring the way to the small boys who like bands of sparrows arrived by all roads and paths with morbid and excited curiosity to see the little body of the dead child. Now _their_ turn had come; now _they_ were the masters. And with the courage of those who are in their own homes, they threatened and drove away some and let others enter, giving them their favour according to the treatment they had received from them in the bloody vicissitudes of their peregrinations on their way home from school.... Rascals! There were even some who insisted on entering after having played a part in the battle during which poor Pascualet had fallen into the canal, thus catching the illness which had been his death.

The appearance of a weak, pale little woman seemed to bring suddenly on the whole family a host of painful recollections. It was Pepeta, Pimentó's wife! Even she came!

An impulse of protestation came over both Batiste and his wife. But to what purpose? Welcome, and if she entered to enjoy their misfortune, she could laugh as much as she wished. There they were all inert, crushed by grief. God, the all-seeing, would give to every one his deserts.

But Pepeta went straight to the bed, pushing the other women aside. She bore in her arms an enormous bunch of flowers and leaves which she spread out upon the bed. The first perfumes of the nascent springtime spread through the room which smelled of medicine, and in whose heavy atmosphere insomnia and sighs of desperation seemed to be inhaled.

Pepeta, the poor beast of burden, dead for maternity though married with the hope of becoming a mother, lost her calm on seeing that little marble face, framed in the turned-back hair as in a nimbus of gold.

"My son!... my poor little boy!"

And she wept with all her soul, as she bent over the little corpse, barely grazing with her lips the pale, cold brow, as though she feared to awaken him.

On hearing her sobs, Batiste and his wife raised their heads in astonishment. They knew now that she was a good woman: _he_ was the bad one. And a mother's and father's gratitude shone in their eyes.

Batiste even trembled when he saw how poor Pepeta embraced Teresa and her daughter, and mingled her tears with theirs. No; here was no duplicity. She herself was a victim; that was why she could understand the misfortunes of others who were also victims.