Part 4

The farmer came forth from the prison as thin as a mummy, and was conducted to Ceuta, where he died after a few years.

His family scattered; disappearing like a handful of straw in the wind.

The daughters, one after the other, left the families which had taken them in, and went to Valencia to earn their living as servants; and the poor widow, tired of troubling others with her infirmities, was taken to the hospital, and died there in a short time.

The people of the _huerta_, with that facility which every one displays in forgetting the misfortune of others, scarcely ever spoke of the terrible tragedy of old Barret, and then only to wonder what had become of his daughters.

But nobody forgot the fields and the farm-house, which remained exactly as on the day when the judge ejected the unfortunate farmer from them.

It was a silent agreement of the whole district; an instinctive conspiracy which few words prepared but in which the very trees and roads seemed to have a part.

Pimentó had given expression to it the very day of the catastrophe. We will see the fine fellow who dares take possession of those lands!

And all the people of the _huerta_, even the women and children, seemed to answer with their glances of mute understanding. Yes; they would see.

The parasitic plants, the thistles, began to spring up from the accursed land which old Barret had stamped upon and cut down with his sickle on that last night, as though he had a presentiment that he would die in prison through its fault.

The sons of Don Salvador, men as rich and avaricious as their father, cried poverty because this piece of land remained unproductive.

A farmer who lived in another district of the _huerta_, a man who pretended to be a bully and never had enough land, was tempted by their low price, and tackled these fields which inspired fear in all.

He set out to work the land with a gun on his shoulder; he and his farm-hands laughed among themselves at the isolation in which the neighbours left them; the farm-houses were closed to them as they passed, and hostile glances followed from a distance.

The tenant, having the presentiment of an ambush, was vigilant. But his caution served him to no purpose. As he was leaving the fields alone one afternoon, before he had even finished breaking up the ground, two musket-shots were fired at him by some invisible aggressor, and he came forth miraculously uninjured by the handful of birdshot which passed close to his ear.

No one was found in the fields,--not even a fresh foot-print. The sharpshooter had fired from some canal, hidden behind the cane-brake.

With enemies such as these, one has no chance to fight, and on the same night, the Valencian delivered the keys of the farm-house to its masters.

One should have heard the sons of Don Salvador. Was there no law or security for property, ... nor for anything?

No doubt Pimentó was the instigator of this attack. It was he who was preventing these fields from being cultivated. So the rural police arrested the bully of the _huerta_, and took him off to prison.

But when the moment of taking oath arrived, all of the district filed by before the judge declaring the innocence of Pimentó, and from these cunning rustics not one contradictory word could be forced.

One and all told the same story. Even failing old women who never left their farm-houses declared that on that day, at the very hour when the two reports were heard, Pimentó was in a tavern of Alboraya, enjoying a feast with his friends.

Nothing could be done with these people of imbecile expression and candid looks, who lied with such composure as they scratched the back of their heads. Pimentó was set free, and a sigh of triumph and of satisfaction came from all the houses.

Now the proof was given: now it was known that the cultivation of these lands was paid for with men's lives.

The avaricious masters would not yield. They would cultivate the land themselves. And they sought day-labourers among the long-suffering and submissive people, who, smelling of coarse sheep-wool and poverty, and driven by hunger, descended from the ends of the province, from the mountainous frontiers of Aragon, in search of work.

The _huerta_ pitied the poor _churros_.[F] Unfortunate men! They wanted to earn a day's pay; what guilt was theirs? And at night, as they were leaving with their hoes over the shoulder, there was always some good soul to call to them from the door of the tavern of Copa. They made them enter, drink, talked to them confidentially with frowning faces but with the paternal and good-natured tone of one who counsels a child to avoid danger; and the result was that on the following day these docile _churros_, instead of going to the field, presented themselves en masse to the owners of the land.

"Master: we have come to get our pay."

All the arguments of the two old bachelors, furious at seeing themselves opposed in their avarice, were useless.

"Master," they responded to everything, "we are poor, but we were not born like dogs behind a barn."

And not only did they leave their work, but they passed the warning on to all their countrymen, to avoid earning a day's wages in those fields of Barret's as they would flee from the devil.

The owners of the land even asked for protection in the daily papers. And the rural police went out over the _huerta_ in pairs, stopping along the roads to surprise gestures and conversations, but always without results.

Every day they saw the same thing. The women sewing and singing under the vine-arbours; the men bending over in the fields, their eyes upon the ground, their active arms never resting; Pimentó, stretched out like a grand lord under the little wands of bird-lime, waiting for the birds, or torpidly and lazily helping Pepeta; in the tavern of Copa, a few old men, sunning themselves or playing cards. The countryside breathed forth peace, and honourable stolidity; it was a Moorish Arcadia. But those of the "_Union_" were on their guard; not a farmer wanted the land, not even gratuitously; and at last, the owners had to abandon their undertaking, let the weeds cover the place and the house fall into decay, while they hoped for the arrival of some willing man, capable of buying or working the farm.

The _huerta_ trembled with satisfaction, seeing how this wealth was lost, and the heirs of Don Salvador were being ruined.

It was a new and intense pleasure. Sometimes, after all, the will of the poor must triumph, and the rich must get the worst of it. And the hard bread seemed more savoury, the wine better, the work less burdensome, as they thought of the fury of the two misers, who with all their money had to endure the rustics of the _huerta_ laughing at them.

Furthermore, this patch of desolation and misery in the midst of the _vega_, served to make the other landlords less exacting. Taking this neighbourhood as an example, they did not increase their rents and even agreed to wait when the half year's rent was late in being paid.

Those desolate fields were the talisman which kept the dwellers of the _huerta_ intimately united, in continuous contact: a monument which proclaimed their power over the owners; the miracle of the solidarity of poverty against the laws and the wealth of those who were the lords of the land without working it or sweating over their fields.

All this, which they thought out confusedly, made them believe that on the day when the fields of old Barret should be cultivated, the _huerta_ would suffer all manner of misfortunes. And they did not expect, after a triumph of ten years, that any person would dare to enter those abandoned fields except old Tomba, a blind and gibbering shepherd, who in default of an audience daily related his deeds of prowess to his flock of dirty sheep.

Hence the exclamations of astonishment, the gestures of wrath, over all the _huerta_, when Pimentó published the news from field to field, from farm-house to farm-house, that the lands of Barret now had a tenant, a stranger, and that he ... he ... (whoever he might be), was here with all his family, installing himself without any warning, ... as if they were his own!

III

When he inspected the uncultivated land, Batiste told himself that here he would have work for some time.

Nor did he feel dismayed over the prospect. He was an energetic, enterprising man, accustomed to working hard to earn a livelihood, and there was hard work here, and plenty of it, furthermore, he consoled himself by remembering that he had been even worse off.

His life had been a continuous change of profession, always within the circle of rural poverty; but though he had changed his occupation every year, he had never succeeded in obtaining for his family the modest comfort which was his only aspiration.

When he first became acquainted with his wife, he was a millhand in the neighbourhood of Sagunto. He was then working like a dog (as he expressed it) to provide for his family; and the Lord rewarded his labours by sending him every year a child, all sons,--beautiful creatures who seemed to have been born with teeth, judging by the haste with which they deserted the mother's breast, and began to beg continually for bread.

The result was that in his search for higher wages, he had to give up the mill and become a teamster.

But bad luck pursued him. And yet no one tended the live stock and watched the road as well as he: though nearly dead from fatigue, he had never like his companions dared to sleep in the wagon, letting the beasts, guided by their instinct, find their own way: wakeful at all hours, he always walked beside the nag ahead to avoid the holes and the bad places. Nevertheless, if a wagon upset, it was always his; if an animal fell ill of the rains, it was of course one of Batiste's, in spite of the paternal care with which he hastened to cover the flanks of the horses with trappings of sackcloth, as soon as a few drops had fallen.

During some years of tiresome wanderings over highroads of the province, eating poorly, sleeping in the open, and suffering the torment of passing entire months away from his family, whom he adored with the concentrated affection of a rough and silent man, Batiste experienced only losses, and saw his position getting worse and worse.

His nags died, and he had to go into debt to buy others; the profit that he should have had from the continuous carrying of bags of skin bulged out with wine or oil, would disappear in the hands of hucksters and owners of carts, until the moment arrived when, seeing his impending ruin, he gave up the occupation.

Then he took some land near Sagunto; arid fields, red and eternally thirsty, in which the century-old carob-trees writhed their hollow trunks, and the olive-trees raised their round and dusty heads.

His life was one continuous battle with the drought, an incessant gazing at the sky; whenever a small dark cloud showed itself on the horizon, he trembled with fear.

It rained but little, the crops were bad for four consecutive years, and at last Batiste did not know what to do nor where to turn. Then, in a trip to Valencia, he made the acquaintance of the sons of Don Salvador, excellent gentlemen (the Lord bless them), who offered to let him use these beautiful fields rent-free for two years, until they could be brought back completely to their old condition.

He had heard rumours of what had happened at the farm-house; of the causes which had compelled the owner to keep these beautiful lands unproductive; but such a long time had elapsed! Furthermore, poverty has no ears; the fields suited him, and in them he would remain. What did he care for the story of don Salvador and old Barret?

All of which was scorned and forgotten as he looked over the land. And Batiste felt himself filled with sweet ecstasy at finding himself the cultivator of the fertile _huerta_, which he had envied so many times as he passed along the high-road of Valencia to Sagunto.

This was fine land; always green; of inexhaustible fertility, producing one harvest after another; the red water circulating at all hours like life-giving blood through the innumerable canals and irrigation trenches which furrowed its surface like a complicated network of veins and arteries; so fertile that entire families were supported by patches so small that they looked like green handkerchiefs. The dry fields off there near Sagunto reminded him of an inferno of drought, from which he fortunately had liberated himself.

Now he was sure that he was on the right road. To work! The fields were ruined; there was much work to be done; but when one is so willing! And this big, robust, muscular fellow, with the shoulders of a giant, closely cropped round head, and good-natured countenance supported by the heavy neck of a monk, extended his powerful arms, accustomed to raising sacks of flour and the heavy skin sacks of the teamster's trade, aloft in the air, and stretched himself.

He was so absorbed in his lands that he scarcely noticed the curiosity of his neighbours.

Restless heads appeared between the cane-brake; men, stretched out at full-length on the sloping banks, were watching him; even the women and the children of the adjoining _huertas_ followed his movements.

Batiste did not mind them. It was curiosity, the hostile expectation which recent arrivals always inspire. Well did he know what that was; they would get accustomed to it. Furthermore, perhaps they were interested in seeing how that desolate growth burned, which ten years of abandonment had heaped upon the fields of Barret.

And aided by his wife and children, he went about on the day after his arrival, burning up all the parasitic vegetation.

The shrubs writhed in the flames; they fell like live coals from whose ashes the loathsome vermin escaped all singed, and the farm-house seemed lost amid the clouds of smoke from these fires, which awakened silent anger in all the _huerta_.

The fields once cleared, Batiste without losing time proceeded to cultivate them. They were somewhat hard; but like an expert farmer, he planned to work them little by little, in sections, and marking out a plot near his farm-house, he began to break up the earth, aided by all his family.

The neighbours made sport of them with an irony which betrayed their irritation. A pretty family! They were gipsies, like those who sleep under the bridges. They lived in that old farm-house like shipwrecked sailors who are holding out in a ruined boat; plugging a hole here, shoring there, doing real wonders to sustain the straw roof, and distributing their poor furniture, carefully polished, in all the rooms which had been before the burrowing place of rats and vermin.

In their industry, they were like a nest of squirrels, unable to keep idle while the father was working. Teresa, the wife, and Roseta, the eldest daughter, with their skirts tucked in between their legs, and hoe in hand, dug with more zeal than day-labourers, resting only to throw back the locks of hair which kept straggling over their red, perspiring foreheads. The eldest son made continuous trips to Valencia with the rush-basket on his shoulder, carrying manure and rubbish which he piled up in two heaps like columns of honour at the entrance to the farm-house; and the three little tots, grave and laborious, as if they understood the situation of the family, went down on all fours behind the diggers, tearing up the hard roots of the burned shrubs from the earth.

This preparatory work lasted more than a week, the family sweating and panting from dawn till night.

Half of the land having been broken up, Batiste fenced in the plot and tilled it with the aid of the willing nag, which was like one of the family.

He had only to proceed to cultivate. They were then in Saint Martin's summer, the time of sowing, and the labourer divided the broken-up earth into three parts. The greater part was for wheat, a smaller patch for beans, and another part for fodder, for it would not do to forget Morrut, the dear old horse: well had he earned it.

And with the joy of those who discover a port after a hard voyage, the family proceeded to the sowing. The future was assured. The fields of the _huerta_ never failed; here bread for all the year would be forthcoming.

On the afternoon which completed the sowing, they saw coming over the adjoining road some sheep with dirty wool, which stopped timidly at the end of the field.

Behind them walked an old man, like dried up parchment, yellowish, with deep sunken eyes and a mouth surrounded by a circle of wrinkles. He was walking with firm steps, but with his shepherd's crook ahead of him, as though feeling his way along the road.

The family looked at him with attention; he was the only person who had ventured to approach the land within the two weeks they were here. On noticing the hesitation of the sheep, he shouted to them to go on.

Batiste went out to meet the old man; he could not pass through; the fields were now under cultivation. Did he not know?

Old Tomba had heard something, but during the two preceding weeks, he had taken out his flock to graze upon the rank grass in the ravine of Carraixet, without concerning himself about the fields. So indeed they now were cultivated?

And the old shepherd raised his head, and with his almost sightless eyes made an effort to see the bold man who dared to do that which was held to be impossible in all the _huerta_.

He was silent for a long while. Then at last he began to mutter sadly: Too bad. He had also been daring in his youth; he had liked to go counter to everything. But when the enemies are so many! Very bad! He had put himself into an awkward position. These lands, since the time of old Barret, had been accursed. He could take his, Tomba's, word for it; he was old and experienced; they would bring him misfortune.

And the shepherd called his flock and made them start out again along the road, but before departing, he threw back his cloak, raised his emaciated arms, and with a certain intonation characteristic of a seer who forecasts the future, or of a prophet who scents disaster, he cried to Batiste:

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

This encounter gave the _huerta_ another cause for anger.

Old Tomba could not bring his sheep back into those lands, after enjoying the peaceful use of their fodder for ten years!

Not a word was said as to the legitimacy of the refusal, inasmuch as the land was now under cultivation; they spoke only of the respect which the old shepherd deserved, a man who in his youth had "eaten up" the French alive, who had seen much of the world, and whose wisdom, demonstrated by half-spoken words and incoherent advice, inspired a superstitious respect among the people of the _huerta_.

After Batiste and his family saw the bosom of the earth well-filled with fertile seed, they began, for lack of work more pressing, to think of the house. The fields would do their duty; now the time had arrived to think about themselves.

And for the first time since his coming to the _huerta_, Batiste left his land for Valencia to load into his cart all the rubbish of the city which might be useful to him.

This man was like a lucky ant. The mounds started by Batiste increased considerably with the expeditions of the father. The heap of manure which formed a defensive screen before the farm-house, grew rapidly, and beyond, there was piling up a mound of hundreds of broken bricks, worm-eaten wood, broken-down doors, windows reduced to splinters, all the refuse of the demolished buildings of the city.

The people of the _huerta_ looked with astonishment at the dispatch and clever skill of these laborious ants as they worked to prepare their home.

The straw roof of the house stood erect again; some of the rafters of the roof, corroded by the rains, were reinforced, others substituted. A new layer of straw now covered the two hanging planes of the exterior; even the little crosses at the ends were supplanted by others which Batiste had daintily made with his clasp knife, decorating their corners with notched grooves: and in all the neighbourhood, there was not a roof which rose more trimly.

The neighbours, on noticing how Barret's house was improved when the roof was placed erect, saw in it something to mock and to challenge.

Then the work below was started. What ways and means of utilizing the rubbish of Valencia! The chinks disappeared, and the plastering of the walls being finished, the wife and daughters white-washed them a dazzling white. The door, new and painted blue, seemed to be the mother of all the little windows, which showed their four square faces of the same colour through the openings of the walls; under the vine-arbour, Batiste made a little enclosure paved with red bricks, so the women might sew there during the afternoon. The well, after a week of descents and laborious carryings, was cleared of all the rocks and the refuse with which the rascals of the _huerta_ had filled it for the last ten years, and its water, fresh and clear, began to rise once more in the mossy bucket, with joyful creakings of the pulley, which seemed to laugh at the district with the strident peals of laughter of a malicious old woman.

The neighbours chocked down their fury in silence. Thief! More than thief! A fine way to work! This man, in his robust arms, seemed to possess two magic wands that transformed all that he touched!

Two months had passed since his arrival, yet he had not left his land a half-dozen times; he was always there, his head between his shoulders, intoxicated with work. And the house of Barret began to present a smiling and coquettish aspect, such as it had never possessed in the days of its former master.

The corral, previously enclosed with rotting cane-brake, now had sides of pickets and clay painted white, along whose edges strutted the ruddy hens, and the cock, excited, shook his red comb. In the little square in front of the house, beds of morning-glories and climbing plants blossomed; a row of chipped jars painted blue served as flower-pots on the bench of red bricks; and through the half-open door, oh vain fellow! the new pitcher-shelf might be seen, with its enamelled tiling, and its glazed green pitchers, casting insolent reflections which blinded the eyes of the passerby who went along the adjoining road.

All the _huerta_ with increasing fury ran to Pimentó. "Could it possibly be permitted? What did the terrible husband of Pepeta think of doing?"

And Pimentó, scratching his forehead, listened to them with a certain confusion.

What was he going to do? He would say just two little words to this stranger who had set himself to cultivate that which was not his; he would give him a hint, a very serious hint, not to be a fool, but to let the land go, as he had no business there. But that accursed man would not come forth from his fields, and it would never do to go to him and threaten him in his own house. It would mean the giving of a foundation for that which must follow. He had to be cautious and watch till he came out. In short, a little patience. He was able to assure them that the man in question would not reap the wheat, nor gather the beans, nor anything which had been planted in the fields of Barret. That should be for the devil.

Pimentó's words calmed the neighbours, who followed the progress of the accursed family with attentive glances, wishing silently that the hour of their ruin would soon arrive.