Part 6

And he went ahead, and was welcomed by his dog, who leaped before him, and rubbed himself against his corduroy trousers.

In the door of the cabin stood his wife surrounded by the little ones, waiting impatiently, for the supper hour had already passed.

Batiste looked at the fields, and all the fury he had suffered an hour ago before the Tribunal of the Waters, returned at a stroke and like a furious wave flooded his consciousness.

His wheat was thirsty. He had only to see it; its leaves shrivelled, the green colour, before so lustrous, now of a yellow transparency. The irrigation had failed him; the turn of which Pimentó, with his sly and evil tricks, had robbed him, would not belong to him until fifteen days had passed, because the water was scarce; and on top of this misfortune all that damned string of pounds and _sous_ for a fine. Christ!

He ate without any appetite, telling his wife the while of the occurrence at the Tribunal.

Poor Teresa listened to her husband, pale with the emotion of the countrywoman who feels a pang in her heart when there must be a loosening of the knot of the stocking which guards the money in the bottom of the chest. Sovereign queen! They had determined to ruin them! What sorrow at the evening-meal!

And letting her spoon fall into the frying-pan of rice, she wept, swallowing her tears. Then she became red with sudden passion, looked out at the expanse of plain with she saw in front of her door, with its white farm-houses and its waves of green, and stretching out her arms, she cried: "Rascals! Rascals!"

The little folks, frightened by their father's scowl, and the cries of their mother, were afraid to eat. They looked from one to the other with indecision and wonder, picked at their noses to be doing something, and all of them ended by imitating their mother and weeping over the rice.

Batiste, agitated by the chorus of sobs, arose furiously, and almost kicked over the little table as he flung himself out of the house.

What an afternoon! The thirst of his wheat and the remembrance of the fine were like two fierce dogs tearing at his heart. When one, tired of biting him, was going to sleep, the other arrived at full speed and fixed his teeth in him.

He wanted to distract his thoughts, to forget himself in work, and he gave himself over with all his will to the task he had in hand, a pigsty which he was putting up in the corral.

But the work did not progress. He was suffocating between the mud-walls; he wanted to look at the fields, he was like those who feel the need to look upon their misfortune, to yield utterly and drink the cup of sorrow to the dregs. And with his hands full of clay, he came out from the farm-yard, and remained standing before the oblong patch of shrivelled wheat.

A few steps away, at the edge of the road, the murmuring canal brimmed with red water ran by.

The life-giving blood of the _huerta_ was flowing far away, for other fields whose masters did not have the misfortune of being hated; and here was his poor wheat, shrivelled, languishing, bowing its green head as if it were making signs to the water to come near and caress it with its cool kiss.

To poor Batiste, it seemed that the sun was burning hotter than on other days. The sun was at the horizon, yet the poor man imagined that its rays were vertical, and that everything was burning up.

His land was cracking open, it parted in tortuous grooves, forming a thousand mouths which vainly awaited a swallow of water.

Nor would the wheat hold its thirst until the next irrigation. It would die, it would become dried up, the family would not have bread; and besides so much misery, a fine on top of everything. And people even find fault if men go to ruin!

Furious he walked back and forth along the border of his oblong plot. Ah, Pimentó! Greatest of scoundrels! If there were no Civil Guards!

And like shipwrecked mariners, agonizing with hunger and thirst, who in their delirium see only interminable banquet-tables, and the clearest springs, Batiste confusedly saw fields of wheat whose stalks were green and straight, and the water entering, gushing from the mouths of the sloping-banks, extending itself with a luminous rippling, as if it laughed softly at feeling the tickling of the thirsty earth.

At the sinking of the sun, Batiste felt a certain relief, as though it had gone out forever, and his harvest was saved.

He went away from his fields, from his farm-house, and unconsciously, with slow steps, took the road below, toward the tavern of Copa. The thought of the rural police had left his mind, and he accepted the possibility of a meeting with Pimentó, who should not be very far away from the tavern, with a certain feeling of pleasure.

Along the borders of the road, there were coming toward him swift rows of girls, hamper on arm, and skirts flying, returning from the factories of the city.

Blue shadows were spreading over the _huerta_; in the background, over the darkening mountains, the clouds were growing red with the splendour of some far distant fire; in the direction of the sea, the first stars were trembling in the infinite blue; the dogs were barking mournfully; and with the monotonous singing of the frogs and the crickets, was mingled the confused creaking of invisible wagons, departing over all the roads of the immense plain.

Batiste saw his daughter coming, separated from all the girls, walking with slow steps. But not alone. It seemed to him that she was talking with a man who followed in the same direction as herself, although somewhat apart, as the betrothed always walk in the _huerta_, for whom approach is a sign of sin.

When he saw Batiste in the middle of the road, the man slackened his pace and remained at a distance as Roseta approached her father.

The latter remained motionless, as he wanted the stranger to advance so that he might recognize him.

"Good night, Señor Batiste."

It was the same timid voice which had saluted him at midday. The grandson of old Tomba. That scamp seemed to have nothing to do but wander over the roads, and greet him, and thrust himself before his eyes with his bland sweetness.

He looked at his daughter, who grew red under the gaze, and lowered her eyes.

"Go home; home, ... I will settle with you!"

And with all the terrible majesty of the Latin father, the absolute master of his children, and more inclined to inspire fear than affection, he started after the tremulous Roseta, who, as she drew near the farm, anticipated a sure cudgeling.

She was mistaken. At that moment the poor father had no other children in the world but his crops, the poor sick wheat, shrivelling, drying, and crying out to him, begging for a swallow in order not to die.

And of this he thought while his wife was getting the supper ready. Roseta was bustling about pretending to be busy, in order not to attract attention and expecting from one moment to the next an outburst of terrible anger. But Batiste, seated before the little dwarfish table, surrounded by all the young people of his family, who were gazing greedily by the candle-light at the earthenware dish, filled with smoking hake and potatoes, went on thinking of his fields.

The woman was still sighing, pondering the fine; making comparisons, without doubt, between the fabulous sum which they were going to wrest from her, and the ease with which the entire family were eating.

Batiste, contemplating the voracity of his children, scarcely ate. Batistet, the eldest son, even appropriated with feigned abstraction of the pieces of bread belonging to the little ones. To Roseta, fear gave a fierce appetite.

Never until then did Batiste comprehend the load which was weighing upon his shoulders. These mouths which opened to swallow up the meagre savings of the family would be without food if that land outside should dry.

And all for what? On account of the injustice of men, because there are laws made to molest honest workmen.... He should not stand this. His family before everything else. Did he not feel capable of defending his own from even greater dangers? Did he not owe them the duty of maintaining them? He was capable of becoming a thief in order to give them food. Why then, did he have to submit, when he was not trying to steal, but to give life to his crops, which were all his own?

The image of the canal, which at a short distance was dragging along its murmuring supply for others, was torturing him. It enraged him that life should be passing by at his very door without his being able to profit by it, because the laws wished it so.

Suddenly he arose, like a man who has adopted a resolution and who in order to fulfil it, stamps everything under foot.

"To irrigate! To irrigate!"

The woman was terrified, for she quickly guessed all the danger of the desperate resolution. For Heaven's sake, Batiste!... They would impose upon him a greater fine; perhaps the Tribunal, offended by his rebellion, would take the water away from him forever! He ought to consider it.... It was better to wait.

But Batiste had the enduring wrath of phlegmatic and slow men, who, when they once lose their composure, are slow to recover it.

"Irrigate! Irrigate!"

And Batistet, gaily repeating the words of his father, picked up the large hoes, and started from the house, followed by his sister and the little ones.

They all wished to take part in this work, which seemed like a holiday.

The family felt the exhilaration of a people which, by a revolution, recovers its liberty.

They approached the canal, which was murmuring in the shade. The immense plain was lost in the blue shadow, the cane-brake undulated in dark and murmuring masses, and the stars twinkled in the heavens.

Batiste went into the canal knee-deep, lowering the gates which held the water, while his son, his wife and even his daughter attacked the sloping banks with the hoes, opening gaps, through which the water gushed.

All the family felt a sensation of coolness and of well-being.

The earth sung merrily with a greedy glu-glu, which touched the heart. "Drink, drink, poor thing!" And their feet sank in the mud, as bent over they went from one side to the other of the field, looking to see if the water had reached every part.

Batiste muttered with the cruel satisfaction which the joy of the prohibited produces. What a load was lifted from him! The Tribunal might come now, and do whatever it wished. His field had drunk; this was the main thing.

And as with the acute hearing of a man accustomed to the solitude, he thought that he perceived a certain strange noise in the neighbouring cane-brake, he ran to the farm, and returned immediately, holding a new shotgun.

With the weapon over his arm, and his finger on the trigger, he stood more than an hour close to the bars of the canal.

The water did not flow ahead; it spread itself out in the fields of Batiste, which drank and drank with the thirst of a dropsical man.

Perhaps those down below were complaining; perhaps Pimentó, notified as an _atandador_, was prowling in the vicinity, outraged at this insolent breach of the law.

But here was Batiste, like a sentinel of his harvest, a hero made desperate by the struggle of his family, guarding his people who were moving about in the field, extending the irrigation; ready to deal a blow at the first who might attempt to raise the bars, and re-establish the water's course.

So fierce was the attitude of this great fellow who stood out motionless in the midst of the canal; in this black phantom there might be divined such a resolution of shooting at whoever might present himself, that no one ventured forth from the adjoining cane-brake, and the fields drank for an hour without any protest.

And this is what is yet stranger: on the following Thursday the _atandador_ did not have him summoned before the Tribunal of the Waters.

The _huerta_ had been informed that in the ancient farm-house of Barret the only object of worth was a double-barreled shotgun, recently bought by the intruder, with that African passion of the Valencian, who willingly deprives himself of bread in order to have behind the door of his house a new weapon which excites envy and inspires respect.

V

Every morning, at dawn, Roseta, Batiste's daughter, leaped out of bed, her eyes heavy with sleep, and after stretching out her arms in graceful writhings which shook all her body of blonde slenderness, opened the farm-house door.

The pulley of the well creaked, the ugly little dog, which passed the night outside the house, leaped close to her skirts, barking with joy, and Roseta, in the light of the last stars, cast over her face and hands a pail of cold water drawn from that round and murky hole, crowned at the top by thick clumps of ivy.

Afterward, in the light of the candle, she moved about the house preparing for her journey to Valencia.

The mother followed her without seeing her from the bed with all kinds of suggestions. She could take away what was left from the supper: that with three sardines which she would find on the shelf would be sufficient. And take care not to break the dish as she did the other day. Ah! And she should not forget to buy thread, needles and some sandals for the little one. Destructive child!... She would find the money in the drawer of the little table.

And while the mother turned over in bed, sweetly caressed by the warmth of the bedroom, planning to sleep a half-hour more close to the enormous Batiste, who snored noisily, Roseta continued her evolutions. She placed her poor meal in a basket, passed a comb through her light-blond hair, which looked as though the sun had absorbed its colour, and tied the handkerchief under her chin. Before going out, she looked with the tender solicitousness of an elder sister, to see if the little ones who slept on the floor, all in the same room, were well covered. They lay there in a row from the eldest to the youngest, from the overgrown Batistet to the little tot who as yet could hardly talk, like a row of organ pipes.

"Good-bye, until tonight!" shouted the brave girl, and passing her arm through the handle of the basket, she closed the door of the farm-house, placing the key underneath.

It was already daylight. In the bluish light of dawn the procession of workers could be seen passing over the paths and roads, all walking in the same direction, drawn by the life of the city.

Groups of graceful spinning-mill girls passed by, marching with an even step, swinging with jaunty grace their right arms which cut the air like a strong oar, and all screaming in chorus every time that any strapping young fellow saluted them from the neighbouring fields with coarse jests.

Roseta walked to the city alone. Well did the poor child know her companions, daughters and sisters of those who hated her family so bitterly.

Several of them were working in the factory, and the poor little yellow-haired girl, making a show of courage more than once, had to defend herself by sheer scratching. Taking advantage of her carelessness, they threw dirty things into her lunch-basket; made her break the earthenware dish of which she was reminded so many times, and never passed near her in the mill without trying to push her over the smoking kettle where the cocoon was being soaked while they called her a pauper, and applied similar eulogies to her and her family.

On the way she fled from them as from a throng of furies, and felt safe only when she was inside the factory, an ugly old building close to the market, whose façades, painted in water-colours the century before, still preserved between peeling paint and cracks certain groups of rose-coloured legs, and profiles of bronzed colour, remnants of medallions, and mythological paintings.

Of all the family, Roseta was the most like her father: a fury for work, as Batiste said of himself. The fiery vapour of the caldron where the cocoon is soaked mounted about her head, burning her eyes; but, in spite of this, she was always in her place, fishing in the depths of the boiling water for the loosened ends of those capsules of soft silk of the mellow colour of caramel, in whose interior the laborious worm, the larva of precious exudation, had just perished for the offence of creating a rich dungeon for its transformation into the butterfly.

Throughout the large building reigned the din of work, deafening and tiresome for the daughters of the _huerta_, who were used to the calm of the immense plain, where the voice carries a great distance. Below roared the steam-engine, giving forth frightful roaring sounds which were transmitted through the multiple tubing: pulleys and wheels revolved with an infernal din, and as though there were not noise enough, the spinning-mill girls, according to traditional custom, sang in chorus with a nasal voice, the _Padre nuestro_, the _Ave Maria_, and the _Gloria Patri_, with the same musical interludes as the chorus which roamed about the _huerta_ Sunday mornings at dawn.

This did not prevent them from laughing as they sang, nor from insulting each other in an undertone between prayers, and threatening each other with four long scratches on coming out, for these dark-complexioned girls, enslaved by the rigid tyranny which rules in the farmer's family, and obliged by hereditary conventions to lower their eyes in the presence of men, when gathered together without restraint were regular demons, and took delight in uttering everything they had heard from the cart-drivers and labourers on the roads.

Roseta was the most silent and industrious of them all. In order not to distract her attention from her work, she did not sing; she never provoked quarrels and she learned everything with such facility, that in a few weeks she was earning three reals, almost the maximum for the day's work, to the great envy of the others.

At the lunch-hour these bands of dishevelled girls sallied forth from the factory to gobble up the contents of their earthen-ware dishes. As they formed a loafing group on the side-walk or in the immediate porches, and challenged the men with insolent glances to speak to them, only falsely scandalized, to fire back shameless remarks in return, Roseta remained in a corner of the mill, seated on the floor with two or three good girls who were from another _huerta_, from the right side of the river, and who did not care a rap for the story of old Barret and the hatred of their companions.

During the first weeks, Roseta saw with a certain terror the arrival of dusk, and with it, the hour for departure.

Fearing her companions, who took the same road as herself, she stayed in the factory for a time, letting them set out ahead like a cyclone, with scandalous bursts of laughter, flauntings of skirts, daring vulgarisms, and the odour of health, of hard and rugged limbs.

She walked lazily through the streets of the city in the cold twilight of winter, making purchases for her mother, stood open-mouthed before the shop windows which began to be illumined, and at last, passing over the bridge, she entered the dark narrow alleys of the suburbs to set forth upon the road of Alboraya.

So far, all was well. But after she came to the dark _huerta_ with its mysterious noises, its dark and alarming forms which passed close to her saluting with a deep "Good night," fear set in, and her teeth chattered.

And it was not that the silence and the darkness intimidated her. Like a true daughter of the country, she was accustomed to these. If she had been certain that she would encounter no one on the road, it would have given her confidence. In her terror, she never thought, as did her companions, of death, nor of witches and phantasms; it was the living who disturbed her.

She recalled with growing fear certain stories of the _huerta_ that she had heard in the factory; the fear that the little girls had of Pimentó, and other bullies who congregated in the tavern of Copa: heartless fellows who pinched the girls wherever they could, and pushed them into the canals, or made them fall behind the haylofts. And Roseta, who was no longer innocent after entering the factory, gave free rein to her imagination, till it reached the utmost limits of the horrible; and she saw herself assassinated by some one of these monsters, her stomach ripped up and soaked in blood, like those children of the legends of the _huerta_ whose fat sinister and mysterious murderers extracted and used in making wonderful salves and potions for the rich.

In the twilight of winter, dark and oftentimes rainy, Roseta passed over more than half of the road all a tremble. But the most cruel crisis, the most terrible obstacle was almost at the end, and close to the farm--the famous tavern of Copa.

Here was the den of the wild beast. This was the most frequented and the brightest bit of road. The sound of voices, the outbursts of laughter, the thrumming of a guitar, and couplets of songs with loud shouting came forth from the door which, like the mouth of a furnace, cast forth a square of reddish light over the black road, in which grotesque shadows moved about. And nevertheless, the poor mill girl, on arriving near this place, stopped undecided, trembling like the heroines of the fairy-tales before the den of the ogre, ready to set out through the fields in order to make a détour around the rear of the building, to sink into the canal which bordered the road, and to slip away hidden behind the sloping banks; anything rather than to pass in front of this red gullet which gave forth the din of drunkenness and brutality.

Finally she decided; made an effort of will like one who is going to throw himself over a high cliff, and passed swiftly before the tavern, along the edge of the canal, with a very light step, and the marvellous poise which fear lends.

She was a breath, a white shadow which did not give the turbid eyes of the customers of Copa time to fix themselves upon it.

And the tavern passed, the child ran and ran, believing that some one was just behind her, expecting to feel the tug of his powerful paw at her skirt.

She was not calm until she heard the barking of the dog at the farm-house, that ugly animal, who by way of antithesis no doubt, was called The Morning Star, and who came bounding up to her in the middle of the road with bounds and licked her hands.

Roseta never told those at home of the terrors encountered on the road. The poor child composed herself on entering the house, and answered the questions of her anxious mother quietly, meeting the situation valorously by stating that she had come home with some companions.

The spinning-mill girl did not want her father to come out nights to accompany her on the road. She knew the hatred of the neighbourhood: the tavern of Copa with its quarrelsome people inspired her with fear.

And on the following day she returned to the factory to suffer the same fears upon returning, enlivened only by the hope that the spring would soon come with its longer days and its luminous twilights, which would permit her to return to the house before it grew dark.

One night, Roseta experienced a certain relief. While she was still close to the city, a man came out upon the road and began to walk at the same pace as herself.

"Good evening!"

And while the mill-girl was walking over the high bank which bordered the road, the man walked below, among the deep cuts opened by the wheels of the carts, stumbling over the red bricks, chipped dishes, and even pieces of glass with which farsighted hands wished to fill up the holes of remote origin.

Roseta showed no disquietude. She had recognized her companion even before he saluted her. It was Tonet, the nephew of old Tomba, the shepherd: a good boy, who served as an apprentice to a butcher of Alboraya, and at whom the mill-girls laughed when they met him upon the road, taking delight in seeing how he blushed, and turned his head away at the least word.