THEMAYFLOWERPUTS TO SEA
Pascualo was on his way home from an afternoon in Valencia; but on reaching the Glorieta, he stopped in front of the Old Customs House.
It was six o'clock. The sun was tinting the enormous front of the building an orange gold, softening the colors of the greenish black smudge that the rain had left on the mansard windows. The statue of Charles II seemed to be melting into the mellow bluish transparency of the light-filled atmosphere. Through the gratings drifted the hum of a busy hive—voices calling, songs coming from a distance, the metallic click of scissors as the workers picked them up or let them fall.
Out through the big entrance the girls from the nearest floors were beginning to pour in animate throng—a horde of Indian shawls, a medley of strong arms with sleeves rolled above the elbow, an army of lunch-boxes slung over shoulders, a pitter-patter of feet, hopping in short quick steps like sparrows, a hub-bub of good-nights, of greetings, of parting gibes. The promenade for the guards, where a few drinking fountains were the only obstructions, was one seething mass of feminine youth.
The Rector, attracted by that curious riot of tobacco-girls, had paused on the sidewalk across the street, among the newspaper stands. A strange fascination it had for him, that moving mass of white handkerchiefs drawn tightly over pretty foreheads! What a bedlam! A regiment of females in mutiny! A nunnery gone mad! A meteor-shower of black eyes, that stared at a man boldly, immodestly, stripping the clothes off one, it seemed, with mocking effrontery!
And who was this coming in his direction? Roseta had spied him, and deserting a party of girls, was tripping over toward him. Her companions were to wait for friends from another floor, and they might be some minutes in starting. Was he going home? All right! They would go together! Roseta hated just standing around!
They took the Grao road, Pascualo moving his sea-legs frantically to keep up with that devil of a girl who never walked but she ran, though with an attractive swaying of her body which made her skirt go up and down like the marking buoy in a yacht race. Shouldn't he carry her lunch-box for her? Thanks! She was used to having it on her arm. Didn't think she could walk so fast without it!
By the time they were at the Sea Bridge, the captain was on the subject of his boat, as usual. ThatMayflowerof his could even make him forget he had a Dolores and a Pascualet! The next morning thebòu-fishing began, and all the vessels would go out. "But she's queen of the lot! We hitched the oxen on to her yesterday, and now she's in the water, anchored with the other boats in the harbor. But there's no mistaking her, girl! She strikes your eye like aseñoritain the middle of a bunch of beach-trailers!" He had been in town to get a few odds and ends still lacking to his equipment. Now he had a dollar to bet that not one of the rich men in the Cabañal, who sat around at home and got the best of every load of fish without lifting a finger, could show a craft half the witch theMayflowerwas ... not half.
But the end which comes to everything in this world came also to the store of nice things the Rector had to say, in his enthusiasm, about his boat. By the time the pair had reached the bakery of Figuetes, Pascualo had lapsed into his normal taciturnity, and Roseta held the floor, dealing with the forewomen in the tobacco factory in terms that such cattle deserved.
"Work the life out of you, they do! It was all I could do to keep myself from waiting outside and pulling the topknot of that wench as she came out! I don't mind about myself so much. Mama and me can get along on nothing almost. But it's different with others of us. Why, some of those girls have to sweat like niggers, to feed some loafer of a husband, and a houseful of brats that wait at the door at night with their mouths wide open to swallow half the bread in town! What I don't see is how, in conditions like that, there's a woman left in the world who can laugh. For instance ..." And the golden-haired Diana, so insensible to the allurements of men, but reared withal among the filthy-mouthed ragamuffins of the seashore, struck an air of stern and serious modesty, and recounted in words of disconcerting directness, but with a rippling sweetness of tone that seemed to wipe the foulness of such language from her cheery lips, the story of a shopmate of hers at home with a broken arm, after a beating from her husband, who had caught her in flagrant wrong-doing with a friend of his! "I wouldn't call her much of a woman, I wouldn't!" and the virtuous Roseta pouted the pout of a virgin who knows all there is to know. "What a disgrace! And she had four children—four!"
The Rector smiled a ferocious smile. "So she got out of it with a broken arm, did she! I'd have broken her neck, I would! No half-way business with these women that don't know what belongs to their husband and what belongs to the other fellow! Imagine living with a thing like that! Thank God, I didn't draw one of that kind. I've got a good wife and a happy home!" "Yes, you can thank God, all right," Roseta assented with one of her smiles of compassionate contempt. But the Rector was not spry of wit. And the finer shadings of irony escaped him.
But as the simple-minded sailor walked along, he grew more and more excited at the outrageous conduct of that woman he didn't know and at the misfortune of that husband whose name he had never heard. "You know, a rotten business like that gets under my skin, it does. Here's an honest man breaking his back from morning till night to feed his woman and his boys and his girls, and comes home from the shop and finds my lady flouncing around with Mr. 'Friend'! God, girl! I'd cut the wench's throat, I would—if I swung for it! If you ask me, I say—well, whose fault is it? The women! Yes, the women! What was a woman ever put on this earth for, except to damn a man's soul!Diós!I never saw but two decent women, anyhow. One is Dolores, and the other is you!" For the Rector, when he talked so extensively, was inclined to go to extremes, and he felt this time that his sweeping denunciation needed that much qualification.
Though much good the concession did him! For his sister was now on ground where, from the long tirades ofSiñáTona, she could be counted quite expert. She talked passionately, with a tinge of irritation in her sweet vibrant voice. "Women, eh! Women! Not a bit of it! It's the men, I say, and I know what I'm talking about. Among the pigs in this world, the prize hog is the man! See trouble anywhere? Look and you'll find a man at the bottom of it. Mama says so, too. There are two kinds of men in this world—scamps and puddingheads! If a woman goes wrong, it's the man that's to blame. If she's not married they are all after her to get what they want ... and maybe I don't know that! If I was the fool some men take me for, God knows the fix I'd be in to-day! And if you are married, well, it's worse, almost—for the scamps try to get you into trouble, and the puddingheads haven't sense enough to keep their wives where they belong. Look at Tonet, for instance! Wouldn't Rosario be serving him right if she went on the street, even, to get square with him for all he does! And then, well, no! Stop at Tonet! We don't need to give other examples! But the whole Cabañal knows about husbands that are themselves to blame if their wives aren't all they ought to be!"
And the girl leered at the Rector so unguardedly, in saying this, that Pascualo, in spite of his corpulent obtuseness, caught the glimmer of an allusion and studied her face enquiringly. But his immense faith, at bottom, in people and in things stood him in good stead against any dangerous inference. And he protested, mildly, at her exaggeration. Bosh! People in the Cabañal made him sick! They were always talking about somebody, to pass the time. If you listened to what people said, there wasn't a decent woman in town, nor a husband that wasn't the joke of the beach. But that's only a way they had of amusing themselves. The Cabañal had no manners, as don Santiago, the curate, said so well! "Now, take me, for instance. I've got the best, sweetest wife in the world, and everybody knows it! Well, does that keep those fools from blabbing about her? And who's the man? Tonet, may it please the court! Tonet, of all men! The people in the Cabañal are donkeys, idiots, rotters, that's all! Tonet, God save us! Why, Tonet ... he worships Dolores, like a mother.... But no, my house has simply got to be a brothel, for those chatter-boxes.... Tonet! God!" And the Rector laughed one of those hearty laughs of pitying superiority at the stupidity of people, the kind of laugh the Spanish peasant gives when he hears some benighted ignoramus questioning the authenticity of the village Virgin's miracles.
Roseta stopped short in her tracks, sizing up the Rector with those dreamy sea-green eyes of hers. What did that laugh mean? Was Pascudo serious? Yes, without a doubt. As serious as a preacher! That puddinghead was proof-proof! And the certainty angered her. Instinctively, without reckoning the consequences of what she was doing, she came out with the charges that had been tickling her tongue for years! In short: two kinds of men, scamps and puddingheads! And a glance of hers stamped the second label upon her brother, as he, in fact, divined.
"So I'm the puddinghead, am I! Hah-hah!... Now see here, Roseta ... out with it! All you know! And no mincing of words, either, or you'll be sorry!"
They were half-way home now, near the roadside Cross. And they stopped a moment in front of it. The Rector's ruddy face had turned pale as death, and he kept biting nervously at his fingers, those blunt, bony, calloused fingers of a fisherman.
"Well, Roseta," he added, when she stood silent still. "Out with it!"
But the girl did not come out with it. She had caught a dangerous gleam in her brother's eye. She was afraid she had gone too far; and, a kindly soul at heart, she repented her imprudent innuendos. She had caused the pallor and the expression of fierce solemnity on that good-natured face!
"Oh, as for knowing, Pascualo, I don't know anything. It's only what people say. But they say lots of things. And if you want them to stop talking, I'd advise you to have Tonet around your house as little, as little, as possible!"
Pascualo had stooped over the watering-trough near the Cross, and covered the whole end of the pipe with his mouth, to let the stream run full into his stomach, as though to drown a conflagration that was burning in his insides. He straightened up and started on, the water dripping down over his chin, till he wiped it away with the back of a rough hand.
"I see. So that's all talk! Well, if they want to wait for me to be nasty to Tonet, they can wait till hell freezes over. Filthy, stupid, malicious chatter-boxes! That's what they are! So I must slam the door in the face of that poor boy, eh! Well, I won't! Just when he's settling down a bit, from the good influence Dolores has over him! And they're all jealous of her, that's what. Just plain jealous!" And the gesture with which he underlined the spiteful words seemed to include Roseta among the envious. "Well, it's my affair, and so long as I don't worry, they needn't. Let them talk their tongues off. That boy is what amounts to a son to me. Why, it seems only yesterday when I was carrying him around in my arms, like a nurse. And when he went to bed at night, I'd roll up in a ball almost, so's he could have plenty of room. And now I'm to kick him out of my house. No, you don't forget some things in a hurry. Oh, yes, when things go right and there's no trouble, you forget easy enough. You forget the fellows you used to drink with in the taverns. But we used to be hungry together,redeu, hungry; and you don't forget times like that. Poor Tonet! No! I'm going to stand by that boy till I get him on his feet and make a man of him, I am. What do they think!... That I'm an ox, probably, a plain damn fool! All right, but this damn fool has got a heart under his ribs, he has." And the Rector, filling with deeper and deeper emotion, rapped on that well-padded chest of his, and his thorax echoed like a drum.
For as much as a quarter of an hour the two of them walked on in silence, Roseta frightened at the possible outcome of their conversation; Pascualo, in a gloomy mood, stumbling along with lowered head and frowning darkly whenever he raised his eyes, clenching his fists as though in struggle with an evil thought that would not down. Thus they reached the Grao and were through it before either of them spoke.
"And anyhow, Roseta," said the Rector at last, from sheer necessity of giving some expression to the anguished meditations that were writhing within him, "and anyhow, it's just as well that it is mere talk. For if I should find some day, that it's more than that ...recristo, nobody really knows who I am! I'm afraid of myself, sometimes! I'm an easy-going sort of chap, and never go around looking for trouble. I even yield a point down on the beach, now and then, because I've a boy to look out for and have never cared to play the bully, or the tough. But there are two things in this world that I have, and that I call mine: my money, and my wife. Let no one dare lay a finger on either of them. On the way back from Algiers, with that load, I was afraid once the cutter was going to get us. And do you know what I had made up my mind to do? Back up against the mast there, with my knife out, and kill and kill and kill, till they cut me down on top of those bales of 'mayflower' that for me meant fortune. And then Dolores ... at times when I thought how nice she looked and what a good woman she was, something of the great lady about her—I don't know what—that makes her so wonderful, it occurred to me—why not say it right out?—that some fellow, some day, might try to get her away from me. Well, sir, I could have throttled her almost, at the mere idea of such a thing, and then gone out raving through the streets like a mad dog. I guess that's what I'm like, Roseta, a dog; so good-natured, so harmless, ordinarily, but able to clean the town up when he goes mad, so's they have to kill him. Well, that's the point! They'd better let me alone, and not go monkeying with my happiness, nor with what I've got together with my own hard work...."
There was a drawn expression on his face as he looked at Roseta after this tirade, a veritable oration for the phlegmatic Rector; and the poor girl felt as if she were being accused of the attempted theft of Dolores.
But Pascualo suddenly, with a gesture of disdain, seemed to come out of his abstraction; and it was evident he felt ashamed at having lost hold on his tongue so far, in a moment of baseless alarm. He had had enough of Roseta, however. And, in fact, they could separate there. "Remember me to mother!" he said, as he turned down to the beach, leaving his sister to go on alone along the road toward the tavern-boat. But it was late that night before the influence of that disquieting conversation was lifted from Pascualo's mind. Tonet was at home when he arrived, but did not seem at all embarrassed in his presence. All a lie, of course! One look at the boy was enough to show that! The Rector looked searchingly into his own heart, and could find no trace of suspicion there. Nothing to it, absolutely, absolutely, nothing! And when, the men of the crew dropped in to get their final orders for the next day, he had forgotten the matter completely.
He had hired a boat to work in team with theMayflower, though, with dog's luck, he would some day be able to build another just like her! Among the men was an old sailor whom the Rector listened to with profoundest respect.TioBatiste was the oldest tar in the whole Cabañal. Seventy years of sailoring were stuffed into that sun-dried crackling hide of his, whence they issued, smelling to heaven of strong tobacco, in the form of practical suggestions and maritime prophecy. Pascualo had taken him on, not so much for the help his aged arms could give, as for the exact knowledge he had of the coast thereabouts. From the Cabo de San Antonio to the Cabo de Canet, the gulf did not have a hole nor a shallow thattioBatiste did not know all about. Turn him into a smelt and toss him overboard, and he'd tell you where he was, the minute he got to the bottom! The top of the water might be a closed book to other people; but he could read, from the looks of it, just what there was underneath.
He would sit up forward on the boat, and describe the bumps on the bottom as though he were on a wagon roughing the road-ruts. With one glance he could tell whether your boat was over the kelp grounds, or over the mud-banks, calledEl Fanch, or over those mysterious submarine hillocks, called thePedrusquets, where the fishermen were always in terror of losing their nets on the sharp crags that cut the seines to shreds. Between theMuralls de Confit, theBareta de Casaretand theRoca de Espioca, lay deep tortuous gullies far down under the sea.TioBatiste could drag a net through the winding channel there without catching on a single rock, and without scooping up a mass of kelp that would break your tackle through. A dark night of fog! Not a lighthouse visible! Thick gloom ten feet ahead! One taste of the mud on your net, and the old wizard would say where you were to a hundred yards. Only a salmon or a squid could have been the teachers of that wondrous learning! AndtioBatiste knew many other useful things—that you should not cast your seine on Hallowe'en, for instance, unless you wanted to bring up a corpse; or that the man who carried the Cross of the Grao on Good Friday would never die at sea.
For that matter he had spent all his life on shipboard. By the time he was ten, he could show callouses under his arm-pits, from hauling at the lines. He had a dozen trips to Cuba to his credit—not the kind of trips youngsters brag about nowadays, because they've been across as waiters or barbers on a big liner—but real voyages, in good old-fashionedfaluchas, better built than they make them now, that went out with wine and came back with sugar, and were owned by gentlemen in cape-coats and top-hats! And every trip with a lamp on board, lighted at the wick floating in the oil bowl before the Christ of the Grao! And a rosary every night on board, without fail, unless you wanted something awful to happen! Those were the days, according totioBatiste, the real days, for sailormen. And as he cursed on, the wrinkles would wiggle all over his face, and his ancient goatee would whip up and down; while vicious bits of forecastle obscenity would punctuate his contempt for the irreligion and the conceit of the younger generation of salts.
Pascualo liked to hear the old man talk. There was something of his old master,tioBorrasca, about him, and the man reminded him of his father, old Pascualo, too. Though the other members of the crew, Tonet, two sailors and the "cat," made fun of the venerable tar, and tried to get him angry all the time by assuring him he was too old for the business now, and that the curate would be willing to take him on as sacristan.Chentòla!Too old for real work, eh! Wait till they got out to sea, and they'd whistle another tune! The boys of these days don't know what a wind is! He'd be fanning himself, while they'd be calling for mama!
The next morning all the Cabin section was in motion. Thebòu-boats would put to sea that evening after sundown—taking the men-folks offshore for their honest battle with the elements for bread. An annual migration of husbands, brothers and sons, this; but, nevertheless, the women, thinking of the months of worry and uneasiness they would have ahead of them till spring, could never take the event very calmly.
Captains were bustling about with their last preparations. They went down to the harbor to look over their boats, test the pulleys, run the lines, raise and lower the sails, pound the bottom over inside, be sure the supplies of rope and canvas were on hand, count baskets, examine nets. And when inventories were complete they would have still to go back to the office to get clearance papers from all those stuck-up fellows in white collars who could hardly speak to a workingman decently!
When the Rector went home for dinner at noontime, he foundsiñáTona in the kitchen talking to Dolores, weeping her eyes out, and patting a bundle she held across her knees. When she saw her son coming, she began at him angrily. "I've just heard, and it's a pretty father you are! So Pascualet is going 'cat' on theMayflower! A boy of eight, who might better be at home with his mother, or at least playing down at the tavern with me! The idea! A baby like that going to sea and made to do a man's work, and Lord knows what else! Well, I'm not going to stand it, I'm not! That's not the way to treat a child! And since his mother don't dare open her head, and his father is actually the one to blame, his grandma must take a hand! I've come to get Pascualet and take him home with me. I won't allow such a thing. Pascualet! Pascualet! Your grandmother wants to see you."
Pascualet came in, the little devil, swallowed up in a suit of yellow baize, barefoot, to be more in character, and with a sash that passed almost under his arm-pits and made his blouse bulge out like a balloon. Cocking his black cap down over one ear, he began to strut up and down in front of the women, imitating the tough and independent manner oftioBatiste, and trying to put some of that worthy's picturesque obscenity into the insults he heaped upon his grandmother for her efforts in his behalf. "I'm through playing at the tavern! You can keep your bread and cheese! I'm a man now, I am; and I'm going 'cat' in theMayflower!"
His father and mother were in convulsions at the saucy antics of this chip of the old block. As for the Rector, he could have eaten the boy alive with kisses. ButsiñáTona could only bawl and bawl like a cry-baby, till her son got really angry. "Mama, will you stop that noise! What do you think we are doing to the boy, cutting his throat? The world isn't coming to an end! Pascualet is just going to sea, the way his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather did. What do you want to make of him? A tramp? No, I want him to be a man of pluck, and able to do a day's work, and not be afraid of salt water, where his living is likely to be. If I can leave him a little bit, when I pass on, so much the better; but he ought to be ready to look out for himself. He'll be in no danger. But if he gets to know what a boat is, he'll go to it with his eyes open. Any one can have an accident, afloat or ashore. Just because my father ended the way he did is no signs we're all to end that way. Too much bawling around here! Give us a rest, will you!"
ButsiñáTona knew they were all possessed of the devil! The sea had her eye on the whole family, and would get them all, finally! She hadn't slept a wink for nights—and the most frightful dreams! Worry and worry about your son! And then you find they're taking the baby, too. No, she couldn't stand it any more. They were bound to kill her with worry and sorrow! If they weren't her children, she wouldn't look them in the face, they were so brutal!
But the Rector, letting the old lady grumble on, sat down to his bowl of steaming soup. "What do you say to dinner, Pascualet! Don't mind her! Your daddy is going to make the best sailor in the Cabañal out of you! Tell us, mama, what you got in that bundle?"
SiñáTona boo-hooed louder than ever at the joking question. A present! A little present, that was all! She thought it would ease her mind. So she had taken what money she had saved—a few pennies it was—and had bought something for him. A life-preserver! A neighbor of hers had gotten it from an engineer on an English steamer! And she produced the huge vest of padded cork, which folded up so easily along the seams! The Rector looked at the strange mechanism and smiled. Did you ever! What things people could think of! "I'd heard there were rigs like that in the world, but I never saw one before. Glad to have it aboard, though I can swim like a fish, myself, and never do it in uniform!" And he was tickled to death, at bottom. He left his soup and tried the life-belt on, laughing at his own stoggy appearance in it; for it made his already generous allowance of paunch still more conspicuous, and he ended by looking and puffing like a seal—for the straps made it hard for him to breathe. "Thanks, thanks! I'll not drown in this. I'll simply strangle. But theMayflowerwill like to have it!" And he dropped it to the floor. When Pascualet, tugging and straining, finally got the thing on, his head and feet barely extended beyond the cork armor. He was a tortoise in a shell, for all the world!
The meal was almost over, when Tonet came in, with a huge bandage around his hand. He had just had a bad blow, that morning; and he reported the news in such a way, that his brother did not see fit to ask how nor why; nor was the Rector sharp enough to note the self-conscious expression on the face of Dolores. Up to his usual tricks, that boy! Probably been in another fight in some drinking-place! "But what do you expect you'll be good for outside? All trussed up like that! Never mind this trip. We won't be out more than a day or two, if we have any kind of luck. We'll take you day after to-morrow, or next day!" The Rector talked on very calmly. That temper of his was hard to ruffle! But Tonet and Dolores sat looking at the floor, as though they were ashamed of something.
At four o'clock, the final preparations for the sailing of the fleet began. Thebòu-boats, two by two, were moored to the harbor wharfs, dipping their masts on the swell as though curtseying to the people ashore, while their hulls went up and down in graceful undulation. Those tiny sea-dogs, with their rough profiles of ancient galleys, made one think of the old armadas of Aragon, or of the fleets of doughty pinnaces with which Roger de Lauria used to spread terror along the coasts of Sicily. And the fishermen, too, as they came down, crew by crew, their clothes and blankets in rolls over their backs, looked like the bands ofalmogávarsthat gathered, of old, on the beach of Salou, to sail, in like craft or worse ones, to the conquest of Majorca. A savor of the historic, of the antique, hovered about that fleet and about each separate craft, which took you back, perforce, to sea legends of the Middle Ages, when the triangular sails of Aragon were as dreaded of the Moors of Andalusia as of the isles that lay smiling in the classic seas of Greece.
The whole village was down on the shore. Women and children were running here and there, trying to identify, in the forests of masts, of crossing and criss-crossing cordage, the boats where their own men were. It was the annual excursion into the deserts of the sea, the recurring foray out into danger to snatch bread from the mysteries of the deep, which sometimes gives up its treasures peacefully and without a struggle, but at others hangs on to them and threatens the plucky Argonaut with death.
Down over the gang-planks from wharf to deck moved a procession of bare feet, yellow trousers, sun-baked faces, all that miserable flock of human beings who are born, live and die, on that shore there, knowing nothing of the world that lies beyond that blue horizon. Hunger, on the starting-line, as it were, for a race with death at the signal of opulence! Men condemned to ignorance and filth and danger, that, inland, other men may sit down before glossy linen table-cloths, and feel their mouths water before a succulent lobster's claw on a creamy cod swimming in luscious sauce!
The sun was hanging low. The last flies of summer, their huge bellies swollen and their wings sluggish, were buzzing about in the golden afternoon, gleaming with a sputtering fire. Away to the horizon, which the peak of the Mongó broke with a blotch of haze, like an island floating in the distance, the sea stretched calm and tranquil. Good weather! Good weather! That was the burden of every woman's tongue, as the boats swallowed up crew after crew. With good luck, there would soon be good things a-plenty in every house! Now the "cats" were almost the only sailors left on shore. They were still running up and down the wharves, stamping barefoot on the pitchy floorings, doing the last errands of the captains, putting the hard-tack aboard, and a final cask of wine!
And the sun was down. Everybody—more than a thousand men in all, there were—was now on board. The boats were waiting only for the papers to come down from the offices. How slow those lubbers worked! The spectators on shore were beginning to get impatient, as though the curtain were late in rising on a show.
For still one ceremony had not yet been completed. From time immemorial it had been the custom of the whole village to wish thebòu-fleet godspeed by insulting the men who were going away. As the boats cast off, atrocious witticisms flew back and forth between deck and shore—all in good humor, of course, for such tradition would have it, and it was a test of brains, besides, to be able to say just the right word to thoselanudos, those husbands whose eyes would be snugly plugged with wool, and come home in blessed ignorance of all their wives had been up to meanwhile! This theme of the wayward wife and the unsuspecting husband is the commonest sport—however cruel it may seem—along the shores of the Levant; and so inveterate the habit, so inevitable the parting serenade, that some of the departing sailors went aboard with pockets or baskets full of stones, to be ready for any thrusts they could not parry with words.
And the last of the after-glow had faded. The lamps along the wharves gleamed like a rosary of fire. Red snakes of light coiled and writhed out over the placid waters of the basin. Stars, green and scarlet, shone from the peak of every mast. The sea was catching the ashen brightness of the nocturnal sky, and boats and buildings stood out in dark outlines of indigo against a vast background of nickel gray. "They're off! They're off!" Sails were being hoisted one by one, and in the night the canvas filtered the harbor lights as through veils of distended crêpe, or translucent wings of great black butterflies.
Swarming mobs of ragamuffins had occupied the points farthest projecting seaward. That would give their gibes the greatest possible range. And what fun it would be! But all ready to duck I They've got plenty of stones aboard to-night!
Slowly, gently, with barely perceptible motion in that breath of air, the first pair of boats drew out from the wharf-side, nodding idly on the swells like lazy bulls reluctant to make their dash. It was still possible from the piers to identify the teams and the men aboard them. "Good-by! Good-by!" the women called to their husbands. "Adiós! Bon viache!" But the youngsters were already at it, shrieking obscenities into the night in a tumultuous uproar. "Did you ever hear such talk!" Though the very wives who caught allusions to themselves laughed as loudly as any one at the most happy scores. It was one carnival of free language, where truth ran riot with slander.
"Lanudos!Worse thanlanudos! I know where the curate is going to stay to-night! Johnnie will take good care of her, don't worry, my lad! Moo-oo! Moo-oo!" And this mooing of cattle was supposed to evoke the image of well-horned oxen in the minds of those brave sailors who were thus being cheered on their way out into peril. But then the stones began to come, whistling like bullets and striking sparks on the rocks where the serenaders were seeking cover. The greatest uproar was at the end of the Breakwater near which every boat had to pass on its way out from the basin. And when the volleys of jest would slacken from the shore, provocation would come from the boats themselves. The sailors seemed offended if their team went past without attention. "And you've nothing to say to us, eh!" some stentorian voice of an old tar would call. "Lanudos! Lanudos!" the answer would come in a storm of shouting, while the "cats" on board would begin to blow on the conches, which the boats used at sea in time of dark or fog.
On one of the rocks, in the full midst of a noisy crowd, and quite indifferent to the flying stones, stood Dolores, alone. The women who had gone down to the shore with her kept farther back away from the line of fire. Yet she was not quite alone. For a man had sauntered carelessly in her direction and finally stopped behind her. The splendid creature felt the warmth of Tenet's breath upon her neck, and her skin tingled under that burning contact. She turned her head and caught one fiery glance from his hungry eyes. And the bandaged hand, which had been drawing feigned groans of pain a few hours before, sought hers in the darkness. Free at last! For once, free! Free from fear of surprise, from thoughts of danger! Neither the Rector nor his son would be at home!
But a sudden shouting of redoubled violence awakened them from their swooning dream of guilty anticipation. "The Rector! There he goes!Flor de Mayo!'Mayflower'!" And the most rousing of all the send-offs was for him. It was not only the young ones this time. Grown-ups, men and women, joined in the scathing jollity. For Dolores, the beautiful, Dolores, the bewitching, had her enemies in that throng of jealous wives. "Hey, the Rector! Hey, the prize-lanudo! Atoreadorfor you, when you come home! The devil will want you, for the horns you'll have! Is it Jersey or Holstein? Or just any old steer, except a short-horn! And we're telling the truth, for once!"
Tonet grew uneasy. He was in plain sight of the throng. Some one might carry the joke too far! But Dolores showed herself a true daughter oftioPaella! She laughed and laughed, as though the best compliments of the sailing had been for her.
And the Rector was delighted. He had always thought himself the most popular man in town! "And what else have you got to say, mutton-heads?" he challenged, as his boat glided slowly along the shore, his moon-face beaming over the varnished stern of theMayflower. "What else have you got to say!" That bravado gave impetus to the pointed insolence on the Breakwater. "Look at them over there? Tonet is with Dolores! Tonet is with Dolores!Lanudo!Cuckold! He's leaving a happy home to-night! But Tonet will be there! No vacation for Dolores!"
The Rector let go the tiller and stood up on the stern, livid with anger! "Pigs, hogs, grunters!Morrals! Cochinos!"
It was all very well to make fun of him. But this bringing the name of a woman in, and his brother's too, was going a bit too strong, a bit too strong!
"PROOFS! PROOFS! ROSARIO!"
God had poor folks in mind that year! The women of the Cabañal, crowding the beach in the afternoon, were sure of that. The boats had been out two nights and a day, and they were already coming home. The stiff horizon line was dotted with sails, in pairs, thebòu-teams hurrying shoreward before a favoring breeze, like couples of doves yoked by a belt at the water-line. The oldest women along shore could not remember such fishing! Lord, the fish just seemed to be sitting there in solid packs, waiting patiently to be scooped out. The poorest people in town would have plenty to eat for once in their lives.
The boats ran in and anchored a few yards from the surf, lowering their big sails, and swinging round to head the wind, gently, gracefully, pitching. Mobs of dirty calico skirts, red faces and tangled heads rushed to the water's edge in front of each team, the women shrieking, cursing, quarreling, arguing, as to whom the fish should go. Overboard the "cats" jumped into the water that reached their waists, and the other men followed. A straight line of moving baskets formed between vessel and shore, human torsos rising higher and higher above the surface of the sea till bare feet touched dry sand. There the wives of the skippers were on hand to take charge of the catch.
The beach was one sparkling shining display of beauty. The fish were still alive and flopping in the baskets. Rock-salmon, like palpitating carnation petals, lay there wriggling their soft vermilion and gasping frantically for breath. Slimy devil-fish crooked their backs in agony or drew together in masses of squirming, crawling suckers. Flounders, as thin and flat as the sole of a shoe, pounded their tails vigorously about. The wide, kite-like fins of rays, quivered in their sticky glue. But squid, squid, everywhere, the most valuable prey of all! The waters offshore seemed literally alive with squid! And the catch was tremendous. Basket after basket shone with masses of transparent iridescent crystal, the slimy crustaceans waving their tentacles desperately about, setting the black of their receptacles a-glitter with the soft colors of mother-of-pearl.
The stretch of water between the boats and the surf was as crowded as a city street. "Cats" were wading out with flagons of water on their shoulders. The sailors, tired of the lukewarm filthy drink from the hogsheads aboard, longed for a draught from the ice-coldfònt de Gas. Tiny girls from the cabins along shore, their ragged skirts innocently rolled high above their knees, were splashing about in the puddles, looking at everything with eager curiosity, and filling their aprons with the littlest fish. Some of the vessels were to lie up on shore for a day. And the oxen, owned cooperatively by the village fishermen, splendid mastodontic creatures, yellow and white, were solemnly, majestically, deliberately, lumbering in and out of the water, shaking their enormous double chins with the gravity of Roman senators. Their polished hoofs sank deep into the sand; but they could beach the heaviest boat at a single pull. Driving them, geeing and hawing, was Chepa, a sallow round-shouldered sickly fellow, with the expression of a crabbed witch, on his fœtus-like face. He might have been fifty. He might have been fifteen. He was dressed in yellow oilskins, his bare red feet protruding from under the huge baggy trousers, the skin on them showing the outline of every tendon and every bone. As a boat would slowly scrape along up out of the water, a throng of ragged disheveled youngsters would rush down to meet it, running along beside it through the surf like a cortege of nereids and tritons, noisily begging for a handful ofcabets!
A market was being improvised right on the beach, and sales were going on in a hub-bub of shouting, cursing, and shaking of fists. The wives of the captains, intrenched behind their overflowing baskets, were going it hammer and tongs with the fish-women who would retail the catch next day at Valencia. When it came to the weighing, the fights would start all over again. The owners would try to keep out the big fish,las piezas gordas; while the buyers would object to including the small fry. Rough scales were being fashioned of baskets hung on ropes, big stones serving as weights. Some gamin from the village, who had been to school, was always on hand to volunteer as book-keeper for the owners, entering the sales in pencil on almost any piece of paper.
The vendors would move the baskets they had bought around with their feet, while the beach-combers looked on covetously. Let a fish slip off and it vanished as though through a hole in the sand. Whenever a new pair of boats came in the crowd would run to a new section of the shore and people from Valencia who had dropped down to see the sight, would find themselves nearly swept off their feet by the rude scrambling mob.
That was a great day for Dolores. For years she had figured on the beach as one in the riot of vendors merely. How she had longed to rise to the class of owners, still to haggle, of course, but to dictate terms, from a vantage point, to that dirty turbulent crowd of lower scum! And now her dream of glory was being realized! She stood sniffing at the air through that disdainful nose of hers, straightening up full height behind her array of baskets; while Tonet—educated in the Royal Navy, if you please—was tending the scales and setting down the figures.
Her keel barely awash in the surf, theMayflowerwas waiting for the oxen to drag her up high and dry. The Rector was still aboard, helping his men furl the sail. At times he would stop and look ashore, watching his wife fighting tooth and nail there, and calling out the figures which his brother was to set down. What a woman! Could a queen be prettier! And the poor fellow's chest heaved with pride and joy at the thought that Dolores owed all that glory to him, to him alone.
Forward, on the tip of the bow, Pascualet reared his diminutive and motionless manhood, looking more like a walrus than an eight-year-old boy, the figure-head of the boat, as it were. Barefoot, and as dirty as could be, his shirt-tail out on one side and flapping in the wind, his breast exposed to the sea-air and as tanned and red as the bust of a statue of mud, he was the admiration of a crowd of little beach-combers, who had gathered round, hardly a stitch on their bronzed limbs, so lean and bony from a life-long diet of salt fish.
But what a catch the Rector had made! His boat loaded to the scuppers with squid, and at thirty cents a pound—you figure it up yourself! The penniless idlers on shore surveyed the wonder-worker as though a sea of dollars were pitching and tumbling out there beyond the surf. Chepa came down with his oxen, and theMayflowerbegan to climb the beach, grating along over the runners that had been laid under her bottom. Pascualo had jumped down from the deck and gone to Dolores, his face wreathed in smiles at sight of her standing there with her apron caught up to hold a peck or more of silver coins that represented her cash sales. Fairly good for two days' work, eh! A few trips like that and they'd have a pretty pile! And there was a good chance for the luck to hold! OldtioBatiste knew where the best places were!
But the Rector stopped and looked at his brother. The bandages on the injured hand had disappeared. So Tonet was in trim again already! That was good news to add to the good catch! He wouldn't miss the next sailing now! And he would see some real fishing, I'll tell you! Just the trouble of hauling them in, with your net full at every shot! "We'll be going out at sunrise, to-morrow morning, to make the best of this run, while it lasts!"
Dolores had sold everything; and she asked her husband if he would be going home. The Rector, however, could not say. He hated to leave the boat. The crew would be going off and getting drunk, let alone that bunch of little devils who would strip her clean of everything that could be carried the moment his back was turned. It would probably keep him busy till way into the night. If he wasn't home by nine o'clock, she had better go to bed. Tonet should go and get his pack ready and say good-by to Rosario; so as to be on the beach an hour before dawn. There would be no waiting in such times!
Dolores looked at her husband and then at Tonet. She said she would be going along. Pascualet did not want to go with her, when she called. He would rather stay down at the boat with papa. Dolores had to start off alone, and the two men stood gazing after her beautiful figure, as, with a graceful swinging of hips and shoulders, it vanished in the distance. Tonet hung-around till after dark, swapping stories and banter withtioBatiste, and discussing the great catch with the men of the crew. He did not leave till the "cat" began to get supper ready on board theMayflower.
Left to himself, Pascualo began to walk up and down the beach, his hands stuffed into his sash, and the legs of his oilskins rasping noisily as they rubbed together. The shore was quite dark. Here and there a stove could be seen glowing on the deck of some boat, blinking as the figure of a sailor passed in front of it. The sea was shrouded in deep gloom, marked by an occasional flash of phosphorescence. The surf was trickling in with a barely audible moan. Softened by the distance came the voices of some "cats" singing as they made their way toward the Cabañal and stirred some dog to bark along the road. A faint band of reddish light still loitered above the horizon where the sun had sunk behind the housetops.
The Rector did not like that reddish after-glow. His experience at sea had taught him to see in it the signs of unsettled weather. But that thought did not concern him long. The joy of the successful trip was too insistent still. No, things were going well, weren't they! Few men in the world with more reason to be thankful than he! A pretty home! A delicious and a frugal wife! The prospect of building another boat, before the year was out, to go in team with theMayflower! And then a boy after his own heart! Pascualet took to salt water like a mackerel! Why, in time that youngster would be the best captain along shore! Better off, far, than the happy man in the story who didn't have a shirt to his back! He wouldn't have to worry about cold weather—nor rainy days! And there would be a bit left over for old age!
Gloating over his good fortune, Pascualo quickened his lumbering pace as a corpulent sea-dog, and rubbed his hands with satisfaction. But in the darkness ahead of him a figure suddenly appeared, advancing slowly in his direction. Only a woman! Some beggar, probably, making the rounds of the fleet to pick up a spare fish here and there! And so it goes! How many poor devils there are in the world! Why shouldn't a fellow do a little something for one of them now and then! And the Rector's hand felt at a lump in the end of his sash where he had knotted a few silver coins along with a copper or two.
"Pascualo!" came the call. It was a soft, timid, hesitating voice. "Is that you, Pascualo?"
"Cristo!What a mistake! I took her for a beggar! And it's Rosario! Well, well! Looking for Tonet, I suppose! Now that's too bad! You've missed him! He's just gone home. He'll be there wanting his supper, and wondering where you are!"
But the skipper, overflowing with good humor, was taken somewhat aback when he learned that Rosario was not looking for Tonet at all. She had come to see the Rector! What was up? He had never been on very good terms with his sister-in-law. Queer she should be turning to him! However, there was nothing to be done except hear her through. He stood with folded arms, his eyes turned toward the boat where Pascualet and the other "cat" were dancing back and forth around the soup-kettle. Well, what could he do for her? He was listening! And resignedly he waited for the tale of woe he was sure would come from that figure, so vaguely outlined in the darkness, and afraid, it seemed, to begin to speak.
But Rosario with sudden resolution, threw her head energetically back, nailed two flaming mysterious eyes upon the Rector, and began to talk as though in a hurry to get through with it. She had something to say to him, something that concerned the reputation of the whole family. She could not stand it any longer! She and Pascualo had become the laughing-stock of the whole place.
"Ah! What's this you're saying? The laughing-stock of the whole place! And what are they laughing at me for, silly? Just take a look at me and theMayflower! Do you see anything specially funny about us?"
"Poor Pascualo!" Rosario said, slowly this time, but in deadly earnest, and with the tone of a person prepared to face the worst, "Pascualo, Dolores is not being true to you."
Pascualo reared like a steer struck with an ax between the eyes. Then he stood dazed for an instant, his great head sunk upon his chest. But it was only for a second. That man had a deep faith in the goodness of things and people. His balance could stand harder buffets from the world than that.
"Hold your tongue, Rosario, your lying tongue, and get out of my sight. You're a liar, a liar, that's what you are!"
Had there been light enough for Rosario to see the Rector's face, she would doubtless have obeyed, frightened. His right foot was kicking at the sand, as though the falsehood were a loathsome worm to be ground under his heel. His arm was doubled up and his fist was clenched. Words seemed to come choking from his throat.
"You rag of a woman! And don't everybody know who you are? A back-biter, a cheap gossip, and a trouble-maker. You hate Dolores! You'd do anything to hurt her! You've driven my poor brother to the dogs with your beastly temper! And now you would dirty the reputation of Dolores! And she's a saint! A saint, do you hear! And a woman like you isn't good enough to kiss the bottom of her shoe, you snake! And now, get out of here, and do it quick, damn quick! Get out of here, or I'll kill you like a rat!"
But Rosario stood there impassively. The calm determination in her did not shrink before those insults and those menacing fists.
"Pascualo, Dolores is not being true to you," she repeated slowly, and with despairing firmness. "She is making a fool of you. And the man ... is ... Tonet!"
The Rector stiffened in speechless fury! And his brother she would bring in too, in that low-down spiteful jealousy of hers!
"Get out of here, I say! Get out of here, Rosario, or I'll kill you as sure as ever you were born!" And he meant it, this time. He had seized her by the two wrists, squeezing them till the bones seemed ready to break, and he threw her around on her heels. But in sudden fear, she wrenched loose, and sidled away, to a safe distance, muttering and protesting. She was not a liar, nor a jealous gossip. She had meant to do him a favor. Keep him from looking like a fool to the town. But if he was satisfied, why should any one else care? He could go on being the happy cuckold, and joy go with him. And she made off, on the run, throwing back, in insolent mockery, the epithets that had been rained on Pascualo the day theMayflowerput to sea: "Steer, hornpate,llanut!"
The Rector, his arms folded, stood looking after her till she was out of sight in the dark. Then a sense of duty well done came over his unsuspecting innocence. "Well, did you ever see anything like that? God, imagine being married to her! Poor Tonet! Swallows everything she hears, and tries to use it to get even! But I guess she got all she wanted from me! That will teach her to come tale-bearing another time. God, what a wench!" And puffing with self-righteousness, he resumed his walk, scarcely noticing that the wash from the surf was now reaching his big boots. "God, what a woman!"
But, all of a sudden, the Rector stopped. It was as though something had been brewing silently in the unconscious recesses of his soul, and then had rapidly boiled up, catching in his throat, strangling him, filling his whole being with mortal anguish.
"She said ... and ... supposing it were true! How do I know she is lying!"
As Pascualo followed this trend of thought, he stamped and splashed up and down on the wet sands, driving his nails into his hands, and swearing under his breath as he swore only at sea when a blow was on. See here ... Tonet was engaged to Dolores once! It was Tonet who had taken him to her house, in the first place. The two were together a great deal of the time. She was always talking to him about Tonet! Tonet this, Tonet that! "And I ... I ... never ... God ... the last to suspect anything! The laughing-stock of the Gulf! And yet ... bah ... impossible!" How that damned woman would like to see him get upset, and make trouble the way she did! Be taken in like that? Not a grown-up man, like him! And besides, what had the wench said! Nothing but what Roseta had said, and hundreds of others, but just to worry him! The men on the beach always had jokes like that on each other, to make things lively. But it was just fun! Whereas that Rosario was trying to make trouble, she was! Spiteful as a mad cat! "Bosh, lies, lies! I stand by Dolores, through thick and thin! And that boy of ours! Pascualet, the little major! And what a regular old salt, though hardly as big as a chipmunk!Mentira! Tot mentira!"
And the Rector stamped and splashed on up and down the beach, talking aloud, stopping, shrugging his shoulders and gesticulating, inviting the sea, the boats, the very shadows of the night, to say whether it was not all a damned lie of that crazy female. Though a wicked devil was lurking somewhere inside him; for every time that he said "lie," and the objects of the night said "lie," the word echoed within him as "Llanut,bruto, steer, bull, ox—with horns!"
"And, by God, if it is true ..." What he had said to Roseta that afternoon on the way home through the Grao, came into his mind. Tonet, Dolores ... yes, even Pascualet ... if one of them laid a finger on his honor! "And wait a minute! A woman like that, to get even with Dolores, would slander her in public! But would she come to me intimate-like, all by ourselves. No, it would take courage to do that! She'd need to have good grounds ... Fool I was not to let her talk ... then I'd know the very worst!" And anything, at that moment, seemed to the Rector preferable to his state of anxious, raging torment.
"Pare! Pare!" a cheery little voice began to call from the deck of theMayflower. Supper was ready! Supper! Who could care about supper with that mess on a fellow's mind! The Rector strode up to the boat, and in a tone that was surprisingly harsh and commanding, told the men to eat their meal and go to bed, for he had something to attend to in town. If he didn't come back, they were to get up and have things ready for the start at sunrise.
Pascualo did not look at his little son, but darted, like a phantom, off along the black shore, running into boats at times, then stumbling into the deep puddles that the sea had dug out in the sand in stormy weather. But he was feeling better! It was a relief to be thinking that he would soon be talking to Rosario again. Those terrible insults she had hurled at him had stopped hurting. His brain was no longer that whirl of mad desperate ravings! He seemed to be walking on air, instead, as though his heavy body were a feather! Yet there was still a griping sensation in his throat, that caught his breath; and when he swallowed, his mouth had the bitter taste of brine. To the last word! To the last word! She would tell every blessed thing she knew, or she'd be sorry!Recristo, who would have said two hours before that after such a trip offshore, he would be sneaking off to the house of a woman he despised, and through the back streets so no one would see him! What a devil of a woman! Stuck the knife in just the right spot! How was it that five words from a chatter-box could spoil a man's soul like that!
He was almost running as he entered a dirty street in one of the most miserable sections of the village, lines of dwarf olives on either hand, the sidewalks filthy with trodden dirt, and lined with two rows of shacks, the front yards fenced in with old boards. The door of Rosario's cottage was closed. He ran into it with a violence that almost snapped the latch, and as it swung open, it banged violently against the wall behind. In the murky light of a single candle, Rosario was sitting on a stool, her head between her hands. Her demeanor of sorrow and despair was quite in harmony with the desolate, ill-furnished interior of that hovel—a table, a couple of chairs, two chromos on the wall for decoration, an old mandolin, and some abandoned fish-nets. The place, as the women of the neighborhood said, had the smell of hunger and wife-beating.
Rosario looked up as the door slammed open, and the Rector's massive figure towered over the threshold, completely filling the door-way. "Oh, it's you!" she said with a bitter smile. She had been waiting for him. She knew he would come. Wouldn't he have a chair? He had been rough with her down on the beach, but she didn't mind. "We all feel that way at first! I couldn't believe it when they first told me about Tonet. I slapped the face of the woman who came to me. And then, an hour later, I went and asked her for God's sake to tell the truth. Well, you were going to kill me a little while ago. And here you are! When people are really in love ... they get mad at first. But then they want to know the truth, even if it pulls the heart out of them! We are both fools, Pascualo!"
The Rector had closed the door behind him, and was standing now in front of his sister-in-law, his arms folded, looking at her with a scowl of angry hostility, the instinctive hatred a man feels toward the one who wrecks his dream.
"The truth, now! The truth! Speak out! All you've got to say!" Pascualo hissed the threatening words, to put a stop to that everlasting moralizing of an idiot! Would she never get to the point? Yet, in all his menacing, raging impatience, there was terror in his soul, the wish that minutes might turn, almost, to centuries, to postpone the cruel revelation.
Well, yes, she would tell him everything! But how would he take it? What she had to say would hurt him terribly, and he must not hate her so for it. She had had her time of it too. She had suffered now till she could stand it no longer. She hated Tonet, and she hated that infamous Dolores! For her Pascualo was simply a comrade in misfortune. Dolores had been deceiving him. "Oh, it's not a matter of yesterday or day before. They've been carrying on for years—almost from the time Tonet and I were married. Tonet was a good boy. But when that thing saw some one else have him for a husband, she set her eyes on him, and she was the one who first led him astray."
"Bosh!" roared the Rector, blind with fury and anguish. "I want proofs! I'm tired of your talk. Proofs! Proofs, Rosario! And be quick about it."
Rosario smiled pityingly at sight of such a fool! "Proofs! Proofs! Why don't you ask the whole village for proofs, proofs! They've been laughing at you for a year or more. It has been the talk of the town. You won't get angry at me? You want the whole truth? Well, even the 'cats' and the sailors on the beach, when they want to say that a man's wife is deceiving him, call him a worselanudothan the Rector."
"Damn your soul!" Pascualo roared, clenching his fist and shaking it in Rosario's face. "Rosario ... Look, Rosario, be careful what you say. Because ... if you don't make good on every blessed word of it ... I'll wring your neck the way I would a chicken's."
"I wish you would! I'm tired of living. What have I to live for? No children! Not a friend in the world! Work like a dog from morning till night, to give him the money I earn so as to escape a beating. And he beats me just the same! Wring my neck! That doesn't scare me! Look, Pascualo, look!"
Rosario rolled up her sleeve, and showed on the sallow skin that covered the bones and tendons of her fore-arm, the black-and-blue marks where a heavy hand had squeezed it as in a vise. "And that's only one. I can show you others almost anywhere on my body! And they come from having complained about his bad behavior with Dolores! This one here I got this morning, when I said he ought not go to the beach with her and help her sell the fish as though he was her husband. And I said it wasn't fair to make a fool of the Rector in public like that! But you want proofs, proofs! Well, why didn't Tonet go out with you on the first trip two days ago? He hurt his hand, didn't he? Yes, but his hand got well the moment theMayflowerwas beyond the Breakwater. And the next morning there wasn't a bandage to be seen. And everybody noticed it. And you went to sea, to stay up all night, in the cold and wet, to keep your home going for your wife, your dear Dolores! And Tonet stayed all warm and cosy at home with her, the pair of them laughing to see what a stupid, self-satisfied idiot you were! Tonet didn't sleep in this house after you sailed. And he's not here even to-night. He ran in a few moments ago, got his things and was off, saying he wouldn't be back again. And where is he, Pascualo? Over at your house of course! They are sure theMayflowerwill keep you down on the shore all night. And Tonet is preparing to make himself at home in your place!"
"Recristo!"
The Rector raised his eyes to heaven, as he muttered the oath, in protest, it seemed, against the powers above who allow such things to happen to an honest man. But he was a stubborn fellow at bottom. His trustful, inoffensive, disposition made it hard for him to believe things like that were possible. Inwardly convinced, he nevertheless came back with a menacing rejoinder:
"You are lying, Rosario! You know that you are lying!"
But the challenge put Rosario on her mettle! "So I'm lying! Oh say, Pascualo, what's the use of talking with a man like you. You're so blind you can't see the nose on your face. What are you yelling about? What have I done to you? You're as blind as a bat, yes, sir, blind as a bat. A man with a spoonful of brains inside his skull would have seen through the situation from the first. But you ... you don't notice anything. You never noticed whether your boy looks like you or like him!"
And that was a nasty thrust! Though the Rector's face was as brown as shoe-leather from years in the sun and the salt-air, it turned a bluish ashen pale. His knees seemed to sag as if he were going to fall, and the shock made his words come out faint, husky and stammering.
"My boy! My Pascualet! Well, whom does he look like? Spit it out, damn you! Pascualet ... is my boy, my boy. And he looks like me ... like me ... he does!"
But the laugh with which Rosario answered was the hollow, sarcastic, mocking laugh of a she-devil! Pascualo did not quite understand. What was there to laugh about in his saying that his boy was his boy? In terror he waited for her explanation. "Why, stupid! If Pascualet is your boy, he ought to look like you, oughtn't he, just as you look the way your father, old Pascualo, looked. Well, he doesn't, that's all! He looks like Tonet—eyes shape, build, and complexion! Poor dunce of a Rector! They call youlanudo! But the wool on your eyes is thicker than they ever guessed! Heavens, man, take a peep at the boy! He's the living picture of Tonet, as Tonet used to be in the days when he was a boy with you, down at the tavern, and was running around like a little devil on the beach!"
The Rector did not need convincing further. He was ready to believe that now. A cataract had been removed from before his eyes, and he saw things clearly, though the world had a strange unfamiliar aspect for him, as it does to a blind man led forth for a first glimpse of it. Gospel truth! Pascualet was Tonet over again! How many times, on looking at the boy, he had had, on his own account, a feeling that he was really looking at some one else—though just whom, he could not quite say!
Pascualo pressed a pair of clenched fists to his chest as though his heart were burning inside him and he were trying to tear it out; then he brought them down with a noisy thud upon his temples. "Recontracordons!God of God of God of Gods!" he groaned in a voice of agony that terrified Rosario. "Holy Christ of the Grao!" He staggered a few steps across the room, like a drunken man, and threw himself flat on the floor with a crash that shook the rickety building. He rolled over, and his legs seemed to bound from the violence of the fall.
When the Rector came to his senses again, he found himself lying on his back, and something warm and tickling was running over his cheeks, like a soft wriggling snake. He wiped his face where it hurt, with his hand, and the hand came back, as he saw in the murky candle light, all covered with blood. His nose felt hot and swollen. He understood what had happened. In going to the floor he had struck hard on his face. His nose had been bleeding in streams. Rosario was just kneeling beside him to wash the blood away with a damp cloth. The girl's look of terror brought him back to all he had been hearing, and he repelled her with a gesture of hatred.
"Don't touch me! I can get up by myself. And much obliged for all you have told me! No, no! Don't bother to excuse yourself! I'm delighted! Favors like that are never forgotten. And lucky I bumped my nose. Otherwise I might have burst a blood vessel. God, how my head aches! But never mind! Cheer up! What a time I'm going to have! I've been too good-natured in my life, I have! But why should a fellow try to do right and put his whole life into working for his family? There's plenty of loafers, and gossips, and rotten women, standing around to bring an honest man to ruin. But now watch me, and you'll see something worth while. This town is going to have something to remember the Rector by, Pascualoel Retor, the most famouslanudoof the Gulf! Ho! Ha!"
Meanwhile, as he muttered on, cursing, bellowing, puffing, threatening, he had been wiping his face with the wet cloth, as though the cool touch of it relieved the biting agony within him. Now he strode toward the door, thrusting his big hands into his sash, in a demeanor of determined resolution. Rosario rushed in front of him, an expression of horror written on her face. A flash of her mad passion for Tonet had come back to her. She was afraid he was to be killed. "Wait, Pascualo! Wait! It may be all a lie! I may have been deceived! You know how people talk! And Tonet is your brother!"
But the Rector smiled in a cold sinister way. "I've heard enough from you. And you're right. I know you're right! And when I'm sure, I'm sure. And you're scared because you know I'm right, too. And you're afraid for your Tonet, aren't you! You love him, don't you! Well, yes, and I love Dolores, in spite of everything! Remember, whatever I do, that that girl has got me here, here, and I shall never get the stab of it out of my heart. But you're going to see, Rosario, and this whole town is going to see, how Pascualoel llanutgoes about things like this!"
"No, Pascualo, no," begged Rosario, seizing him by his powerful hands. "Wait ... not to-night ... to-morrow ... some other day!"
"Oh, I know what you are thinking about! You know where Tonet is to-night! But don't worry. You're right! Not to-night! Not to-night! Besides, I've left my knife at home. And I'm not going to kill them with my teeth! But for God's sake, get out of my way, woman. A fellow can't breathe in here!" And he brushed Rosario aside with a rude thrust, and dashed out into the dark.
The Rector's first sensation on finding himself alone was one of relief and pleasure, as though he had just escaped from a furnace. And he breathed deeply and deliciously of the cold breeze that was growing noticeably stronger. Not a star was shining now. The sky was overcast, and Pascualo, in spite of his situation, with the instinct of a sailor, first took account of the weather. "Bad day to-morrow!" he commented. Then the sea and the storm passed from his mind. He began to walk, and he walked and walked, moving his legs mechanically, indifferent to direction, hardly knowing that he was walking, though each footstep seemed to ring in his brain with a grating irritating echo. He was as unconscious, almost, as he had been back there in Tenet's cabin after his fall. He was asleep, but standing up, and his feet going, in a dream, but going rapidly, in spite of the paralysis of all his senses. He did not notice that he was walking round and round over the same streets.
Then a feeling came back to him, and again it was one of pleasure. How nice it was to be walking around in the dark over roads that would seem too ugly to be worth while by daylight! It was the fugitive's joy in the desert, where he is free from human beings and under the protecting wing of solitude. There, in the distance, was a glimmer of light. A drinking place, probably! And he turned, all a-tremble, in the opposite direction, as though a danger lay that way. Oh, if some one should see him! He would die of shame. The most insignificant "cat" would be too much for him! No, silence, darkness, to be alone, was all he wanted!
So he walked the streets of the village and then down on the beach, which also seemed to terrify him. "God, how those fishermen must have been making fun of me!" Probably all the boats there were in the secret and when they creaked it was their way of laughing at the wool they saw on the eyes of theMayflower'scaptain! Occasionally he would awaken from the torpor in which he was wandering doggedly from place to place. One time he came to himself just long enough to see that he was boarding his boat. At another, he found himself on his own door-step with his hand about to raise the latch. No, somewhere else, somewhere else. A moment's quiet and calm! There would be time for that, later! In the end, shocks like these gradually roused him from his anguished abstraction.
No, he would never put up with it! Never! People were going to find out what sort of a man the Rector was! But after all, it wasn't necessary to be too hard on Dolores. She was running true to form—a real daughter oftioPaella, drunkard that he had been, patron and agent of the girls in the Fishmarket section, talking around his house as though Dolores were some member of his "flock"! What could she ever have learned from a man like that! To be a bad girl, that's all, and no decency whatever. And that was how, just how, she had turned out! But you couldn't blame her, could you? The real one to blame was he himself, great fool that he had been, ever to think of marrying a woman who had to be just what Dolores was!
Hadn'tsiñáTona always said so? Mother saw through her from the start, and had never wanted a girl oftioPaella's in the family. A bad woman, Dolores, granted! But he couldn't talk very loud if he had married her with his eyes open. But Tonet! What could you find to say for him! Disgracing your own brother! Who ever heard of monstrousness like that! Your own brother! No, you cut the heart out of a beast of that kind!
But scarcely had his blood-thirsty schemes of vengeance taken shape in his mind, that old habits of thinking had their say. There was Rosario reminding him that Tonet was his brother! Wasn't it just as monstrous for a brother to kill a brother as to betray him? One such case in the history of the world—Cain, and what sort of a chap had Cain been? Not much, to judge by what don Santiago said of him! And then again, was Tonet really to blame? "No, Pascualo! You're to blame yourself, and nobody else. I see it all clear as day. You robbed Tonet of his sweetheart. That boy and Dolores were lovers before you even thought of speaking to a girl oftioPaella's! Now that was a mean trick, come to think of it! Marry your brother's promised bride! As rotten a thing as ever I did! And so, what else could you expect? There they are together all the time—as had to be, brother-in-law, sister-in-law—and both in the family. Well, could you expect them not to fall in love again?"
He stopped in his tracks for a moment, so obvious, so crushing, did the sense of his own guilt come back to him. He looked around. It was the beach, there, under his feet; and a few steps away was the tavern of his mother. The blackening rotting boat, rising from the reed enclosures around it, called up a flood of memories from the past. There they had played together, he and Tonet, running about over the sands. Tonet was on his shoulder, pulling at his hair in angry petulant disgust at not having his own way. Just inside those walls, the old stateroom, and the warm quilt thrown over the two of them! How tenderly he had cared for his little brother, his comrade in poverty, who had rested his little brown head sometimes on his very cheek! Yes, Rosario had been right. His brother! More than that, his child! For it was he, really, more thansiñáTona, who had been a loving parent to the boy, spoiling him, slaving for him! "And now, I'm going to kill him! God, what beast would commit a crime like that?" No, he would forgive Tonet. Why be a Christian otherwise? Why, otherwise, believe in all the things don Santiago talked about?
The absolute solitude of the seashore, the darkness as black as the night before Creation, the complete aloofness from every human being, brought a touch of sweetness back into that travailing spirit, with the impulse toward forgiveness. Pascualo was recovering to a new life. It seemed as though another being were inside him, and thinking for him. Anguish had put an edge on his intelligence. God was his only companion in that loneliness. With God he would have to reckon. And did God care if a man found his wife unfaithful? What a small detail that must seem to a Being as great as that! Just like a pair of rats down there on earth! No, much more important it must seem to God for a fellow to be good, and not answer treason with murder ... murder!
Slowly the Rector turned back toward the Cabañal. How much better he felt, now! The cold breeze, rapidly growing stronger, had found a way into the furnace within him. But how weak and faint he felt! He had not eaten a mouthful since breakfast the day before. And his nose must have been broken by the fall, it pained him so! One! Two! A church bell rang in the distance. Two o'clock! What a night! And how it had flown! But the hours still to pass before morning would probably seem much longer!
As the Rector reached the road, he heard a boy's voice begin to sing. Some "cat" on the way to his boat. In fact, there the youngster was, on the other sidewalk, with two oars on his shoulder and a roll of nets under his arm.
The sight of the boy upset him again. Now the Rector understood that there were two Rectors under that one hide of his. One of them was the usual man he had always been—good-natured, taciturn, with kindly feelings for everybody. The other, a beast that began to roar and claw inside him at the thought of being deceived, and which snarled for blood in the presence of betrayal. And Pascualo laughed a shrill high-strung laugh! Pardon! Forgiveness! What a cowardly whimperer that other Rector was! See how the imbecile had sniffled at a lot of humbug memories back there near the tavern ofsiñáTona!Lanudo!Just the name for a coward like that! Fine sentiments those had been to justify a man without the guts to protect his own dignity as a man! Such stuff might do very well for don Santiago! It was a curate's job to find pretty words and say them. But he was a sailor, thank God, with the life of a young bull in him; and if anybody tried funny business on him, by God, he would get what was coming to him, with some to boot.Lanudo!Coward!
And ashamed in his own eyes for his past weakness, the skipper began to thump his fists on his chest, swearing at himself in his other ridiculous personality, where he was so good-natured and easy-going. Forgiveness! Forgiveness might be all right in a graveyard. But he was living in a village where people were alive and knew each other. In a few hours they would be up and out on the streets, walking past him as that "cat" had just walked past, but nudging each other at sight of him and whispering: "There goes Pascualoel llanut!" Never! Ch—st, he would die first! His mother hadn't brought him into the world to be the butt of the whole Cabañal. First, Tonet! And then Dolores! And then every damned man who got in his way. And then—well, then,—what were jails for, anyway, but for men worth the salt they eat! And if it was worse than jail ... ready for that, too. He might die at sea sometime, anyhow. Well, suppose they did squeeze his gullet up there on a scaffold! He would be dying like a sailor with good boards under his feet. And they would know they were garroting a man, and not a weakling!