In 1870 Marcelo Desnoyers was nineteen years old. He was born in the suburbs of Paris, an only child; his father, interested in little building speculations, maintained his family in modest comfort. The mason wished to make an architect of his son, and Marcelo was in the midst of his preparatory studies when his father suddenly died, leaving his affairs greatly involved. In a few months, he and his mother descended the slopes of ruin, and were obliged to give up their snug, middle-class quarters and live like laborers.
When the fourteen-year-old boy had to choose a trade, he learned wood carving. This craft was an art related to the tastes awakened in Marcelo by his abandoned studies. His mother retired to the country, living with some relatives while the lad advanced rapidly in the shops, aiding his master in all the important orders which he received from the provinces. The first news of the war with Prussia surprised him in Marseilles, working on the decorations of a theatre.
Marcelo was opposed to the Empire like all the youths of his generation. He was also much influenced by the older workmen who had taken part in the Republic of ‘48, and who still retained vivid recollections of the Coup d’Etat of the second of December.
One day he saw in the streets of Marseilles a popular manifestation in favor of peace which was practically a protest against the government. The old republicans in their implacable struggle with the Emperor, the companies of the International which had just been organized, and a great number of Italians and Spaniards who had fled their countries on account of recent insurrections, composed the procession. A long-haired, consumptive student was carrying the flag. “It is peace that we want—a peace which may unite all mankind,” chanted the paraders. But on this earth, the noblest propositions are seldom heard, since Destiny amuses herself in perverting them and turning them aside.
Scarcely had the friends of peace entered the rue Cannebiere with their hymn and standard, when war came to meet them, obliging them to resort to fist and club. The day before, some battalions of Zouaves from Algiers had disembarked in order to reinforce the army on the frontier, and these veterans, accustomed to colonial existence and undiscriminating as to the cause of disturbances, seized the opportunity to intervene in this manifestation, some with bayonets and others with ungirded belts. “Hurrah for War!” and a rain of lashes and blows fell upon the unarmed singers. Marcelo saw the innocent student, the standard-bearer of peace, knocked down wrapped in his flag, by the merry kicks of the Zouaves. Then he knew no more, since he had received various blows with a leather strap, and a knife thrust in his shoulder; he had to run the same as the others.
That day developed for the first time, his fiery, stubborn character, irritable before contradiction, even to the point of adopting the most extreme resolution. “Down with War!” Since it was not possible for him to protest in any other way, he would leave the country. The Emperor might arrange his affairs as best he could. The struggle was going to be long and disastrous, according to the enemies of the Empire. If he stayed, he would in a few months be drawn for the soldiery. Desnoyers renounced the honor of serving the Emperor. He hesitated a little when he thought of his mother. But his country relatives would not turn her out, and he planned to work very hard and send her money. Who knew what riches might be waiting for him, on the other side of the sea! . . . Good-bye, France!
Thanks to his savings, a harbor official found it to his interest to offer him the choice of three boats. One was sailing to Egypt, another to Australia, another to Montevideo and Buenos Aires, which made the strongest appeal to him? . . . Desnoyers, remembering his readings, wished to consult the wind and follow the course that it indicated, as he had seen various heroes of novels do. But that day the wind blew from the sea toward France. He also wished to toss up a coin in order to test his fate. Finally he decided upon the vessel sailing first. Not until, with his scanty baggage, he was actually on the deck of the next boat to anchor, did he take any interest in its course—“For the Rio de la Plata.” . . . And he accepted these words with a fatalistic shrug. “Very well, let it be South America!” The country was not distasteful to him, since he knew it by certain travel publications whose illustrations represented herds of cattle at liberty, half-naked, plumed Indians, and hairy cowboys whirling over their heads serpentine lassos tipped with balls.
The millionaire Desnoyers never forgot that trip to America—forty-three days navigating in a little worn-out steamer that rattled like a heap of old iron, groaned in all its joints at the slightest roughness of the sea, and had to stop four times for repairs, at the mercy of the winds and waves.
In Montevideo, he learned of the reverses suffered by his country and that the French Empire no longer existed. He felt a little ashamed when he heard that the nation was now self-governing, defending itself gallantly behind the walls of Paris. And he had fled! . . . Months afterwards, the events of the Commune consoled him for his flight. If he had remained, wrath at the national downfall, his relations with his co-laborers, the air in which he lived—everything would surely have dragged him along to revolt. In that case, he would have been shot or consigned to a colonial prison like so many of his former comrades.
So his determination crystallized, and he stopped thinking about the affairs of his mother-country. The necessities of existence in a foreign land whose language he was beginning to pick up made him think only of himself. The turbulent and adventurous life of these new nations compelled him to most absurd expedients and varied occupations. Yet he felt himself strong with an audacity and self-reliance which he never had in the old world. “I am equal to everything,” he said, “if they only give me time to prove it!” Although he had fled from his country in order not to take up arms, he even led a soldier’s life for a brief period in his adopted land, receiving a wound in one of the many hostilities between the whites and reds in the unsettled districts.
In Buenos Aires, he again worked as a woodcarver. The city was beginning to expand, breaking its shell as a large village. Desnoyers spent many years ornamenting salons and facades. It was a laborious existence, sedentary and remunerative. But one day he became tired of this slow saving which could only bring him a mediocre fortune after a long time. He had gone to the new world to become rich like so many others. And at twenty-seven, he started forth again, a full-fledged adventurer, avoiding the cities, wishing to snatch money from untapped, natural sources. He worked farms in the forests of the North, but the locusts obliterated his crops in a few hours. He was a cattle-driver, with the aid of only two peons, driving a herd of oxen and mules over the snowy solitudes of the Andes to Bolivia and Chile. In this life, making journeys of many months’ duration, across interminable plains, he lost exact account of time and space. Just as he thought himself on the verge of winning a fortune, he lost it all by an unfortunate speculation. And in a moment of failure and despair, being now thirty years old, he became an employee of Julio Madariaga.
He knew of this rustic millionaire through his purchases of flocks—a Spaniard who had come to the country when very young, adapting himself very easily to its customs, and living like a cowboy after he had acquired enormous properties. The country folk, wishing to put a title of respect before his name, called him Don Madariaga.
“Comrade,” he said to Desnoyers one day when he happened to be in a good humor—a very rare thing for him—“you must have passed through many ups and downs. Your lack of silver may be smelled a long ways off. Why lead such a dog’s life? Trust in me, Frenchy, and remain here! I am growing old, and I need a man.”
After the Frenchman had arranged to stay with Madariaga, every landed proprietor living within fifteen or twenty leagues of the ranch, stopped the new employee on the road to prophesy all sorts of misfortune.
“You will not stay long. Nobody can get along with Don Madariaga. We have lost count of his overseers. He is a man who must be killed or deserted. Soon you will go, too!”
Desnoyers did not doubt but that there was some truth in all this. Madariaga was an impossible character, but feeling a certain sympathy with the Frenchman, had tried not to annoy him with his irritability.
“He’s a regular pearl, this Frenchy,” said the plainsman as though trying to excuse himself for his considerate treatment of his latest acquisition. “I like him because he is very serious. . . . That is the way I like a man.”
Desnoyers did not know exactly what this much-admired seriousness could be, but he felt a secret pride in seeing him aggressive with everybody else, even his family, whilst he took with him a tone of paternal bluffness.
The family consisted of his wife Misia Petrona (whom he always called the China) and two grown daughters who had gone to school in Buenos Aires, but on returning to the ranch had reverted somewhat to their original rusticity.
Madariaga’s fortune was enormous. He had lived in the field since his arrival in America, when the white race had not dared to settle outside the towns for fear of the Indians. He had gained his first money as a fearless trader, taking merchandise in a cart from fort to fort. He had killed Indians, was twice wounded by them, and for a while had lived as a captive with an Indian chief whom he finally succeeded in making his staunch friend. With his earnings, he had bought land, much land, almost worthless because of its insecurity, devoting it to the raising of cattle that he had to defend, gun in hand, from the pirates of the plains.
Then he had married his China, a young half-breed who was running around barefoot, but owned many of her forefathers’ fields. They had lived in an almost savage poverty on their property which would have taken many a day’s journey to go around. Afterwards, when the government was pushing the Indians towards the frontiers, and offering the abandoned lands for sale, considering it a patriotic sacrifice on the part of any one wishing to acquire them, Madariaga bought and bought at the lowest figure and longest terms. To get possession of vast tracts and populate it with blooded stock became the mission of his life. At times, galloping with Desnoyers through his boundless fields, he was not able to repress his pride.
“Tell me something, Frenchy! They say that further up the country, there are some nations about the size of my ranches. Is that so?” . . .
The Frenchman agreed. . . . The lands of Madariaga were indeed greater than many principalities. This put the old plainsman in rare good humor and he exclaimed in the cowboy vernacular which had become second nature to him—“Then it wouldn’t be absurd to proclaim myself king some day? Just imagine it, Frenchy;—Don Madariaga, the First. . . . The worst of it all is that I would also be the last, for the China will not give me a son. . . . She is a weak cow!”
The fame of his vast territories and his wealth in stock reached even to Buenos Aires. Every one knew of Madariaga by name, although very few had seen him. When he went to the Capital, he passed unnoticed because of his country aspect—the same leggings that he was used to wearing in the fields, his poncho wrapped around him like a muffler above which rose the aggressive points of a necktie, a tormenting ornament imposed by his daughters, who in vain arranged it with loving hands that he might look a little more respectable.
One day he entered the office of the richest merchant of the capital.
“Sir, I know that you need some young bulls for the European market, and I have come to sell you a few.”
The man of affairs looked haughtily at the poor cowboy. He might explain his errand to one of the employees, he could not waste his time on such small matters. But the malicious grin on the rustic’s face awoke his curiosity.
“And how many are you able to sell, my good man?”
“About thirty thousand, sir.”
It was not necessary to hear more. The supercilious merchant sprang from his desk, and obsequiously offered him a seat.
“You can be no other than Don Madariaga.”
“At the service of God and yourself, sir,” he responded in the manner of a Spanish countryman.
That was the most glorious moment of his existence.
In the outer office of the Directors of the Bank, the clerks offered him a seat until the personage the other side of the door should deign to receive him. But scarcely was his name announced than that same director ran to admit him, and the employee was stupefied to hear the ranchman say, by way of greeting, “I have come to draw out three hundred thousand dollars. I have abundant pasturage, and I wish to buy a ranch or two in order to stock them.”
His arbitrary and contradictory character weighed upon the inhabitants of his lands with both cruel and good-natured tyranny. No vagabond ever passed by the ranch without being rudely assailed by its owner from the outset.
“Don’t tell me any of your hard-luck stories, friend,” he would yell as if he were going to beat him. “Under the shed is a skinned beast; cut and eat as much as you wish and so help yourself to continue your journey. . . . But no more of your yarns!”
And he would turn his back upon the tramp, after giving him a few dollars.
One day he became infuriated because a peon was nailing the wire fencing too deliberately on the posts. Everybody was robbing him! The following day he spoke of a large sum of money that he would have to pay for having endorsed the note of an acquaintance, completely bankrupt. “Poor fellow! His luck is worse than mine!”
Upon finding in the road the skeleton of a recently killed sheep, he was beside himself with indignation. It was not because of the loss of the meat. “Hunger knows no law, and God has made meat for mankind to eat. But they might at least have left the skin!” . . . And he would rage against such wickedness, always repeating, “Lack of religion and good habits!” The next time, the bandits stripped the flesh off of three cows, leaving the skins in full view, and the ranchman said, smiling, “That is the way I like people, honorable and doing no wrong.”
His vigor as a tireless centaur had helped him powerfully in his task of populating his lands. He was capricious, despotic and with the same paternal instincts as his compatriots who, centuries before when conquering the new world, had clarified its native blood. Like the Castilian conquistadors, he had a fancy for copper-colored beauty with oblique eyes and straight hair. When Desnoyers saw him going off on some sudden pretext, putting his horse at full gallop toward a neighboring ranch, he would say to himself, smilingly, “He is going in search of a new peon who will help work his land fifteen years from now.”
The personnel of the ranch often used to comment on the resemblance of certain youths laboring here the same as the others, galloping from the first streak of dawn over the fields, attending to the various duties of pasturing. The overseer, Celedonio, a half-breed thirty years old, generally detested for his hard and avaricious character, also bore a distant resemblance to the patron.
Almost every year, some woman from a great distance, dirty and bad-faced, presented herself at the ranch, leading by the hand a little mongrel with eyes like live coals. She would ask to speak with the proprietor alone, and upon being confronted with her, he usually recalled a trip made ten or twelve years before in order to buy a herd of cattle.
“You remember, Patron, that you passed the night on my ranch because the river had risen?”
The Patron did not remember anything about it. But a vague instinct warned him that the woman was probably telling the truth. “Well, what of it?”
“Patron, here he is. . . . It is better for him to grow to manhood by your side than in any other place.”
And she presented him with the little hybrid. One more, and offered with such simplicity! . . . “Lack of religion and good habits!” Then with sudden modesty, he doubted the woman’s veracity. Why must it necessarily be his? . . . But his wavering was generally short-lived.
“If it’s mine, put it with the others.”
The mother went away tranquilly, seeing the youngster’s future assured, because this man so lavish in violence was equally so in generosity. In time there would be a bit of land and a good flock of sheep for the urchin.
These adoptions at first aroused in Misia Petrona a little rebellion—the only ones of her life; but the centaur soon reduced her to terrified silence.
“And you dare to complain of me, you weak cow! . . . A woman who has only given me daughters. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
The same hand that negligently extracted from his pocket a wad of bills rolled into a ball, giving them away capriciously without knowing just how much, also wore a lash hanging from the wrist. It was supposed to be for his horse, but it was used with equal facility when any of his peons incurred his wrath.
“I strike because I can,” he would say to pacify himself.
One day, the man receiving the blow, took a step backward, hunting for the knife in his belt.
“You are not going to beat me, Patron. I was not born in these parts. . . . I come from Corrientes.”
The Patron remained with upraised thong. “Is it true that you were not born here? . . . Then you are right; I cannot beat you. Here are five dollars for you.”
When Desnoyers came on the place, Madariaga was beginning to lose count of those who were under his dominion in the old Latin sense, and could take his blows. There were so many that confusion often reigned.
The Frenchman admired the Patron’s expert eye for his business. It was enough for him to contemplate for a few moments a herd of cattle, to know its exact number. He would go galloping along with an indifferent air, around an immense group of horned and stamping beasts, and then would suddenly begin to separate the different animals. He had discovered that they were sick. With a buyer like Madariaga, all the tricks and sharp practice of the drovers came to naught.
His serenity before trouble was also admirable. A drought suddenly strewed his plains with dead cattle, making the land seem like an abandoned battlefield. Everywhere great black hulks. In the air, great spirals of crows coming from leagues away. At other times, it was the cold; an unexpected drop in the thermometer would cover the ground with dead bodies. Ten thousand animals, fifteen thousand, perhaps more, all perished!
“WHAT a knock-out!” Madariaga would exclaim with resignation. “Without such troubles, this earth would be a paradise. . . . Now, the thing to do is to save the skins!”
And he would rail against the false pride of the emigrants, against the new customs among the poor which prevented his securing enough hands to strip the victims quickly, so that thousands of hides had to be lost. Their bones whitened the earth like heaps of snow. The peoncitos (little peons) went around putting the skulls of cows with crumpled horns on the posts of the wire fences—a rustic decoration which suggested a procession of Grecian lyres.
“It is lucky that the land is left, anyway!” added the ranchman.
He loved to race around his immense fields when they were beginning to turn green in the late rains. He had been among the first to convert these virgin wastes into rich meadow-lands, supplementing the natural pasturage with alfalfa. Where one beast had found sustenance before, he now had three. “The table is set,” he would chuckle, “we must now go in search of the guests.” And he kept on buying, at ridiculous prices, herds dying of hunger in others’ uncultivated fields, constantly increasing his opulent lands and stock.
One morning Desnoyers saved his life. The old ranchman had raised his lash against a recently arrived peon who returned the attack, knife in hand. Madariaga was defending himself as best he could, convinced from one minute to another that he was going to receive the deadly knife-thrust—when Desnoyers arrived and, drawing his revolver, overcame and disarmed the adversary.
“Thanks, Frenchy,” said the ranchman, much touched. “You are an all-round man, and I am going to reward you. From this day I shall speak to you as I do to my family.”
Desnoyers did not know just what this familiar talk might amount to, for his employer was so peculiar. Certain personal favors, nevertheless, immediately began to improve his position. He was no longer allowed to eat in the administration building, the proprietor insisting imperiously that henceforth Desnoyers should sit at his own table, and thus he was admitted into the intimate life of the Madariaga family.
The wife was always silent when her husband was present. She was used to rising in the middle of the night in order to oversee the breakfasts of the peons, the distribution of biscuit, and the boiling of the great black kettles of coffee or shrub tea. She looked after the chattering and lazy maids who so easily managed to get lost in the nearby groves. In the kitchen, too, she made her authority felt like a regular house-mistress, but the minute that she heard her husband’s voice she shrank into a respectful and timorous silence. Upon sitting down at table, the China would look at him with devoted submission, her great, round eyes fixed on him, like an owl’s. Desnoyers felt that in this mute admiration was mingled great astonishment at the energy with which the ranchman, already over seventy, was continuing to bring new occupants to live on his demesne.
The two daughters, Luisa and Elena, accepted with enthusiasm the new arrival who came to enliven the monotonous conversations in the dining room, so often cut short by their father’s wrathful outbursts. Besides, he was from Paris. “Paris!” sighed Elena, the younger one, rolling her eyes. And Desnoyers was henceforth consulted in all matters of style every time they ordered any “confections” from the shops of Buenos Aires.
The interior of the house reflected the different tastes of the two generations. The girls had a parlor with a few handsome pieces of furniture placed against the cracked walls, and some showy lamps that were never lighted. The father, with his boorishness, often invaded this room so cherished and admired by the two sisters, making the carpets look shabby and faded under his muddy boot-tracks. Upon the gilt centre-table, he loved to lay his lash. Samples of maize scattered its grains over a silk sofa which the young ladies tried to keep very choice, as though they feared it might break.
Near the entrance to the dining room was a weighing machine, and Madariaga became furious when his daughters asked him to remove it to the offices. He was not going to trouble himself to go outside every time that he wanted to know the weight of a leather skin! . . . A piano came into the ranch, and Elena passed the hours practising exercises with desperate good will. “Heavens and earth! She might at least play the Jota or the Perican, or some other lively Spanish dance!” And the irate father, at the hour of siesta, betook himself to the nearby eucalyptus trees, to sleep upon his poncho.
This younger daughter whom he dubbed La Romantica, was the special victim of his wrath and ridicule. Where had she picked up so many tastes which he and his good China never had had? Music books were piled on the piano. In a corner of the absurd parlor were some wooden boxes that had held preserves, which the ranch carpenter had been made to press into service as a bookcase.
“Look here, Frenchy,” scoffed Madariaga. “All these are novels and poems! Pure lies! . . . Hot air!”
He had his private library, vastly more important and glorious, and occupying less space. In his desk, adorned with guns, thongs, and chaps studded with silver, was a little compartment containing deeds and various legal documents which the ranchman surveyed with great pride.
“Pay attention, now and hear marvellous things,” announced the master to Desnoyers, as he took out one of his memorandum books.
This volume contained the pedigree of the famous animals which had improved his breeds of stock, the genealogical trees, the patents of nobility of his aristocratic beasts. He would have to read its contents to him since he did not permit even his family to touch these records. And with his spectacles on the end of his nose, he would spell out the credentials of each animal celebrity. “Diamond III, grandson of Diamond I, owned by the King of England, son of Diamond II, winner in the races.” His Diamond had cost him many thousands, but the finest horses on the ranch, those which brought the most marvellous prices, were his descendants.
“That horse had more sense than most people. He only lacked the power to talk. He’s the one that’s stuffed, near the door of the parlor. The girls wanted him thrown out. . . . Just let them dare to touch him! I’d chuck them out first!”
Then he would continue reading the history of a dynasty of bulls with distinctive names and a succession of Roman numbers, the same as kings—animals acquired by the stubborn ranchman in the great cattle fairs of England. He had never been there, but he had used the cable in order to compete in pounds sterling with the British owners who wished to keep such valuable stock in their own country. Thanks to these blue-blooded sires that had crossed the ocean with all the luxury of millionaire passengers, he had been able to exhibit in the concourses of Buenos Aires animals which were veritable towers of meat, edible elephants with their sides as fit and sleek as a table.
“That book amounts to something! Don’t you think so, Frenchy? It is worth more than all those pictures of moons, lakes, lovers and other gewgaws that my Romantica puts on the walls to catch the dust.”
And he would point out, in contrast, the precious diplomas which were adorning his desk, the metal vases and other trophies won in the fairs by the descendants of his blooded stock.
Luisa, the elder daughter, called Chicha, in the South American fashion, was much more respected by her father. “She is my poor China right over again,” he said, “the same good nature, and the same faculty for work, but more of a lady.” Desnoyers entirely agreed with him, and yet the father’s description seemed to him weak and incomplete. He could not admit that the pale, modest girl with the great black eyes and smile of childish mischief bore the slightest resemblance to the respectable matron who had brought her into existence.
The great fiesta for Chicha was the Sunday mass. It represented a journey of three leagues to the nearest village, a weekly contact with people unlike those of the ranch. A carriage drawn by four horses took the senora and the two senoritas in the latest suits and hats arrived, via Buenos Aires, from Europe. At the suggestion of Chicha, Desnoyers accompanied them in the capacity of driver.
The father remained at home, taking advantage of this opportunity to survey his fields in their Sunday solitude, thus keeping a closer oversight on the shiftlessness of his hands. He was very religious—“Religion and good manners, you know.” But had he not given thousands of dollars toward building the neighboring church? A man of his fortune should not be submitted to the same obligations as ragamuffins!
During the Sunday lunch the young ladies were apt to make comments upon the persons and merits of the young men of the village and neighboring ranches, who had lingered at the church door in order to chat with them.
“Don’t fool yourselves, girls!” observed the father shrewdly. “You believe that they want you for your elegance, don’t you? . . . What those shameless fellows really want are the dollars of old Madariaga, and once they had them, they would probably give you a daily beating.”
For a while the ranch received numerous visitors. Some were young men of the neighborhood who arrived on spirited steeds, performing all kinds of tricks of fancy horsemanship. They wanted to see Don Julio on the most absurd pretexts, and at the same time improved the opportunity to chat with Chicha and Luisa. At other times they were youths from Buenos Aires asking for a lodging at the ranch, as they were just passing by. Don Madariaga would growl—
“Another good-for-nothing scamp who comes in search of the Spanish ranchman! If he doesn’t move on soon . . . I’ll kick him out!”
But the suitor did not stand long on the order of his going, intimidated by the ominous silence of the Patron. This silence, of late, had persisted in an alarming manner, in spite of the fact that the ranch was no longer receiving visitors. Madariaga appeared abstracted, and all the family, including Desnoyers, respected and feared this taciturnity. He ate, scowling, with lowered head. Suddenly he would raise his eyes, looking at Chicha, then at Desnoyers, finally fixing them upon his wife as though asking her to give an account of things.
His Romantica simply did not exist for him. The only notice that he ever took of her was to give an ironical snort when he happened to see her leaning at sunset against the doorway, looking at the reddening glow—one elbow on the door frame and her cheek in her hand, in imitation of the posture of a certain white lady that she had seen in a chromo, awaiting the knight of her dreams.
Desnoyers had been five years in the house when one day he entered his master’s private office with the brusque air of a timid person who has suddenly reached a decision.
“Don Julio, I am going to leave and I would like our accounts settled.”
Madariaga looked at him slyly. “Going to leave, eh? . . . What for?” But in vain he repeated his questions. The Frenchman was floundering through a series of incoherent explanations—“I’m going; I’ve got to go.”
“Ah, you thief, you false prophet!” shouted the ranchman in stentorian tones.
But Desnoyers did not quail before the insults. He had often heard his Patron use these same words when holding somebody up to ridicule, or haggling with certain cattle drovers.
“Ah, you thief, you false prophet! Do you suppose that I do not know why you are going? Do you suppose old Madariaga has not seen your languishing looks and those of my dead fly of a daughter, clasping each others’ hands in the presence of poor China who is blinded in her judgment? . . . It’s not such a bad stroke, Frenchy. By it, you would be able to get possession of half of the old Spaniard’s dollars, and then say that you had made it in America.”
And while he was storming, or rather howling, all this, he had grasped his lash and with the butt end kept poking his manager in the stomach with such insistence that it might be construed in an affectionate or hostile way.
“For this reason I have come to bid you good-bye,” said Desnoyers haughtily. “I know that my love is absurd, and I wish to leave.”
“The gentleman would go away,” the ranchman continued spluttering. “The gentleman believes that here one can do what one pleases! No, siree! Here nobody commands but old Madariaga, and I order you to stay. . . . Ah, these women! They only serve to antagonize men. And yet we can’t live without them!” . . .
He took several turns up and down the room, as though his last words were making him think of something very different from what he had just been saying. Desnoyers looked uneasily at the thong which was still hanging from his wrist. Suppose he should attempt to whip him as he did the peons? . . . He was still undecided whether to hold his own against a man who had always treated him with benevolence or, while his back was turned, to take refuge in discreet flight, when the ranchman planted himself before him.
“You really love her, really?” he asked. “Are you sure that she loves you? Be careful what you say, for love is blind and deceitful. I, too, when I married my China was crazy about her. Do you love her, honestly and truly? . . . Well then, take her, you devilish Frenchy. Somebody has to take her, and may she not turn out a weak cow like her mother! . . . Let us have the ranch full of grandchildren!”
In voicing this stock-raiser’s wish, again appeared the great breeder of beasts and men. And as though he considered it necessary to explain his concession, he added—“I do all this because I like you; and I like you because you are serious.”
Again the Frenchman was plunged in doubt, not knowing in just what this greatly appreciated seriousness consisted.
At his wedding, Desnoyers thought much of his mother. If only the poor old woman could witness this extraordinary stroke of good fortune! But she had died the year before, believing her son enormously rich because he had been sending her sixty dollars every month, taken from the wages that he had earned on the ranch.
Desnoyers’ entrance into the family made his father-in-law pay less attention to business.
City life, with all its untried enchantments and snares, now attracted Madariaga, and he began to speak with contempt of country women, poorly groomed and inspiring him with disgust. He had given up his cowboy attire, and was displaying with childish satisfaction, the new suits in which a tailor of the Capital was trying to disguise him. When Elena wished to accompany him to Buenos Aires, he would wriggle out of it, trumping up some absorbing business. “No; you go with your mother.”
The fate of his fields and flocks gave him no uneasiness. His fortune, managed by Desnoyers, was in good hands.
“He is very serious,” again affirmed the old Spaniard to his family assembled in the dining roam—“as serious as I am. . . . Nobody can make a fool of him!”
And finally the Frenchman concluded that when his father-in-law spoke of seriousness he was referring to his strength of character. According to the spontaneous declaration of Madariaga, he had, from the very first day that he had dealings with Desnoyers, perceived in him a nature like his own, more hard and firm perhaps, but without splurges of eccentricities. On this account he had treated him with such extraordinary circumspection, foreseeing that a clash between the two could never be adjusted. Their only disagreements were about the expenses established by Madariaga during his regime. Since the son-in-law was managing the ranches, the work was costing less, and the people working more diligently;—and that, too, without yells, and without strong words and deeds, with only his presence and brief orders.
The old man was the only one defending the capricious system of a blow followed by a gift. He revolted against a minute and mechanical administration, always the same, without any arbitrary extravagance or good-natured tyranny. Very frequently some of the half-breed peons whom a malicious public supposed to be closely related to the ranchman, would present themselves before Desnoyers with, “Senor Manager, the old Patron say that you are to give me five dollars.” The Senor Manager would refuse, and soon after Madariaga would rush in in a furious temper, but measuring his words, nevertheless, remembering that his son-in-law’s disposition was as serious as his own.
“I like you very much, my son, but here no one overrules me. . . . Ah, Frenchy, you are like all the rest of your countrymen! Once you get your claws on a penny, it goes into your stocking, and nevermore sees the light of day, even though they crucify you. . . ! Did I say five dollars? Give him ten. I command it and that is enough.”
The Frenchman paid, shrugging his shoulders, whilst his father-in-law, satisfied with his triumph, fled to Buenos Aires. It was a good thing to have it well understood that the ranch still belonged to Madariaga, the Spaniard.
From one of these trips, he returned with a companion, a young German who, according to him, knew everything and could do everything. His son-in-law was working too hard. This Karl Hartrott would assist him in the bookkeeping. Desnoyers accepted the situation, and in a few days felt increasing esteem for the new incumbent.
Although they belonged to two unfriendly nations, it didn’t matter. There are good people everywhere, and this Karl was a subordinate worth considering. He kept his distance from his equals, and was hard and inflexible toward his inferiors. All his faculties seemed concentrated in service and admiration for those above him. Scarcely would Madariaga open his lips before the German’s head began nodding in agreement, anticipating his words. If he said anything funny, his clerk’s laugh would break forth in scandalous roars. With Desnoyers he appeared more taciturn, working without stopping for hours at a time. As soon as he saw the manager entering the office he would leap from his seat, holding himself erect with military precision. He was always ready to do anything whatever. Unasked, he spied on the workmen, reporting their carelessness and mistakes. This last service did not especially please his superior officer, but he appreciated it as a sign of interest in the establishment.
The old man bragged triumphantly of the new acquisition, urging his son-in-law also to rejoice.
“A very useful fellow, isn’t he? . . . These gringoes from Germany work well, know a good many things and cost little. Then, too, so disciplined! so servile! . . . I am sorry to praise him so to you because you are a Frenchy, and your nation has in them a very powerful enemy. His people are a hard-shelled race.”
Desnoyers replied with a shrug of indifference. His country was far away, and so was Germany. Who knew if they would ever return! . . . They were both Argentinians now, and ought to interest themselves in present affairs and not bother about the past.
“And how little pride they have!” sneered Madariaga in an ironical tone. “Every one of these gringoes when he is a clerk at the Capital sweeps the shop, prepares the meals, keeps the books, sells to the customers, works the typewriter, translates four or five languages, and dances attendance on the proprietor’s lady friend, as though she were a grand senora . . . all for twenty-five dollars a month. Who can compete with such people! You, Frenchy, you are like me, very serious, and would die of hunger before passing through certain things. But, mark my words, on this very account they are going to become a terrible people!”
After brief reflection, the ranchman added:
“Perhaps they are not so good as they seem. Just see how they treat those under them! It may be that they affect this simplicity without having it, and when they grin at receiving a kick, they are saying inside, ‘Just wait till my turn comes, and I’ll give you three!’”
Then he suddenly seemed to repent of his suspicions.
“At any rate, this Karl is a poor fellow, a mealy-mouthed simpleton who the minute I say anything opens his jaws like a fly-catcher. He insists that he comes of a great family, but who knows anything about these gringoes? . . . All of us, dead with hunger when we reach America, claim to be sons of princes.”
Madariaga had placed himself on a familiar footing with his Teutonic treasure, not through gratitude as with Desnoyers, but in order to make him feel his inferiority. He had also introduced him on an equal footing in his home, but only that he might give piano lessons to his younger daughter. The Romantica was no longer framing herself in the doorway—in the gloaming watching the sunset reflections. When Karl had finished his work in the office, he was now coming to the house and seating himself beside Elena, who was tinkling away with a persistence worthy of a better fate. At the end of the hour the German, accompanying himself on the piano, would sing fragments from Wagner in such a way that it put Madariaga to sleep in his armchair with his great Paraguay cigar sticking out of his mouth.
Elena meanwhile was contemplating with increasing interest the singing gringo. He was not the knight of her dreams awaited by the fair lady. He was almost a servant, a blond immigrant with reddish hair, fat, heavy, and with bovine eyes that reflected an eternal fear of disagreeing with his chiefs. But day by day, she was finding in him something which rather modified these impressions—his feminine fairness, except where he was burned by the sun, the increasingly martial aspect of his moustachios, the agility with which he mounted his horse, his air of a troubadour, intoning with a rather weak tenor voluptuous romances whose words she did not understand.
One night, just before supper, the impressionable girl announced with a feverish excitement which she could no longer repress that she had made a grand discovery.
“Papa, Karl is of noble birth! He belongs to a great family.”
The plainsman made a gesture of indifference. Other things were vexing him in those days. But during the evening, feeling the necessity of venting on somebody the wrath which had been gnawing at his vitals since his last trip to Buenos Aires, he interrupted the singer.
“See here, gringo, what is all this nonsense about nobility which you have been telling my girl?”
Karl left the piano that he might draw himself up to the approved military position before responding. Under the influence of his recent song, his pose suggested Lohengrin about to reveal the secret of his life. His father had been General von Hartrott, one of the commanders in the war of ‘70. The Emperor had rewarded his services by giving him a title. One of his uncles was an intimate councillor of the King of Prussia. His older brothers were conspicuous in the most select regiments. He had carried a sword as a lieutenant.
Bored with all this grandeur, Madariaga interrupted him. “Lies . . . nonsense . . . hot air!” The very idea of a gringo talking to him about nobility! . . . He had left Europe when very young in order to cast in his lot with the revolting democracies of America, and although nobility now seemed to him something out-of-date and incomprehensible, still he stoutly maintained that the only true nobility was that of his own country. He would yield first place to the gringoes for the invention of machinery and ships, and for breeding priceless animals, but all the Counts and Marquises of Gringo-land appeared to him to be fictitious characters.
“All tomfoolery!” he blustered. “There isn’t any nobility in your country, nor have you five dollars all told to rub against each other. If you had, you wouldn’t come over here to play the gallant to women who are . . . you know what they are as well as I do.”
To the astonishment of Desnoyers, the German received this onslaught with much humility, nodding his head in agreement with the Patron’s last words.
“If there’s any truth in all this twaddle about titles,” continued Madariaga implacably, “swords and uniforms, what did you come here for? What in the devil did you do in your own country that you had to leave it?”
Now Karl hung his head, confused and stuttering.
“Papa, papa,” pleaded Elena. “The poor little fellow! How can you humiliate him so just because he is poor?”
And she felt a deep gratitude toward her brother-in-law when he broke through his usual reserve in order to come to the rescue of the German.
“Oh, yes, of course, he’s a good-enough fellow,” said Madariaga, excusing himself. “But he comes from a land that I detest.”
When Desnoyers made a trip to Buenos Aires a few days afterward, the cause of the old man’s wrath was explained. It appeared that for some months past Madariaga had been the financial guarantor and devoted swain of a German prima donna stranded in South America with an Italian opera company. It was she who had recommended Karl—an unfortunate countryman, who after wandering through many parts of the continent, was now living with her as a sort of gentlemanly singer. Madariaga had joyously expended upon this courtesan many thousands of dollars. A childish enthusiasm had accompanied him in this novel existence midst urban dissipations until he happened to discover that his Fraulein was leading another life during his absence, laughing at him with the parasites of her retinue; whereupon he arose in his wrath and bade her farewell to the accompaniment of blows and broken furniture.
The last adventure of his life! . . . Desnoyers suspected his abdication upon hearing him admit his age, for the first time. He did not intend to return to the capital. It was all false glitter. Existence in the country, surrounded by all his family and doing good to the poor was the only sure thing. And the terrible centaur expressed himself with the idyllic tenderness and firm virtue of seventy-five years, already insensible to temptation.
After his scene with Karl, he had increased the German’s salary, trying as usual, to counteract the effects of his violent outbreaks with generosity. That which he could not forget was his dependent’s nobility, constantly making it the subject of new jests. That glorious boast had brought to his mind the genealogical trees of the illustrious ancestry of his prize cattle. The German was a pedigreed fellow, and thenceforth he called him by that nickname.
Seated on summer nights under the awning, he surveyed his family around him with a sort of patriarchal ecstasy. In the evening hush could be heard the buzzing of insects and the croaking of the frogs. From the distant ranches floated the songs of the peons as they prepared their suppers. It was harvest time, and great bands of immigrants were encamped in the fields for the extra work.
Madariaga had known many of the hard old days of wars and violence. Upon his arrival in South America, he had witnessed the last years of the tyranny of Rosas. He loved to enumerate the different provincial and national revolutions in which he had taken part. But all this had disappeared and would never return. These were the times of peace, work and abundance.
“Just think of it, Frenchy,” he said, driving away the mosquitoes with the puffs of his cigar. “I am Spanish, you French, Karl German, my daughters Argentinians, the cook Russian, his assistant Greek, the stable boy English, the kitchen servants Chinas (natives), Galicians or Italians, and among the peons there are many castes and laws. . . . And yet we all live in peace. In Europe, we would have probably been in a grand fight by this time, but here we are all friends.”
He took much pleasure in listening to the music of the laborers—laments from Italian songs to the accompaniment of the accordion, Spanish guitars and Creole choruses, wild voices chanting of love and death.
“This is a regular Noah’s ark,” exulted the vainglorious patriarch.
“He means the tower of Babel,” thought Desnoyers to himself, “but it’s all the same thing to the old man.”
“I believe,” he rambled on, “that we live thus because in this part of the world there are no kings and a very small army—and mankind is thinking only of enjoying itself as much as possible, thanks to its work. But I also believe that we live so peacefully because there is such abundance that everyone gets his share. . . . How quickly we would spring to arms if the rations were less than the people!”
Again he fell into reflective silence, shortly after announcing the result of his meditations.
“Be that as it may be, we must recognize that here life is more tranquil than in the other world. Men are taken for what they are worth, and mingle together without thinking whether they came from one country or another. Over here, fellows do not come in droves to kill other fellows whom they do not know and whose only crime is that they were born in an unfriendly country. . . . Man is a bad beast everywhere, I know that; but here he eats, owns more land than he needs so that he can stretch himself, and he is good with the goodness of a well-fed dog. Over there, there are too many; they live in heaps getting in each other’s way, and easily run amuck. Hurrah for Peace, Frenchy, and the simple life! Where a man can live comfortably and runs no danger of being killed for things he doesn’t understand—there is his real homeland!”
And as though an echo of the rustic’s reflections, Karl seated at the piano, began chanting in a low voice one of Beethoven’s hymns—