The Dead Command Part 14

The Little Chaplain rejoiced at the thought of the arrogant youths with whom he was to become acquainted. They would all treat him like a chum because he was the brother of the bride to be; but of all these future friends.h.i.+ps the one which most flattered him was that of Pere, nicknamed Ferrer, on account of his trade as an ironworker, a man about thirty, much talked about in the parish of San Jose.

The boy looked upon him as a great artist. When he condescended to work he made the most beautiful pistols ever seen on the field of Iviza. Old barrels were sent to him from the Peninsula, and he mounted them to suit his fancy in stocks engraved with barbaric design, adding to the work ornate decorations of silver. A weapon of his make could be loaded to the muzzle without danger of bursting.

A still more important circ.u.mstance increased his respect for Ferrer. He declared in a low voice, with a tone of mystery and respect, "Ferrer is a verro."

A verro! Jaime was silent for a few moments, trying to coordinate his recollection of island customs. An expressive gesture from the Little Chaplain a.s.sisted his memory. A verro was a man whose valor was already demonstrated, one who has several proofs of the power of his hand, or the accuracy of his aim, rotting in the earth.

That his kindred might not seem beneath Ferrer, Pepet recalled his grandfather's prowess. He had also been a verro, but the ancients knew how to do things better. The skill with which the grandfather settled his affairs was still remembered in San Jose; a stab with his famous knife, and his well-laid plans sufficed, for people were always found who were ready to swear they had seen him at the other end of the island at the very moment when his enemy lay writhing in mortal agony far away.

Ferrer was a less fortunate verro. He had returned six months ago after having spent eight years in a prison on the Peninsula. He had been sentenced to fourteen, but he had received various exemptions. His reception was triumphal. A native of San Jose was returning from heroic exile! They must not fall behind the citizens of other parishes who received their verros with great demonstrations, and on the day of the arrival of the steamer even the most distant relatives of Ferrer, who composed half the town, went down to the port of Iviza to meet him, and the other half went out of pure patriotism. Even the alcalde joined in the expedition, followed by his secretary, to retain the sympathy of his political partisans. The gentlemen of the city protested with indignation at these barbaric and immoral customs of the peasantry, while men, women, and children a.s.saulted the steamer, each striving to be first to press the hero's hand.

Pepet described the verro's reception on his return to San Jose. He had been a member of the party, with its long line of carts, horses, donkeys, and pedestrians, looking as if an entire people were emigrating. The procession halted at every tavern and inn along the way, and the great man was regaled with jugs of wine, tid-bits of roasted sausage and gla.s.ses of figola, a liquor made of native herbs. They admired his new suit, a suit suggesting the fine senor which had been made to his order on leaving the penitentiary; they inwardly marveled at his ease of manner, at the princely and condescending air with which he greeted his old friends. Many of them envied him. What wonderful things a man learns when he leaves the island! There is nothing like travel!

The former ironworker overwhelmed them all with boasts of his adventures on his homeward voyage. For several weeks thereafter the evening gatherings in the tavern were most interesting. The words of the verro were repeated from house to house throughout all the little homes scattered through the cuarton, every peasant finding some l.u.s.ter for his parish in these adventures of his fellow citizen.

The Ironworker never wearied of praising the beauty of the penal establishment in which he had spent eight years. He forgot the misery and hards.h.i.+p he had endured there; he looked back upon it with that love for the past which colors one's recollections.

He had been more fortunate than those poor wretches who are sent to the penitentiary on the plains of La Mancha, where the men have to carry up the water on their backs, suffering the torments of an Arctic cold.

Neither had he been in the prisons of old Castile where snow whitens the courtyards and sifts in through the barred windows. He came from Valencia, from the penitentiary of Saint Michael of the Kings, "Niza,"

as it was nicknamed by the habitual pensioners of these establishments.

He spoke with pride of this house, just as a wealthy student recalls the years he has spent in an English or German university. Tall palm trees shaded the courtyards, their crested tops waving above the tiled roofs; standing in the window-grilles one could see extensive orchards, with the triangular white pediments of the farmhouses, and farther out stretched the Mediterranean, an immense blue expanse, behind which lay his native rock, the beloved isle; perhaps the breeze, laden with the salt smell and with the fragrance of vegetation, which filtered like a benediction through the malodorous cells of the penitentiary, had first pa.s.sed over it. What more could a man desire! Life there was sweet; one dined regularly, and always had a hot meal; everything was orderly, and a man had only to obey and allow himself to be led. One made advantageous friends.h.i.+ps; one a.s.sociated with people of note, whom he would never have met had he remained on the island, and the Ironworker told of his friends with pride. Some had possessed millions, and had ridden in luxurious carriages there in Madrid, an almost fantastic city whose name rung in the ears of the islanders like that of Bagdad to the poor Arab of the desert listening to the tales of the "Thousand and One Nights;" others had overrun half the world before misfortune shut them up in this enclosure. Surrounded by an absorbed circle, the verro recounted the adventures of these a.s.sociates in the lands of the negroes, or in countries where men were yellow, or green, and wore long womanish braids. In that ancient convent, as large as a town, dwelt the salt of the earth. Some of them had girded on swords and commanded men; others had been accustomed to handling papers bearing great seals and had interpreted the law. Even a priest had been a cell-companion of the Ironworker!

The verro's admirers heard him with wide-open eyes and nostrils palpitating with emotion. What joy! To be a verro, to have gained celebrity and respect by killing an enemy in the darkness of night, and, as a recompense, eight years in "Niza," a place of honor and delight.

How they envied such good luck!

The Little Chaplain, who had listened to these tales, felt a great and enduring respect for the verro. He described the particulars of his person with the detail of one enamored of a hero.

He was neither as tall nor as strong as the senor; he would scarcely come up to Don Jaime's ear, but he was agile, and n.o.body surpa.s.sed him in the dance: he could dance whole hours until he tired out every girl in the parish. From his long season at the prison he had returned with a pale and waxy complexion, the complexion of a cloistered nun; but now he was dark like everybody else, with his face bronzed and tanned by the sea air and the African sun of the island. He lived in the mountain, in a hut at the edge of the pine woods near the charcoal-makers, who supplied fuel for his forge. This he did not light every day. With his pretensions at being an artist, he worked only when he had to repair a fire-lock, to transform a flintlock into a rifle, or to make one of those silver decorated pistols which were the admiration of the Little Chaplain.

The boy hoped that this man would be his sister's choice; that the verro, with his astonis.h.i.+ng skill, would become a member of his family.

"Maybe Margalida will like him, and then Ferrer will give me one of his pistols. What do you think, Don Jaime?"

He plead the verro's cause as if he were already a relative. The poor fellow lived so wretchedly, alone in his shop with no other companion than an old woman always dressed in the black garb of long-past mourning; one of her eyes was watery, the other was shut. She would blow the bellows while her nephew hammered the red-hot iron. Ever working around the fire, she grew more bony and thin each day; the hollows of her eyes seemed to be turning into liquid in her old face, which was wrinkled like a withered apple.

That gloomy, smoky den in the pine forest would be embellished by Margalida's presence. Its only decorations at present were a few small, colored rush baskets woven in the shape of checker-boards, adorned with silk pompons, a friendly token from the unfamed artists who whiled away the time in their retreat in "Niza." When his sister should live at the forge Pepet would go to see her, and he counted on acquiring through the munificence of his brother-in-law, a knife as famous as his grandfather's, that is, if Senor Pep unjustly persevered in refusing him this glorious heritage.

The recollection of his father seemed to cloud the boy's hopes. He realized how difficult it would be for the master of Can Mallorqui to accept the Ironworker as a son-in-law; the old man could say no ill of him; he acknowledged his fame as an honor to the town. The island not only had brave men in "the wild beasts of San Juan," but San Jose could also gloat over valiant youths who had undergone trying tests; Ferrer, however, was little skilled in agricultural affairs, and although all the Ivizans showed themselves equally predisposed to cultivating the soil, to casting a net into the sea, or to landing a cargo of smuggled goods, along with other little industries, skipping easily from one kind of work to another, he desired for his daughter a genuine farmer, one accustomed all his life to scrabbling the earth. His resolution was unbreakable. In his empty and inflexible brain, when an idea sprouted it became so firmly imbedded that no hurricane nor cataclysm could uproot it. Pepet should be a priest, and should travel over the world.

Margalida he was keeping for some farmer who should add to the lands of Can Mallorqui when he inherited them.

The Little Chaplain thought eagerly of him who might be the one favored by Margalida. It would be a struggle for them all, having at their head a man like the Ironworker. Even if his sister should incline toward another, the fortunate one would be compelled to settle accounts with Pere, the glorious desperado, and must put him out of the way. Great things were going to be seen. The courting of Margalida was already discussed in every house in the cuarton; her fame would spread throughout the whole island; and Pepet smiled with ferocious delight like a young savage on his way to a ma.s.sacre.

He looked up to Margalida, acknowledging her as a greater authority than his father for the reason that his respect was not based on fear of blows. She it was who managed the house; everyone obeyed her. Even her mother walked in her footsteps like a serving woman, not venturing to do anything without consulting her. Senor Pep hesitated before making a decision, scratching his forehead with a gesture of doubt and murmuring, "I must consult the girl about that." The Little Chaplain himself, who had inherited the paternal obstinacy, quickly yielded at his sister's slightest word, a gentle insinuation from her smiling lips uttered in her sweet voice.

"The things she knows, Don Jaime!" said the boy with admiration, and he enumerated her talents, dwelling with a certain respect on her skill in singing.

"Do you know the Minstrel, the sick boy, Don Jaime? He has trouble with his chest. He cannot work, and he spends his time lying in the shade thumping on a tambourine and mumbling verses. He's a white lamb, a chicken, with eyes and skin like a woman's, incapable of standing up before a brave man. He aspires to Margalida, too," but the Little Chaplain swore that he would smash the tambourine over his head before he would accept him as a brother-in-law. He would only claim as a relative of his a hero. Yet, as for making up songs and singing them interspersed with cries like the peac.o.c.k's, there was no one to equal the Minstrel. One should be just, and Pepet recognized the youth's merit. He was a glory to the cuarton, almost to be compared with the valorous Ironworker. At the summer gatherings on the prchu of the farmhouse, or at the Sunday dances, Margalida, blus.h.i.+ng, urged on by her companions, would sometimes take a seat in the center of the circle, and, the tambourine on her knee, her eyes hidden behind a kerchief, would reply with a long romance of her own invention to the rhymes of the troubadour.

If, some Sunday, the Minstrel intoned a long harangue about the perfidy of woman and how dear her fondness for dress cost man, the following Sunday Margalida would reply with a romanza twice as long, criticizing the vanity and egoism of the men, while the crowd of girls chorused her verses with cluckings of enthusiasm, glorying in having an avenger in the girl of Can Mallorqui.

"Pepet!... Pepet!..."

A feminine voice sounded in the distance like a crystal, breaking the dense silence of the early afternoon hours vibrant with heat and light.

The voice grew stronger, as if approaching the tower.

Pepet changed from the position of a young animal at rest, freeing his legs from his encircling arms, and sprang to his feet. It was Margalida calling him. No doubt his father needed him for some task, and he had made a long visit.

Jaime grasped his arm.

"Wait, let her come," he said, smiling. "Pretend you don't hear her."

The Little Chaplain's l.u.s.trous teeth glistened in his bronzed face. The young imp was pleased at this innocent duplicity, and he took advantage of it by speaking to the senor with bold confidence.

"You will really ask Senor Pep for it--for my grandfather's knife?"

"Yes, you shall have it," said Jaime. "Or if your father will not give it to you I will buy you the best one I can find in Iviza."

The boy rubbed his hands, his eyes glowing with savage joy.

"Having that will make a man of you," continued Febrer, "but you must not use it! Just a decoration, nothing else."

Eager to realize his desire at once, Pepet replied with energetic nodding of his head. Yes, a decoration, nothing else! Yet his eyes darkened with a cruel doubt. A decoration it might be, but if anyone should offend him while he had such a companion, what ought a man to do?

"Pepet!"

The crystal voice now rung out several times at the foot of the tower.

Febrer waited for her coming, hoping to see Margalida's head, and then her figure, appear in the doorway; but he waited in vain; the voice grew more insistent, with pretty quavers of impatience.

Febrer peeped through the doorway and saw the girl standing at the foot of the stairs, in her full blue skirt and her straw hat with its streamers of flowered ribbons. The broad brim of her hat seemed to form an aureole around the rose-pale face in which trembled the dark drops of her eyes.

"Greeting, Almond Blossom!" called Febrer, smiling, but with hesitation in his voice.

Almond Blossom! As the girl heard this name on the senor's lips a flush of color momentarily overspread the soft whiteness of her face.

Had Don Jaime heard that name? But did such a gentleman interest himself in nonsense of that kind?

Now Febrer saw nothing but the crown and brim of Margalida's hat. She had lowered her head, and in her confusion stood fingering the corners of her ap.r.o.n, abashed, like a girl listening to the first words of love, and suddenly realizing the significance of life.

CHAPTER III

LOVE AND DANCING

The next Sunday morning Febrer took a trip to town. Tio Ventolera could not go fis.h.i.+ng with him, for he considered his presence at ma.s.s indispensable, that he might respond to the priest with his shrill voice.

Having nothing else to do, Jaime started for the pueblo, walking along the paths in the red earth which stained his white hempen sandals. It was one of the last days of summer. The snowy white farmhouses seemed to reflect the African sun like mirrors. Swarms of insects buzzed in the air. In the green shade of the spreading fig trees, low and round, like roofs of verdure resting on their circle of supports, figs opened by the heat, fell, flattening on the ground like enormous drops of purple sugar. p.r.i.c.kly pears raised their th.o.r.n.y, wall-like trunks on either side of the road, and among their dusty roots whisked flexible, little animals, with long emerald green tails, intoxicated by the sun.