The Cabin Part 3

Averse to discussing his difficulties, he always seemed to be smiling, good-natured and calm, with the blue cap which had won for him his nickname,[D] pulled well down over his ears.

He worked from daylight until dusk. While the rest of the _huerta_ still slept, he tilled his fields in the uncertain light of dawn, but more and more convinced, all the time, that he could not go on working them alone.

It was too great a burden for one man. If he only had a son! When he sought aid, he took on servants who robbed him, worked but little, and whom he discharged when he surprised them asleep in the stable during the sunny hours.

Obsessed with his respect for his ancestors, he would rather have died in his fields, overcome by fatigue, than rent a single acre to strange hands. And since he could not manage all the work alone, half of his fertile land remained fallow and unproductive, while he tried to maintain his family and pay off his landlord by the cultivation of the other half.

A silent struggle was this, desperate and obstinate, to earn enough for the necessities of life and overcome the ebbing of his vitality.

He now had only one wish. It was that his little girls should not know; that no one should give them an inkling of the worries and troubles which hara.s.sed their father; that the sacred joy of this household, the joy enlivened at all hours by the songs and laughter of the four sisters, who had been born in four successive years, should not be broken.

And they, in the meantime, had already begun to attract the attention of the young swains of the _huerta_, when they went to the merrymakings of the village in their new and showy silk handkerchiefs and their rustling ironed skirts. And while they were getting up at dawn and slipping off barefooted in their chemises in order to look down, through the cracks of the little windows, at the suitors who were singing the _albaes_,[E]

or who wooed them with thrummings of the guitar, poor old Barret, trying harder and harder to balance his accounts, drew out ounce by ounce the handful of gold which his father had ama.s.sed for him farthing by farthing, and tried in vain to appease Don Salvador, the old miser who never had enough, and who, not content with squeezing him, kept talking of the bad times, the scandalous increase in taxes, and the need of raising his rent.

Barret could not possibly have had a worse landlord. He bore a detestable reputation throughout the entire _huerta_, since there was hardly a district where he did not own property. Every evening he pa.s.sed over the roads, visiting his tenants, wrapped up even in springtime in his old cloak, shabby and looking like a beggar, while maledictions and hostile gestures followed after him. It was the tenacity of avarice which desired to be in contact with its property at all hours; the persistency of the usurer, who has pending accounts to settle.

The dogs howled from a distance when they saw him, as though Death itself were approaching; the children looked after him with frowning faces; men hid themselves in order to avoid painful excuses, and the women came to meet him at the door of the cabin with their eyes upon the ground and the lie ready to entreat him to be patient, while they answered his bl.u.s.tering threats with tears.

Pimento who, as the public bully, interested himself in the misfortunes of his neighbours, and who was the knight-errant of the _huerta_, muttered something through his teeth which sounded like the promise of a thras.h.i.+ng, with a cooling-off later in a ca.n.a.l. But the very victims of the miser held him back, telling him of the influence of Don Salvador, warning him that he was a man who spent his mornings in court and had powerful friends. With such, the poor are always losers.

Of all his tenants, the best was Barret, who at the cost of great effort owed him nothing at all. And the old miser, even while pointing him out as a model to the other tenants, carried his cruelty toward him to the utmost extreme. Aroused by the very meekness of the farmer he showed himself more exacting, and was evidently pleased to find a man upon whom he could vent without fear all his instincts of robbery and oppression.

Finally he raised the rent of the land. Barret protested, even wept as he recited to him the merits of the family who had worked the skin from their hands in order to make these fields the best of the _huerta_. But Don Salvador was inflexible. Were they the best? Then he ought to pay more. And Barret paid the increase; he would give up his last drop of blood before he would abandon those fields which little by little were taking his very life.

At last he had no money left to tide him over. He could count only upon the produce from the fields. And completely alone, poor Barret concealed the real situation from his family. He forced himself to smile when his wife and daughters begged him not to work so hard, and he kept on like a veritable madman.

He did not sleep; it seemed to him that his garden-truck was growing less quickly than that of his neighbours; he made up his mind that he, and he alone, should cultivate all the land; he worked at night, groping in the darkness; the slightest threatening cloud would make him tremble, and be fairly beside himself with fear; and finally, honourable and good as he was, he even took advantage of the carelessness of his neighbours and robbed them of their share of water for the irrigation.

But if his family were blind, the neighbouring farmers understood his situation and pitied him for his meekness. He was a big, good-natured fellow, who did not know how to put on a bold front before the repellent miser, who was slowly draining him dry.

And this was true. The poor fellow, exhausted by his feverish existence and mad labour, became a mere skeleton of skin and bones, bent over like an octogenarian, with sunken eyes. That characteristic cap, which had given him his nickname, no longer remained settled upon his ears, but as he grew leaner, drooped toward his shoulders, like the funereal extinguisher of his existence.

But the worst of it was that this insufferable excess of fatigue only served to pay half of what the insatiable monster demanded. The consequences of his mad labours were not slow in coming. Barret's nag, a long-suffering animal, the companion of all his frantic toil, tired of working both day and night, of drawing the cart with loads of garden-truck to the market at Valencia, and of being hitched to the plough without time to breathe or to cool off, decided to die rather than to attempt the slightest rebellion against his poor master.

Then indeed the poor farmer saw himself lost! He gazed with desperation at his fields which he could no longer cultivate; the rows of fresh garden-truck which the people in the city devoured indifferently without suspecting the anxiety the produce had caused the poor farmer, in the constant battle with his poverty and with the land.

But Providence, which never abandons the poor, spoke to him through the mouth of Don Salvador. Not vainly do they say that G.o.d often derives good from evil.

The insufferable miser, the voracious usurer, offered his a.s.sistance with touching and paternal kindness on hearing of Barret's misfortune.

How much did he need to buy another beast? Fifty dollars? Then here he was, ready to aid him, and to show him how unjust was the hatred of those who despised and spoke ill of him.

And he loaned money to Barret, although with the insignificant detail of demanding that he place his signature (since business is business), at the foot of a certain paper in which he mentioned interest, the acc.u.mulation of interest, and security for the debt, listing to cover this last detail, the furniture, the implements, all that the farmer possessed on his farm, including the animals of the corral.

Barret, encouraged by the possession of a new and vigorous young horse, returned to his work with more spirit, to kill himself again over those lands which were crus.h.i.+ng him, and which seemed to grow in proportion as his efforts diminished until they enveloped him like a red shroud.

All that his fields produced was eaten by his family, and the handful of copper which he made by his sales in the market of Valencia was soon scattered; he could never eke out enough to satisfy the avarice of Don Salvador.

The anguish of old Barret over his struggle to pay his debt and his failure to do so aroused in him a certain instinct of rebellion which caused all sorts of confused ideas of justice to surge through his crude reasoning. Why were not the fields his own? All his ancestors had spent their lives upon these lands; they were sprinkled with the sweat of his family; if it were not for them, the Barrets, these lands would be as depopulated as the sands of the seash.o.r.e. And now this inhuman old man, who was the master here, though he did not know how to pick up a hoe and had never bent his back in toil in his whole life, was putting the screws on him and crus.h.i.+ng him with all his "reminders." Christ! How the affairs of men are ordered!

But these revolts were only momentary; the resigned submission of the labourer returned to him; with his traditional and superst.i.tious respect for property. He must work and be honest.

And the poor man, who considered that failure to pay one's obligation was the greatest of all dishonours, returned to his work, growing ever weaker and thinner, and feeling within himself the gradual sagging of his vitality. Convinced that he would not be able to drag out the situation much longer, he was yet indignant at the mere possibility of abandoning a handful of the lands of his forefathers.

When Christmas came, he was able to pay Don Salvador only a small part of the half-year's rent that fell due; Saint John's day arrived, and he had not a _centime_; his wife was sick; he had even sold their wedding jewelry in order to meet expenses; ... the ancient pendant earrings, and the collar of pearls, which were the family treasure, and the future possession of which had given rise to discussions among the four daughters.

The avaricious old miser proved himself to be inflexible. No, Barret, this could not continue. Since he was kind-hearted (however unwilling people were to believe it), he would not permit the farmer to kill himself in his determination to cultivate more land than his efforts were equal to. No, he would not consent to it; he was too kind-hearted.

And as he had received another offer of rental, he notified Barret to relinquish the fields as soon as possible. He was very sorry, but he also was poor. Ah! And at the same time, he reminded him that it would be necessary to pay back the loan for the purchase of the horse, ... a sum which with the interest amounted to....

The poor farmer did not even pay attention to the sum of some thousand reals to which his debt had aggregated with the blessed interest, so agitated and confused did he become by this order to abandon his lands.

His weakness and the inner erosion produced by the crus.h.i.+ng struggle of two years showed themselves suddenly.

He, who had never wept, now sobbed like a child. All of his pride, his Moorish gravity, disappeared all at once, and kneeling down before the old man, he begged him not to forsake him since he looked upon him as a father.

But a fine father poor Barret had picked! Don Salvador proved to be relentless. He was sorry, but he could not help it: he himself was poor; he had to provide a living for his sons. And he continued to cloak his cruelty with sentences of hypocritical sentimentality.

The farmer grew tired of asking for mercy. He made several trips to Valencia to the house of the master to remind him of his forefathers, of his moral right to those lands, begging him for a little patience, declaring with frenzied hope that he would pay him back. But at last the miser refused to open his door to him.

Then desperation gave Barret new life. He became again the son of the _huerta_, proud, spirited, intractable, when he is convinced that he is in the right. The landlord did not wish to listen to him? He refused to give him any hope? Very well; he was in his own house; if Don Salvador desired anything, he would have to seek him there. He would like to see the bully who could make him leave his farm.

And he went on working, but with misgiving, gazing anxiously about if any one unknown to him happened to be approaching over the adjoining roads, as though expecting at any moment to be attacked by a band of bandits.

They summoned him to court, but he did not appear.

He already knew what this meant: the snares that men set in order to ruin the honourable. If they were going to rob him, let them seek him out on these lands which had become a part of his very flesh and blood, for as such he would defend them.

One day they gave him notice that the court was going to begin proceedings to expel him from his land that very afternoon; furthermore, they would attach everything he had in his cabin to meet his debts. He would not be sleeping there that night.

This news was so incredible to poor old Barret that he smiled with incredulity. This might happen to others, to those cheats who had never paid anything; but he, who had always fulfilled his duty, who had even been born here, who owed only a year's rent,--nonsense! Such a thing could not happen, even though one were living among savages, without charity or religion!

But in the afternoon, when he saw certain men in black coming along the road, big funereal birds with wings of paper rolled under the arm, he no longer was in doubt. This was the enemy. They were coming to rob him.

And suddenly there was awakened within old Barret the blind courage of the Moor who will suffer every manner of insult but who goes mad when his property is touched. Running into the cabin, he seized the old shot-gun, always hung loaded behind the door, and raising it to his shoulder, took his stand under the vineyard, ready to put two bullets into the first bandit of the law to set foot upon his fields.

His sick wife and four daughters came running out, shouting wildly, and threw themselves upon him, trying to wrest away the gun, pulling at the barrel with both hands. And such were the cries of the group, as they struggled and contended for it, reeling from one pillar of the grape-arbour to the other, that people from the neighbourhood began to run out, arriving in an anxious crowd, with the fraternal solidarity of those who live in deserted places.

It was Pimento who prudently made himself master of the shot-gun and carried it off to his house. Barret staggered behind, trying to pursue him but restrained and held fast by the strong arms of some strapping young fellows, while he vented his madness upon the fool who was keeping him from defending his own.

"Pimento,--thief! Give me back my shot-gun!"

But the bully smiled good-naturedly, satisfied that he was behaving both prudently and paternally with the old madman. Thus he brought him to his own farm-house, where he and Barret's friends watched him and advised him not to do a foolish deed. Have a care, old Barret! These people are from the court, and the poor always lose when they pick a quarrel with _it_! Coolness and evil design succeed above everything.

And at the same time, the big black birds were writing papers, and yet more papers in the farm-house of Barret; impa.s.sively they turned over the furniture and the clothing, making an inventory even of the corral and the stable, while the wife and the daughters wept in despair, and the terrified crowd, gathering at the door, followed all the details of the deed, trying to console the poor woman, or breaking out into suppressed maledictions against the Jew, Don Salvador, and these fellows who yielded obedience to such a dog.

Toward nightfall, Barret, who was like one overwhelmed, and who, after the mad crisis, had fallen into a stony stupor, saw some bundles of clothing at his feet, and heard the metallic sound of a bag which contained his farming implements.

"Father! Father!" whimpered the tremulous voices of his daughters, who threw themselves into his arms; behind them the old woman, sick, trembling with fever, and in the rear, invading the _barraca_ of Pimento, and disappearing into the background through the dark door, all the people of the neighbourhood, the terrified chorus of the tragedy.

He had already been driven away from his farm-house. The men in black had closed it, taking away the keys; nothing remained to them there except the bundles which were on the floor; the worn clothing, the iron implements; this was all which they were permitted to take out of the house.