Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) Part 35

Ulysses felt very uneasy on remembering what he had done out on the Mediterranean. He feared that the popular groups, thronging past him and giving cheers behind their flags, were going to guess his exploit and fall upon him. It was necessary to get away from this patriotic enthusiasm, and he breathed more freely when he found himself in one of the coaches of a train.... Besides, he was going to see Freya. And it was enough for him merely to evoke her image to make all his remorse vanish.

The short journey proved long and difficult. The necessities of war had made themselves felt from the very first moment, absorbing all means of communication. The train would remain immovable for hours together in order to give the right of way to other trains loaded with men and military materials.... In all the stations were soldiers in campaign uniform, banners and cheering crowds.

When Ferragut arrived at Naples, fatigued by a journey of forty-eight hours, it seemed to him that the coachman was going too slowly toward the old palace of Chiaja.

Upon crossing the vestibule with his little suit-case, the portress,--a fat old crone with dusty, frizzled hair whom he had sometimes caught a glimpse of in the depths of her hall cavern,--stopped his pa.s.sage.

"The ladies are no longer living in the house.... The ladies have suddenly left with Karl, their employee." And she explained the rest of their flight with a hostile and malignant smile.

Ferragut saw that he must not insist. The slovenly old wife was furious over the flight of the German ladies, and was examining the sailor as a probable spy fit for patriotic denunciation. Nevertheless, through professional honor, she told him that the blonde _signora_, the younger and more attractive one, had thought of him on going away, leaving his baggage in the porter's room.

Ulysses hastened to disappear. He would soon send some one to collect those valises. And taking another carriage, he betook himself to the _albergo_ of S. Lucia.... What an unexpected blow!

The porter made a gesture of surprise and astonishment upon seeing him enter. Before Ferragut could inquire for Freya, with the vague hope that she might have taken refuge in the hotel, this man gave him some news.

"Captain, your son has been here waiting for you."

The captain stuttered in dismay, "What son?..."

The man with the embroidered keys brought the register, showing him one line, "Esteban Ferragut, Barcelona." Ulysses recognized his son's handwriting, and at the same time his heart was oppressed with indefinable anguish.

Surprise made him speechless, and the porter took advantage of his silence to continue speaking. He was such a charming and intelligent lad!... Some mornings he had accompanied him in order to point out to him the best things in the city. He had inquired among the consignees of the _Mare Nostrum_, hunting everywhere for news of his father.

Finally convinced that the captain must already be returning to Barcelona, he also had gone the day before.

"If you had only come twelve hours sooner, you would have found him still here."

The porter knew nothing more. Occupied in doing errands for some South American ladies, he had been unable to say good-bye to the young man when he left the hotel, undecided whether to make the trip in an English steamer to Ma.r.s.eilles or to go by railroad to Genoa, where he would find boats direct to Barcelona.

Ferragut wished to know when he had arrived. And the porter, rolling his eyes, gave himself up to long mental calculation.... Finally he reached a date and the sailor, in his turn, concentrated his powers of recollection.

He struck himself on the forehead with his clenched hand. It must have been his son then, that youth whom he had seen entering the _albergo_ the very day that he was going to take charge of the schooner, to carry combustibles to the German submarines!

CHAPTER VIII

THE YOUNG TELEMACHUS

Whenever the _Mare Nostrum_ returned to Barcelona, Esteban Ferragut had always felt as dazzled as though a gorgeous stained gla.s.s window had opened upon his obscure and monotonous life as the son of the family.

He now no longer wandered along the harbor admiring from afar the great transatlantic liners in front of the monument of Christopher Columbus, nor the cargo steamers that were lined up along the commercial docks.

An important boat was going to be his absolute property for some weeks, while its captain and officers were pa.s.sing the time on land with their families. Toni, the mate, was the only one who slept aboard. Many of the seamen had begged permission to live in the city, and so the steamer had been entrusted to the guardians.h.i.+p of Uncle Caragol with half a dozen men for the daily cleaning. The little Ferragut used to play that he was the captain of the _Mare Nostrum_ and would pace the bridge, pretending that a great tempest was coming up, and examine the nautical instrument with the gravity of an expert. Sometimes he used to race through all the habitable parts of the boat, climbing down to the holds that, wide open, were being ventilated, waiting for their cargo; and finally he would clamber into the s.h.i.+p's gig, untying it from the landing in order to row in it for a few hours, with even more satisfaction than in the light skiffs of the Regatta Club.

His visits always ended in the kitchen, invited there by Uncle Caragol, who was accustomed to treat him with fraternal familiarity. If the youthful oarsman was perspiring greatly.... "A refresquet?" And the _chef_ would prepare his sweet mixture that made men, after one gulp, fall into the haziness of intoxication.

Esteban esteemed highly the "refrescos" of the cook. His imagination, excited by the frequent reading of novels of travel, had made him conceive a type of heroic, gallant, das.h.i.+ng sailor--a regular swash-buckler capable of swallowing by the pitcherful the most rousing drinks without moving an eyelid. He wanted to be that kind; every good sailor ought to drink.

Although on land he was not acquainted with other liquors than those innocent and over-sweet ones kept by his mother for family fiestas, once he trod the deck of a vessel he felt the necessity for alcoholic liquids so as to make it evident that he was entirely a man. "There wasn't in the whole world a drink that could do _him_ any harm...." And after a second "refresco" from Uncle Caragol, he became submersed in a placid nirvana, seeing everything rose-colored and considerably enlarged,--the sea, the nearby boats, the docks, and Montjuich in the background.

The cook, looking at him affectionately with his bleared eyes, believed that he must have bounded back a dozen years and be still in Valencia, talking with that other Ferragut boy who was running away from the university in order to row in the harbor. He almost came to believe that he had lived twice.

He always listened patiently to the lad's complaints, interrupting him with solemn counsels. This fifteen-year-old Ferragut appeared discontented with life. He was a man and he had to live with women--his mother and two nieces, who were always making laces,--just as in other times his mother had been the lace-making companion of her mother-in-law, Dona Cristina. He wanted to be a seaman and they were obliging him to study the uninteresting courses leading to a bachelor's degree. It was scarcely likely, was it, that a captain would have to know Latin?... He wanted to bring his student life to an end so as to become a pilot and continue practicing on the bridge, beside his father. Perhaps at thirty years of age, he might achieve the command of the _Mare Nostrum_ or some similar boat.

Meanwhile the lure of the sea dragged him far from the cla.s.sroom, prompting him to visit Uncle Caragol at the very hour that his professors were calling the roll and noting the students' absence.

The old man and his protege used to betake themselves in the galley with the uneasy conscience of the guilty. Steps and voices on deck always changed their topic of conversation. "Hide yourself!" and Esteban would dodge under the table or hide in the provision-closet while the cook sallied forth with a seraphic countenance to meet the recent arrival.

Sometimes it was Toni, and the boy would then dare to come out, relying on his silence; for Toni liked him, too, and approved of his aversion to books.

If it was the captain who was coming to the boat for a few moments, Caragol would talk with him, obstructing the door with his bulk at the same time that he was smiling maliciously.

For Esteban the two most wonderful things in all the world were the sea and his father. All those romantic heroes that had come from the pages of novels to take their place in his imagination had the face and ways of Captain Ferragut.

From babyhood he had seen his mother weeping occasionally in resigned sadness. Years later, recognizing with the precocity of a little-watched boy the relations that exist between men and women, he suspected that all these tears must be caused by the flirtations and infidelities of the distant sailor.

He adored his mother with the pa.s.sion of an only and spoiled child, but he admired the captain no less, excusing every fault that he might commit. His father was the bravest and handsomest man in all the world.

And when rummaging one day through the drawers in his father's stateroom, he chanced upon various photographs having the names of women from foreign countries, the lad's admiration was greater still.

Everybody must have been madly in love with the captain of the _Mare Nostrum. Ay_! No matter what he might do when he became a man, he could never hope to equal this triumphant creature who had given him existence....

When the boat, on its return from Naples, arrived at Barcelona without its owner, Ferragut's son did not feel any surprise.

Toni, who was always a man of few words, was very lavish with them on the present occasion. Captain Ferragut had remained behind because of important business, but he would not be long in returning. His second was looking for him at any moment. Perhaps he would make the trip by land, in order to arrive sooner.

Esteban was astounded to see that his mother did not accept this absence as an insignificant event. The good lady appeared greatly troubled and her eyes filled with tears. Her feminine instinct made her suspect something ominous in her husband's delay.

In the afternoon, when her old lover, the professor, visited her as usual, the two talked slowly with guarded words but with eyes of understanding and long intervals of silence.

When Don Pedro reached the height of his glorious career, the possession of a professors.h.i.+p in the inst.i.tute of Barcelona, he used to visit Cinta every afternoon, pa.s.sing an hour and a half in her parlor with chronometric exact.i.tude. Never did the slightest impure thought agitate the professor. The past had fallen into oblivion.... But he needed to see daily the captain's wife weaving laces with her two little nieces, as he had seen Ferragut's widow years before.

He informed them of the most important events in Barcelona and in the entire world; they would comment together on the future of Esteban, and the former suitor used to listen rapturously to her sweet voice, conceding great importance to the details of domestic economy or descriptions of religious fiestas, solely because it was she who was recounting them.

Many times they would remain in a long silence. Don Pedro represented patience, even temper, and silent respect, in that tranquil and immaculate house which lost its monastic calm only when its head presented himself there for a few days between voyages.

Cinta had accustomed herself to the professor's visits. At half-past three by the clock his footsteps could always be heard in the pa.s.sageway.

If any afternoon he did not come, the sweet Penelope was greatly disappointed.

"I wonder what can be the matter with Don Pedro?" she would ask her nieces uneasily.

She oftentimes asked this question of her son; but Esteban, without exactly hating the visitor, appreciated him very slightly.

Don Pedro belonged to that group of gentlemen at the Inst.i.tute whom the government paid to annoy youth with their explanations and their examinations. He still remembered the two years that he had pa.s.sed in his course, as in the torture chamber, enduring the torments of Latin.

Besides that, the professor was a timid man who was always afraid of catching cold, and who never dared to venture into the street on cloudy days without an umbrella. Let people talk to him about courageous men!

"I don't know," he would reply to his mother. "Perhaps he's gone to bed with seven kerchiefs on his head."

When Don Pedro returned, the house recovered its normality of a quiet and well-regulated clock. Dona Cinta, after many consultations, had come to believe his collaboration indispensable. The professor mildly supplemented the authority of the traveling husband, and took it upon himself to represent the head of the family in all outside matters....