Part 12 (1/2)
”I'll help you as far as I am able,” replied Manuel, with feigned earnestness.
Several ragam.u.f.fins sprawled themselves out on the clearing near Manuel and Roberto, and the student did not care to go on with his tale.
”They've already begun to split up into divisions,” said one of the loafers who wore a coachman's hat, pointing with a stick to the women inside the courtyard of La Doctrina.
And so it was; groups were cl.u.s.tering about the trees of the patio, on each of which was hung a poster with a picture and a number in the middle.
”There go the marchionesses,” added he of the coachman's hat, indicating several women garbed in black who had just appeared in the courtyard.
The white faces stood out amidst the mourning clothes.
”They're all marchionesses,” said one.
”Well, they're not all beauties,” retorted Manuel, joining the conversation. ”What have they come here for?”
”They're the ones who teach religion,” answered the fellow with the hat. ”From time to time they hand out sheets and underwear to the women and the men. Now they're going to call the roll.”
A bell began to clang; the gate closed; groups were formed, and a lady entered the midst of each.
”Do you see that one there?” asked Roberto. ”She's Don Telmo's niece.”
”That blonde?”
”Yes. Wait for me here.”
Roberto walked down the road toward the gate.
The reading of the religious lesson began; from the patio came the slow, monotonous drone of prayer.
Manuel lay back on the ground. Yonder, flat beneath the grey horizon, loomed Madrid out of the mist of the dust-laden atmosphere. The wide bed of the Manzanares river, ochre-hued, seemed furrowed here and there by a thread of dark water. The ridges of the Guadarrama range rose hazily into the murky air.
Roberto pa.s.sed by the patio. The humming of the praying mendicants continued. An old lady, her head swathed in a red kerchief and her shoulders covered with a black cloak that was fading to green, sat down in the clearing.
”What's the matter, old lady? Wouldn't they open the gate for you?”
shouted the fellow with the coachman's hat.
”No.... The foul old witches!”
”Don't you care. They're not giving away anything today. The distribution takes place this coming Friday. They'll give you at least a sheet,” added he of the hat mischievously.
”If they don't give me anything more than a sheet,” shrilled the hag, twisting her blobber-lip, ”I'll tell them to keep it for themselves.
The foxy creatures! ...”
”Oh, they've found you out, granny!” exclaimed one of the loafers lying on the ground. ”You're a greedy one, you are.”
The bystanders applauded these words, which came from a _zarzuela_, and the chap in the coachman's hat continued explaining to Manuel the workings of La Doctrina.
”There are some men and women who enrol in two and even three divisions so as to get all the charity they can,” he went on. ”Why, we--my father and I--once enrolled in four divisions under four different names.... And what a rumpus was raised! What a row we had with the marchionesses!”
”And what did you want with all those sheets,” Manuel asked him.