Part 2 (1/2)

It was a requirement of her business to change her name, as well as to speak with an Andalusian accent. And she began to imitate the voice of the virago upstairs with a species of rough humour.

But in spite of her mirth, she was in a hurry to get away. She was afraid of those upstairs. The owner of the rough voice or the gentleman who wanted the milk might give her some memento of the delay. So she hurried up after urging Pepeta to stop again some other time to tell her the news of the _huerta_.

The monotonous tinkling of the bell of La Rocha continued for more than an hour through the streets of Valencia; the wilted udders yielded up their last drop of insipid milk, produced by a miserable diet of cabbage-leaves and garbage, and Pepeta finally was ready to start back toward the _barraca_.

The poor labouring-woman walked along sadly deep in thought. The encounter had impressed her; she remembered, as though it had just happened the day before, the terrible tragedy which had swallowed up old Barret and his entire family.

Since then, the fields, which his ancestors had tilled for more than a hundred years, had lain abandoned at the edge of the high road.

The uninhabited _barraca_ was slowly crumbling to pieces without any merciful hand to mend the roof or to cast a handful of clay upon the c.h.i.n.ks in the wall.

Ten years of pa.s.sing and re-pa.s.sing had accustomed people to the sight of this ruin, so they paid no further attention to it. It had been some time since even Pepeta had looked at it. It now interested only the boys who, inheriting the hatred of their fathers, trampled down the nettles of the abandoned fields in order to riddle the deserted house with rocks, which split great gaps in the closed door, or to fill up the well under the ancient grape-arbour with earth and stones.

But this morning Pepeta, under the spell of the recent meeting, not only looked at the ruin, but stopped at the edge of the highway to see it the better.

The fields of old Barret, or rather, of the Jew, Don Salvador, and his excommunicated heirs, were an oasis of misery and abandonment in the midst of the _huerta_, so fertile, well-tilled, and smiling.

Ten years of desolation had hardened the soil, causing all the parasitic plants, all the nettles which the Lord has created to chasten the farmer, to spring up out of its sterile depths. A dwarfish forest, tangled and deformed, spread itself out over those fields in waving ranks of strange green tones, varied here and there by flowers, mysterious and rare, of the sort which thrive only amid cemeteries and ruins.

Here, in the rank maze of this thicket, fostered by the security of their retreat, there bred and multiplied all species of loathsome vermin, which spread out into the neighbouring fields; green lizards with corrugated loins, enormous beetles with sh.e.l.ls of metallic reflection, spiders with short and hairy legs, and even snakes, which slid off to the adjoining ca.n.a.ls. Here they thrived in the midst of the beautiful and cultivated plain, forming a separate estate, and devouring one another. Though they caused some damage to the farmers, the latter respected them even with a certain veneration, for the seven plagues of Egypt would have seemed but a trifle to the dwellers of the _huerta_ had they descended upon those accursed fields.

The lands of old Barret never had been destined for man, so let the most loathsome pests nest among them, and the more, the better.

In the midst of these fields of desolation, which stood out in the beautiful plain like a soiled patch on a royal robe of green velvet, the _barraca_ rose up, or one should rather say fell away, its straw roof bursting open, showing through the gaps, which the rain and wind had pierced, the worm-eaten framework of wood within.

The walls, rotted away by the rains, laid bare the clay-adobe. Only some very light stains revealed the former whitewash; the door was ragged along the lower edge which rats had gnawed, with wide cracks that ran, full length, from end to end. The two or three little windows, gaping wide, hung loosely on one hinge exposed to the mercy of the south-west winds, ready to fall as soon as the first gust should shake them.

This ruin hurt the spirit and weighed upon the heart. It seemed as though phantoms might sally forth from the wretched and abandoned hut as soon as darkness closed in; that from the interior might come the cries of the a.s.sa.s.sinated, rending the night; that all this waste of weeds might be a shroud to conceal hundreds of tragic corpses from sight.

Horrible were the visions which were conjured up by the contemplation of these desolate fields; and their gloomy poverty was sharpened by the contrast with the surrounding fields, so red and well-cultivated, with their orderly rows of garden-truck and their little fruit-trees, to whose leaves the autumn gave a yellowish transparency.

Even the birds fled from these plains of death, perhaps from fear of the hideous reptiles which stirred about under the growth of weeds, or possibly because they scented the vapour of abandonment.

If anything were seen to flutter over the broken roof of straw, it was certain to be of funereal plumage with black and treacherous wings, which as they stirred, cast silence over the joyful flappings and playful twitterings in the trees, leaving the _huerta_ deathly still, as though no sparrows chirped within a half-league roundabout.

Pepeta was about to continue on her way toward her farm-house, which peered whitely among the trees some distance across the fields; but she had to stand still at the steep edge of the highroad in order to permit the pa.s.sing of a loaded wagon, which seemed to be coming from the city, and which advanced with violent lurches.

At the sight of it, her feminine curiosity was aroused.

It was the poor cart of a farmer drawn by an old and bony nag, which was being helped over the deep ruts by a tall man, who marched alongside the horse, encouraging him with shouts and the cracking of a whip.

He was dressed like a labourer; but his manner of wearing the handkerchief knotted around the head, his corduroy trousers, and other details of his costume, indicated that he was not from the _huerta_, where personal adornment had gradually been corrupted by the fas.h.i.+ons of the city. He was a farmer from some distant _pueblo_; he had come, perhaps, from the very centre of the province.

Heaped high upon the cart, forming a pyramid which mounted higher even than the side-poles, was piled a jumble of domestic objects. This was the migration of an entire family. Thin mattresses, straw-beds, filled with rustling leaves of corn, rush-seats, frying-pans, kettles, plates, baskets, green bed-slats: all were heaped upon the wagon, dirty, worn, and miserable, speaking of hunger, of desperate flight, as if disgrace stalked behind the family, treading at its heels. And on top of this disordered ma.s.s were three children, embracing each other as they looked out across the fields with wide-open eyes, like explorers visiting a country for the first time.

Treading close at the heels of the wagon, watching vigilantly to see that nothing might fall, trudged a woman with a slender girl, who appeared to be her daughter. At the other side of the nag, aiding him whenever the cart stuck in a rut, stalked a boy of some eleven years.

His grave exterior was that of a child accustomed to struggle with misery. He was already a man at an age when others were still playing. A little dog, dirty and panting, brought up the rear.