Part 22 (1/2)

And the bully justified his conduct with arguments. Why should he pay?

Come now, why? His grandfather had cultivated his lands before him; at his father's death they had been divided among the brothers at their pleasure, following the custom of the _huerta_, and without consulting the landlord in any way. They were the ones who had worked them; they had made them produce, they had worn away their lives upon their fields.

Pimento, speaking with vehemence of his work, showed such shamelessness that some smiled.... Good: he was not working much now, because he was shrewd and had recognized the farce of living. But at one time he had worked, and this was enough to make the lands more justly his own than they were of that big, fat woman of Valencia. When she would come to work them; when she would take the plough with all its weight, and the two little girls with the bows yoked together would draw it after them, then she would legitimately be the mistress.

The coa.r.s.e jokes of the bully made the people roar with laughter. The bad flavour of the payment of St. John remained with them and they took much pleasure in seeing their masters treated so cruelly. Ah! The joke about the plough was very funny; and each one imagined that he could see the master, the stout and timid landlord, or the senora, old and proud, hitched up to the ploughshare pulling and pulling, while they, the farmers, those under the heel, were cracking the whip.

And all winked at each other, laughed and clapped their hands, in order to express their approbation. Oh! It was very comfortable in the house of Copa listening to Pimento. What ideas the man had!

But the husband of Pepeta became gloomy, and many noticed that often he would cast a side-long look about him, that look of murder which was long known in the tavern to be a certain sign of immediate aggression.

His voice became thick, as if all the alcohol which was swelling his stomach had ascended like a hot wave and burned his throat.

They might laugh until they burst, but their laughs would be the last.

Already the _huerta_ was not the same as it had been for ten years. The masters, who had been timid rabbits, had again become unruly wolves.

They were showing their teeth again. Even his mistress had taken liberties with him. With him who was the terror of all the landowners of the _huerta_! During his visit last St. John's day she had laughed at his saying about the chains, and even at the knife, announcing to him that he might prepare either to leave the lands or pay his rent, not forgetting the back payments either.

And why had they turned in such a manner? Because already they no longer feared them.... And why did they not fear them? Christ! Because now the fields of old Barret were no longer abandoned and uncultivated, a phantom of desolation to awe the landlords and make them sweet and reasonable. So the charm had been broken. Since a half-starved thief had succeeded in imposing himself upon them, the landlords had laughed, and wis.h.i.+ng to take revenge for ten years of enforced meekness, had grown worse than the infamous Don Salvador.

”True ... it is true,” said all the group, supporting the arguments of Pimento, with furious nods.

All confessed that their landlords had changed as they recalled the details of their last interview; the threats of ejection, the refusal to accept the incomplete payments, the ironical way in which they had spoken of the lands of old Barret, cultivated again in spite of the hatred of all the _huerta_. And now, all at once, after the sweet laziness of ten years of triumph, with the reins on their shoulders and the master at their feet, had come the cruel pull, the return to other times, the finding of the bread bitter and the wine more sour, thinking of the accursed half-year, and all on account of an outsider, a lousy fellow who had not even been born in the _huerta_, and who had hung himself upon them to interfere in their business and make life harder for them. And should this rogue still live? Did the _huerta_ not have any men?

Good-bye, new friends.h.i.+ps, respect born by the side of the coffin of a poor child! All the consideration created by misfortune went tumbling down like a stock of playing-cards, vanis.h.i.+ng like a nebulous cloud, and the old hatred reappeared at a single bound--the solidarity of all the _huerta_, which in combating the intruder was defending its very life.

And at what a moment the general animosity arose! The eyes fixed upon him burned with the fire of hatred; heads muddled with alcohol seemed to feel a horrible itching for murder; instinctively they all started toward Batiste, who felt himself pushed about from all sides as if the circle were tightening in order to devour him.

He repented now of having remained. He felt no fear, but he cursed the hour in which the idea of going to the tavern occurred to him--an alien place which seemed to rob him of his strength, that self-possession which animated him when he felt the earth beneath his feet--the earth which he had cultivated at the cost of so much sacrifice, and in whose defence he was ready to lose his very life.

Pimento, as he gave way to his anger, felt all the brandy he had drunk during the past two days fall suddenly like a heavy blow upon his brain.

He had lost the serenity of an unshakable drunkard; he arose staggering, and it was necessary for him to make an effort to sustain himself upon his legs. His eyes were inflamed as though they were dripping blood; his voice was laboured as though the alcohol and anger were drawing it back and not letting it come forth.

”Go,” he said imperiously to Batiste, threateningly, extending a hand, till it almost touched his face. ”Go, or I will kill you!”

Go!... It was this that Batiste desired; he grew paler and paler, repenting more and more that he was here. But he well divined the significance of that imperious ”Go!” of the bully, supported by signs of approval on the part of all the others.

They did not demand that he should leave the tavern, ridding them of his odious presence; they were ordering him with threats of death to abandon the fields, which were like the blood of his body; to give up for ever the farm-house where his little one had died, and in which every corner bore a record of the struggles and the joys of the family in their battle with poverty. And swiftly he had a vision of himself and all his furniture piled on the cart, wandering over the roads, in search of the unknown, in order to create another existence: carrying along with them like a gloomy companion, that ugly phantom of famine which would be ever following at their heels....

No! He shunned quarrels, but let them not put a finger on his children's bread!

Now he felt no disquietude. The image of his family, hungry and without a hearth, enraged him; he even felt a desire to attack all these people who demanded of him such a monstrous thing.

”Will you go? Will you go?” asked Pimento, ever darker and more threatening.

No: he would not go. He said it with his head, with his smile of scorn, with his firm glance and the challenging look which he fixed upon the group.

”Scoundrel!” roared the bully; and his hand fell upon the face of Batiste, giving it a terrible resounding slap.