Part 25 (2/2)
The two little ones, frightened, took refuge in the arms of their elder brother, and the father rushed about like a madman, roaring maledictions.
Thieves! How well they had known how to do it! They had set fire to the farm-house from all four sides, it had burst into flames from top to bottom; even the corral with its stable and its sheds was crowned with flames.
From it there came forth desperate neighings, cacklings of terror, fierce gruntings; but the farm-house, insensible to the wails of those who were roasting in its depths, went on sending up curved tongues of fire through the door and the windows; and from its burning roof there rose an enormous spiral of white smoke, which reflecting the fire took on a rosy transparency.
The weather had changed: the night was calm, the wind did not blow and the blue of the sky was dimmed only by the columns of smoke, between whose white wisps the curious stars appeared.
Teresa was struggling with her husband, who, recovered from his painful surprise, and spurred on by his interests, which incited him to commit follies, wished to enter the fiery inferno. Just one moment, nothing more: only the time necessary to take from the bedroom the little sack of money, the profit of the harvest.
Ah! Good Teresa! Even now it was no longer necessary to restrain the husband, who endured her violent grasp. A farm-house soon burns; straw and canes love fire. The roof came down with a crash,--that erect roof which the neighbours looked upon as an insult--and out of the enormous bed of live-coals arose a frightful column of sparks, in whose uncertain and vacillating light the _huerta_ seemed to move with fantastic grimaces.
The sides of the corral stirred heavily as if within them a legion of demons were rus.h.i.+ng about and striking them. Engarlanded with flame the fowls leaped forth, trying to fly, though burning alive.
A piece of wall of mud and stakes fell, and through the black breach there came forth like a lightning flash, a terrible monster, ejecting smoke through its nostrils, shaking its mane of sparks, desperately beating its tail like a broom of flame, which scattered a stench of burning hair.
It was the horse. With a prodigious bound, he leaped over the family, and ran madly through the fields, instinctively seeking the ca.n.a.l, into which he fell with the sizzling hiss of red-hot iron when it strikes water.
Behind him, dragging itself along like a drunken demon emitting frightful grunts, came another spectre of fire, the pig, which fell to the ground in the middle of the field, burning like a torch of grease.
There remained now only the walls and the grape-vines with their twisted runners distorted by fire, and the posts, which stood up like bars of ink over the red background.
Batistet, in his longing to save something, ran recklessly over the paths, shouting, beating at the doors of the neighbouring farm-houses, which seemed to wink in the reflection of the fire.
”Help! Help! Fire! Fire!”
His shouts died away, raising a funereal echo, like that heard amid ruins and in cemeteries.
The father smiled cruelly. He was calling in vain. The _huerta_ was deaf to them. There were eyes within those white farm-houses, which looked curiously out through the cracks; perhaps there were mouths which laughed with infernal glee, but not one generous voice to say ”Here I am!”
Bread! At what a cost it is earned! And how evil it makes man!
In one farm-house there was burning a pale light, yellowing and sad.
Teresa, confused by her misfortune, wished to go there to implore help, with the hope of some relief, of some miracle which she longed for in their misfortune.
Her husband held her back with an expression of terror. No: not there.
Anywhere but there.
And like a man who has fallen low, so low that he already is unable to feel any remorse, he s.h.i.+fted his gaze from the fire and fixed it on that pale light, yellowish and sad; the light of a taper which glows without l.u.s.tre, fed by an atmosphere in which might almost be perceived the fluttering of the dead.
Good-bye, Pimento! You were departing from the world well-served. The farm-house and the fortune of the odious intruder were lighting up your corpse with merrier splendour than the candles bought by the bereaved Pepeta, mere yellowish tears of light.
Batistet returned desperate from his useless trip. n.o.body had answered.
The plain, silent and scowling, had said good-bye to them for ever.
They were more alone than if they had been in the midst of a desert; the solitude of hatred was a thousand times worse than that of Nature.
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