CHAPTER IV
THIRTY AND ONE WOOERS
Winter came. There were days when the sea would lash furiously against the chain of islands and cliffs between Iviza and Formentera that form a wall of rock cut by straits and channels. The deep blue waters, which usually flow tranquilly through these narrows, reflecting the sandy bottoms, would begin to whirl in livid eddies, dashing against the coasts and the projecting rocks, which would disappear and then emerge again in the white foam. Vessels would struggle valiantly against the swift undertow and the spectacular, roaring waters between the islands of Espalmador and Los Ahorcados, where lies the pathway of the great ships. Vessels from Iviza and Formentera must spread all their canvas, and sail under shelter of the barren islands. The sinuosities of this labyrinth of channels permit navigators from the archipelago of the Pityusæ to go from one island to another by different routes, according to the direction of the winds. While the sea rages on one side of the archipelago, on the other it may be still and safe, lying heavy like oil. In the straits the waves may swirl high in furious whirlpools, but with a mere turn of the wheel, a slight shifting of her course, the vessel may glide into the shelter of an island where she will ride in tranquil waters, paradisiacal, limpid, affording views of strange vegetation, where dart fishes sparkling with silver and flashing with carmine.
Usually day dawned with a gray sky and an ashen sea. The Vedrá seemed more enormous, more imposing, lifting its conical needle in this stormy atmosphere. The sea rushed in cataracts through the caverns on its margin, roaring like the peals of gigantic cannons. The wild goats on their inaccessible heights sprang from one narrow footing to another, and only when thunder rolled through the gloomy heavens, and fiery serpents flashed down to drink in the immense pool of the sea, did the timid beasts flee with bleating of terror to seek refuge in the recesses covered by juniper.
On many stormy days Febrer went fishing with Tío Ventolera. The old sailor was thoroughly familiar with his sea. On the mornings when Jaime remained in his couch watching the livid and diffuse light of a stormy day filter through the crevices, he had to arise hastily on hearing the voice of his companion who "sang the mass," accompanying the Latin jargon by pelting the tower with stones. Get up! It was a fine day for fishing. They would make a good catch. When Febrer gazed apprehensively at the threatening sea, the old man explained that they would find tranquil waters in the shelter around the Vedrá.
Again, on radiant mornings, Febrer fruitlessly awaited the old man's call. Time dragged on. After the rosy tint of dawn the golden bars of sunlight stole through the cracks; but in vain the hours passed, he heard neither mass nor stone throwing. Tío Ventolera remained invisible. Then, on opening his window, he looked out upon the clear sky, luminous with the gracious splendor of the winter sun, but the sea was restless, a gloomy blue, undulating, without foam and without noise under the impulse of a treacherous wind.
The winter rains covered the island as with a gray mantle, through which the indefinite contours of the nearby range were vaguely outlined. On the mountain tops the pine trees dropped tears from every filament, and the thick layer of humus was soaked like a sponge, expelling liquid beneath the footsteps. On the barren rocky heights along the coast, the rain gathered, forming tumultuous brooks, which leapt from cliff to cliff. The spreading fig trees trembled like enormous broken umbrellas, allowing the water to enter the broad spaces beneath their cupolas. The almond trees, denuded of their leaves, shook like black skeletons. The deep gulleys filled with bellowing waters that flowed uselessly toward the sea. The roads, paved with blue cobbles, between high, rocky banks, were converted into cataracts. The island, thirsty and dusty during a great part of the year, seemed to repel this exuberance of rain from all its pores, as a sick man repels the strong medicine administered too late. On these stormy days Febrer remained shut up in his tower. It was impossible to go to sea and impossible also to go out hunting in the island fields. The farmhouses were closed, their white cubes spotted by torrents of rain, devoid of any other sign of life than the thread of blue smoke escaping from the chimney tops.
Forced to inactivity, the lord of the Pirate's Tower began to read over again one of the few books he had acquired on his trips to the city, or he smoked pensively, recalling that past from which he had endeavored to run away. What was happening in Majorca? What were his friends saying?
Given over to this enforced idleness, lacking the distraction of physical exercise, he thought over his former life, which was daily growing more hazy and indistinct in his memory. It seemed to him like the life of another man; something which he had seen and been familiar with, but which belonged to the history of another. Really was that Jaime Febrer who had traveled all over Europe and had had his hours of vanity and triumph the same person who was now living in this tower by the sea, rustic, bearded, and almost savage, with the sandals and hat of a peasant, more accustomed to the moaning of the waves and the screaming of gulls than to contact with men?
Weeks before he had received a second letter from his friend Toni Clapés. This also was written from a café on the Borne, a few hastily scrawled lines to attest his regard. This rude but kind friend did not forget him; he did not even seem to be offended because his former letter had remained unanswered. He wrote about Captain Pablo. The captain was still angry with Febrer, nevertheless he was working diligently to disentangle his affairs. The smuggler had faith in Valls. He was the cleverest of Chuetas, and more generous than any of them. There was no doubt that he would save the remains of Jaime's fortune, and he would be able to spend the rest of his days in Majorca, tranquil and happy. Later he would hear from the captain himself. Valls preferred to keep quiet until matters were settled.
Febrer shrugged his shoulders. Bah! It was all over! But on gloomy winter days his spirit rebelled against existing like a solitary mollusk, shut up in his stone shell. Was he always going to live like this? Was it not folly to have hidden himself away in this corner while still having youth and courage to struggle with the world?
Yes, it was folly. The island and his romantic shelter were all very pretty for the first few months, when the sun shone, the trees were green, and the island customs exercised over his soul the charm of a bizarre novelty; but bad weather had come, the solitude was intolerable, and the life of the rustics was revealed to him in all the crudity of their barbarous passions. These peasants, dressed in blue velveteen, with their bright belts and gay cravats and their flowers behind their ears, had at first seemed to him picturesque figures, created only to serve as a decoration for the fields, choristers for a pastoral operetta, languid and tame; but he knew them better now; they were men like others, and barbarous men, barely grazed by contact with civilization, conserving all the sharp angles of their ancestral rudeness. Seen from a distance, for a short time, they attracted with the charm of novelty, but he had penetrated their customs, he was almost one of them, and it weighed upon him like falling into slavery—this inferior existence which seemed to be clashing every instant with ideas and prejudices of his past.
He ought to get away from this atmosphere; but where could he go? How could he escape? He was poor. His entire capital consisted of a few dozens of duros which he had brought from Majorca, a sum which he retained, thanks to Pèp, who was firm in his refusal to accept any remuneration whatever. Here he must remain, nailed to his tower as if it were a cross, without hope, without desire, seeking in cessation of thought a vegetative joy like that of the junipers and tamarisks growing between the cliffs on the promontory, or like that of the shell fish forever clinging to the submerged rocks.
After long reflection he resigned himself to his fate. He would not think, he would not desire. Besides, hope, which, never forsakes us, conceived in his mind the vague possibility of something extraordinary that would present itself in its own good time, to save him from this situation; but while it was on its way, how the loneliness bored him!
Margalida had not been to the tower for some time. She seemed to seek pretexts for not coming, and she even went out of her way to avoid meeting Febrer. She had changed; she seemed to have suddenly awakened to a new existence. The innocent and trustful smile of girlhood had changed to a gesture of reserve, like a woman who realizes the dangers of the road and travels with slow and cautious step.
Since the courting had begun, and young men came twice a week to solicit her hand, according to the traditional "festeig," she seemed to have taken heed of great and unknown dangers before unsuspected, and she remained at her mother's side, shunning every occasion of being left alone with a man, and blushing as soon as masculine eyes met her own.
This courting had nothing extraordinary about it, according to island customs, and yet it aroused in Febrer a dumb anger, as if he saw in it an offense and a spoliation. The invasion of Can Mallorquí by the braggart and enamored young blades he took as an insult. He had looked upon the farmhouse as his home, but since these intruders had been cordially received he was going to take his leave.
Besides, he suffered in silence the chagrin of not being the only preoccupation of the family, as he had been at first. Pèp and his wife still looked up to him as their master; Margalida and her brother venerated him as a powerful lord who had come from far away because Iviza was the best place in the world; but in spite of this other thoughts seemed to be reflected in their eyes. The visit of so many youths and the change which this had wrought in their daily life, made them less solicitous in regard to Don Jaime. They were all worried about the future. Which one of the youths deserved in the end to be Margalida's husband?
During the long winter evenings Febrer, shut up in his tower, sat gazing at a little light shining forth in the valley below—the light of Can Mallorquí. On the nights not devoted to the courting, the family would be alone, gathered around the fireplace, but, in spite of this, he remained fixed in his isolation. No, he would not go down. In his chagrin he even complained of the bad weather, as if he would make the winter cold responsible for this change which had gradually taken place in his relations with the peasant family.
He wistfully recalled those beautiful summer nights when they used to sit until the small hours watching the stars tremble in the dark sky beyond the black border of the portico. Febrer used to sit beneath the pergola with the family and Uncle Ventolera who came, drawn by the hope of some gift. They never let him go away without a slice of watermelon, which filled the old man's mouth with its sweet red juice, or a glass of perfumed figola, brewed from fragrant mountain herbs. Margalida, her eyes fixed on the mystery of the stars, would sing Ivizan romances in her girlish voice, more fresh and soft to the ear of Febrer than the breeze which filled the blue tumult of the night with rustling. Pèp would tell, with the air of a prodigious explorer, of his stupendous adventures on the mainland during the years when he had served the king as a soldier, in the remote and almost fantastic lands of Catalonia and Valencia.
The dog, lying at his feet, seemed to be listening to his master with mild, gentle eyes, in the depths of which a star was reflected. Suddenly he would spring up with nervous impulse, and giving a leap, would disappear in the darkness, accompanied by the sonorous murmur of crashing vegetation. Pèp would explain this stealthy flight. It was nothing more than some animal wandering in the darkness; a jack rabbit, a cotton-tail, which the beast had scented with the delicate nose of the hunting dog. Again he would rise to his feet slowly with growls of vigilant hostility. Somebody was passing near the farmhouse; a shadow, a man walking quickly, with the celerity of the Ivizans, accustomed to going rapidly from one side of the island to the other. If the shade spoke, they all answered his greeting. If he passed in silence they pretended not to see him, just as the dark traveler seemed to be unconscious of the existence of the farmhouse and of the persons seated under the pergola.
It was a very ancient custom in Iviza not to greet each other out in the country after nightfall. Shadows passed along the roads without a word, avoiding a meeting so as not to stumble against nor recognize each other. Each was bound on business of his own, to see his sweetheart, to consult the doctor, to kill an enemy at the other end of the island, to return on a run and be able to prove an alibi by saying that at the fatal hour he had been with friends. Every one who traveled at night had his reasons for passing unrecognized. One shadow feared another shadow. A "bòna nit," or a request for a light for the cigarette, might be answered by a pistol shot.
Sometimes no one passed by the farmhouse, and yet, the dog, stretching out his neck, howled into the dark void. In the distance human howls seemed to answer him. They were prolonged and savage yells, which rent the mysterious silence like a war cry. "A-u-u-ú!" And much farther away, weakened by distance, replied another fierce exclamation: "A-u-u-ú!"
The peasant silenced his dog. There was nothing strange about these cries. They were the voices of youths howling in the darkness, guiding one another by their calls, perhaps that they might recognize each other and come together for a friendly purpose, or perhaps to fight, the cry being a challenging shout. It was not unlikely that after the howling a shot would ring out. Affairs of young bloods and of the night! They had no significance.
Then Pèp would continue the relation of his extraordinary journeys, while his wife, who heard these ever new marvels for the thousandth time, stared at him in amazement.
Uncle Ventolera, not to be outdone, narrated tales of pirates and of valorous mariners of Iviza, bearing them out with the testimony of his father, who had been cabin boy on Captain Riquer's xebec, and which assaulted the frigate Felicidad, captained by the formidable corsair "the Pope." Stirred by these heroic recollections, he hummed in his quavering old voice the ballad in which Ivizan sailors had celebrated the triumph, verses in Castilian, for greater solemnity, whose words Tío Ventolera mispronounced.
The toothless old sailor continued singing the heroic deeds of long ago, as if they dated from yesterday, as if he had witnessed them himself, as if a flash from the atalaya announcing a disembarcation of enemies might suddenly flare across this land of combat, enveloped in darkness.
Again, his eyes glittering with avarice, he would tell of enormous sums which the Moors, the Romans, and other red mariners whom he called the Normans, had buried in caves along the coast. His ancestors knew much about all this. What a pity that they had died without saying a word! He related the true history of the cavern of Formentera, where the Normans had stored the product of their freebooting expeditions throughout Spain and Italy—golden images of saints, chalices, chains, jewels, precious stones and coins measured by the peck. A frightful dragon, trained doubtless by the red men, used to guard the deep, dark cavern, with the treasure beneath his belly. The rash soul who should slip down a rope into the cave would serve the beast for nourishment. The red mariners had died many centuries ago; the dragon was dead also; the treasure must still be on Formentera. Who could find it? The rustic audience trembled with emotion, never doubting the existence of such treasure because of the respect inspired in them by the age of the narrator.
Placid summer evenings those, which were no longer repeated for Febrer! He avoided going down to Can Mallorquí after dark, fearful of disturbing by his presence the conversation of the family about Margalida's suitors.
On courting nights he experienced even greater uneasiness, and, without explaining to himself his motive, he stared longingly toward the farmhouse. The same light, the same appearance as ever—but he imagined that he could make out in the nocturnal silence, new sounds, the echo of songs, Margalida's voice. There would be the odious Ironworker, and that poor devil of a Minstrel, and the rude, barbarous youths, with their ridiculous dress. Gran Dios! How was it possible that these rustics had ever managed to interest him, after all that he had seen of the world?
The next day when the Little Chaplain would climb up to the tower to bring his dinner, Jaime would question him about the events of the previous evening.
Listening to the boy, Febrer pictured to himself the incidents of the courting. The family supped hurriedly at nightfall, so as to be ready for the ceremony. Margalida took down her gala skirt hanging from the ceiling in her room, and after donning it with the red and green kerchief crossed over her breast and a smaller one on her head, a long bow of ribbon at the end of her braid, she put on the gold chain her mother had turned over to her, and took her seat on the folded abragais on a kitchen chair. Her father smoked his pipe of tobacco de pòta; her mother sat in a corner weaving rush baskets; the Little Chaplain peeped out of the door to the broad porch, on which the youthful suitors were silently gathering. Some there were who had been waiting for an hour, for they lived near; there were others who came dusty or spattered with mud, after walking two leagues. On rainy nights, in the shelter of the porch they shook out their cowled Arabian capes of coarse weave, an inheritance from their forefathers, or the feminine mantles in which they were wrapped, as garments of modern elegance.
After briefly deciding upon the order to be followed in their conversation with the girl, the troop of rivals started for the kitchen, as it was too cold on the porch in winter. A knock on the door.
"Come in, whoever you are!" shouted Pèp, as if ignorant of the presence of the suitors and expecting an unusual visitor.
They entered tamely, greeting the family: "Bòna nit! Bòna nit!" They took seats on a bench, like schoolboys, or they remained standing, all gazing at the girl. Near her was a vacant chair, or if this were lacking, the suitor squatted on the ground, Moorish fashion, talking to her in low tones for three minutes, enduring the hostile gaze of his adversaries. The slightest prolongation of this brief term provoked coughing, furious glances, remonstrances and threats in undertones. The youth would retire and another would take his place. The Little Chaplain laughed at these scenes, seeing in the hostile tenacity of the suitors a motive for pride. The courting of his sister was not going to be like that of other girls. The suitors seemed to Pepet to be rabid dogs who would not easily give up their prey. This wooing smelled to him of gunpowder, and he affirmed it with a smile of joy and satisfaction which disclosed the whiteness of his wolf-cub teeth in his dark oval face. None of the suitors seemed to gain advantage over the others. During the two months that the courting had lasted, Margalida had done nothing but listen, smile, and respond to them all with words which confused the youths. His sister's talent was very great. On Sundays when they went to mass, she walked ahead of her parents accompanied by all her suitors—a veritable army. Don Jaime had met them several times. Her friends, seeing her come with this queenly retinue, paled with envy. The suitors besieged her, endeavoring to extract some word, some sign of preference, but she replied with astonishing discretion, keeping them all on the same footing, avoiding fatal clashes which might suddenly arouse the aggressive youths, who were always heavily armed.
"And how about the Ironworker?" asked Don Jaime.
Accursed vèrro! His name issued with difficulty from the señor's lips, but he had been thinking of him for some time.
The boy shook his head. The Ironworker was making no particular advance over his rivals, and the Little Chaplain did not seem to regret it keenly.
His admiration for the vèrro had cooled somewhat. Love emboldens men, and none of the youths who pretended to Margalida's hand, now that they came face to face with him as a rival, stood in fear of him any longer, and they even ventured disrespect to his formidable person. One evening he had appeared with a guitar, intending to employ a large part of the time which belonged to the others in playing. When his turn came he placed himself near Margalida, tuned his instrument and began to intone songs of the mainland learned during his retirement at "Niza"; but before beginning he had taken from his girdle a double-barreled pistol, cocked it, and had laid it upon one of his thighs, ready to grasp it and to let fly a shot at the first man to interrupt him. Absolute silence and impassive glances! He sang as long as he wished, he put up his pistol with the air of a conqueror, but later, when they went out, in the darkness of the fields, when the youths dispersed with cries of ironic farewell, two well-aimed stones issuing from the shadows struck the braggart to the ground, and for several days he failed to come to the courting so as not to show his bandaged head. He had made no effort to find out who the aggressor was. The rivals were many, and, moreover, he had to take into account their fathers, uncles, and brothers, almost a fourth part of the island, quick to mix in a war of vengeance for the honor of the family.
"I think," said Pepet, "that the Ironworker is less valiant than they say; and what is your opinion about it, Don Jaime?"
When it was growing late, and Margalida had talked with each of her suitors, her father, who was dozing in a corner, would break into a loud yawn. The man of the fields seemed to divine the passing of time even when asleep. "Half past nine! Bedtime! Bòna nit!" And all the youths, after this hint, would leave the house, their footsteps and their whinnying swallowed up by darkness.
Pepet, as he spoke of these reunions, in which he rubbed elbows with brave men, wearers of deadly weapons, again bethought him of his grandfather's knife. When would Don Jaime speak to his father about this family treasure? Since he had put off asking he must not forget his promise to present him another knife. What could a man like himself do, lacking such a companion? Where could he present himself?
"Don't worry," said Febrer. "One of these days I'll go to town. You may count on the gift."
One morning Jaime started for Iviza, eager for a fresh experience, and to renew and vary his impressions in a less rural atmosphere. Iviza seemed to him now like a great city, even to him who had traveled over all Europe. The houses in a row, the red brick sidewalks, the balconies with Persian blinds, he admired them all with the simplicity of a savage from the interior of a desert who arrives at a trading station on the coast. He paused before the shops, examining the goods exposed with the same enjoyment with which he used to contemplate the luxurious display windows on the boulevards or on Regent Street.
The jewelry shop of a Chueta held his attention a long while. He admired the filigree buttons with a stone in the center, the hollow gold chains made for the peasant girls, who deemed these objects the most perfect and marvelous works created by the art of man. Suppose he should go in and buy a dozen of those buttons! What a surprise for the girl of Can Mallorquí when he should present them to her for the decoration of her sleeves! Surely she would accept them from him, a grave gentleman upon whom she looked with filial respect. Detestable respect! That confounded gravity of his that hampered him like a crushing burden! But the scion of the Febrers, the descendant of opulent merchants and heroic navigators, was forced to resist, thinking of the money stowed away in his girdle. Probably he did not possess enough to make the purchase.
In another store he acquired a knife for Pepet, the largest and heaviest he could find, an absurd weapon, capable of making him forget the relic of his glorious grandfather.
At noon, Febrer, bored by objectless strolling through the ward of the Marina, and along the steep, narrow streets of the ancient Royal Fortress, entered a small inn, the only one in the city, situated near the port. There he met the customary patrons. In the vestibule a few youths dressed in peasant style, with military caps, soldiers of the garrison who served as orderlies; within the dining-room, subaltern officers of a batallion of light infantry, young lieutenants who were smoking with a bored mien and gazing through the windows at the immense blue expanse like prisoners of the sea. During the meal they lamented their bad luck at having their youth wasted by being chained to this rock. They spoke of Majorca as a place of joy; they recalled the provinces on the mainland, of which many of them were sons, as paradises to which they were eager to return. Women! It was a longing, a desire which made their voices quaver and brought a glow of madness into their eyes. The chaste Ivizan virtue, the exclusive islander, suspicious of foreigners, weighed upon them like the chain of an insufferable prison. There was no trifling with love here; no time was wasted; either hostile indifference or honest courting with a view to speedy marriage. Words and smiles led straight to matrimony; association with young girls was only possible for the purpose of the formation of a new household; and these lusty youths, gay, abounding in vitality, suffered a tantalizing torment discussing the most beautiful girls of the island, admiring them, yet living apart from them, in spite of moving in narrow limits which forced them to continual meetings. Their dearest hope was to get leave of absence, so that they might live a few days in Majorca or on the Peninsula, far from the cold-hearted and virtuous isle, which accepted the foreigner only as a husband.
Women! Those young bloods talked of nothing else, and seated at the long table, Febrer silently seconded their words and lamentations. Women! The irresistible tendency which binds us to them is the only thing that remains after the moral upheavals which change one's life; the only thing which remains standing among the ghosts of other illusions destroyed by the cataclysm. Febrer felt the same disgust as did the soldiers, the impression of being locked up in a prison of privations, surrounded by the sea as if it were a moat. Just now the island capital impressed him as a town of irresistible monotony, with its señoritas guarded in suspicious and monastic isolation. His mind reverted to the country as to a place of liberty, with its simple souled and natural women, restrained only by a defensive instinct like that of primitive females.
He left the city that same afternoon. Nothing remained of the optimism of a few hours before. The streets of the Marina were nauseating; an infectious odor escaped from the houses; in the arroyo buzzed swarms of insects, rising from the pools at the sound of the footsteps of a passerby. The recollection of the hills near his tower, perfumed by sylvan plants and by the salty odor of the sea, seemed to smile in his memory with idyllic sweetness.
A peasant's cart took him to the vicinity of San José, and after leaving it he started for the mountain, passing between the pine trees bent and twisted by the storms. The sky was overcast, the atmosphere warm and heavy. From time to time big drops fell, but before the clouds could settle into rain a gust of wind seemed to sweep them toward the horizon.
Near a charcoal burner's cabin Jaime saw two women walking rapidly among the pines. They were Margalida and her mother, coming from Cubells, a hermitage situated upon a hill on the coast, near a spring, which gave a vivid green to the abrupt cliffs, and nurtured oranges and palms in the shelter of the rocks.
Jaime overtook the two women, and next he saw Pepet spring out of the bushes where he had been walking outside the path, stone in hand, pursuing a bird whose cries had attracted his attention. They continued the journey to Can Mallorquí together, and, without realizing how it happened Febrer found himself in advance, walking by Margalida's side, while Pèp's wife trudged along behind with slow step, leaning on her son's arm.
The mother was ill; an obscure illness, which caused the doctor on his rare visits, to shrug his shoulders, and which excited the ambition of the island healers. They had been to make a promise to the Virgin of Cubells, and had left on her altar two fluted candles purchased in the city.
While Margalida talked in a sad voice of the old woman's aches and pains, the egoism of vigorous youth spurred her on with nervous haste until her cheeks became suffused with color, and her eyes betrayed a certain impatience. This was courting day. They must reach Can Mallorquí in time to prepare an early supper for the family before the suitors should arrive.
Febrer was admiring her with his serious eyes. He marveled now at the stupidity which had caused him to think of Margalida for all these months as a child, as an undeveloped creature, without realizing her graces. He remembered with scorn those señoritas of the city for whom the soldiers in the fonda sighed. Again he thought of the courting of Margalida with an annoyance resembling jealousy. Must this girl fall a prey to one of those dusky-faced barbarians who would subject her to slavery of the soil like a beast?
"Margalida!" he murmured, as if about to say something important. "Margalida!"
But he spoke no more. The old-time rake felt his instincts of libertinism aroused by the perfume exhaled by this woman, an indefinable perfume of flesh fresh and virginal, which he thought he inhaled, like a connoisseur, more with the imagination than through sense of smell. At the same time—a strange thing for him!—he experienced a timidity which deprived him of speech; a timidity like that he had felt in his early youth when, far from the easy conquests on his estate in Majorca, he ventured to address himself to worldly-wise women on the Continent. Was it not an unworthy act for him to speak of love to this girl whom he had considered a child and who respected him as if he were her father?
"Margalida! Margalida!"
After these exclamations, which aroused the girl's curiosity, making her raise her eyes to fix them questioningly on his, he at last began to speak, asking her about the progress of the courting. Had she decided on anyone? Who was to be the lucky man? The Ironworker? the Minstrel?
She lowered her eyes again, in her confusion picking up a corner of her apron and raising it to her bosom. She did not know. She hesitated and lisped like a child in her bashfulness. She did not wish to marry—neither the Minstrel or the Ironworker, nor anybody. She had acquiesced in the courting because all girls did the same when they reached a certain age. Besides (here she flushed vividly), it gave her a kind of satisfaction to humiliate her friends, who were raging with envy on seeing the great number of her suitors. She was grateful to the youths who came from great distances to see her, but as for loving one of them—or marrying——
She had slackened her pace as she spoke. Pèp's wife and his son passed on unconsciously, and as the two were left alone in the path, they at last stopped, without realizing what they were doing.
"Margalida! Almond Blossom!"
To the devil with shyness! Febrer felt arrogant and masterful as in his better days. Why this fear? A peasant girl! A child!
He spoke with a firm accent, trying to fascinate her with the impassioned fixedness of her eyes, drawing near her, as if to caress her with the music of his words. And how about him? What did Margalida think of him? What if he should present himself to Pèp some day, telling him that he wished to marry his daughter?
"You!" exclaimed the girl. "You, Don Jaime!"
She raised her eyes fearlessly, laughing at the absurdity—the señor was accustomed to fooling her with his jests. Her father said that the Febrers were all as serious as judges, but ever in a good humor. He was jesting at her expense again, as he had done when he had told about his clay sweetheart up there in his tower who had been waiting for him a thousand years.
But when her glance met Febrer's, seeing his pale face, tense with emotion, she turned white also. He seemed a different man; she saw a Don Jaime she had never known before. Instinctively, impelled by fear, she took a step backward. She remained on the defensive, leaning against the slender trunk of a small tree, which grew beside the path, its tiny sickly colored leaves almost loosened by the autumn wind.
She could still smile—a forced smile, pretending to believe it one of the señor's jokes.
"No," replied Febrer with energy, "I am speaking seriously. Tell me, Margalida, Almond Blossom, what if I should become one of your lovers; and if I should come to the courting, what would you answer me?"
She shrunk back against the yielding tree trunk, making herself smaller, as if she would escape those ardent eyes. Her instinctive backward step shook the flexible tree and a shower of yellow leaves, like flakes of amber, fell roundabout her, clinging to her hair. Pale, her lips compressed and blue, she murmured words scarcely more audible than a gentle sigh. Her eyes, enlarged and deep, bore the agonized expression of the humble of spirit who think many things, but who find no words to express them. He, the heir of the Febrers, a gran señor, to marry a peasant girl? Was he crazy?
"No; I am not a great señor; I am an unfortunate creature. You are richer than I, who am living off your charity. Your father wishes your husband to be a man who shall cultivate his lands. Will you marry me, Margalida? Do you love me, Almond Blossom?"
With bowed head, avoiding a glance that seemed to burn her, she continued speaking without listening to him. Madness! It could not be true! The señor to say such things! He must be dreaming!
Suddenly she felt on one of her hands a light, caressing touch. She looked at him again. She saw an unfamiliar face that thrilled her. She experienced a sensation of grave danger—the nervous start which gives a warning. Her knees shook, they contracted as if she were about to faint with fear.
"Do you think me too old?" he murmured in a supplicating voice. "Can you never come to love me?"
The voice was sweet and caressing, but those eyes seemed to devour her! That pale face, like that of men who kill! She longed to speak, to protest at his last words. She had never thought of Don Jaime's age; he was something superior, like the saints, who grow in beauty with the years. But fear held her silent. She freed herself from the caressing hand, she felt moved by the prodigious rebound of her nerves, as if her life were in danger, and she fled from Febrer as if he were an assassin.
"Heaven help me!"
Murmuring this supplication she sprang away, and began to run with the agility of the country girl, disappearing round a turn in the path.
Jaime did not follow her. He stood motionless in the solitude of the pine forest, erect in the pathway, unconscious of his surroundings, like the hero of a legend subjected to an enchantment. Then he passed a hand over his face, as if awakening from a dream, collecting his thoughts. His audacious words stung him with remorse, Margalida's alarm, the terrified flight which had terminated the interview. How stupid of him! It was the result of his going to the city; the return to civilized life which, had upset his bachelor calm, arousing passions of long ago; the conversation of the young soldiers, who lived with their thoughts ever fixed on women. But no; he did not repent what he had done. It was important for Margalida to know what he had so often vaguely thought in the isolation of his tower.
He continued slowly along his way to avoid meeting the family from Can Mallorquí. Margalida had joined her mother and brother. He saw them from a rise of ground, when they were journeying through the valley in the direction of the farmhouse.
Febrer changed his route, avoiding Can Mallorquí. He directed his steps toward the Pirate's Tower, but when he gained it he passed on, not stopping until he reached the sea.
The rock-bound coast, which seemed to overhang the waters, was broken by their incessant lashing for century upon century. The waves, like furious blue bulls, charged, frothing with anger, against the rock, wearing deep caverns, which were prolonged upward in the form of vertical cracks. This age-long battle was destroying the coast, shattering its stony armor, scale by scale. Colossal wall-like fragments loosened. They first separated by forming an imperceptible crevice which grew and grew with the passing of centuries. The natural wall leaned for years and years above the waves, which beat furiously at its base, until it would lose its balance some stormy night and topple like the rampart of a besieged citadel, crumbling into blocks, peopling the sea with new reefs soon to be covered with slimy vegetation, while the winding passages would seethe with foam and sparkle with the metallic gleam of fish.
Febrer seated himself on the edge of a great projecting rock, a ledge loosened from the coast that inclined boldly over the reefs. His fatalism impelled him to sit there. Would that the inevitable catastrophe might take place at that moment, and that his body, dragged down by the collapsing rock, might disappear in the bottom of the sea, having for its sarcophagus this mass, equal to the pyramid of a Pharaoh! What had he to look forward to in life?
Before sinking out of sight the setting sun peeped through an opening of stormy sky lying between riven clouds. It was a gory sphere, a wafer of purple which lightened the immensity of the sea with a fiery glare. The dark masses closing in the horizon were fringed with scarlet. A restless triangle of flames spread over the dark green waters. The foam turned red and the coast looked for an instant like molten lava.
In the glow of this stormy light Jaime contemplated the fluctuation of the waters at his feet, hurling their boisterous swirls into the hollows of the rock, roaring and writhing, frothing with anger in the winding passages between the reefs. In the depths of this greenish mass, illuminated by the setting sun with transparencies of opal, he saw strange vegetation growing on the rocks, diminutive forests among whose clinging fronds moved animals of fantastic form, nervous and swift or torpid and sedentary, with hard carapaces, gray and pinkish, bristling with defenses, armed with tentacles, with lances and with horns, making war among themselves and persecuting the weaker creatures which passed like white exhalations, flashing like crystal in the rapidity of their flight.
Febrer felt belittled by the solitude. Faith in his human importance destroyed, he considered himself no bigger than one of those tiny creatures swarming about in the vegetation of the submarine abyss—perhaps even smaller. Those animals were armed for life, they could sustain themselves by their own strength, never knowing the discouragement, the humiliations and the sorrows which afflicted him. The grandeur of the sea, unconscious of man, cruel and implacable in its anger, overwhelmed Febrer, arousing in his memory an endless chain of ideas which were perhaps new, but which he accepted as vague reminiscences of a former existence, as something which he had thought before, he knew not where nor when.
A thrill of respect, of instinctive devotion, swept over him, making him forget the event of a short time before, submerging him in religious contemplation. The sea! He thought, he knew not why, of the most remote ancestors of humanity, of primitive man, miserable, scarcely emerged from original animalism, tormented and repelled on every side by a nature hostile in its exhuberance, as a young and vigorous body conquers or throws off the parasites which endeavor to live at the cost of its organism. On the shore of the sea, in the presence of the divine mystery, green and immense, man should experience his most restful moments. The earliest gods sprung from the bosom of the waters; contemplating the fluctuation of the waves, and soothed by their murmur, man should feel that within him is born something new and powerful—a soul. The sea! The mysterious organisms which people it also live, as do those of the land, subjected to the tyranny of fear, immovable in their primitive existence, repeating themselves throughout the centuries as if ever the same entity. There also do the dead command! The strong pursue the weak, and are in their turn devoured by others more powerful, as in the times of their remote progenitors, when the waters were yet warm from the formation of the globe—ever the same, repeating themselves throughout hundreds of millions of years. A monster of prehistoric ages who might return to swim in these waters would find on all sides, in the dark chasms, and along the coasts, the same life and the identical struggles as in his youth. The animal of combat with his green carapace, armed with curving claws and with forceps for torture, implacable warrior of the dark submarine caverns, has never united with the graceful fish, swift and weak, which trails its rose and silver tunic through the transparent waters. His destiny is to devour, to be strong, and, if he should find himself disarmed, his defenses broken, to give himself up to misfortune without protest and to perish. Death is preferable to abdicating one's primal rights, the noble fatality of birth. For the strong of the land or of the sea there is no satisfaction nor life outside one's own sphere; they are slaves of their own greatness; birth brings them misfortunes as well as honors, and it will ever be the same! The dead are the only ones who rule the living. The first beings who initiated a plan for living wrought with their acts the cage in which succeeding generations must be imprisoned.
The tranquil mollusks which he now saw in the depths of the waters, clinging to the rocks like dark buttons, seemed to him divine beings who guard the mystery of creation in their stupid quiet. He imagined them great and imposing like those monsters worshipped by savages for their impassivity, and in whose rigidity they believe they divine the majesty of the gods. Febrer recalled his jests of other times, on nights of feasting, seated before a plate of fresh oysters, in the fashionable Parisian restaurants. His elegant companions thought him mad as they listened to the nonsensical ideas aroused by wine, the sight of the shell fish and the recollection of certain fragmentary reading in his youth. "We're going to eat our grandfathers like the merry cannibals that we are." The oyster is one of the primitive manifestations of life on the planet—one of the earlier forms of organic matter, still resting, uncertain and aimless in its evolution in the immensity of the waters. The sympathetic and slandered monkey only has the importance of a first cousin who has failed to make a career for himself, of an unfortunate and absurd relative whom one leaves outside the door, feigning ignorance of his family name, denying him a welcome. The mollusk is the venerable grandfather, the chief of the house, the creator of the dynasty, the ancestor crowned with a nobility of millions of centuries. These thoughts came back to Febrer's mind now with the vividness of indisputable truths.
Humanity is faithful to its sources. Nobody denies the traditions of those venerable ancestors who seemed to be asleep in the immense catacomb of the sea. Man thinks himself free because he can move from one side of the planet to the other; because his organism is mounted upon two agile and articulate columns which permit of his springing over the ground by the mechanism of walking—but, it is an error! One more of many illusions which deceptively gladden our lives, making us bearers of its misery and its triviality! Febrer was convinced that we are all born shut in between two valves of prejudices, of scruple, and of pride, an inheritance from those who proceeded us, and although man stirs about, he never manages to tear himself from the same rock to which his predecessors clung and vegetated. Activity, incidents of life, independence of character, all are illusions, the vanity of the mollusk which dreams while adhering to the rock, and imagines he is swimming through all the seas on the globe, while his valves continue fastened to the stone!
All creatures are as those who have gone before, and as those yet to come. They change in shape, but the soul remains stationary and immutable like that of those rudimentary beings, eternal witnesses of the first palpitation of life on the planet, which seemed to be sleeping the heaviest of sleeps; and thus will it ever be. Vain are great efforts to free oneself from this fatal environment, from the heritage of fear, from the circle in which we are forced to move, until at last comes death. Then other animals like ourselves appear, and begin whirling around the same circle, imagining themselves free because ever before their footsteps they have new space in which to run.
"The dead command!" Jaime once more declared to himself. It seemed impossible that men do not realize this great truth; that they dwell in eternal night, believing that they make new things in the glow of illusions which rise daily, as rises the great deception of the sun to accompany us through the infinite, which is dark, but which seems to us blue and radiant with light.
When Febrer thought this, the sun had already set. The sea was almost black, the sky a leaden gray, and in the fog on the horizon the lightning quivered and flashed. Jaime felt on his face and on his hands the moist kiss of drops of rain. A storm was about to break which perhaps would last throughout the night. The lightning flashes were coming nearer, a distant crashing was heard, as if two hostile fleets were cannonading beyond the curtain of fog on the horizon, and approaching each other behind its screen. The sheet of quiet water, glossy as crystal between reefs and coast, began to tremble with the widening undulations of the raindrops.
In spite of this he did not stir. He remained seated on the rock, experiencing a fierce anger against fate, rebelling with all the strength of his nature at the tyranny of the past. Why should the dead command? Why should they darken the atmosphere with the dust of their souls, like powdered bone lodging in the brains of the living, imposing the old ideas?
Suddenly Febrer experienced an overwhelming impression, as if he beheld an extraordinary light, never before seen. His brain seemed to dilate, to expand like a mass of water bursting an encompassing vessel of stone. At that instant a lightning flash colored the sea with livid light, and a thunder clap burst above his head, its echoes rattling with awesome reverberation over the expanse of the sea, in the caverns, and over the hilltops along the shore.
No, the dead do not command! The dead do not rule! As if he were a different man, Jaime ridiculed his recent thoughts. Those rudimentary animals which he had seen among the rocks, and with them all creatures of the sea and of the earth, suffer the slavery of fear. The dead rule them because they do the same things which their ancestors did, the same things their descendants will do. But man is not the slave of fear; he is its collaborator and sometimes its master. Man is a progressive and reasoning being, and can change his condition to suit his desires. Man was a slave to his surroundings in former times, in remote ages, but when he conquered nature and exploited her, he burst the fatal bondage in which other created things still remain prisoners. What matters to him the fear in which he has been born? He can make himself over anew if he will.
Jaime could not continue his reflections. Rain was streaming over the brim of his hat, running down his back. Night had suddenly come. By the glare of the lightning he saw the glazed surface of the sea trembling with the beating of the rain.
Febrer made all haste toward his tower, but he was happy, eager to run, with the overflowing joy of one emerging from long imprisonment and who has not before him space enough for his repressed activity.
"I will do what I please!" he shouted, rejoicing at the sound of his own voice, which was lost in the clamor of the storm. "Neither dead nor living shall rule me! What do I care for my noble forefathers, for my moth-eaten prejudices, for all the Febrers?"
Suddenly he was enveloped in a carmine light, and a cannon-shot burst above his head, as if the coast had been rent asunder by the shock of an immense catastrophe.
"That must have struck near here," said Jaime, referring to the electric flash.
His mind occupied with the Febrers, he thought of his ancestor the knight commander Don Priamo. The explosion of thunder recalled to his mind the combats of the diabolical hero, the religious cavalier of the Cross, a mocker of God and of the devil who always followed his sovereign will, fighting on the side of his kindred, or living among the enemies of the Faith, according to his caprices or his affections.
No! Febrer did not repudiate him. He adored the valorous knight commander; he was his true forbear, the best of them all, the rebel, the demon of the family!
Jaime entered the tower and struck a light; he flung around his shoulders the Arabian haik of coarse weave that served him for his nocturnal excursions, and taking a book he tried to distract himself until Pepet should bring his supper.
The storm seemed to be centered on the island. The rain fell on the fields, converting them, into marshes; it rushed down the declivities of the roadways, overflowing like rivers; it soaked the mountains like great sponges through the porous soil of the pine forest and thickets. The flare of the lightning gave hasty glimpses, like visions in a dream, of the blackish sea, the fretting foam, and flooded fields, which seemed filled with fiery fish, the trees glistening beneath their watery mantles.
In the kitchen of Can Mallorquí Margalida's suitors stood in a group, in damp, steaming clothing and muddy sandals. Tonight the courting lasted longer. Pèp, with a paternal air, had allowed the youths to remain after the time for the wooing had passed; he felt sorry for the poor boys who must walk home through the rain. He had been a suitor himself once upon a time. They might wait; perhaps the storm would soon pass; and if it did not they should stay and sleep wherever they could, in the kitchen, on the porch. "One wouldn't turn out a dog on such a night."
The youths, rejoicing in the event, which added more time to their courting, gazed at Margalida arrayed in her gala dress, seated in the center of the room, a vacant chair beside her. Each one had taken his turn at sitting upon it during the course of the evening, and now all looked at it eagerly, but lacked courage to occupy it again.
The Ironworker, wishing to outshine the others, was twanging a guitar, singing in low tones, accompanied by the rolling of the thunder. The Minstrel, sitting in a corner, was meditating new verses. Some boys hailed with mocking words the lightning flashes, which filtered through the cracks of the door, and the Little Chaplain smiled, sitting on the floor, his chin in his hands.
Pèp was dozing in a low chair, overcome by weariness, and his wife screamed with terror whenever a loud thunder clap shook the house, interjecting between her groans fragments of prayers, murmured in Castilian for greater efficacy: "Santa Barbara bendita, que en el cielo estas escrita——" Margalida, heedless of the glances of her suitors, seemed half dead with fright.
Suddenly there came two taps upon the door. The dog, who had scrambled to his feet scenting the presence of someone on the porch, stretched his neck, but instead of barking he wagged his tail in welcome.
Margalida and her mother glanced fearfully toward the door. Who could it be, at that time, on that night, in the solitude of Can Mallorquí? Had anything happened to the señor?
Aroused by the knocking, Pèp sat up straight in his chair. "Come in, whoever you are!" He gave the invitation with the dignity of a Roman paterfamilias, absolute master of his house. The door was not locked.
It opened, giving passage to a gust of rain-laden wind, which made the candle flicker, and refreshed the dense atmosphere of the kitchen. The dark rectangle of the doorway was lighted by the splendor of a lightning flash, and all saw in it, against the livid sky, a kind of penitent, with half-concealed face, a hooded figure, dripping rain.
He entered with firm tread, with no word of greeting, followed by the dog sniffing at his legs with affectionate growls. He strode directly toward the vacant chair beside Margalida, the place reserved for the suitors.
As he took his seat he flung back his hood and fixed his eyes on the girl.
"Ah!" she gasped, turning pale, her eyes widening in surprise.
So great was her emotion, so violent, her impulse to draw away from him, that she nearly fell to the floor.