The stockholders were almost all rich people of Castro, and the company drew up its constitution in such a manner that the town got scarcely any benefit out of it. They were not going to instal more than two public fountains inside the city limits, and those were to run only a few hours. Cæsar tried to convince them that this was absurd, but nobody paid any attention to him.
THE LIBRARY
A bit disappointed, he left the “Water Pumping Company” to go its way, and devoted himself entirely to things that he could carry out alone.
The first one he tried was establishing a circulating library of technical books on trades and agriculture, and of polite and scientific literature, in the Workmen’s Club.
“They will sell the books,” everybody said; “they will get them all soiled, and tear out the leaves....”
Cæsar had the volumes bound, and at the end of each he had ten or twelve blank sheets put in, in case the reader wished to write notes.
The experiment began; predictions were not fulfilled; the books came back to the library untorn and unspotted and with some very ingenuous notes in them. Lots of people took out books.
The clerical element immediately protested; the priests said in the pulpit that to send any chance book to working people’s houses without examining it first, was to lead people into error. Dr. Ortigosa retorted that Science did not need the approval of sacristans. As, in spite of the clerical element’s advice, people kept on reading, there were various persons that took out books and filled them with obscene drawings and tore out illustrations. Dr. Ortigosa sent Cæsar a letter informing him what was happening, and Cæsar answered that he must limit the distribution of books to the members of the Workmen’s Club and people that were known. He bade him replace the six or seven books abused, and continued to send new ones.
The ferment kept the city stirred up; there were no end of heated discussions; lectures were given in the Club, and Dr. Ortigosa’s paper, The Protest, came to life again.
“I am with you in whatever will agitate the people’s ideas,” wrote Cæsar; “but if they start to play orators and revolutionists, and you folks come along with pedantic notions, then I for my part shall drop the whole thing.”
When Cæsar was in Castro, he spent his evenings at the Workmen’s Club. They gave moving pictures and frequent balls. Cæsar did not miss one of the Club’s entertainments. The men came to him for advice, and the girls and the little boys bowed to him affectionately. There was great enthusiasm over him.
THE BENEVOLENT SOCIETY
Shortly after the initiation of these improvements in the Club, there appeared in Castro Duro, without fuss, without noise, two rather mysterious societies; the Benevolent Society of Saint Joseph and the Agricultural Fund. In an instant the Benevolent Society of Saint Joseph had a numerous array of members and patrons. All the great landholders of the region, including Amparito’s father, bound themselves to employ no labourers except those belonging to the Benevolent Society. In the neighbouring villages the inhabitants joined en masse. At the same time as this important society, Father Martin and his friends founded the Castrian Agricultural Fund, whose purpose was to make loans, at a low rate of interest, to small proprietors.
The two Catholic institutions set themselves up in rivalry to the Workmen’s institution. The town was divided; the Catholics were more numerous and richer; the Liberals more determined and enthusiastic. The Catholics had given their upholders a resigned character.
Moreover, the name Catholic applied to the members of the two Clerical societies made those who did not belong to them admit with great tranquillity that they were not Catholics.
The Clericals called their enemies Moncadists, and by implication Schismatics, Atheists, and Anarchists. Inside the town there was a Moncadist majority; in the environs everybody was a Catholic and belonged to the Benevolent Society.
Generally the Catholics were abused in word and deed by the Moncadists; the members of the Workmen’s Club held those of the Benevolent Society for cowards and traitors. Doubtless Father Martín did not wish that his followers should be distinguished by Christian meekness, and he appointed a bully whom people called “Driveller” Juan warden of the Benevolent Society. This Juan was a lad who lived without working; his mother and his sisters were dressmakers, and he bled them for money, and spent his life in taverns and gambling-dens.
“Driveller” began to insult members of the club, especially the boys, and to defy them, on any pretext. Dr. Ortigosa went to see Cæsar and explained the situation. “Driveller” was a coward, he didn’t venture beyond a few peaceable workmen; but if he had defied “Furibis” or “Panza” or any of the railway men that belonged to the Club, they would have given him what he deserved. But in spite of “Driveller’s” cowardice, he inspired terror among the young boys and apprentices.
Dr. Ortigosa was in favour of getting another bully, who could undertake the job of cutting out “Driveller’s” guts.
“Whom are we to get?” asked Cæsar.
“We know somebody,” said Ortigosa.
“Who is it?”
“’ El Montes.’”
“What kind of a party is he?”
“A bandit like the other, but braver.”
BANDITS
“El Montes” had just come out of Ocaña.
He was a Manchegan, tall, strong, robust, and had been in the penitentiary several times.
“And how do we manage ‘El Montes’?” asked Cæsar.
“We make him a servant at the Workmen’s Club.”
“He will corrupt the place.”
“Yes, that’s true. Then at the right moment we shall send him to the Café del Comercio. They gamble at that café; he can go there and in two or three days call a halt on ‘Driveller’ Juan.” “Good.”
“We must arrange for you to dismiss the new judge and put in some friend of yours, and one fine day we will get a quarrel started and we will put all Father Martin’s friends in jail.”
“You two play atrocious politics,” said Alzugaray, who was listening to the conversation.
“It’s the only kind that will work,” replied Ortigosa. “This is scientific politics. Ruffianism converted into philosophy. We are playing a game of chess with Father Martin and we are going to see if we can’t win it.”
“But, man, employing all these cut-throats!”
“My dear friend,” responded Cæsar, “political situations include such things; with their heads they touch the noblest things, the safety of one’s native land and the race; with their feet they touch the meanest things, plots, vices, crimes. A politician of today still has to mingle with reptiles, even though he be an honourable man.”
“Besides, we need have no scruples,” added Ortigosa; “the inhabitants of Castro are laboratory guinea-pigs. We are going to experiment on them, we are going to see if they can stand the Liberal serum.”
THE TWO ASYLUMS
A little after these rivalries between the Benevolent Society and the Workmen’s Club, which stirred up every one’s passions to an extreme never before known at Castro Duro, another motive for agitation transpired.
There were two asylums in the town; the Municipal Aid and the Asylum of the Little Sisters of the Poor.
The Municipal Aid had its own property and was wisely organized; the old people were permitted to go out of the asylum, they had no uniform, and from time to time they were allowed to drink a glass of something. In the Little Sisters’ Home, on the contrary, discipline was most severe; all the inmates had to go dressed in a horrible uniform, which the poor hated; to be present, like a chorus, at the funerals of important persons; pray at every step; and besides all that, they were forbidden under pain of expulsion, to smoke or to drink anything.
So the result was that there were abandoned old wretches, who, if they couldn’t get a place in the Aid, let themselves die in some corner, rather than put on the uniform of the Little Sisters’ Home, degrading in their eyes.
That asylum had no income, because its Catholic managers had eaten it all up. In view of the institution’s bad economic condition, it occurred to Father Martin to consolidate the two; to make one asylum of the municipal and the religious, and to put it under the strict rule of the religious one. What Father Martin wanted was that the Little Sisters should have a finger in the whole thing, and that the income of one institution should serve for both.
Cæsar threatened the mayor with dismissal if he accepted the arrangement, and insisted that the Liberal councilmen should not permit the fusion, which was to the great advantage of the Clerical party.
As a matter of fact, the plan came to nothing, and Cæsar treated the Municipal Aid to two barrels of wine and tobacco in abundance, which aroused great enthusiasm among the old people, who cheered for the Deputy of their District.
Cæsar rode over the situation on horseback; but the Clerical campaign strengthened at the same rate that popular sympathies went out toward him. In almost every sermon there were allusions to the immorality and the irreligion that reigned in the town. The support of the women was sought and they were exhorted to influence their husbands, brothers, and sons to resign from the Workmen’s Club.
The old pulpit oratory began to seem mild, and on the feast of the Virgin of the Rock, a young preacher launched out, in the church, into an eloquent, violent, and despotic sermon in which he threatened eternal suffering to those who belonged to heretical clubs and would not return to the loving bosom of the Church. The homily caused the greatest impression, and there were a few unhappy mortals who, some days later, were reported as dead or missing at the Workmen’s Club.
XIII. AMPARITO IN ACTION
LAURA AT CASTRO
A time for new elections arrived, and Cæsar stood for Castro Duro. Don Calixto, who had married his two daughters and was bored at not being allowed to pull the strings in the town, decided to move to Madrid. First he had thought of spending only some time at the capital, but later he decided to stay there and he had his furniture sent down.
People said that Don Calixto had no great affection for the old palace of the Dukes of Castro, and Cæsar proposed that he should rent the house to him.
Don Calixto hesitated; in Castro he would certainly have refused, but being in Madrid he accepted. His wife advised him that if he had any scruples, he should ask more rent. They came to the agreement that Cæsar should pay three thousand pesetas a year for the part Don Calixto had formerly inhabited.
This time Cæsar had the election won, and there was not the slightest fight. He was the boss of Castro, a good boss, accepted by everybody, save the Clericals.
Cæsar had money, and he wrote to his sister to come and see him at Castro in his seigniorial mansion. Laura arrived at Madrid in the autumn, and the two went to Castro together.
Laura’s appearance in the town created a great sensation. At first people said she was Cæsar’s wife. Others said she was an actress; until finally everybody understood that she was his sister.
Laura really took undue advantage of her superiority. She was irresistibly amiable and bewitching with everybody. The majority of the men in Castro Duro talked of nothing but her, and the women hated her to the death.
Being a marchioness, a Cardinal’s niece, and a Deputy’s sister, gave her, besides, a terrible social prestige.
One person who clung to her, enchanted to have such a friend, was Amparito. She went to the palace in her motor at all hours, to see Laura and chat with her. In the afternoon the two of them used to walk in Amparito’s father’s property, where the labourers, who were threshing, received them like queens.
What enchanted Laura was the wild garden at Don Calixto’s house, with its pomegranates and laurels, its tower above the river, full of climbing plants and oleanders.
“You ought to buy this house,” she used to tell Cæsar.
“It would cost a good deal.”
“Pshaw! You could arrange that wonderfully. You would get married and live here like a prince.”
“Get married?”
“Yes. To Amparito. That young thing is enchanting.
“She will make a splendid little wife. Even for your respectability as a Deputy, it would be fitting to marry. A bachelor politician has a poor look.”
Cæsar paid no attention to these suggestions and continued to lead an unsocial life. He covered the environs on horseback, found out everything that was going on and settled it. In this he set himself an enormous task, which was not notable for results; but he hoped to succeed in conquering the district completely, and then to extend his sphere of action to others and yet others.
After being a fortnight in Castro Duro, Laura went to Biarritz, as was her custom every year.
AMPARITO AND CÆSAR
Cæsar was left alone. He had seen Amparito with his sister many times but had scarcely ever exchanged more than a few words with her. One afternoon Cæsar was in the gallery in an arm-chair, with his feet high. He felt melancholy and lazy, and was watching the clouds move across the sky. Soon he heard steps, and saw Amparito with an old servant who had been her nurse.
Cæsar jumped up.
“What’s the matter?” he exclaimed.
“I came to get something Laura forgot,” said Amparito.
“She forgot something?” asked Cæsar stupidly.
“Yes,” replied Amparito; and added, addressing the old woman:
“Go see if there is a little glass box in Señorita Laura’s room.”
The old woman went out, and Amparito, looking at Cæsar, who was on his feet watching her nervously, said:
“Do you still hate me?”
“I?” exclaimed Cæsar.
“Yes, you do hate me.”
“I! I have never hated you.... Quite the contrary.”
“Whenever you see me you get away, and just now you looked at me as if you were terrified. Have you such a grudge against me for a joke I played on you long ago?”
“I, a grudge! No. It is because I have the impression, Amparito, that you want to upset my plans, to make game of me. Why do you?”
“Do you think I try to amuse myself by worrying you?”
“Yes.”
“No, that isn’t true. You don’t think so.”
“Then why this constant inclination to distress me, to poke fun at me?”
“I never poked fun at you.”
“Then I have made a mistake.... I had come to think that you took some interest in me.”
“And so I did. I did take an interest in you, and I keep on taking an interest in you.”
“And why so?”
“Because I see that you are unhappy, and you are alone.”
“Ah! You are sorry for me!” “Now you are offended. Yes, I am sorry for you.”
“Sorry!”
“Yes, sorry. Because I see that you despise everybody and despise yourself, because you think people are bad, and that you are too, and to me this seems so sad that it makes me pity you deeply.”
Cæsar began to walk up and down the gallery, trembling a little.
“I don’t see why you say this to me,” he murmured. “I am a morbid man, with an ulcerated, wounded spirit.... I know that. But why say it to me? Do you take pleasure in humiliating me?”
“No, Cæsar,” said Amparito, drawing near him. “You don’t believe that I take pleasure in humiliating you. No, you know well that I do not.”
On saying this, Amparito burst into tears, and she had to lean against the gallery window, to hide her face and dissemble her emotion.
Cæsar took her hand, and as she did not turn her head, he seized her other, too. She looked at him with her eyes shining and full of tears; and in that look there was so much attachment, so much distress, that Cæsar felt a weakness in his whole frame. Then, taking Amparito’s head between his hands, he kissed it several times.
She leaned her head on Cæsar’s shoulder and stood pressed against him, sobbing. Cæsar felt a sensation of anguish and pain, as if within the depths of his soul, the strongest part of his personality had broken and melted.
They heard the footsteps of the old woman, coming back to say that she had found nothing in the room Laura had occupied during her stay.
Amparito dried her tears, and smiled, and her face was redder than usual. Presently she said to the nurse:
“Probably you didn’t look well. I am going to go myself.”
Amparito went out.
Cæsar was pale and absorbed; he felt that something extraordinary had happened to him. His hands trembled and things swam around him.
In a short while Amparito returned. She had a round glass box in her hand, which she said she had found in Laura’s room.
“This afternoon I am going to Our Lady of the Rock,” said Amparito. “Will you come, Cæsar?”
“Yes.”
“Then, good-bye till then.”
Amparito gave him her hand, and Cæsar kissed it. The old servant was dumfounded. Amparito burst out laughing.
“He is my beau. Hadn’t you noticed it before?”
“No,” said the old woman with a gesture of violent negation.
Amparito laughed again and disappeared.
The first days of his engagement Cæsar was constantly in-tranquil and uneasy. He kept thinking that it was impossible to live like that, giving his whole attention to nothing except the desires of a girl. He imagined that the awakening would come from one moment to the next; but the awakening didn’t arrive.
By degrees Cæsar abandoned all the affairs of the district, which had taken all his attention, and took to occupying himself solely with his sweetheart. The whole town knew their relations and talked of the coming wedding.
That dazzling idyll intrigued all the girls in Castro. The truth was that none of them had considered Cæsar a marrying man; some had imagined him already old; others an experienced and vicious bachelor, incapable of yielding to the matrimonial yoke; and now they saw him a youth, of distinguished type, with distinguished manners and looks.
Cæsar went almost daily to Amparito’s father’s country-place. It was a magnificent estate, another ancient property of the Dukes of Castro Duro, with a house adorned with escutcheons, and an extensive stone pool, deep and mysterious. The garden did not resemble that at Don Calixto’s house, for that one was of a frantic gaiety, and the one on Amparito’s father’s estate was very melancholy. Above all, the square of water in the pool, whose edges were decorated with great granite vases, had a mysterious, sad aspect.
“Doesn’t it make you very sad to look at this deep water in the pool?” Cæsar asked his fiancée.
“No, it doesn’t me.”
“It does me.”
“Because you are a poet,” she said, “and I am not; I am very prosaic.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
The more Cæsar talked with Amparito, the less he understood her and the more he needed to be with her.
“We really do not think the same about anything,” Cæsar used to tell himself, “and yet we understand each other.”
Many times he endeavoured to make a psychological résumé of Amparito’s character, but he didn’t succeed. He didn’t know how to classify her; her type always escaped him.
“All her notions are different from mine,” he used to think; “she speaks in another way, feels in another way, she even has a different moral code. How strange!”
Also, what Amparito knew was completely heterogeneous; she spoke French well and wrote it fairly correctly; in Spanish, on the other hand, she had no idea of spelling. Cæsar was always stupefied on seeing the transpositions of h’s, s’s, and z’s that she made in her letters.
There remained by Amparito, from her passage through the French school, a recollection of the history of France made up of a few anecdotes and a few phrases. Thus, it was not unusual to hear her speak of Turenne, of Francis I, or of Colbert. For the rest, she played the piano badly enough and with extremely little enthusiasm.
This was the part belonging to her education as a rich young lady; that which belonged to the country girl, who lived among peasants, was more curious and personal.
She knew many plants by their vulgar names, and understood their industrial and medicinal use. Besides, she spoke in such pure, natural phrases that Cæsar was filled with admiration.
Cæsar had reached such a degree of exaltation that he thought of nothing any more, except his sweetheart. At night, before going to sleep, he thought of her deliriously. He often dreamed that Amparito had changed into the red-flowered oleander of the wild palace garden, and in every flower of the oleander he used to see Amparito’s red lips and white teeth.
XIV. INTRANSIGENCE LOST
DISQUIET DISAPPEARS
The wedding took place and Cæsar had to compromise about a lot of things. It didn’t trouble him to confess and receive communion; he considered those mere customs, and went to the church of the Plain to conform to these practices with the old priest who was a friend of Amparito’s.
On the other hand, it did bother Cæsar to have to suffer Father Martin in his house, who allowed himself to talk and give advice; and he was also irritated by the presence of certain persons who considered themselves aristocrats and who came to call on him and point out to him that it was now time to give up the rabble and the indigent and to rise to their level.
If he had not had so much to think about as he did have, he would have found this a good chance to show his aggressive humour; but all his attention was fixed on Amparito.
The newly married pair spent the first days of their honeymoon at Castro; then they went to Madrid, with the intention of going abroad, and afterwards they went back to the town.
The old palace of the Dukes of Castro was witness to their idyll.
At the end of some time Cæsar felt tranquil, perhaps too tranquil.
“This, no doubt, is what is called being happy,” he used to say to himself. And being happy gave him the impression of a limbo; he felt as though his old personality was dying within him. He could no longer recover his former way of life; all his disquietudes had vanished. He felt that he was balanced, lacking those alternations of courage and cowardice which had previously formed the characteristic thing in him. It was the oasis after the desert; the calm that follows the storm.
Cæsar wondered if he had acquired new nerves. His instinct to be arbitrary was on the downward track.
He could not easily determine what role his wife played in his inner life. He felt the necessity of having her beside him, of talking to her; but he did not understand whether this was mere selfishness, for the sake of the soothing effect her presence produced, or was for the satisfaction of his vanity in seeing how she gave all her thought to him.
Spiritually he did not feel her either identified with him or strange to him; her soul marched along as if parallel to his, but in other paths.
“All that men say about women is completely false,” Cæsar used to think, “and what women say about themselves, equally so, because they merely repeat what men say. Only when they are completely emancipated will they succeed in understanding themselves. It is indubitable that we have not the same leading ideas, or the same points of view. Probably we have not a similar moral sense either. Neither is woman made for man, nor man for woman. There is necessity between them, not harmony.”
Many times, watching Amparito, he told himself:
“There is some sort of machinery in her head that I do not understand.”
Noting his scrutinizing gaze, she would ask him:
“What are you thinking about me?”
He would explain his perplexities, and she would laugh.
SYMPATHY
Indubitably, there existed an instinctive accord of the sentiments between Amparito and him, an organic sympathy. She could feel for them both, but he could not think for them both; each mental machine ran in isolation, like two watches, which do not hear each other. She knew whether Cæsar was sad or joyful, disheartened or spirited, merely by looking at him. She had no need to ask him; she could read Cæsar’s face. He could not, on his side, understand what went on behind that little forehead and those moist and sparkling eyes.
“Are you feeling happy? Are you feeling sad?” he would ask her. He could not reach the point of knowing by himself.
“I never succeed in knowing what you want,” he sometimes said to her, bitterly.
“Why, you always succeed,” she used to reply.
Cæsar often wondered if the rôle of being so much loved, whether wrong or right, was an absurd, offensive thing. In all great affections there is one peculiarity; if one loves a person, one gets to the point of changing that person to an idol inside oneself, and from that moment it seems that the person divides into the unreal idol, which is like a false picture of the adored one, and the living being, who resembles the idolized object very slightly.
Cæsar found something absurd in being loved like that. Besides, he found that she was dragging him away from himself. After six months of marriage, she was making him change his ideas and his way of life, and he was having absolutely no influence on her.
Previously he had often thought that if he lived with a woman, he should prefer one that was spiritually foreign to him, who should look on him like a rare plant, not with one that would want to identify herself with his tastes and his sympathies.
With a somewhat hostile woman he would have felt an inclination to be voluble and contradictory; with a sympathetic woman, on the contrary, he would have seemed to himself like a circus runner whom one of his pupils is trying to overtake, and who has to run hard to keep the record where it belongs.
But his wife was neither one nor the other.
Amparito had an extraordinary insouciance, gaiety, facility, in accepting life. Cæsar never ceased being amazed. She spent her days working, talking, singing. The slightest diversion enchanted her, the most insignificant gift aroused a lively satisfaction.
“Everything is decided, as far as you are concerned,” Cæsar used, to tell her.
“By what?”
“By your character.”
She laughed at that.
It seemed as if she had chosen the best attitude toward life. She saw that her husband was not religious, but she considered that an attribute of men, and thought that God must have an especial complacency toward husbands, if only so as not to leave wives alone in paradise.
Amparito held by a fetichistic Catholicism, conditioned by her situation in life, and mixed with a lot of heterodox and contradictory ideas, but she didn’t give any thought to that.
The marriage was very successful; they never had disputes or discussions. When both were stubborn, they never noticed which one yielded.
They had rented one rather big floor facing on the Retiro, and they began to furnish it.
Amparito had bad taste in decoration; everything loud pleased her, and sometimes when Cæsar laughed, she would say:
“I know I am a crazy country girl. You must tell me how to fix things.”
Cæsar decided the arrangement of a little reception-room. He chose a light paper for the walls, some coloured engravings, and Empire furniture. Female friends found the room very well done. Amparito used to tell them:
“Yes, Cæsar had it done like this,” as if that were a weighty argument with everybody.
Amparito and her father persuaded Cæsar that he ought to open an office. All the people in Castro lamented that Cæsar did not practise law.
He had always felt a great repugnance for that sharpers’ and skinflints’ business; but he yielded to please Amparito, and set up his office and took an assistant who was very skillful in legal tricks. Cæsar was often to be found writing in the office, when Amparito opened the door.
“Do you want to come here a moment?” she would say.
“Yes. What is it?”
“Look and see how this hat suits me. How do you like it?”
Cæsar would laugh and say:
“I think you ought to take off the flowers, or it ought to be smaller.”
Amparito accepted Cæsar’s suggestions as if they had been, articles of faith.
Cæsar, on his part, had a great admiration for his wife. What strength for facing life! What amazing energy!
“I walk among brambles and leave a piece of my clothing on every one of them,” thought Cæsar, “and she passes artlessly between all obstacles, with the ease of an ethereal thing. It’s extraordinary!”
It pleased Amparito to be thus observed.
Her husband used to tell her:
“You have, as it were, ten or twelve Amparitos inside of you; it often seems to me that you are a whole round of Amparitos.”
“Well, you are not more than one Cæsar to me.”
“That’s because I have the ugly vice of talking and of being consequential.”
“Don’t I talk?”
“Yes, in another way.”
DOUBT
In the spring they went to Castro, and the members of the Workmen’s Club presented themselves before Cæsar to remind him of a project for a Co-operative and a School, which he had promised them. They were all ready to put up what was necessary for realizing both plans.
Cæsar listened to them, and although with great coldness, said yes, that he was ready to initiate the scheme. A few days later, in Dr. Ortigosa’s Protest, there was enthusiastic talk of the Great Co-operative, which, when established, would improve, and at the same time cheapen necessary articles.
The same day that the paper came out with this news, a commission of the shopkeepers of Castro waited on Cæsar. The scheme would ruin them. It was especially the small shopkeepers that considered themselves most injured.
Cæsar replied that he would think it over and decide in an equitable manner, looking for a way to harmonize the interests of all people. Really he didn’t know what to do, and as he had no great desire to begin new undertakings, he wanted to call the Co-operative dead, but Dr. Ortigosa was not disposed to abandon the idea.
“It is certain that if goods are made cheaper,” said the doctor, “and the Co-operative is opened to the public, the shopkeepers will have to fight it, and then either they or we shall be ruined; but something else can be done, and that is to sell articles to the public at the same price as the tradesmen, and arrange it that members get a dividend from the profits of the society. In that way there will be no fight, at any rate not at first.”
They tried to do it that way, but it did not satisfy the poor people, or calm the shopkeepers.
Cæsar, who had lost his lust for a fight, put the scheme aside; and although it would cost him more, decided to have the construction of the school begun.
The Municipality ceded the lot and granted a subsidy of five thousand pesetas to start the work; Cæsar gave ten thousand, and at the Workmen’s Club a subscription was opened, and performances were given in the theatre to collect funds.
The school promised to be a spacious edifice with a beautiful garden. The corner-stone was laid in the presence of the Governor of the Province, and despite the fact that the founders’ intention was to found a lay school, the Clerical element took part in the celebration.
When the work began, the majority of the members of the Club were shocked to find that the masons, instead of working on the same conditions as for other jobs, asked more pay, as if the school where their sons might study were an institution more harmful than beneficial for them.
Cæsar, on learning this, smiled bitterly and said:
“They are not obliged to be less of brutes than the bourgeoisie.”
From Madrid Cæsar continued sending maps for the school, engravings, bas-reliefs, a moving-picture machine.
Dr. Ortigosa and his friends went every day to look over the work.
A year from the beginning of work, the boys and girls’ school was opened. Dr. Ortigosa succeeded in arranging that two of the three male teachers they procured were Free-Thinkers. One of them, a poor man who had lived a dog’s life in some town in Andalusia, was reputed to be an anarchist. They appointed three female teachers too, two old, and one young, a very attractive and clever girl, who came from a town near Bilboa.
Cæsar took part in the opening, and spoke, and received enthusiastic applause. Despite which, Cæsar felt ill at ease among his old friends; in his heart he knew that he was deserting them. He now thought it unlikely, almost impossible, that that town should succeed in emerging from obscurity and meaning something in modern life. Moreover, he doubted about himself, began to think that he was not a hero, began to believe that he had assigned himself a role beyond his powers; and this precisely at the moment when the town had the most faith in him.
XV. “DRIVELLER” JUAN AND “THE CUB-SLUT”
A MURDER
“Driveller” Juan, the town dandy protected by Father Martín, had from childhood distinguished himself by his cowardice and by his tendency to bullying. His appearance was that of an idiot; people said he drivelled; whence they gave him the nickname of “Driveller” Juan. He lived by pretending to be terrible in the gambling houses, and bragged of having been in prison several times.
The Clericals had made “Driveller” the janitor of the Benevolent Society, and at the same time its bully, so that he could inspire terror; but as he was a coward in reality, and this was evident, he did not succeed in terrifying the members of the Workmen’s Club.
“Driveller” Juan was tall, red-headed, with high cheek bones, knotty hands, and a pendulous lip; his father, like him, had been bony and strong, and for that reason had been called “Big Bones.”
“Driveller,” like the coward he was, knew that he was not filling his job; one day he had dared to go to a ball at the Workmen’s Club, and San Román, the old Republican, had gone to him and tapped him on the arm, saying:
“Listen here, ‘Driveller,’ get out right now and don’t you come back.”
“Why should I?”
“Because you are not wanted.”
Juan had gone away like a whipped dog. “Driveller” wanted to do a manly action, and he did it.
There was a boy belonging to the Workmen’s Club, who was called “Lengthy,” one of the few type-setters in the town, a clever, facetious lad who now and then wrote an article for The Protest.
“Driveller” insisted that “Lengthy” wanted to make fun of him. No doubt he chose him for his victim, because he was so slim, lanky, and weak; perhaps he had some other reason for attacking him. One afternoon, at twilight, “Driveller” halted “Lengthy,” demanded an explanation, insulted him, and on finding his victim made no reply, gave him a blow. The street was wet, and “Driveller” stepped on a fruit-skin and fell headlong. Seeing the bully infuriated, “Lengthy” started to run, came to an open door, and ran rapidly up the stairs. “Driveller,” furious, ran after him. Pursued and pursuer went down a hallway and “Lengthy” managed to reach a door and close it. “Driveller’s” revengeful fury was not satisfied; he lay in wait until “Lengthy,” believing himself alone, tried to escape from his hiding-place and was walking down the hall, and then “Driveller” drew his pistol and fired with the mouth against “Lengthy’s” shoulder, and left him dead. As it was a rainy day, both the dead man’s footsteps and the murderer’s could be followed and everything that had happened ascertained.
The impression produced in the town by this assassination was enormous. Some people said that Father Martin and his followers had ordered “Lengthy” killed. In the Workmen’s Club there was talk of setting fire to the Benevolent Society of Saint Joseph and of burning the monastery of la Peña.
Cæsar was in Madrid at the time of the crime. Some days later a committee from the Club came to see him; it was necessary to have a charge pushed and for Cæsar to be the private attorney.
According to the Club people, the Clericals wanted to save “Driveller” Juan, and if he was not disposed of completely, he would begin his performances again.
Cæsar could see nothing for it but to accept the duty which the town put upon him.
Because of the crime, the history of “Driveller’s” family came to be public property. He had a mother and two sisters who were seamstresses, whom he exploited, and he lived with a tavern-keeper nicknamed “The Cub-Slut,” a buxom, malicious woman, who said horrible things about everybody.
LIFE OF “THE CUB-SLUT”
There were reasons for “The Cub-Slut’s” being what she was. Her parents being dead when she was a baby, having no relatives she had been left deserted. A farrier they called “Gaffer,” who seemed to have been a kind person, took in the infant and brought her up in his house. It was “Gaffer” who had given the nickname to the child, because instead of calling her by her name, he used to say:
“Hey, ‘Cub-Slut!’ Hey, little ‘Cub-Slut!’” and the appellation had stuck.
When the girl was fourteen, “Gaffer” ravished her, and afterwards, being tired of her, took her to a house of prostitution in the Capital and sold her. “The Cub-Slut” left the brothel to go and live with an old innkeeper, who died and made her his heiress. Six years later she went back to Castro. Those that had seen her come back maintained that when she reached the town and was told that “Gaffer” had died a few months before, she burst into tears; some said it was from sentiment, but others thought, very plausibly, that it was from rage at not being able to get revenge. “The Cub-Slut” set up a tavern at Castro.
“Driveller” and “The Cub-Slut” got along well, although, by what any one could discover, “The Cub-Slut” treated the bully more like a servant than anything else.
“The Cub-Slut” was said to be very outspoken. One Sunday, on the promenade, she had answered one of the young ladies of Castro rudely. The young lady was the daughter of a millionaire, who had married after having several children by a mistress of pretty bad reputation. The millionaire’s children had been educated in aristocratic schools, and his girls were very elegant young ladies; even the mother got to be refined and polished. One Sunday, on the promenade, one of them, on passing near “The Cub-Slut,” said in a low tone to her mother:
“Dear Lord, what riff-raff!”
And “The Cub-Slut,” hearing her, stopped and said violently:
“There’s no riff-raff here except your mother and me. Now you know it.”
The young lady was so upset by the harsh retort that she didn’t leave the house again for a long while.
Such rude candour on “The Cub-Slut’s” part had made her feared; so that nobody durst provoke her in the slightest degree. Besides, her history and her misfortune were known and people knew that she was not a vicious woman, but rather a victim of fate.
The assassination of “Lengthy” was one of those events that are not forgotten in a town. “Lengthy” was the son of “Gaffer,” “The Cub-Slut’s” protector, and some people imagined that she had persuaded “Driveller” to commit the crime; but the members of the Workmen’s Club continued to believe that it was a case of clerical revenge.
“THE CUB-SLUT’S” ARGUMENT
In the month of June, Cæsar and Amparito went to Castro Duro.
One afternoon when Cæsar was alone in the garden, a very buxom woman appeared before him, wearing a mantilla and dressed in black.
“I came in without anybody seeing me,” she said. “Your porter, ‘Wild Piglet,’ let me pass. I know that Amparito is not here.”
She didn’t say “Your wife,” or “Your lady,” but “Amparito.”
“Tell me what you want,” said Cæsar, looking at the woman with a certain dread.
“I am the woman that lives with ‘Driveller’ Juan.”
“Ah! You are...?” “Yes. ‘The Cub-Slut.’”
Cæsar looked at her attentively. She was of the aquiline type seen on Iberian coins, her nose arched, eyes big and black, thin-lipped mouth, and a protruding chin. She noticed his scrutiny, and stood as if on her guard.
“Sit down, if you will, please, and tell me what you wish.”
“I am all right,” she replied, continuing to stand; then, precipitately, she said, “What I want is for them not to punish Juan more than is just.”
“I don’t believe he will be punished unjustly,” responded Cæsar.
“The whole town says that if you speak against him in court, the punishment will be heavier.”
“And you want me not to speak?”
“That’s it.”
“It seems to me to be asking too much. I shall do no more than insist that they punish him justly.”
“There is no way to get out of it?”
“None.”
“If you wanted to... I would wait on you on my knees afterwards, I would make any sacrifice for you.”
“Are you so fond of the man?”
“The Cub-Slut” answered in the negative, by an energetic movement of her head.
“Well, then, what do you expect to get out of him?”
“I expect revenge.”
“The Cub-Slut’s” eyes flashed.
“Is what they say about you true?” asked Cæsar.
“Yes.”
“The dead boy was the son of the man that sold you?”
“Yes.”
“But to revenge oneself on the son for the sin of the father is horrible.”
“The son was just as wicked as the father.”
“So that you ordered him killed?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And you come and tell that to me, when I am to be the private attorney.” “Have them arrest me. I don’t care.”
“The Cub-Slut” stood firm before Cæsar, provocative, with flashing eyes, in an attitude of challenge.
“You hated that dead boy so much as this?”
“Yes, him and all his family.”
“I can understand that if the father were alive, you might...”
“If he were alive! I would give my life to drag him out of his tomb, so as to make him suffer as much as he made me suffer.”
Cæsar vaguely remembered the story he had heard about this woman, whose adopted father had ruined her and then left her in a disreputable house in the Capital. In general, the most absolute lack of apprehension characterizes such village tragedies, and neither does the victim know she is a victim, nor the villain that he is a villain.
But in this case, judging by what “The Cub-Slut” was telling him, it had not been so; “Gaffer” had gone about it with a certain depravity, glutting his desires on her, and then selling her, putting her into an infamous house. The villain had been cruel and intelligent; the victim had realized that she was one, to the degree that her soul was filled with desires for vengeance.
“That man,” “The Cub-Slut” ended, sobbing, “took away my name and gave me a nickname; took away my honour, my life, everything; and if I cannot be revenged on him because he is dead, I will be revenged on his family.”
Cæsar listened attentively to the woman’s explanation, without interrupting her. Then, when she had finished speaking, he said:
“And why not go away?”
“Away? Where?” she asked, astonished.
“Anywhere. The world is so big! Why do you persist in living in the one spot where people know you and have a bad opinion of you? Go away from here. There are countries with more generous sentiments than these old corners of the world. You do not consider yourself infamous or vile.”
“No, no.”
“Then go away from here. To America, to Australia, anywhere. Perhaps you can reconstruct your life. At any rate, nobody will call you by your nickname; nobody will talk familiarly to you. You will conquer or you will be conquered in the struggle for life. That’s evident. You will share the common lot, but you will not be vilified. Do go.”
“The Cub-Slut” listened to Cæsar with eyes cast down. When he ceased, she stood looking at him intently, and then, without a word, she disappeared.