XVI. PITY, A MASK OF COWARDICE
THE MOTHER
Some days later Cæsar was in his office, when a thin old woman, dressed in black, shot in, crossed the room, and fell on her knees before him. Cæsar jumped up in disgust.
“What’s this? What’s going on here?” he asked.
Amparito entered the room and explained what was going on. The old woman was “Driveller” Juan’s mother. People had told Juan’s mother that the only obstacle to her son’s salvation from death was Cæsar, and she had come to implore him not to let them condemn Juan to death.
“My poor son is a good boy,” moaned the old creature; “a woman made him commit the crime.”
Cæsar listened, silent and gloomy, without speaking, and then left the room. Amparito remained with the old woman, consoling her and trying to quiet her.
That night Amparito returned to the task, and dragged the promise from her husband that he would not act as private attorney at the trial.
Cæsar was ashamed and saddened; he didn’t care to go to see anybody; he was committing treason against his cause.
“Pity will finish my work or finish me,” thought Cæsar, walking about his room. “That poor old woman is worthy of compassion; that is undeniable. She believes her son is a good boy, and he really is a low, cowardly ruffian. I ought not to pay any attention to this plea, but insist on their condemning that miserable wretch to death. But I haven’t any more energy; I haven’t any more strength. I can feel that I am going to yield; the mother’s grief moves me, and I do not consider that if this bully goes free, he is going to turn the town upside down and ruin all our work. I am lost.”
FLIGHT
Cæsar confided to his wife that he was daunted; his lack of courage was a nightmare to him.
Amparito said that they ought to take a long trip. Laura had invited them to come to Italy. It was the best thing they could do.
Cæsar accepted her solution, and, as a matter of fact, they went to Madrid and from there to Italy.
The Workmen’s Club telegraphed to Cæsar when the time for the trial came, and Amparito answered the telegram from Florence, saying that her husband was ill.
Never had Cæsar felt so agitated as then. He bought the Spanish newspapers, and expected to find in some one of them the words: “Señor Moncada is a coward,” or “Señor Moncada is a sorry creature and a traitor.”
When they knew that judgment had been pronounced and Juan condemned to eight years in the penitentiary, they returned to Madrid.
Cæsar felt humiliated and ashamed; he did not dare show himself in Castro. The congratulations that some people sent him on the restoration of his health made his cheeks hot with shame in the solitude of his office.
The editor of a newspaper in the Capital of the Province came to call on Cæsar, who was so dispirited that he confided to his visitor that he was ready to retire from politics. Two days later Cæsar saw a big headline on the first page of the Conservative newspaper of the Capital, which said: “Moncada is about to retire.”
Amparito applauded her husband’s decision, and Cæsar made melancholy plans for the future, founded on the renunciation of all struggle.
A few days later Cæsar received a letter from Castro Duro which made him quiver. It was signed by Dr. Ortigosa, by San Román, Camacho, the apothecary, and the leading members of the Workmen’s Club. The letter was in the doctor’s handwriting. It read thus:
“Dear Sir: We have read in the newspaper from the Capital the announcement that you are thinking of retiring from politics. We believe this announcement is not true. We cannot think that you, the champion of liberty in Castro Duro, would abandon so noble a cause, and leave the town exposed to the intrigues and the evil tricks of the Clericals. There is no question in this of whether it would suit you better to retire from politics, or not. That is of no importance. There is a question of what would suit our country and Liberty better.
“If because of the seductions of an easy life, you should withdraw from us and desert us, you would have committed the crime of lèse-civilization; you would have slain in its flower the re-birth of the spiritual and civic life of Castro.
“We do not believe you capable of such cowardice and such infamy, and since we do not believe you capable of it, we beg you to come to Castro Duro as soon as possible to direct the approaching municipal elections.—Dr. Ortigosa, Antonio San Román, José Camacho.”
On reading this letter Cæsar felt as if he had been struck with a whip. Those men were correct; he had no right to retire from the fight.
This conviction supported him.
“I have to go to Castro,” he said to Amparito.
“But didn’t you say that...?”
“Yes, but it is impossible.”
Amparito realized that her husband’s decision was final, and she said:
“All right; let us go to Castro.”
XVII. FIRST VICTORY
The Conservatives had come into power; the time to change the town government was approaching. It was customary at Castro, as in all rural districts in Spain, that in a period of Liberal administration the majority of the councillors elected should be Liberal, and at a time of Conservative government, they should be Conservative.
The former Liberal, García Padilla, had gone over to the Conservative camp, and one was now to see whether he would get his friends into the Municipality so as to prepare for his own election as Deputy later.
It was the first time there was going to be a real election at Castro Duro. Moncada’s candidates were almost all persons of good position. Dr. Ortigosa and a Socialist weaver figured among the candidates, as representing the revolutionary tendency. The Liberals felt and showed an unusual activity and anxiety. Cæsar started a newspaper which he named Liberty, Dr. Ortigosa was the soul of this paper, whose doctrines ran from Liberal Monarchy to Anarchy, inclusive. As the election drew nearer, the agitation increased.
In the two electoral headquarters established by Moncada’s party, the coming and going never stopped; some enthusiastic Moncadists came to headquarters every fifteen minutes, to bring rumours going about and to get news.
Don So-and-So had said this; Uncle What’s-His-Name was thinking of doing that; it was nothing but conferences and machinations. The painter had painted for them gratis a big poster expressing cheers for Liberty, for Moncada, Dr. Ortigosa, and the Liberal candidates. The café keeper brought chairs, without any one’s asking him; somebody else brought a brasier for the clerks; everybody was anxious to do something. The stock phrase, an electoral battle, was not for them a political commonplace but a reality. The most trivial things served as a motive for very long discussions. Such was their identification with the Idea, that it succeeded in wiping out selfish ends. They all felt honoured and enthusiastic, at least while it lasted.
People dreamed of the election.
When Cæsar arrived at the electoral headquarters, it was always a series of exclamations, of embracing, of advice, that never ended.
“Don Cæsar, such a thing is... Don Cæsar, don’t trust So-and-So.”
“We must get rid of them.”
“Not one of them ought to be left.”
He used to smile, because finding himself really loved by the people had cleansed him of his habitual bitterness and his loss of spirits. When he had finished receiving recommendations and congratulations, he would go to an inside room, and there, in the company of a candidate or a secretary, would read letters and arrange what they had to do.
The most active of the candidates was Dr. Ortigosa.
Ortigosa was a narrow-minded, tenacious man. His chief hatred was for Catholicism and he directed all his attacks at the religion of his forefathers, as he ironically termed it.
He had founded a Masonic lodge, named the “Microbe,” and whose principal characteristic was anti-Catholicism.
Ortigosa carried his propaganda everywhere. He stopped at every corner to speechify, to talk of his plans.
Cæsar used his motor-car to go about among the villages in the district. They would go to four or five and talk from balconies, or very often from the car, like itinerant patent-medicine venders.
In the little villages these reunions produced a great effect. What was said served as a topic of conversation for a month.
Cæsar had developed a clear, insinuating eloquence. He knew how to explain things admirably. Padilla’s followers were not asleep; but, as was natural, they took up the work in another way. They went from shop to shop, making the shopkeepers see the harmfulness of the Moncadist politics, promising them advantages. They threatened workmen with dismissal. There was no great enthusiasm; their campaign was less noisy, but, in part more certain.
All the Liberal element of Castro was wrought up, from the temperate Liberals, who remembered Espartero, to the Anarchists. “Whiskers” and “Furibis” were the only ones who got together in a tavern to talk about bombs and dynamite, and one could be sure that neither of them was capable of anything. Those two had nothing more to do with Ortigosa, considering him a deserter.
“You are imbeciles,” the doctor told them, with his habitual fury. “This fight is waking the people up. They are beginning to show their instincts, and that makes a man strong. The longer and more violent this fight is, the better; progress will be so much quicker.”
“Agitation, agitation is what we need,” cried the doctor; and he himself was as agitated as a man condemned.
The Liberals won a great victory; they obtained eight places out of ten vacancies.
XVIII. DECLARATION OF WAR
The new city government of Castro was the most extraordinary that could be imagined. Dr. Ortigosa presented motions which caused the greatest astonishment and stupefaction, not only in the town, but in the whole province. He conceived magnificent plans and extravagant ideas. He asked to have the teaching system changed, religious festivals suppressed and other ones instituted, property abolished, public baths installed, and that Castro Duro should break with Rome.
The doctor was a creature born to succeed those revolutionary eagle-men, like Robespierre and Saint Just, and condemned to live in a miserable chicken-yard.
One day when Cæsar was working in his office, he was astounded to see Father Martin enter.
Father Martin greeted Cæsar like an old acquaintance; he had come to ask him a favour. Suspicious, Cæsar prepared to listen. After speaking of the business that had brought him, the friar began to criticize the town-government of Castro and to say that it was a veritable mad-house.
“Your friends,” said the priest, smiling, “are unrestrained. They want to change everything in three days. Dr. Ortigosa is a crazy man....”
“To my mind, he is the only man in Castro that deserves my estimation.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“This demoniac says that for him traditions have no value whatsoever.”
“Oh! I think the same thing,” said Cæsar. “Are you anti-historic?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Absolutely. Tradition has no value for me either.”
“The basis of tradition,” answered the friar, arguing like a man who carries the whole of human knowledge in the pocket of his habit, “is the confidence we all have in the experience of our predecessors. Whether I be a labourer or a pastor, even though I have lived fifty years, I may have great experience about my work and about life, but it will never be so great as the united experience of all those who have preceded me. Can I scorn the accumulation of wisdom that past generations hand down to us?”
“If you wish me to tell you the truth, for me your argument has no weight,” answered Cæsar coldly.
“No?”
“No. It is undeniable that there is a sum of knowledge that comes from father to son, from one labourer to another, and from one pastor to another. But what value have these rudimentary, vague experiences, compared to the united experience of all the men of science there have been in the world? It is as if you told me that the stock of knowledge of a quack was greater and better than that of a wise physician.”
“I am not talking,” answered the Father, “of pure science. I am talking of applied science. Is one of your universal savants going to occupy himself with the way of sowing or of threshing in Castro?”
“Yes. He has already occupied himself with it, because he has occupied himself with the way of sowing or threshing in general, and, what is more, with the variations in the processes that may be occasioned by the kind of soil, the climate, etc.”
“And do you believe that such scientific pragmatism can be substituted for the natural pragmatism born of the people’s loins, created by them through centuries and centuries of life?”
“Yes. That is to say, I believe it can purify it; that it can cast out of this pragmatism, as you call it, all that is wrong, absurd, and false and keep what good there may be.” “And for you the absurd and false is Catholic morality.”
“It is.”
“You are not willing to discuss whether Catholicism is true or is a lie; you consider it a ruinous doctrine which produces decadence. I have been told that you have stated that on various occasions.”
“It is true. I have said so.”
“Then we do not agree. Catholicism is useful; Catholicism is efficient.”
“For what? For this life?”
“Yes.”
“No. Pshaw! It may be useful when it comes to dying? Where there is Catholicism there is ruin and misery.”
“Nevertheless, there is no misery in Belgium.”
“Certainly there is none, but in that country Catholicism is not what it is in Spain.”
“Of course it isn’t,” exclaimed the friar, shouting, “because what characterizes Spanish Catholicism is Spain, poverty-stricken, fanatic Spain, and not the Catholicism.”
“I do not believe we are going to understand each other,” replied Cæsar; “what seems a cause to me is an effect for you.... Besides, we are getting away from the question. To you Castro’s moral and intellectual state seems good, does it not?”
“Yes.”
“Well, to me it seems horrifying. Sordid vice, obscure adultery; gambling, bullying, usury, hunger... You think it ought to keep on being just as it was before I was Deputy for the District. Do you not?”
“I do.”
“That I have been a disturbance, an enemy to public tranquillity.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, this state of things that you find admirable, seems to me bestially fanatical, repugnantly immoral, repulsively vile.”
“Of course, for you are a pessimist about things as they are, like any good revolutionist. You believe that you are going to improve life at Castro. You alone?” “I, united with others.”
“And meanwhile you introduce anarchy into the city.”
“I introduce anarchy! No. I introduce order. I want to finish with the anarchy already reigning in Castro and make it submit to a thought, to a worthy, noble thought.”
“And by what right do you arrogate to yourself the power to do this?”
“By the right of being the stronger.”
“Ah! Good. If you should get to be the weaker, you ought not to complain if we should misuse our strength.”
“Complain! When you have been misusing it for thousands of years! At this very moment, we do the talking, we make the protests, but you people give the orders.”
“We offset your idiotic behaviour. We stand in the way of your utopias. Do you think you are going to solve the problem of this earth, and that of Capital? Are you going to solve the sexual question? Are you going to institute a society without inequality or injustice, as Dr. Ortigosa said in La Libertad the other day? To me it seems very difficult.”
“To me too. But that is what there is to try for.”
“And when will you attain so perfect an arrangement, so great a harmony, as the Catholic, created in twenty centuries? When?”
“We shall attain a different, better harmony.”
“Oh, I doubt it.”
“Naturally. That is just what the pagans might have said to the Christians; and perhaps with reason, because Christianity, compared to paganism, was a retrogression.”
“That point we cannot discuss,” said Father Lafuerza, getting up.
Cæsar got up too.
“In spite of all this, I admire you, because I believe you are sincere,” said Father Martin. “But I believe you to be dangerous and I should be happy to get you out of Castro.”
“I feel the same way about you, and I should also be happy to get you out of here, as an unwholesome element.”
“So that we are open, loyal enemies.” “Loyal! Pshaw! We are ready to do each other all the harm possible.”
“For my part, yes, and in any way,” announced the priest with energy.
“I, too,” Cæsar answered; and he raised the curtain of the office door.
“Don’t disturb yourself,” said Father Martin.
“Oh, it’s no trouble.”
“Regards to Amparito.”
“Thank you.”
The friar hesitated about going out, as if he wanted to return to the attack.
“Afterwards, if you repent...” he said.
“I shall not repent,” Cæsar coldly replied.
“I will drink peace to you.”
“Yes, if I submit. I will drink peace to you too, if I submit.”
“You are going to play a dangerous game.”
“It will be no less dangerous for you than for me.”
“You are playing for your head.”
“Pshaw! We will play for it and win it.”
The friar bowed, and smiling in a forced manner, left the house.
XIX. THE FIGHT FOR THE ELECTION
The Conservatives at Castro Duro were ready to commit the greatest outrages and the most arbitrary acts so as to win by any methods.
It was known that a committee consisting of García Padilla, Father Martín Lafuerza, and two Conservative councillors had gone to the Minister of the Interior to beg that Cæsar’s victory might be prevented by whatsoever means.
“It is necessary that Don Cæsar Moncada should not be elected for the District,” said Father Martín. “If he is, the town will remain subjected to a revolutionary dictatorship. All the Conservative classes, the merchants, the religious communities, fervently hope that Moncada will not be made Deputy.”
The committee of Castrians visited other high personages, and they must have attained their object, because the municipal government was suspended a few days later, the Workmen’s Club closed, the judge transferred, the Civil Guard was reinforced, and a police inspector of the worst antecedents was detailed to Castro as commissioner of elections.
The Governor of the Province, a political enemy of Cæsar’s, was a personal friend of his.
“For your sake I am ready to lose my future,” he had said to him, “but as for your followers, there is nothing left for me to do but knock them over the head.”
La Libertad, Cæsar’s newspaper, made a very violent campaign against García Padilla. Ortigosa succeeded in finding out that Padilla had been tried for embezzlement, and he published that fact. The Castro News, on its side, insulted Cæsar and called him a crooked speculator on the exchange, an upstart, and an atheist.
The rapidity and violence of the Government’s methods produced an effect of fear on lukewarm Liberals; on the other hand, it moved the decided ones to show themselves all the more courageous and rash.
Moncada’s party almost immediately took on a revolutionary character. The lodge, “The Microbe,” was at work, and the most radical arrangements started there. It suited the Government and the Conservatives to have the Moncada party take this demagogic character. The commissioner had contaminating persons come on from the Capital for the purpose of sowing discord in the Workmen’s Club.
These suspicious persons, directed by one they called “Sparkler,” used to gather in the taverns to corrupt the workmen and the peasants, carrying on a propaganda that was anarchistic in appearance, but in reality anti-liberal.
“They are all the same,” they used to say; “Liberals and Conservatives are not a bit different.”
The drunkards and vagabonds were in their glory during those days, eating and drinking. Nobody knew for certain where the money came from, but everybody could make certain that it flowed profusely.
At the same time the commissioner had the most prominent workmen of the Club arrested and brought suit against them on ridiculous accusations.
THE MEETING
The Liberals tried to hold a manifestation in protest, but the commissioner and the mayor prohibited it.
The newspaper La Libertad explained what was going on, and was reprimanded.
A meeting was organized at the school; the governor had granted permission.
The school was not lighted, and Cæsar sent a man to the Capital for acetylene lamps, which were put up on the walls, and which made a detestable smell. The reunion took place at nine at night. Cæsar presided, and had San Román, the bookseller, on his right, and Dr. Ortigosa on his left.
Behind them on a bench were some of the members of the Workmen’s Club.
The audience was composed of the poorest people; the rich Liberal element was drawing back; there were day-labourers with blankets around their shoulders and mouths, women in shawls holding children in their arms. Among the audience were the agents provocateurs who doubtless had the intention of making a disturbance; but the Republican bookseller ordered them thrown out of the place, and, despite their resistance, he managed to have it done.
The chief of police, insolent and contemptuous, took his seat at the table with an officer of the Civil Guard in civilian’s, who was there, he said, to take notes.
San Román, the bookseller, gave Cæsar a paper with the names of those who were going to speak. They were many, and Cæsar didn’t know them.
The first to whom he gave the floor, in the order of the list, was a lame boy, who came forward on a crutch, and began to speak.
The boy expressed himself with great enthusiasm and admirable candour.
“Who is this youngster?” Cæsar asked San Román.
“He is the best pupil in our school. We call him ‘Limpy.’ He comes of a very poor family. He came to the school a year ago, knowing nothing, and see him now. He says, and I think he is right, that if he keeps on studying, he will be an eminent man.”
The audience applauded everything “Limpy” said, and when he finished they hailed him with shouts and cheers. As he went back to his seat, Cæsar and San Román shook his hand effusively.
STAND FAST, FELLOW CITIZENS!
After “Limpy,” various orators spoke, in divers keys: “Furibis,” “Uncle Chinaman,” “Panza,” San Román, a weaver, a railway employee, and Dr. Ortigosa. The last-named let loose, and launched into such violent terms that the audience shouted in horrified excitement. Cæsar’s speech recommended firmness, and caused scarcely any reaction. The note had been given by “Limpy,” with his ingenuousness and his appealing quality, and by the doctor with the violence of his words.
The next day the Governor’s commissioner gave orders to close the school, and Dr. Ortigosa and San Román were taken to jail.
POLITICAL TRICKS
It was impossible to carry on a campaign of popular agitation, and Cæsar decided to open a headquarters for propaganda next door to each voting place.
Meetings in the villages had been suppressed, because at the least alarm, or even without any motive, the chief of police, with members of the Civil Guard, went in among the people and dispersed them by shoving and by pounding rifles on their feet.
The newspapers couldn’t say anything without being immediately reported and suspended.
Cæsar sent no telegrams of protest, but he kept at work silently. He was thinking of using all weapons, including even trickery and bribes.
García Padilla and the Government agents found this proceeding even more dangerous than the former. Cæsar offered twenty dollars to anybody that would give information of any electoral sharp practices which could be proved. The week of the election he and his friends did not rest.
At one of the polls in Carrascal, where Cæsar had a majority, the tile bearing the house-number had been changed by night. The real voters had to wait to cast their votes in one place, and meanwhile the urn was being filled with ballots for the Government candidate at another place.
In the hamlet of Val de San Gil, another trick was tried; the polling place was established in a hay-loft to which one went up by a ladder. While the villagers were waiting for the ladder to be set up, the urn was being filled. When the ladder was put into place and the voters went up one by one, they found that they had all voted already. As the ladder was narrow, they had to go up singly, and it was not likely they would have ventured to protest. Besides, there were a number of ruffians in the place, armed with sticks and pistols, who were ready to club or to shoot any one protesting.
In spite of all, Cæsar had the election won, always supposing that the Government did not carry things to the limit; but at the last moment he learned that more Civil Guards were going to come to Castro, and that the Government agents had orders to prevent Moncada’s victory by any method.
In the evening on Saturday, Cæsar was told that the commissioner was in a tavern, with others of the police, giving out ballots for illegal voters. Cæsar went there alone, and entered the tavern.
The commissioner, on seeing him, grew confused.
“I know what you are doing,” said Cæsar. “Be careful, because it may cost you a term in prison.”
“You are the one that may have to pay by going to prison,” replied the inspector.
“Just try to arrest me, you poor fool, and I’ll shoot your head off!”
The police inspector jumped up from the table where he was seated, and, as he went out, he let one of the ballots fall. Cæsar looked over the men who were with the police inspector; one of them was “Sparkler.” Some days before he had come to Moncada’s headquarters to offer to work for him, and he was the director of the contaminating persons sent to Castro by the Government.
A CLANDESTINE MEETING
When he returned to the headquarters, they told him there was a meeting in “Furibis’s” tavern at nine that night. Cæsar got there a little later than the time set. The place was gloomy, and had some big earthen jars in it. They had put a table at the back of this cave, and an acetylene light illuminated it.
Those present formed a semicircle around the table.
Cæsar knocked at the tavern, and they opened the door to him; a workman who was speaking delayed his peroration, and they waited until Cæsar had reached the table and got seated. The atmosphere was suffocating. Everything was closed so that the Civil Guards would not see the light through the windows and suspect that there was a meeting being held there. The workmen were, for the most part, masons, weavers, brickmakers. There were women there with their little ones asleep in their bosoms. The air one breathed there was horrible. It looked like a gathering of desperate people. They had learned that their arrested comrades had been beaten in the prison, and that San Román and Dr. Ortigosa were in the infirmary as a result.
EULOGY OF VIOLENCE
The excitement among those present was terrible. “Limpy” was the most strenuous; he was in favour of their all going out that moment and storming the jail.
When they had all spoken, Cæsar got up and asked them to wait. If he won the election the next day, he promised them that the prisoners should be freed immediately; if he did not win and the prisoners remained there...
“Then what is to be done?” said a voice.
“What is to be done? I am in favour of violence,” answered Cæsar; “burning the jail, setting fire to the whole town; I am ready for anything.”
At that moment he really did think he had been too lenient.
“Man’s first duty is to break the law,” he shouted, “when it is a bad law. Everything is due to violence and war. I will go to the post of danger this very second, whenever you wish. Shall we storm the jail? Let’s go right now.”
This storming of the jail didn’t seem an easy thing to the others. One might try to climb down the hill and surprise the prison guards, but it would be difficult. According to “Furibis,” the best thing would be for ten or twelve of them to go out into the street with guns and pistols and shoot right and left.
At this disturbance the Civil Guard would come out, and that would be the moment for the others to enter the jail and drag the prisoners out into the street.
Some one else said that it seemed better to him for them to approach the Civil Guards’ quarters cautiously, kill the sentinels, and take possession of the rifles.
“Decide,” said Cæsar; “I am ready for anything.”
Cæsar’s attitude made the excited ones grow calmer and understand that it was not so easy to storm the jail.
It was about eleven when the meeting at the tavern ended. They had decided to wait and see what would happen the next day, and they left the place one by one.
“We will escort you, Don Cæsar,” several of them said.
“No. What for?”
“Remember there are people who might attack you. ‘Driveller’ Juan is at large in Castro.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“That bully can’t do anything to me.”
AT NIGHT
Cæsar went out of the tavern, pulled down his hat, and wrapped himself in his cape. He had not brought the motor, to avoid being recognized. It was a cloudy night, but still and beautiful.
Before they got out of the town a small boy came up to Cæsar.
“‘The Cub-Slut’ sent me to tell you to come to her house; she wants to speak to you.”
“I will go tomorrow.”
“No. You must come now, because what she has to say is very important,” shouted the youngster.
“Well, I can’t go now.”
The youngster protested, and Cæsar continued on his way. “Limpy” and “Uncle Chinaman” followed him. Cæsar was walking in the middle of the highway, when, about half way home, a man on the run passed him. No doubt he was going to give some signal.
“Limpy” and “Chinaman” shouted over and over:
“Don Cæsar! Don Cæsar!”
Cæsar halted, and “Chinaman” and “Limpy” ran up to him.
“What’s going on?” asked Cæsar.
“They are lying in wait for you,” said “Limpy.” “Didn’t you see a man go past running?”
“Yes.”
“We are going to stay with you. We will sleep at your house,” said “Chinaman,” “and if they attack us, we will defend ourselves.”
He showed a pistol which he carried in his sash.
The three walked on together, and as they passed a little grove in front of the palace, a shadow passed by, crawling, and fled away.
“He was there,” said “Chinaman.”
They went into the house. Amparito, with the old nurse, was praying before a lighted image.
XX. CONFIDENCE
YES, HE IS THE HERO
When he got up, Cæsar found a lot of letters and notices from his followers all over the district, giving him pointers.
With the help of a manservant who used to go about with him, he himself got the motor ready and prepared to visit the polls.
As he got into the car, the youngster of the night before appeared with a letter.
“From ‘The Cub-Slut’; please read it right away.”
“Give it to me; I will read it.”
“She told me you were to read it right away.”
“Yes, man, yes.”
Cæsar took the letter and put it distractedly into his pocket. The motor started and Cæsar did not read the note. At eight in the morning he was on his way to Cidones. The polls had been established legally.
It was raining gently. As he drew near Cidones, the sun appeared. The river was turbid and mud-coloured. Thick grey fog-clouds were rolling about the plain; when they gathered below the hill where Cæsar stood, they gave it the appearance of an island in the middle of the sea. From the chimneys of the town the smoke came out like hanks of spun silver, and bells were ringing through this Sunday morning calm.
Cæsar stopped at an inn which was a little outside the town. The blacksmith, an old Liberal, came out to receive him. The old man had been suffering with rheumatism for some while. “How goes it?” Cæsar asked him.
“Very well. I have been to vote for you.”
“And your health?”
“Now that spring is coming, one begins to get better.”
“Yes, that is true,” said Cæsar; “I hadn’t noticed that the trees are in bloom.”
“Oh, yes, they are out. In a little while we shall have good weather. It’s a consolation for old folks.”
Cæsar took leave of the blacksmith and got into the motor.
CÆSAR! CÆSAR!
“Yes, spring is in flower,” said Cæsar. “I will remove all the obstacles and men’s strength will come to life, which is action. This town, then others, and finally all Spain.... May nothing remain hidden or closed up; everything come to life, out into the sunlight. I am a strong man; I am a man of iron; there are no obstacles for me. The forces of Nature will assist me. Cæsar! I must be Cæsar!”
The automobile began to move in a straight line toward Castro.
The ground on both sides of the highway fled away rapidly.
The automobile lessened its pace at the foot of the hill, and began to climb.
It went in by an old gate in the wall, which was called the Cart Gate.
The street of the same name, a street in the poor suburb, was narrow and the houses low; it was paved with cobbles. A little farther along several lanes formed a crossroads.
This was a quarter of brothels and of gipsies who made baskets.
When he reached the crossroads, in the narrowest part there was a cart blocking the street. The automobile stopped.
“What’s the matter?” asked Cæsar, standing up.
At that moment two shots rang out, and Cæsar fell wounded into the bottom of the car. The chauffeur saw that the discharges came from the low windows of a loom, and backing the motor, he returned rapidly, passed out the Cart Gate, at risk of running into it, went down to the highway, and drove at high speed to Cæsar’s house.
A moment later “Driveller” Juan and “Sparkler” came out of the loom and disappeared down a lane. The judge who went to take depositions learned from the chauffeur that Cæsar had received a letter as he was getting into the car. He had the wounded man’s clothes searched, and they found “The Cub-Slut’s” letter, in which she warned Cæsar of the danger he was in. Fate had kept Cæsar from reading it.
THE RED FLAG
The news that Cæsar was seriously wounded ran through the town like a train of powder.
A movement of terror shook everybody. “Limpy,” “Furibis,” and the other hysterical ones gathered at the tavern and agreed to set fire to the monastery of la Peña. “Furibis” had arms in his house and divided them among his comrades. A woman fastened a red rag to a stick, and they left Castro by different paths and met opposite Cidones.
Nine of them went armed, and various others followed behind.
On reaching Cidones, one of the party advanced up the lane and saw two pairs of Civil Guards. They discussed what they had better do, and the majority were in favour of going into Moro’s inn, which was at the entrance to the town, and waiting until night.
They did go in there and told Moro what they had just done. The inn-keeper listened with simulated approval, and brought them wine. This Moro was not a very commendable party; he had been convicted for robbery several times and had a bad reputation.
While the revolutionists were drinking and talking, Moro stole out without any one’s noticing, and went to see the chief of the Civil Guard, and told him what was going on. “They are armed, then?” asked the chief.
“Yes.”
“And how many are they?”
“Nine with arms.”
“We are only five. Do you want to do something?”
“What is it?”
“At dusk we will pass by the inn. I will knock. And you shall say to them: ‘Here is the chief of the Civil Guard; hide your arms.’ They will hide them, and we will arrest them.”
“Shall I get something for doing this favour?” asked Moro.
“Naturally.”
“What will they give me?”
“You will see.”
The ruse worked as they had plotted it; Moro played the comedy to perfection.
On learning that the chief of the Civil Guard wanted to come in, the revolutionists, on the landlord’s advice, left their arms in the next room. At the same instant the window panes burst to bits and the soldiers of the Civil Guard fired three charges from close up. Two women and four men fell dead; the wounded, among whom was “Limpy,” were taken to the hospital, and only one person was lucky enough to escape.
FATE
At the chief headquarters of Moncada’s followers, a strange phenomenon was noticed; on the preceding days they had been chock full; that night there were not over ten or a dozen men from the Workmen’s Club collected by a table lighted by a petroleum lamp. The pharmacist, Camacho, presided.
The news of the election was worse every minute. At the last hour the Padillists, knowing that Moncada was wounded, were behaving horribly. In the polls at Villamiel the tellers had fled with the blank ballots, and the Conservative boss arranged the outcome of the election from his house.
As the teller from Santa Inés, who was a poor Liberal school-master, was on his way from the hamlet with the papers, six men had seized him, had snatched the returns from him, changed all the figures, and sent them to the municipal building at Castro full of blots.
They had fired over twenty shots at the teller for Paralejo. Many of Moncada’s emissaries, on knowing that Cæsar was wounded and his campaign going badly, had passed over to the other party.
Only Moncada could have rallied that flight. His most faithful gave one another uneasy looks, hoping some one would say: “Come along!” so that they could all have gone. Camacho alone kept up the spirits of the meeting.
At nine o’clock at night the chief of police entered the headquarters, accompanied by two Civil Guards.
“Close up here, please,” said the inspector.
“Why?” asked the pharmacist.
“Because I order you to.”
“You have no right to order that.”
“No? Here, get out, everybody, and you are under arrest.”
Those present took to their heels; the pharmacist went to jail to keep San Román and Ortigosa company, and the Club was shut up....
The election was won by Padilla.