-Xiv- · II

Ah, you rogue!” exclaimed Nucha, catching hold of him and pulling him out into the light of the poultry-yard. “I shall skin you alive, you great scamp! Now we know who the fox is that eats the eggs! Today I shall give your backside such a soaking you will not sit down for a week!”

The miniature thief kicked and struggled; Nucha felt pity, fancying that he was sobbing disconsolately. But having managed for a moment to pull his arms away from his face, she was able to convince herself that the insolent little monkey was doing nothing but laughing heartily, and also to observe the extraordinary loveliness of the ragged little urchin. Julián, an uneasy witness of this scene, stepped forward and attempted to take him from Nucha.

“Leave him with me, Don Julián...” she pleaded. “How handsome he is! What hair! What eyes! Whose child is this?”

Never had the timorous chaplain felt so strong a desire to lie. Yet he could find no lie to tell.

“I believe...” he stammered, choking, “I believe... he belongs to Sabel, the one who is doing the cooking these days.”

“To the maidservant? But... is the girl married?”

Julián’s embarrassment deepened. This time he felt a choking lump in his throat.

“No, madam; married, no... You are aware that... unfortunately... the country girls... hereabouts... are not accustomed to observing the strictest modesty... Human weaknesses.”

Nucha sat down upon a stone bench in the yard adjoining the hen-house, still holding the child and determined to see his face better. He persisted in hiding it with his hands and arms, starting and wriggling like a captured wild rabbit held fast. Nothing was visible but his mop of hair, a tangle of curls chestnut-brown as a ripe chestnut, matted and strewn with bits of straw and specks of dried mud, and his neck and nape, bronzed by the sun.

“Julián, have you a two-cuarto piece about you?”

“Yes, madam.”

“Here, rapaciño... Let us see if you will lose your fear of me.”

The spell was effective. The child stretched out his hand, and swiftly thrust the coin into his bosom. Nucha then saw his rounded, dimpled face, exceedingly graceful and regular at once, like that of the bronze cupids that uphold brackets and lamps. A laugh between roguish and celestial brightened this exquisite work of nature. Nucha planted a kiss on each cheek.

“What a darling! God bless him! What is your name, little one?”

“Perucho,” answered the young rascal with the utmost nonchalance.

“My husband’s name!” exclaimed the lady eagerly. “I wager he is his godson? Eh?”

“He is his godson, his godson,” hastened to declare Julián, who would have liked to put a gag in that laughing mouth with its full, cupid-like lips. Unable to do so, he endeavoured to turn the conversation away from such dangerous ground.

“What did you want the eggs for? Tell us, and I will give you another two cuartos, come.”

“I sell them,” Perucho declared concisely.

“So you sell them, do you? Here we have a businessman... And to whom do you sell them?”

“To the women from around here, who go to the vila...”

“Let us see, how much do they pay you?”

“Two cuartos a dozen.”

“Well, look here,” said Nucha affectionately, “from now on you shall sell them to me, and I will pay you just as much. Because you are so handsome, I will neither scold you nor be angry with you. Far from it! You and I are going to be great friends. The very first thing I must give you is a pair of trousers... You are not walking about in a very decent state, to say the least.”

Indeed, through the rents and gaps in the boy’s filthy tow-cloth breeches his plump, fresh flesh burst forth, its tenderness in no way concealed by the mud and filth which served him for attire in default of anything more respectable.

“Poor little angel!” murmured Nucha. “It seems incredible that they should keep them like this! I wonder that they do not kill themselves, that they do not freeze to death... Julián, we must clothe this infant Jesus.”

“Yes, a fine infant Jesus he is!” growled Julián. “The very foul fiend himself, God forgive me! Do not pity him, madam; he is an imp of mischief, more mischievous than an ape... The trouble I took to teach him to read and write, to accustom him to wash that snout and those paws... Not even by tying him up, madam, not even by tying him up! And he is sounder than an apple with the life he leads. He has already fallen twice into the pond this year, and once he was within an ace of drowning.”

“Come, Julián, what would you have him do at his age? He cannot be staid and grave like grown-up folk. Come with me, boy; I am going to make you something to cover those little legs... Has he no shoes? Then we must order him a stout pair of poplar clogs... And I shall preach a sermon to his mother to wash him with soap every day. You will give him lessons again. Or we shall send him to school, which will be best of all.”

No one could dissuade Nucha from her charitable purpose. Julián was on pins and needles, dreading lest from such proximity some catastrophe might arise. Nevertheless, the natural goodness of his heart made him take an interest once more in that pious work, which he had already attempted in vain. He saw in it a further proof of Nucha’s moral beauty. It seemed to him providential that the mistress should care for that evil shoot of a vile trunk. And Nucha, meanwhile, was immensely amused by her protégé; she was charmed by his very impudence, his knavish instincts, his eagerness to pilfer eggs and fruit, his greed in clutching coins, his liking for wine and tasty morsels. She aspired to straighten that tender sapling, civilizing at once both his skin and his spirit. A task for giants, said the chaplain.

-XV-

Around this time the Moscoso couple devoted themselves to returning the visits of the surrounding aristocracy. Nucha rode the donkey, and her husband the chestnut mare; Julián accompanied them on a mule; one of the Marquis’s favourite hounds invariably joined the retinue, and two grooms, clad in Sunday best with elaborately embroidered sashes and brand-new felt hats, brandishing green switches that swayed as they walked, went along as outriders charged with holding the beasts when the riders dismounted.

The round began with the wife of the judge of Cebre. The door was opened by a barefoot maid, who, seeing Nucha alight from her mount and adjust the flounces of her dress with the handle of her parasol, fled panic-stricken into the interior of the house, shouting as though announcing fire or robbers:

“Ma’am... Oh, ma’am! Some gentry...! There are gentlefolk here!”

No echo answered her shrieks of consternation; but after a few minutes the judge himself appeared in the vestibule, overflowing with apologies for the girl’s clumsiness: it was incredible what trouble it took to domesticate them; they were told the same thing a thousand times, and still they never learned to receive... well... in the manner that... As he thus mumbled, he arched his elbow, offering Nucha the support of his arm to ascend the staircase; and as it was so narrow that two persons could not walk abreast, the lady of Moscoso experienced the greatest difficulty in the world attempting to cling with her fingertips to the arm of the worthy gentleman, who mounted two steps ahead of her, all twisted and askew. Having reached the drawing-room door, the judge began to pat himself all over, anxiously searching his pockets and uttering half-voiced, broken monosyllables and confused exclamations. Suddenly he let out a kind of terrible roar:

“Pepa...! Pepaaa!”

The slap of bare feet was heard, and the judge challenged the maid:

“The key, come now! Where the devil have you put the key?”

Pepa was already handing it to him in all haste, and the judge, changing his tone from the most furious hoarseness to the most honeyed sweetness, pushed open the door and said to Nucha:

“This way, my dear lady, this way... be so good...”

The parlour was completely in darkness. Nucha collided with a table just as the judge repeated:

“Be so good as to take a seat, my dear lady... You must excuse us...”

The light that flooded the room once the window shutters were thrown open allowed Nucha at last to distinguish the blue rep sofa, the two matching armchairs, the mahogany pedestal table, and the carpet spread before the sofa depicting a ferocious Bengal tiger of fine cinnamon hue. The judge was entirely occupied with settling his visitors, debating earnestly whether the light from the front suited the Marquis of Ulloa or whether he would be better off with his back to the window; at the same time he cast uneasy glances around him, for his wife’s delay in appearing was beginning to vex him. He exerted himself to sustain the conversation, but his smile was contracted into a grimace, and his stern eye turned very frequently toward the door. At length a rustle of starched petticoats was heard in the corridor: the judge’s lady entered, breathless and freshly arrayed, as was clearly evident from every detail of her attire; she had just squeezed her respectable person into her corset, but had not managed to fasten the last buttons of her silk bodice; her false chignon, pinned on in haste, tilted askew toward her left ear; she wore one earring unfastened, and not having had time to put on shoes, she concealed with immense difficulty beneath the voluminous flounces of her silk skirt a pair of list slippers.

Although Nucha was not given to mockery, she could not help being amused by the attire of the judge’s lady, who passed for the living fashion-plate of Cebre; and on the sly she smiled at Julián, pointing out to him with an imperceptible wink the necklaces, charms, and brooches the lady wore at her neck, while the latter in turn devoured and inventoried the simple adornment of the newly married bride from Santiago. The visit was brief, for the Marquis wished to discharge his social debt that very day to the Archpriest, and the parish of Loiro was at least a league distant from the little town of Cebre. They took leave of the judicial authority as ceremoniously as they had entered, with the same punctilious arm-offering and escorting and lavish proffers of house and person.

To reach Loiro it was necessary to penetrate deep into the mountain along a path beset with crags and precipices, which only became passable on approaching the domains of the archpriestship—vast and wealthy once upon a time, now almost reduced to nothing by the disentailment. The rectory bore witness to its past splendour; its appearance was conventual; on entering and dismounting in the vestibule, the master and mistress of Ulloa felt the subterranean chill of a broad, vaulted crypt where the human voice re-echoed with strange and solemn hollows. Down the staircase of broad stone steps and monumental stone balustrade there descended with difficulty, with the slow and swaying gait of bears walking on two legs, a monstrous and misshapen pair of human beings, who seemed all the more so when seen together: the Archpriest and his sister. Both were panting; their laborious breathing sounded like the gasping of an apoplectic; the triple rolls of their double chins and the heavy roll of fat on the nape of their necks framed their purplish faces, congested with thick blood, in a formidable halo of flesh; and when they turned their backs, on the very spot where the Archpriest displayed his tonsure his sister exhibited a little knot of grey hair identical to the queue worn by bullfighters. Nucha, whom the judge’s reception and his lady’s headdress had put into high good humour, smiled slyly once more, especially on noting the comical misunderstandings in the conversation caused by the deafness of the two respectable siblings. Not belying their hospitable rustic tradition, they made the visitors pass willy-nilly into the dining-room, where a statue of marble would also have laughed to observe how the refreshment table—the very one at which the master and mistress of the house dined every day—had two semicircular hollows cut into it, one facing the other, doubtless designed to accommodate comfortably the rotundity of a pair of gigantic abdomens.

The return to the Pazos was enlivened by comments and jests about the visits: even Julián laid aside his customary gravity and indulgence to make merry over the notched table and the hardware store the judge’s lady wore upon her neck and bosom. They looked forward with delight to the next day, when another excursion of the same kind was in store for them, no doubt equally amusing: it was their turn to visit the young ladies of Molende and the gentlemen of Limioso.

They set out from the Pazos early in the morning, for they had good need of the whole long summer afternoon to carry out their programme; and perhaps it would not have sufficed had they not found the young ladies of Molende away from home; a strapping peasant girl passing by with a bundle of grass explained with difficulty that the young ladies had gone to the fair at Vilamorta, and God only knew when they would return. Nucha was sorry, for the young ladies, who had been to the Pazos to see her, pleased her, and were the only youthful faces, the only persons in whom she found reminiscences of the merry chatter and fresh spirits of her sisters, whom she could not forget. They left a polite message with the girl and turned up the mountain toward the Pazo of Limioso.