-Xxviii- · I

At this point in the narrative, we must turn, to complete it, to the memories engraved forever on the mind of Sabel’s pretty boy: the events of that morning when for the last time he served mass for good Don Julián (who usually gave him two coppers after the divine office).

Perucho’s first memory is that, leaving the chapel, he lingered sadly by the door, for that day the chaplain gave him nothing. Sucking his thumb, he stayed thoughtful a moment, till the lack of the coppers gave him an idea: his grandfather had promised him two if he warned him when the lady stayed behind after mass! Calculating with mathematical rigour that, having lost two coppers on one hand, he must earn them on the other, he felt his legs dance, and ran at top speed to find his grandfather.

Crossing the kitchen, he slipped into the ground-floor room where Primitivo transacted business, and pushing the door open, saw him seated before a large old table upon which rose a chaos of papers covered with crabbed figures and notes written in a crooked, jagged hand, by a hand little skilled even in pothooks. The table and the room in general attracted Perucho with that charm which disorder and confusion hold for childhood, places where many varied objects accumulate, for children imagine that each heap of things is an unknown world, a store of priceless treasures. Seldom did Perucho enter there; his grandfather usually turned him out that he might not surprise certain financial operations which the steward preferred to carry out without witnesses. When the grandson entered, Primitivo’s polished, dark face might have been confounded with the bronze tint of a heap of copper coin or mountain of brass, from which issued little columns that the steward aligned in regular order... Perucho stood dazzled before such fabulous wealth. There lay his two coppers! A tiny nugget of that great metal mine! Filled with hope, he raised his voice as loud as he could, and delivered his message. That the lady was in the chapel with the chaplain... That they had sent him away from there.

He was about to add: “And that two coppers are owed me for the news,” or something of the kind, but his grandfather gave him no time for it, rising from the armchair with the wild creature’s agility that characterised all his movements, not without raising a tempestuous whirlpool in the sea of copper and causing the fall of some towers which collapsed with a resonant clatter under their heavy weight. Primitivo rushed out towards the interior of the house. The boy remained there, beset by the two strongest temptations he had ever suffered in his life. One was to eat the wafers which, with their tempting whiteness and bright red, invited him from a tin box, and although it would be more glorious for our hero to overcome his greedy whim, truth compels us to declare that he put forth a finger moistened with saliva and fished out one, two, three, until he had swallowed all the box contained. This appetite satisfied, the other pressed him, prompting him to help himself to the promised two coppers from the heap before him, at his disposal and pleasure. Not only did he desire his due wage, but he was tempted above all by certain rusty farthings called fortune-coins in the countryside, which, by virtue of reasons logical enough in his child mind, seemed preferable to the larger pieces. Perucho’s acquisitions and pleasures were usually represented by a farthing. For a farthing the cake-seller at fairs gave him gingerbread or ring-biscuits enough; for a farthing they sold him string enough for his top, and the rocket-maker supplied powder to lay powder-trains; for a farthing he procured strips of paper matches, crude picture-sheets printed on yellow paper, and clay cocks with a whistle in their tail. And all this lay within his reach, like the wafers; and nobody saw him or could denounce him! The little scamp stood on tiptoe to reach the money better, stretched out both palms, and plunged them into the sea of copper... He moved them about the surface without daring to close them... At last he seized a handful of farthings, and clenched his fist tightly, with that intensity peculiar to children, who always fear happiness may slip through an open hand. And so he stood motionless, not daring to withdraw that sinful hand laden with spoil into the secure corner of his bosom where he stored his thefts. For Perucho was something of a pilferer, taking eggs and fruit without scruple; but with the peasant’s superstitious respect, regarding only money as another’s property, he had never touched coin. In his soul raged a fierce conflict between duty and passion: the bad angel and the good pulled each an ear. Tremendous struggle! But let heaven and men rejoice, for the spirit of light conquered. Was it the first awakening of honour? A drop of Moscoso blood in his veins? Early fruit of Julián’s and Nucha’s lessons? The boy opened his hand wide, and the coins fell back with a metallic chime.

It must not be supposed, however, that Perucho renounced his two coppers, earned honestly by the speed of his legs. Renounce them! By no means! That same embryo of conscience which in the depths of his being shouted to him, “thou shalt not steal,” told him with equal force: “thou hast a right to claim what was promised thee.” And obeying the impulse, the child ran off in the same direction as his grandfather.

By chance he came upon him in the kitchen, where he was asking Sabel something in a low voice. Perucho went up to him, and grasping his jacket exclaimed:

“My two coppers?”

Primitivo took no notice. He was talking with his daughter, and so far as Perucho could understand, she was explaining that the young master had gone out at dawn to shoot partridges, and she supposed he was somewhere towards the Cebre road. The grandfather uttered an oath he often used and which Perucho was wont to repeat by way of bravado, and without further talk walked away.

Perucho declared afterwards that it had struck him to see his grandfather go out without his gun and wide-brimmed hat, things he never parted with. Such a thought must have occurred to the boy later, in view of what happened. For the moment he thought only of overtaking Primitivo, which he did at the top of the path leading down to the Pazos. Though the hunter went like the wind, the boy ran swiftly too.

“Go to the devil! What do you want?” growled Primitivo on recognising his grandson.

“My two coppers!”

“I will give you four at home if you help me look for the young master in the woods and tell him, the moment you see him, what you told me, do you hear? That the chaplain is shut up with the lady in the chapel and they turned you out to be alone.”

The boy fixed his clear eyes on his grandfather’s viperish gaze; and without waiting for further orders, mouth wide open, galloped off in the direction where he instinctively judged the young master would be found. He flew with clenched fists, scattering pebbles and dirt beneath his hardened feet. He sped over gorse without feeling the thorns, trampling the pink heather, clearing bushes almost as tall as himself, startling a hare behind an arbutus tree or a magpie perched upon the lower pine branches. Suddenly he heard footsteps and saw the young master emerge from the oak grove... Mad with joy he ran to give his message, expecting a reward. This was the same foul oath his grandfather had uttered in the kitchen; and the young master darted off towards the Pazos as though swept along by a whirlwind.

Perucho stood for some moments perplexed and confused; he affirms that soon the desire for the promised coppers, which now amounted to the respectable sum of four, possessed his mind again. To obtain them he must find his grandfather and report the meeting with the young master; he did not think this difficult, remembering roughly where Primitivo had remained; and by shortcuts practicable only for rabbits and himself, Perucho dashed along his grandfather’s trail. He was climbing a ruined wall protecting a hanging vineyard on the steep mountain slope, when on the other side of the rampart he fancied he heard footsteps, which his sharp ear did not mistake for the hunter’s; and with the cautious instinct of children left to nature and themselves, he crouched down behind the wall so that only his forehead showed. He could not doubt it: they were human footsteps, distinct from the scamper of a hare or the dry tread of a fox or dog. Human footsteps they were, stealthy, muffled, and very slow. They seemed those of someone seeking an ambush. And indeed, the boy soon saw creeping through the brushwood a man whose description he had heard a thousand times at evening gatherings, accompanied by cries of terror. The grey bowler, red sash, cropped whiskers on tallow-coloured face, and above all the blind white eye, cold as a piece of roadside quartz—in short, the ill-favoured aspect of the One-eyed Man of Castrodorna held the boy spellbound. The One-eyed Man clutched a short, wide blunderbuss to his chest, and after casting his single eye in every direction, pricking his ears, and sniffing the air, crept up to the wall, half-kneeling behind a hedge of briars and heather. Perucho, his feet resting on the crevices of the stones, remained glued to the wall, not daring to breathe or move, for that strange, ill-looking man inspired in him the unreasoning dread of children who divine perils they cannot measure. Eager though he was for his four coppers, he dared not drop down, fearing to make a noise and have the barrel of that weapon, whose wide mouth must vomit fire and death, turned upon him... Thus passed ten seconds of anguish. Before he could recover from his terror, a new incident occurred. He heard footsteps again, not cautious like one hiding, but hurried, like one hastening to reach his goal; and along the sunken path beneath the wall he caught sight of his grandfather advancing towards the Pazos; doubtless with his eagle eye he had descried the young master and was hurrying to overtake him. Primitivo walked absent-mindedly, intent on joining Don Pedro, looking neither right nor left. He came abreast of the wall. Then the boy saw a terrible thing, a thing he remembered years afterwards and through all his life: the ambushed man rose, his single eye flashing fierce; levelled the formidable carbine; a frightful thunderclap roared from the black muzzle; a blot of smoke floated, which the wind scattered at once, and through its grey shreds the grandfather spun like a top and fell face downward, biting in a supreme convulsion the grass and mud of the road.

Perucho asserts that he never knew whether it was fear or his own will that made him drop from the wall and roll rather than leap down the familiar shortcuts, bruising his limbs and tearing his clothes to tatters, heedless of both. He bounced like a ball among the gnarled vines; leaped over stone terrace-walls; dashed like an arrow across maize-fields; plunged into brooks, soaking himself to the waist rather than wait for stepping-stones; cleared fences three times his height; crossed hedges, leaped hollows and ditches, not knowing where or how, until at last, scratched, bleeding, sweating, and panting, he found himself at the Pazos, and mechanically returned to his starting-point, the chapel, which he entered, entirely oblivious of the four coppers, the first motive of all his adventures.

It was written that that morning should be fertile in extraordinary surprises. In the chapel Perucho was accustomed to notice that people spoke in whispers, walked softly, and held their very breath: the least slip usually cost him a severe reprimand from Don Julián; so that instinct and habit prevailing over bewilderment, he entered the sacred place with respectful demeanour. There something was happening which caused him an astonishment almost greater than the catastrophe of his grandfather. Leaning against the altar was the lady of Moscoso, pale as a corpse, her eyes closed, her brows knit, trembling from head to foot; before her the young master was shouting, very fast and with threatening gestures, words the child did not understand; while the chaplain, with hands clasped and a countenance displaying such horror and grief as Perucho had never seen in human face, pleaded with the master, the mistress, the altar, the saints... and suddenly, ceasing to entreat, drew himself up, flushed and with flashing eyes, confronting the Marquis as though defying him... And Perucho caught indignant words, insulting phrases, words overflowing with wrath, fury, indignation, and reproach; and without knowing the cause, gathered that the master was frightfully enraged, that he was going to strike the lady, perhaps kill her, make an end of Don Julián, overthrow the altars, and burn the chapel down...

The boy then remembered similar scenes in the kitchen of the Pazos, where the victims were his mother and himself: the master had then the same face, the identical tone of voice. And amid the confusion of his tender brain and the terrors that cowed him, one idea, superior to all others, rose triumphant. Doubtless the master was preparing to throttle his wife and the chaplain; they had just killed his grandfather in the woods; that day, by all tokens, was to be one of general slaughter. Who knew whether, having made an end of his wife and Don Julián, the master might not take it into his head to kill the baby girl? That thought restored to Perucho all the energy he was wont to display in his ventures in yards, henhouses, and stables.

He slipped quietly from the chapel, resolved to save the life of the heiress of Moscoso at all costs. How would he do it? There was no time to mature a plan: what mattered was to act with speed and shrink before no obstacle. He stole unseen through the kitchen and flew up the stairs. Reaching the upper rooms, the residence of the family, he so muffled his tread that the sharpest ear would have mistaken it for the rustle of wind shaking a curtain. What he feared was finding the door of Nucha’s bedroom closed. His heart leaped for joy on seeing it ajar.