The Shadow of the Cathedral Part 13

"Pardon! pardon!"

At the sight of such a wreck the father felt his courage fail; his eyes expressed an immense, an overwhelming sadness.

He retreated backwards to the door of the "habitacion," followed by the young woman, dragging herself on her knees and stretching out her hands.

"Brother, it is well," he said despairingly; "you are stronger than I am, let your will be accomplished. Let her remain, as you wish it, but do not let me see her!--remain, both of you. It is I that will go."

CHAPTER VI

The sewing machine clicked from early morning till night in the house of the Lunas. This and the hammering of the shoemaker were the only sounds of work that disturbed the holy silence of the upper cloister.

When Gabriel left his bed at sunrise, after a night of painful coughing, he would find Sagrario already in the entrance room preparing her machine for the day's work. From the day following that of her return to the Cathedral she had devoted herself to work with sullen silence as a means of returning unnoticed to the Claverias, trusting that the people would forgive her past. The gardener's widow procured her work, and so the sound of the st.i.tching was continually heard in the old "habitacion," accompanied very often by melodies from the Chapel-master's harmonium.

The "Wooden Staff" moved about his house like a shadow. He remained continually in the Cathedral or in the lower cloister, only coming up to the "habitacion" when it was absolutely necessary. He ate his meals with his head bent, in order not to look at his daughter, who was seated opposite to him at the other end of the table, ready to burst into tears at the sight of her father before her. A painful silence oppressed the family. Don Luis being so absent-minded, seemed the only one not to perceive the situation, and chatted gaily with Gabriel about his hopes and his musical enthusiasms. Everything seemed to him quite natural; nothing disturbed him, and the return of Sagrario to the family hearth had not caused him the slightest surprise.

When dinner was over Esteban fled, not to return to the house till night-time; after supper he locked himself into his own room, leaving his brother and his daughter in possession of the entrance sitting-room. The machine began to work again, and Don Luis fingered his harmonium till nine o'clock, when Silver Stick locked the tower staircase, rattling his bunch of keys with a noise that equalled a curfew. Gabriel felt indignant at his brother's obstinacy.

"You will kill the child; what you are doing is unworthy of a father."

"I cannot help it, brother; it is impossible for me to look at her. It is sufficient for me to tolerate such things in the house. Ay! if you could only tell how the people's looks wound me!"

In reality the scandal produced by the return of Sagrario to the Claverias had been much less than he had feared. She seemed so ill and so weary that none of the women felt any animosity against her, and the energetic protection of her Aunt Tomasa imposed respect. Besides, those simple women of instinctive pa.s.sions could not now feel towards her that hostile envy that her beauty and the cadet's courts.h.i.+p had formerly inspired. Even Mariquita, Silver Stick's niece, found a certain salve to her vanity in protecting with disdainful tolerance that unhappy girl who in former days had attracted the attention of every man who visited the upper cloister.

Curiosity only disturbed the calm of the Claverias for about a week.

Little by little the women ceased to stand about the Luna's door to watch Sagrario bending over her machine, and the girl quietly continued her sad and hard-working life. Gabriel seldom left the "habitacion." He spent whole days by the young woman's side, endeavouring by his presence to atone for the hostile aloofness of her father. It pained him that she should find herself so despised and solitary in her own house. Every now and then the Aunt Tomasa came to see them, enlivening them with the optimism of her happy old age. She was pleased with her niece's conduct; to work hard so as not to be a drag on her obstinate old father, and to help towards the maintenance of the house, was clearly what was required; but all the same there was no reason she should kill herself with work--calm and good humour, this bad time would lead to a better; she was there to get things straight with that fiend-possessed Gabriel, and she made the gloomy "habitacion" ring with her healthy laugh and lively words.

At other times Gabriel's friends would invade the house, abandoning the a.s.semblies at the shoemaker's. They could not bear Luna's absence, they wanted to hear him, to consult him, and even the shoemaker when his work was not urgent would leave his bench and, smelling of paste, with his ap.r.o.n tucked into his belt and his head rolled up in striped handkerchiefs, would come and sit by Sagrario's machine.

The young woman fixed her sad eyes with admiration on her uncle. She had always from her childhood heard her parents speak with respect of that extraordinary relative who was travelling in foreign countries; she vaguely remembered him as a shadow crossing her love dream when he had spent a few days in the Cathedral before establis.h.i.+ng himself in Barcelona, astonis.h.i.+ng them all by the accounts of his travels and his foreign customs. Now she returned to find him aged, as sickly as herself, but influencing all who surrounded him by the mysterious power of his words, that were like heavenly music to those poor narrow-minded souls.

In the midst of her sadness Sagrario had no other pleasure but to listen to her uncle; she felt the same as did those simple men who left their work to seek Luna in their anxiety to hear fresh things from his lips. Gabriel was the modern world that for so many years had rolled on far from the Cathedral, never touching it, but which had at last entered in to stir and awaken a handful of men who were still living in the sixteenth century.

The appearance of Sagrario had brought about a change in Luna's life; he became more communicative, and he lost a great deal of the reserve he had imposed upon himself when he took refuge in the stony lap of the church. He no longer forced himself to keep silence and to hide his thoughts; the presence of a woman seemed to enliven him and wake once more his propagandist fervour. His companions saw a new Gabriel--more loquacious and more disposed to communicate to them the "new things," that were already upheaving the traditional course of their thoughts, and that even now had on many nights disturbed their sleep.

They talked, discussed and consulted Luna, so that he could clear their confused ideas, and above the voices of the men sounded the continual click, click of the sewing machine, always busy, like an echo of the universal work surging in the world, while the calm of the Infinite spread itself through the precincts of the church.

All those men, accustomed to the slow, regular, quiet duties of the church, with long periods of rest, admired the nervous activity of Sagrario.

"You will kill yourself, child," said the old organ-blower. "I know very well what it is like, I have done something of the same sort; I blow and blow at those bellows, and when it is a ma.s.s with much music, such as Don Luis loves, I end by cursing the organ and him who invented it, for indeed it nearly breaks my arms."

"Work!" said the bell-ringer with emphasis. "Work is a punishment from G.o.d! You all know its origin. It was the eternal penalty imposed on our first parents by the Lord when He drove them out of Paradise. It is a chain that we must drag on for ever."

"No, senor," replied the shoemaker. "As I have read in the newspapers, work is the greatest of all the virtues, not a punishment; laziness is the mother of vice, and work is a virtue. Is it not so, Don Gabriel?"

The shoemaker looked at the master, watching for his words as a thirsty man looks for water.

"Work," said Gabriel, "is neither a punishment nor a virtue; it is a hard law to which we have to submit for self-preservation and for the welfare of the species. Without work life could not exist."

And with the same fervid enunciation with which he had in former times swayed the mult.i.tude at those meetings of protest against society, he explained to this half-dozen men and the quiet sewer, who stopped her machine to listen, the greatness of universal work, which every day laboured on the earth, to subdue it and force it to yield sustenance for man.

It was a struggle the whole twenty-four hours against the blind forces of Nature. The army of work extended over the whole globe, exploring the continents, leaping to the islands, sailing the seas, and descending to the bowels of the earth. How many were its soldiers? No one could count them--millions and millions. At daybreak no one was absent from the roll-call; the casualties were replaced, the gaps that poverty and misfortune opened in the ranks were filled up immediately.

As soon as the sun rose the factory chimney began to smoke, the hammer broke the stone, the file bit the metal, the plough furrowed the earth, the ovens were lighted, the pump worked its piston, the hatchet sounded in the wood, the locomotive moved amidst clouds of vapour, the cranes groaned on the wharves, the steamers cut the waters, and the little barks danced on the waves dragging their nets. None were absent from work's review. All hurried on, driven by the fear of hunger, defying danger, not knowing if they would live till night, or if the sun rising over their heads would be the last in their lives. And that daily concentration of human energies began with the first light of day in all parts of the world, wherever men had a.s.sembled and built towns and const.i.tuted societies, or even in the deserts to be reclaimed by their energies.

The stonemason breaks the stone with his hammer, and at every breath is poisoned by inhaling the invisible particles. The miner descends to the h.e.l.l of modern times with no other guide than the glimmer from his lamp, to wrest from the strata of the earliest ages relics of the earth's infancy, those carbonised trees that gave shade to prehistoric animals. Far from the sun and far from life, he defies death, just as the mason, poised on a slight scaffolding despises giddiness, watched only by the birds, surprised to see a creature without wings perched on such a dizzy height.

The workman in the factory, changed by a fatal and mistaken progress into a slave of machinery, lives fastened to it like another wheel, a spring of human flesh, struggling with his physical weariness against the iron muscles that never tire; brutalised daily by the deafening cadence of pistons and wheels to give us the innumerable products of industry rendered necessary by the life of civilisation.

And these millions and millions of men who support the existence of society, who fight for it against the blind and cruel forces of Nature, who every morning return to the struggle, seeing in this monotonous and continual sacrifice the sole aim of their existence, form the immense family of wage-earners, living on the surplus of a privileged minority, contenting themselves to subsist on the smallest part of what these reject, submitting to a wretched remuneration, always the lowest, without hope of saving or of emanc.i.p.ation.

"It is this egotistical minority," said Gabriel, having arrived at this point, "who have falsified truth, endeavouring to persuade the majority of workers that work is a virtue, and that the only mission of man on earth is to work till he perishes. This code, invented, by the great capitalists, misquotes science, declaring that people can only live healthily who devote themselves to work, and that all inaction is fatal, but is silent as to what science adds--that excessive work destroys men with far greater rapidity than if they were living in idleness. They say that work is a painful necessity for the preservation of life, but they do not say it is a virtue, because repose and sweet inaction are far more grateful to men and to all animals than exertion and fatigue. The fable of Paradise, the story of the Biblical G.o.d imposing the sweat of labour as a punishment in order to earn subsistence, shows that in all times the natural temperament of man considered rest as the pleasantest condition, and that work must be considered as an evil indispensable to life, but all the same an evil. Ruled by the instinct of preservation, man ought only to work just as much as is necessary for food. But as the immense majority do not work for themselves alone, but for the profits of a minority of employers, these require that a man should work as much as he is able, even if he dies from his over-exertion, and in this way they become rich, h.o.a.rding the surplus from production. Their contention is that a man should work more than is required for himself, that he should produce more than is required for his own necessities. In this surplus lies their wealth, and to obtain it they have invented a monstrous and inhuman morality, that by means of religion and even of philosophy, glorifies work, saying that work is the greatest of all virtues and idleness the source of all vices. And this makes me ask, if idleness is a vice in the poor, how is it that among the rich it is counted as a sign of distinction and even of elevation of mind? And if work is the greatest of all virtues, how is it that capitalists endeavour to ama.s.s wealth in order to free themselves and their descendants from the practice of so great a virtue? Why is it that this society which exalts work with every sort of poetical conception relegates the worker to the lowest rank? Why do they receive with greater enthusiasm a soldier who has fought, more or less, than an aged workman who has spent seventy years working without any one praising him or being grateful to him for so much virtue?"

The servants of the Cathedral nodded their heads, a.s.senting to what fell from the master; they looked up to him as simple people always look up to those who come down to them as apostles of a new idea.

The continual friction with Gabriel had caused to germinate in their minds, stunted by the traditional atmosphere, a growth of ideas, like the microscopic mosses the winter rains had formed on the granite b.u.t.tresses of the church. Hitherto they had lived resigned to the life that surrounded them, moving like somnambulists on the undecided boundary which separates soul from instinct, but the unexpected presence of that fugitive from social battles was the impulse that launched them into full thought, walking tentatively and with no other light than that of their master.

"You," went on Gabriel, "do not suffer from the slavery of work like those who live among modern factories. The Church does not require great exertions from you, and the service of G.o.d does not destroy you from over-fatigue, though it kills you with hunger. There exists a monstrous inequality between the salaries of those down below who sit in the choir and sing and what you earn, who lend to wors.h.i.+p all the strength of your arms. You will not die of fatigue, it is true; many a workman in the towns would laugh at the lightness of your duties; but you languish from poverty. I see in this cloister the same anaemic children that I saw in workmen's slums, I see what you eat and what you are paid. The Church pays its servants as in the days of faith; she believes that we still live in the times when whole towns would throw themselves into the work with the hope of gaining heaven, and would help to raise cathedrals without any more positive recompense than the workman's stew and the blessing of the bishop; and all this while, you, beings of flesh who require nourishment, deceive your stomachs and those of your wives and children with potatoes and bread, while down below those wooden images are covered with pearls and gold in senseless profusion, and without its ever occurring to you to ask yourselves why the idols who have no wants should be so rich, while you are unable to satisfy your own and live in misery."

The listeners looked at each other in astonishment, as though these words were an illuminating flash. They were doubtful for a moment as though frightened, and then the faith of conviction illuminated their faces.

"It is true," said the bell-ringer in a gloomy tone.

"It is true," repeated the shoemaker, throwing into his words all the bitterness of his grinding life of poverty, with a constantly increasing family, and with no other help but his inadequate work.

Sagrario remained silent. She did not understand many of her uncle's sayings, but she received them all as gospel coming from him, and they sounded in her ears like delicious music.

Gabriel's reputation spread among the humble inhabitants of the church, and all the servants of the Primacy gossiped about his wisdom.

The clergy took notice of him, and more than once on rainy evenings the canon librarian, taking his walk in the cloisters, tried to make Gabriel talk; but the fugitive, with a remnant of prudence, showed himself towards the ca.s.socks, as they themselves said, coldly courteous and reserved, fearing that they would expel him if they became acquainted with his views.

Only one priest of all those he saw in the upper cloister had inspired him with any confidence. This was a young man of wretched appearance, with worn-out clothes, a chaplain of one of the innumerable convents of nuns in Toledo. He received seven duros a month, which were all his means of supporting himself and his old mother, a common peasant woman, who had denied herself bread in order to give an education to her son.

"You see, Gabriel," said the priest. "You see how it is--such a great sacrifice to earn less than a common labourer earns in my village. Why did they ordain me with so much ceremony? Was it for this I sang ma.s.s in the midst of so much pomp, as though in wedding the Church I were uniting myself to wealth?"

His poverty made him the slave of Don Antolin, and in the last third of the month he came almost every day to the cloister, trying to soften Silver Stick with his prayers and induce him to lend a few pesetas. He even flattered Mariquita, who could not show herself shy with him, in spite of his ca.s.sock.

"He has a very good appearance," she said to the women of the Claverias with the enthusiasm inspired by every man. "I like to see him by the side of Don Gabriel and to hear them talk as they walk in the cloister. They look like two great n.o.blemen. His mother called him Martin, no doubt because he resembled the Saint Martin by that painter they call El Greco, that hangs in some parish church, but I forget which."

To cajole Don Antolin was a far more arduous task, and the poor little curate suffered much in his endeavours to propitiate the miser, who was irritated if his miserable loans were not repaid at the proper time. Silver Stick with his love of authority was delighted to hold a priest and an equal under his thumb, so that those in the Claverias should see that he did not order about the small fry only. Don Martin was for him only a servant in a ca.s.sock, and he made him come up to the cloister nearly every evening on various pretexts. His delight Was to keep him whole hours standing in front of his door, obliged to listen and to pay attention to all his words.

Gabriel felt pity for the moral dependency in which the poor young man lived, and he would often leave his niece, going out into the cloister to join them. His other friends were not long in discovering him; first of all the bell-ringer, then the organ-blower, and presently the verger, the Perrero, and the shoemaker would join the group, of which Silver Stick was the nucleus. Don Antolin was delighted to see himself surrounded by so many people, never imagining that Gabriel was the attraction, thinking always it was his authority that inspired fear and respect.

Recognising equality with no one but Luna, to him only he addressed his conversation, as though the others had no other duty but to listen to him in silence; if anyone spoke to him he pretended not to hear, but continued addressing Gabriel. Mariquita, huddled up in a shawl, followed them with her eyes from the door, sharing her uncle's pride in seeing himself surrounded by such a group, who accompanied him in his stroll up and down the cloister; the proximity of so many men seemed to turn her head.

"Uncle! Don Gabriel!" she called in a coaxing voice. "Won't you come in; you will be more comfortable inside the house, because, even though it is sunny, it is very cold."