Mayflower (Flor de mayo) Part 8

Most of the money in her had come from smuggling those very rolls that showed the gay dancer in the bright colors! Roseta was right! _Flor de mayo! Flor de mayo!_

The name pleased everybody, awakening in those sluggish imaginations a thrill of poetry and romance. They found something mysterious and attractive in the name, without suspecting the charm attached to it by that historic boat which carried the Puritans to the new world and marked the birth of the great republic of the West!... The Rector could not contain his joy. Roseta had the brains for you! Let's have dinner on that, ladies and gentlemen! And we'll have a real toast afterward ... to _Flor de mayo_!

The frying-pan was lifted from the stove and carried into the house, and the whole family rose to follow--significant happenings that did not escape the watchful eyes of little Pascualet. He deserted his orpheon of tiny choristers. The monotone of _la lluna la pruna_ came to an end, and peace settled over the moon-lit country-side.

It was not long before the whole Caba.n.a.l, with that gift for rapid perception of important things that little places have, was aware that the Rector's new boat was to be christened _Flor de mayo_. And when, the evening before the blessing of the vessel, she was dragged down to the water's edge in front of the _casa del bus_, the beautiful mysterious name could be read on the inside of her stern sheets, painted in letters of fetching blue.

The next afternoon, the cabin section of the Caba.n.a.l was in festive mood. Occasions like that were few indeed! Standing G.o.d-father in the baptismal rites was "_Senor_ Mariano _el Callao_," no less a stingy old fat-purse, granted, but with enough heart in him to sh.e.l.l out a penny or two for a nephew like that on a day like that. Sweets a-plenty were to be pa.s.sed around on the sh.o.r.e, with barrels of drinks. Barrels! Besides, that Rector boy knew how to do things well. He took the crew he had engaged for the first trip and went off to the church to escort don Santiago, the curate, to the beach. The priest welcomed him with one of those smiles he kept for his very best paris.h.i.+oners only. "What! Ready so soon? Well, son, won't you just run around and tell the sacristan to get the water and the hyssop ready! I'll just get into my ca.s.sock, and be with you in a jiffy...." "Not quite so fast, don Santiago!" observed the Rector. "Not quite so fast! You ought to see this is not an occasion for any ca.s.sock business, or stuff like that. Your cope, father, your cope, and the best you've got, see? You don't launch a boat like this every other day. Never mind about the money! I'll pay what's right!"

The good priest smiled. "Very well ... the cope isn't just the thing, but cope it is, if you say so.... We're ready to accommodate good members of our flock, who know how to appreciate favors."

And they started back from the rectory, the sacristan in front with the hyssop and the holy vessel; then the curate surrounded by his guard of honor, the captain and his men. In one hand don Santiago was carrying his book of prayers, in the other the train of his old but sumptuous cope, to keep it out of the mud. The handsome robe was of a white somewhat yellowed with age; and the heavy gold borders had tarnished green, while the padding over the lining peeped through in places where the outer cloth had been worn thin.

Children came up in droves to press their sniffling noses on the good priest's hand, which at every step, almost, had to let the train fall into the muck. Women greeted smilingly from the sidewalks. The dear old _pae capella_! What a good-natured soul--never too harsh on penances, but able to see through you, just the same, if you tried to fool him.

Don Santiago had the secret of adapting himself to the weaknesses of his flock. Many a time he would stop in the street to extend his blessings over the fish baskets of some woman of the market, or touch his fingers miraculously to a pair of short scales to charm it against any danger lest the inspectors of Valencia detect its fraudulent weights!

When the procession reached the sh.o.r.e, the bells began to ring, mingling their garrulous ding-dong in the gentle crunching of the surf. Late comers could be seen running along the sands to arrive in time for everything. There, on a stretch of beach that was quite free of boats, the _Mayflower_ rose from the middle of a swarming crowd, her bright varnished sides gleaming white in the sunlight, her rakish mast, gracefully tilted forward, standing out against the blue, its peak adorned with the baptismal insignia of a new boat, sheaves of gra.s.s and bunches of cloth flowers, that would hang up there till the storm winds finally wrenched them loose.

The Rector and his party elbowed their way through the crowd pressing around the boat. At the stern were the two sponsors--_sina_ Tona, G.o.dmother, in a new shawl and skirt; and "Senor" Mariano, G.o.d-father, in his tall hat and with his cane, in the very get-up that he wore at his talks with the Governor in town! The whole family offered a spectacle of gay and showy magnificence. Dolores had her pink dress on, and a new kerchief of flaming colors; while her fingers gleamed with every ring she owned. Tonet was strutting about on deck in his new suit, his s.h.i.+ning silk cap pulled down over one ear, twirling his mustache in immense satisfaction that his conspicuous position enabled so many pretty girls to sate their eyes on him. On the ground, with Roseta, was his Rosario in the least shabby of her gowns, and sure not to make trouble with Dolores on such a solemn day. The Rector, for his part, had turned Englishman over night. He was sporting a blue woolsey suit that a friend of his, an engineer on a steamer, had brought on from Glasgow. On his vest shone a watch chain as big as one of the stays on his boat--and that was the real surprise he had saved for the celebration. He was sweating like a stoker in that garment that might have done very well in winter. He had taken upon himself the task of keeping order, shoving people back when they edged up too close to the priest and the baptismal party. "The idea, gentlemen.... That talking, there! Sh-h-h. This ceremony is not a thing to laugh about. The fun, later on ...!" And he set a good example by taking off his cap and putting on a long face, as the chaplain, sweating just as much under that stifling cope, was fumbling through his book to find the prayer beginning _Propitiare Domini supplicationibus nostris et benedic navem istam_.... _Sina_ Tona and _tio_ Mariano on either side of the curate stood with eyes nailed to the ground. The sacristan watched his master like a cat after a mouse, ready to say _amen_ on the slightest pretext. The mult.i.tude with heads bare was hushed and still, as though something extraordinary were about to happen.

Don Santiago knew his public. He read the simple prayer slowly and solemnly, making each syllable stand out, and introducing impressive pauses to take full advantage of the general silence. The Rector, quite beside himself with emotion and not knowing what he was doing, nodded a.s.sent to every word, as though taking those Latin phrases that were falling on his _Mayflower_ seriously to heart. What he really caught was all that about _Arcam Noe ambulantem in diluvio_; and he straightened up to his full height in pride, at the vague feeling that his boat was being likened to that ancient craft, the most famous in Christian annals! So he was a real comrade now of that wicked old patriarch who invented wine and became the first and best sailor of his time, on earth! _Sina_ Tona could stand the strain no longer. She crammed her handkerchief into both eyes to keep the tears from bursting out. When the prayer was over, the curate reached for the hyssop: _Asperges_ ...

and he sprinkled a rain of water upon the boat's stern, and the spray dripped down in s.h.i.+ning drops over the painted sides. _Amen_, said the sacristan; and don Santiago, with the Rector in front of him to clear the way, and followed by the sacristan, amening every word, started round the boat, showering Latin and holy water at every step.

Pascualo could not understand that the ceremonies were over. "See here, don Santiago! There's the rigging still to do, and the deck, and then down in the hold! There's a good fellow! It won't take you long ... and I'll do what's right, you know!" And the curate, smiling at the earnestness of the young man's plea, went up, finally, to the ladder that had been set up against the _Mayflower's_ bilge, and began the ascent, catching the floundering cope underneath his feet on every rung.

And the vestment of white and gold caught the afternoon sun and gleamed afar like the sh.e.l.l of a bright climbing scarab. But when he had blessed everything to the Rector's full content, he withdrew with his a.s.sistant, and the throng rushed for the boat like an army storming a wall.

They would give her the right send-off, that crowd of bedraggled loud-talking ragam.u.f.fins, the sc.r.a.pings from the whole beach, already besieging the sponsors with their petulant whining: "Our candy now, and the almonds, the almonds!" "Senor" Mariano's face was beaming omnipotent over the vessel's side. "Candy, eh! It's candy you want!" He well knew what all the good things he had brought to eat had cost--one whole _onza_--gold--to keep on good terms with nephew! And he bent over, and sunk his hands into the baskets between his legs. "Well, candy it is!"

And he began to rain nuts and cinnamon lozenges, as hard as bullets, upon the heads of the clamoring mob, and the young ones, girls and boys, began to scramble on the sand, fighting for the goodies, dirty underskirts squirming about among trousers with huge rents that showed the bare scaly skins of the beach-combers underneath.

Tonet was uncorking bottles of gin and pointing them out to special friends with lavish and condescending urgency as if he were doing the honors himself. Liquor began to pa.s.s around by the jugful. Everybody was drinking--the beach guards, their guns on their shoulders, retired sea-captains from the village, men from other boats--barefoot, mostly, these, and dressed in yellow baize, like clowns--and tiny "cats," with knives of grotesque proportions thrust crosswise into the sashes about their ragged waists.

The real carousal was going on up on deck. The planking of the _Mayflower_ was beginning to clack like the polished floor of a ball-room, and the rich smell of a tavern was filling the atmosphere about the boat. Dolores, who could resist the call of all that gayety no longer, started to climb the ladder, kicking out at every rung at the crowd of pestering "cats" who gathered round for one look at the ankles of the pretty girl as she went higher. The Rector's wife knew that her real element was up there where there was so much man around, where her charms would be certain of voracious admiration as she stamped about on boards that belonged to her--every inch of them--and where the women down below, especially Rosario--she would be green with envy--could get a good look at her success.

Pascualo, meanwhile, was with his mother. On that solemn occasion, which meant so much to him, which he had looked forward to for so long, he felt a strange return of his affection for the poor old woman. He forgot his beautiful wife and even Pascualet--the rogue was as busy as could be with the cinnamon b.a.l.l.s, up on deck--to give all his attention to _sina_ Tona.

"A full-fledged master, outfitter, owner of a boat--my own boat!" And he kissed and hugged the old mother who was weeping streams from her puffy eyes. Tona's thoughts indeed were running back over long, long years of widowhood and loneliness and ostracism and over the memory of that mad adventure with the guardsman, to a similar christening she had witnessed in her youth. _Tio_ Pascualo rose before her memory, strong, young, handsome, as she had known him in the days of their courts.h.i.+p. And his departure from life became as bitterly sorrowful as if he had vanished but the day before. "My boy, my boy--_fill meu, fill meu_!" she sobbed, throwing her arms about the st.u.r.dy neck of the Rector, who at that moment seemed to be the resurrection of his father's very self.

And Pascualo, in truth, was the honor of the family, the boy whose hard work had redeemed her lost station, her lost importance, in that community. Her tears now were not of sorrow only but of remorse. She had never loved the boy enough, not half so much as he deserved. Her affection was overflowing now--she must make up for all the past. Then, she was afraid, yes, sir, afraid, that her Pascualet, her poor little Rector, would go the way his father went; and as the words hung tremulously upon her lips, she looked off toward the tavern-boat, just visible from the _Mayflower's_ splendid hull, in which that martyr of the sea had met his frightful end.

What a contrast between the _Mayflower_, so new, and strong, and spick, and span, and that rotting hulk which, for lack of custom now, was daily growing blacker and more worm-eaten! The old woman seemed to vision in the future a day when the _Mayflower_ might drift ash.o.r.e, cracked and water-logged, just as old _Fleet-Foot_ had come home with her husband's corpse in her hold. No, she could not be happy. All that roistering and carousing was a sin. It was making fun of the sea, that hypocrite with the smiling face out there, that purring cat that was meek enough for the moment, but that would show her claws when once the _Mayflower_ was in her power. Her boy! What a strong handsome boy--and she loved him as much as though he had just come back from a long voyage! But old Pascualo had been just as strong and handsome. And he made fun of the sea too! Now, she knew it, she was sure of it! The sea had a grudge against her family, and would swallow the new boat as it had wrecked the old.

"Bosh, mama, bos.h.!.+ _Recristo_, the old lady will never get her hands on me! But anyhow, why go crying on a glad day like this? You're just getting religion, like most of the old ladies--your conscience is at you for having forgotten papa for so long, perhaps. But you can make that right by lighting a good fat candle to the old sailor, in case his soul is still in Purgatory. Come now, mama, brace up. No more prophesying!

The sea is a good fine lover of mine. I won't listen to any gossip about her! She gets riled at times, but after all she gives poor folks like us a living. Here, Tonet! Give us a drink, a good big swig! Cheer the place up a bit. Let's give the _Mayflower_ a good old-fas.h.i.+oned send-off."

He took the beaker that was handed him and drank a deep draught. But his mother went on weeping, her eyes still gazing at the tavern-boat down the sh.o.r.e. The Rector showed some signs of irritation. "Still bawling, eh! And this is the time to talk of funerals! See, ma, you ought to have made me a bishop, then there'd be no cause for whining from the women folks. Honest, and work hard, say I, and trust to luck! That's the sailor's creed! The sea? The sea gives us everything. It raises us when we are little. And it feeds us when we're grown up. We're always asking something of the sea! Well, we have to take a storm now and then, along with the big runs. Besides, somebody's got to risk his skin, if folks are going to have fish to eat. That somebody is me. Out to sea I go, as I've always gone. And that's the end of that! And now, enough of this whimpering business, what do you say, ma? Here's to _Flor de Mayo_!

Here's to 'Mayflower.' _Cristo!_ another mug, boys, on me, on me! Drink her down, drink her down, till every mother's son of you is drunk. And I'll feel insulted if they don't come down and get you to-night because you can't walk home, and find you all rooting in the sand here like so many grunting hogs!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE _MAYFLOWER_ PUTS TO SEA

Pascualo was on his way home from an afternoon in Valencia; but on reaching the Glorieta, he stopped in front of the Old Customs House.

It was six o'clock. The sun was tinting the enormous front of the building an orange gold, softening the colors of the greenish black smudge that the rain had left on the mansard windows. The statue of Charles II seemed to be melting into the mellow bluish transparency of the light-filled atmosphere. Through the gratings drifted the hum of a busy hive--voices calling, songs coming from a distance, the metallic click of scissors as the workers picked them up or let them fall.

Out through the big entrance the girls from the nearest floors were beginning to pour in animate throng--a horde of Indian shawls, a medley of strong arms with sleeves rolled above the elbow, an army of lunch-boxes slung over shoulders, a pitter-patter of feet, hopping in short quick steps like sparrows, a hub-bub of good-nights, of greetings, of parting gibes. The promenade for the guards, where a few drinking fountains were the only obstructions, was one seething ma.s.s of feminine youth.

The Rector, attracted by that curious riot of tobacco-girls, had paused on the sidewalk across the street, among the newspaper stands. A strange fascination it had for him, that moving ma.s.s of white handkerchiefs drawn tightly over pretty foreheads! What a bedlam! A regiment of females in mutiny! A nunnery gone mad! A meteor-shower of black eyes, that stared at a man boldly, immodestly, stripping the clothes off one, it seemed, with mocking effrontery!

And who was this coming in his direction? Roseta had spied him, and deserting a party of girls, was tripping over toward him. Her companions were to wait for friends from another floor, and they might be some minutes in starting. Was he going home? All right! They would go together! Roseta hated just standing around!

They took the Grao road, Pascualo moving his sea-legs frantically to keep up with that devil of a girl who never walked but she ran, though with an attractive swaying of her body which made her skirt go up and down like the marking buoy in a yacht race. Shouldn't he carry her lunch-box for her? Thanks! She was used to having it on her arm. Didn't think she could walk so fast without it!

By the time they were at the Sea Bridge, the captain was on the subject of his boat, as usual. That _Mayflower_ of his could even make him forget he had a Dolores and a Pascualet! The next morning the _bu_-fis.h.i.+ng began, and all the vessels would go out. "But she's queen of the lot! We hitched the oxen on to her yesterday, and now she's in the water, anch.o.r.ed with the other boats in the harbor. But there's no mistaking her, girl! She strikes your eye like a _senorita_ in the middle of a bunch of beach-trailers!" He had been in town to get a few odds and ends still lacking to his equipment. Now he had a dollar to bet that not one of the rich men in the Caba.n.a.l, who sat around at home and got the best of every load of fish without lifting a finger, could show a craft half the witch the _Mayflower_ was ... not half.

But the end which comes to everything in this world came also to the store of nice things the Rector had to say, in his enthusiasm, about his boat. By the time the pair had reached the bakery of Figuetes, Pascualo had lapsed into his normal taciturnity, and Roseta held the floor, dealing with the forewomen in the tobacco factory in terms that such cattle deserved.

"Work the life out of you, they do! It was all I could do to keep myself from waiting outside and pulling the topknot of that wench as she came out! I don't mind about myself so much. Mama and me can get along on nothing almost. But it's different with others of us. Why, some of those girls have to sweat like n.i.g.g.e.rs, to feed some loafer of a husband, and a houseful of brats that wait at the door at night with their mouths wide open to swallow half the bread in town! What I don't see is how, in conditions like that, there's a woman left in the world who can laugh. For instance ..." And the golden-haired Diana, so insensible to the allurements of men, but reared withal among the filthy-mouthed ragam.u.f.fins of the seash.o.r.e, struck an air of stern and serious modesty, and recounted in words of disconcerting directness, but with a rippling sweetness of tone that seemed to wipe the foulness of such language from her cheery lips, the story of a shopmate of hers at home with a broken arm, after a beating from her husband, who had caught her in flagrant wrong-doing with a friend of his! "I wouldn't call her much of a woman, I wouldn't!" and the virtuous Roseta pouted the pout of a virgin who knows all there is to know. "What a disgrace! And she had four children--four!"

The Rector smiled a ferocious smile. "So she got out of it with a broken arm, did she! I'd have broken her neck, I would! No half-way business with these women that don't know what belongs to their husband and what belongs to the other fellow! Imagine living with a thing like that!

Thank G.o.d, I didn't draw one of that kind. I've got a good wife and a happy home!" "Yes, you can thank G.o.d, all right," Roseta a.s.sented with one of her smiles of compa.s.sionate contempt. But the Rector was not spry of wit. And the finer shadings of irony escaped him.

But as the simple-minded sailor walked along, he grew more and more excited at the outrageous conduct of that woman he didn't know and at the misfortune of that husband whose name he had never heard. "You know, a rotten business like that gets under my skin, it does. Here's an honest man breaking his back from morning till night to feed his woman and his boys and his girls, and comes home from the shop and finds my lady flouncing around with Mr. 'Friend'! G.o.d, girl! I'd cut the wench's throat, I would--if I swung for it! If you ask me, I say--well, whose fault is it? The women! Yes, the women! What was a woman ever put on this earth for, except to d.a.m.n a man's soul! _Dios!_ I never saw but two decent women, anyhow. One is Dolores, and the other is you!" For the Rector, when he talked so extensively, was inclined to go to extremes, and he felt this time that his sweeping denunciation needed that much qualification.

Though much good the concession did him! For his sister was now on ground where, from the long tirades of _Sina_ Tona, she could be counted quite expert. She talked pa.s.sionately, with a tinge of irritation in her sweet vibrant voice. "Women, eh! Women! Not a bit of it! It's the men, I say, and I know what I'm talking about. Among the pigs in this world, the prize hog is the man! See trouble anywhere? Look and you'll find a man at the bottom of it. Mama says so, too. There are two kinds of men in this world--scamps and puddingheads! If a woman goes wrong, it's the man that's to blame. If she's not married they are all after her to get what they want ... and maybe I don't know that! If I was the fool some men take me for, G.o.d knows the fix I'd be in to-day! And if you are married, well, it's worse, almost--for the scamps try to get you into trouble, and the puddingheads haven't sense enough to keep their wives where they belong. Look at Tonet, for instance! Wouldn't Rosario be serving him right if she went on the street, even, to get square with him for all he does! And then, well, no! Stop at Tonet! We don't need to give other examples! But the whole Caba.n.a.l knows about husbands that are themselves to blame if their wives aren't all they ought to be!"

And the girl leered at the Rector so unguardedly, in saying this, that Pascualo, in spite of his corpulent obtuseness, caught the glimmer of an allusion and studied her face enquiringly. But his immense faith, at bottom, in people and in things stood him in good stead against any dangerous inference. And he protested, mildly, at her exaggeration.

Bos.h.!.+ People in the Caba.n.a.l made him sick! They were always talking about somebody, to pa.s.s the time. If you listened to what people said, there wasn't a decent woman in town, nor a husband that wasn't the joke of the beach. But that's only a way they had of amusing themselves. The Caba.n.a.l had no manners, as don Santiago, the curate, said so well! "Now, take me, for instance. I've got the best, sweetest wife in the world, and everybody knows it! Well, does that keep those fools from blabbing about her? And who's the man? Tonet, may it please the court! Tonet, of all men! The people in the Caba.n.a.l are donkeys, idiots, rotters, that's all! Tonet, G.o.d save us! Why, Tonet ... he wors.h.i.+ps Dolores, like a mother.... But no, my house has simply got to be a brothel, for those chatter-boxes.... Tonet! G.o.d!" And the Rector laughed one of those hearty laughs of pitying superiority at the stupidity of people, the kind of laugh the Spanish peasant gives when he hears some benighted ignoramus questioning the authenticity of the village Virgin's miracles.

Roseta stopped short in her tracks, sizing up the Rector with those dreamy sea-green eyes of hers. What did that laugh mean? Was Pascudo serious? Yes, without a doubt. As serious as a preacher! That puddinghead was proof-proof! And the certainty angered her.

Instinctively, without reckoning the consequences of what she was doing, she came out with the charges that had been tickling her tongue for years! In short: two kinds of men, scamps and puddingheads! And a glance of hers stamped the second label upon her brother, as he, in fact, divined.

"So I'm the puddinghead, am I! Hah-hah!... Now see here, Roseta ... out with it! All you know! And no mincing of words, either, or you'll be sorry!"

They were half-way home now, near the roadside Cross. And they stopped a moment in front of it. The Rector's ruddy face had turned pale as death, and he kept biting nervously at his fingers, those blunt, bony, calloused fingers of a fisherman.

"Well, Roseta," he added, when she stood silent still. "Out with it!"

But the girl did not come out with it. She had caught a dangerous gleam in her brother's eye. She was afraid she had gone too far; and, a kindly soul at heart, she repented her imprudent innuendos. She had caused the pallor and the expression of fierce solemnity on that good-natured face!

"Oh, as for knowing, Pascualo, I don't know anything. It's only what people say. But they say lots of things. And if you want them to stop talking, I'd advise you to have Tonet around your house as little, as little, as possible!"

Pascualo had stooped over the watering-trough near the Cross, and covered the whole end of the pipe with his mouth, to let the stream run full into his stomach, as though to drown a conflagration that was burning in his insides. He straightened up and started on, the water dripping down over his chin, till he wiped it away with the back of a rough hand.

"I see. So that's all talk! Well, if they want to wait for me to be nasty to Tonet, they can wait till h.e.l.l freezes over. Filthy, stupid, malicious chatter-boxes! That's what they are! So I must slam the door in the face of that poor boy, eh! Well, I won't! Just when he's settling down a bit, from the good influence Dolores has over him! And they're all jealous of her, that's what. Just plain jealous!" And the gesture with which he underlined the spiteful words seemed to include Roseta among the envious. "Well, it's my affair, and so long as I don't worry, they needn't. Let them talk their tongues off. That boy is what amounts to a son to me. Why, it seems only yesterday when I was carrying him around in my arms, like a nurse. And when he went to bed at night, I'd roll up in a ball almost, so's he could have plenty of room. And now I'm to kick him out of my house. No, you don't forget some things in a hurry. Oh, yes, when things go right and there's no trouble, you forget easy enough. You forget the fellows you used to drink with in the taverns. But we used to be hungry together, _redeu_, hungry; and you don't forget times like that. Poor Tonet! No! I'm going to stand by that boy till I get him on his feet and make a man of him, I am. What do they think!... That I'm an ox, probably, a plain d.a.m.n fool! All right, but this d.a.m.n fool has got a heart under his ribs, he has." And the Rector, filling with deeper and deeper emotion, rapped on that well-padded chest of his, and his thorax echoed like a drum.