LITMIR.BIZ

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earning his share of cabets, returning only Sundays to hand over, with a show of pride, the three or four pesetas that represented his week's wage. The other boy, that lost soul Tonet, had turned out a regular waster – that was the very word for him. And he never came home unless he was hungry. He had joined the ragamuffins along shore, a swarm of wharf rats that knew no more about their fathers than the homeless dogs who went with them on their raids. He could swim like a fish, and all through the summer days he loafed around the liners in the harbor, without a stitch on his lean sunburned body, diving for the silver coins the passengers threw overboard. At night he would come home, his trousers in rags, his face scratched and bleeding. His mother had caught him several times fondly caressing the brandy keg; and one evening she had had to put on her shawl and go to harbor-police headquarters, where her tears and lamentations finally got him loose on the promise that she would cure him of his ugly weakness for scraping the bottoms of the sugar boxes stored on the piers.

      That Tonet was a limb of the Devil! And, diós mio, where did he get it, where did he get it! How could two decent honest parents, such as she and Pascualo had been, ever get to have a boy like that? With a perfectly good dinner waiting for him at home, why did he insist on sneaking around the steamers from Scotland, waiting for the watchman to turn his back so as to be off with a dried codfish under his arm? No, that boy was to be the death of her! Twelve years old, no inclination to work, and not the slightest fear or respect for her, in spite of all the broomsticks she had broken over his back.

      Siñá Tona usually confided her troubles to a certain Martinez, a young policeman who patrolled that part of the shore, spending the noon hours under the café shelter, his rifle across his knees, his eyes vaguely fixed on the horizon of the sea, and his ears filled with the running plaint of the tavernkeeper. A handsome chap Martinez was, an Andalusian from Huelva, slender and trim of person, natty as could be in the old service uniform which he sported with a truly martial swagger, twirling the corner of his blond mustache with an air that people called "distinguished." Siñá Tona admired the man. After all, breeding will come out! You can tell it a mile away. How Martinez talked, for instance! You could see from his choice of words that he was a man of schooling. For that matter he had studied years and years in the Seminary up his way; and if now he was only a patrolman, it was because he hadn't wanted to be a priest – he had quarreled with his family on the subject – preferring to see a bit of the world by enlisting in the army. The mistress of the tavern listened open-mouthed to the tales he told about himself in a heavy Andalusian dialect where every "s" was like "th" in "thing." In deference to his learning, she answered in kind, floundering about in an absurd and unintelligible Castillian which made people in the village laugh.

      "See, siñor Martines, that jacknape of mine is driving me mad with all his carrying on. I say to him, I say: 'Anything wrong in this house, jail-bird? Well, then, why go tearing around with that gang of good-for-nothings, who will die at the end of a rope, every one of them!' now osté siñor Martines, you know how to talk in good grammar. You just tell him what is what. You tell him they'll put him in the lock-up at Valencia if he isn't a good boy."

      And siñor Martines promised to take the little rogue in hand, and he did, in fact, give him a lecture, which reduced Tonet, for a moment at least, to cowering in terror in the presence of that uniform and that heavy gun, which the soldier would never let go of for an instant. These slight favors gradually brought Martinez into the family, making his relations with siñá Tona more and more intimate. He got his meals now at the tavern, and spent most of his time there; and the mistress finally had the pleasure of darning his stockings and sewing the buttons on his underwear. Poor siñor Martines! What would happen to a fine young man like him without a woman around? He would get to be as shabby and disreputable as a stray cat. And, frankly, no decent lady could allow that to happen!

      Summer afternoons when the sun was beating full upon the deserted beach, turning the baked sand into a fiery furnace, one scene would always be enacted in the shade of the thatched roof of the tavern shelter. Martinez would be seated on a reed stool with one elbow on the counter, reading Perez Escrich, his favorite author, in bulging grimy volumes with the corners worn down from having passed from patrol to patrol along the coast. Siñá Tona was convinced at last. That was where he got all those big words and that moral philosophy which stirred the bottom of her soul; and she looked at the books with the superstitious awe of an illiterate. Across the counter, mechanically sewing, without thinking of what she was doing, she would sit looking at Martinez fixedly, studying his thin blond mustache for half an hour at a time, then the elegant lines of his nose for just as long, and finally the exquisite skill with which he parted his hair, making two absolutely even plasters of golden locks on either side.

      Sometimes, on looking up at the bottom of a page, Martinez would find the two black eyes of siñá Tona nailed upon him; and he would blush and go on reading. Then afterwards the tavern keeper would be ashamed of herself. The idea! When Pascualo was alive, she had looked at the fellow casually once or twice, because she thought his face was interesting. But now she sat there looking and looking and looking, like a fool! What would people say if they ever caught her at it! Of course! She liked him! And why not? So handsome, and such fine manners! And how well he could talk! But after all, that was absurd. She was well on toward forty, thirty-six or so, she couldn't just remember. And he, well, twenty-four at the outside! But then again, and then again! What difference did a few years make? She was not so bad looking. She carried her age well. To settle that question, just listen to the men off the boats who were always pestering her! And if it was all so absurd, why were people gossiping about it? The other patrolmen, friends of Martinez, and the fish-women on the beach, were always teasing them with indirect allusions which, if anything, were too direct.

      And the expected happened. To silence her own misgivings, siñá Tona argued that her boys needed a father, and Martinez was just the man. The courageous Amazon, who would cudgel the roughest sailor at the slightest flippancy, herself took the initiative, overcoming the bashfulness of that timid overgrown boy; and he, submissive rather than seeking, allowed things to take their course, like a superior being with thoughts absorbed in higher things, and responding to affairs of earth like an automaton.

      The matter did not remain long secret; nor was Tona displeased at the talk. She wanted it known that the tavern had a man in charge. When she had something to attend to in the Cabañal, she left the shop in care of Martinez, who sat, as he had always sat, under the shelter, looking out to sea with the rifle across his knees. Even the two boys understood that something was going on. "The Rector," on his turns ashore, would look at his mother with a perplexed expression on his face, and he was timid and ashamed in the presence of that big yellow-headed youth in uniform whom he always found about the tavern. Not so Tonet. That rascal smiled broadly all the time, reflecting the gibes and sarcasms he had picked up along shore. And he ceased to be at all impressed at the sermons of the patrolman, which he now rebutted by thumbing his nose and going off down the beach cavorting and turning handsprings.

      Meanwhile Tona was passing through a new honeymoon in the full maturity of life. In comparison, her marriage with Pascualo seemed like monotony itself. Into her passion for the soldier she put all the vehemence of a woman whose youth is sloping toward sunset, and she paraded her joy in bold indifference to what people were saying. Let them talk! Let them talk till their tongues wore out! Many women were worse than she was. Of course the girls were sore at her carrying off a good-looking fellow right under their noses!

      Martinez, for his part, with the usual dreamy expression on his face, let himself be kissed and pampered as though he deserved every bit of it; besides his prestige had gone up not only in his squad but with his superiors. Why not, with a boat full of the real stuff, not to mention that stocking crammed with silver duros that sometimes stuck into his ribs as he lay down on the bed in the stateroom! To make sleeping more comfortable he removed that annoying obstruction, and siñá Tona said not a word. Was he not to be her husband? The money was all hers, and so long as the tavern paid as well as it was paying, there was no need to worry.

      In four or five months, however, Tona began to go around with a long face. See here, Martinez, siñor Martines, just come down out of the clouds and listen to Tona for a moment. Tona is saying something to you. She is saying that something must be done, in the circumstances. The present situation

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