LAS ANIMAS[78]

LAS ANIMAS[78]

Don Fernan. Uncle Romance, I am coming in, although it don't rain.

Uncle Romance. Welcome, Señor Don Fernan. Your worship comes to this, your house, like the sun, to illumine it. Has your worship any commands?

Don F. I am hungry for a story, Uncle Romance.

Uncle R. Story again! Señor, does your worship think that my yarns are like Don Crispin's titles, that were past counting? Your worship must excuse me; I'm in a bad way to-day; my memory is broken-winded, and my wits are heavier than bean-broth. But, not to disappoint your worship, I'll call my Chana.[79] Ch-a-a-a-na! Sebas-ti-a-a-na! What ails the woman? She is getting to be like the Marquis of Montegordo, who remained mute, blind, and deaf.[80] Ch-a-a-na!!

Aunt Sebastiana. What do you mean, man, by bawling like a cowherd? Oh! Señor Don Fernan is here. God be with you, señor! How is your worship?

Don F. Never better, Aunt Sebastiana; and you are well?

Aunt S. Ay! no, señor; I'm fallen away like a lime-kiln.

Don F. Why, what has been the matter with you?

Uncle R. The same that ailed the other one who was sunning herself:

Aunt S. No, señor, it isn't that. God and his dear mother do not take away our flesh, but the child when he is born, and the mother when she dies; and my son—my own life—

Uncle R. There, Chana, don't mention Juan, the big hulk, with more ribs than a frigate.[81]

Aunt S. Don't believe it, señor; he just talks to hear himself, and don't know what he's saying. That boy of mine is more gentle and reasonable; he wouldn't say scat to the cat. He has served in the army six years, and has got his lights snuffed.[82]

Uncle R. His lights are those of midnight. He entered the uniform, but the uniform hasn't entered him.[83]

Don F. But what is the trouble, Aunt Sebastiana?

Aunt S. Señor, he can't get work.

Don F. Oh! I'll give him work, if you'll tell me a story.

Aunt S. My man, here, would do it better. Your worship knows that he has the name of being such a good story-teller. He never wants for a tale.

Don F. That is true; but to-day he's not in a talking mood.

Aunt S. If I hadn't—

Uncle R. Come, come, woman, don't keep his worship in expectation, like a watch-dog. A story, and a good one; for you could talk if you were under water.

Aunt S. Would your worship like to hear about the animas?

Don F. Without delay. Let us hear about the animas.

Aunt S. There was once a poor woman who had a niece that she brought up as straight as a bolt. The girl was a good girl, but very timid and bashful. The dread of what might become of this child, if she should be taken away, was the poor old woman's greatest anxiety. Therefore, she prayed to God, night and day, to send her niece a kind husband.

The aunt did errands for the house of a gossip of hers that kept boarders. Among the guests of this house was a great nabob, who condescended to say that he would marry if he could find a girl modest, industrious, and clever. You may be sure that the old woman's ear was wide open. A few days afterwards, she told the nabob that he would find what he was looking for in her niece, who was a treasure, a grain of gold, and so clever that she painted even the birds of the air. The gentleman said that he would like to know her, and would go to see her the next day. The old woman ran home so fast that she never saw the path, and told her niece to tidy up the house, and to comb her hair, and dress herself, the next morning, with great care, for they were going to have company.

When the gentleman came, the next day, he asked the girl if she knew how to spin.

"Spin, is it?" answered the aunt.

"She takes the hanks down like glasses of water."

"What have you done, madam?" cried the niece when the gentleman had gone, after giving her three hanks of flax to spin for him. "What have you done? And I don't know how to spin!"

"Go along," said the aunt, "go along, for a poor article that will sell well, and don't set your foot down,[84] but let it be as God will."

"Into what a thorn-brake you have put me, madam!" said the niece, crying.

"Well, see that you get out of it," answered the aunt; "but these three hanks must be spun, for your fortune depends upon them."

The poor girl went to her room in sore distress, and betook herself to imploring the blessed souls, for which she had great devotion.

While she prayed, three beautiful souls, clothed in white, appeared to her, and told her not to be troubled, for they would help her in return for the good she had done them by her prayers; and, taking each one a hank, they changed the flax into thread as fine as your hair in less time than would be worth one's while to name.

When the nabob came, the next day, he was astonished to see the result of so much diligence united with so much skill.

"Did I not tell your worship so!" exclaimed the old woman, beside herself with delight.

The gentleman asked the girl if she knew how to sew.

"And why shouldn't she?" answered the aunt with spirit. "Pieces of sewing are no more in her hands than cherries would be in the big snake's mouth."[85]

The gentleman then left her linen to make him three shirts, and, not to tire your worship, it happened just as it had the day before; and the same took place on the day after, when the nabob brought a satin waistcoat to be embroidered; except that, when, in answer to her many tears and great fervor, the souls appeared and said to the girl, "Don't be troubled, we are going to embroider this waistcoat for you," they added, "but it must be upon a condition."

"What condition?" inquired the girl anxiously.

"That you ask us to your wedding."

"Am I going to be married?" said the girl.

"Yes," answered the souls, "to that rich man."

And so it turned out, for, when the gentleman came, the next day, and saw his waistcoat so exquisitely wrought that it seemed as though hands of flesh could not have touched it, and so beautiful that to look at it fairly took away his eyesight, he told the aunt that he wanted to marry her niece.

The aunt was ready to dance for joy. Not so the niece, who said to her: "But, madam, what will become of me when my husband finds out that I don't know how to do anything?"

"Go along! and don't make up your mind," answered the aunt. "The blessed souls that have helped you in other straits are not going to desert you in this."

On the wedding-day, when the feasting was at its height, three old women entered the parlor. They were so beyond anything ugly that the nabob was struck dumb with horror.

The first had one arm very short, and the other so long that it dragged on the ground; the second was humped and crooked; and the eyes of the third stuck out like a crab's, and were redder than a tomato.

"Jesus, Maria!" said the astonished gentleman to his bride, "who are those three scarecrows?"

"They are three aunts of my father," she replied, "that I invited to my wedding."

The nabob, who was mannerly, went to speak to the aunts and find them seats.

"Tell me," he said to the first, "what makes one of your arms so short and the other so long?"

"My son," answered the old woman, "it was spinning so much that made them grow that way."

The nabob hurried to his wife and told her to burn her distaff and spindle, and to take care that she never let him see her spin.

He immediately asked the second old woman what made her so humpbacked and crooked.

"My son," she answered, "I grew so by working all the while at my broidery-frame."

With three strides the gentleman put himself beside his wife, and said to her: "Go this minute, and burn your broidery-frame, and take care that in the lifetime of God I do not catch you with another."

Then he went to the third old woman, and asked her what made her eyes look so red and as if they were going to burst?

"My son," she answered, giving them a frightful roll, "this comes of continual sewing, and of keeping my head bent over the work."

Before the words were out of her mouth, the nabob was at his wife's side: "Go," said he, "gather all your needles and thread, and throw them into the well, and bear in mind that the day I find you sewing, I will sue for a divorce. The sight of the halter on another's neck is warning enough for me."

Aunt S. And now, Señor Don Fernan, my story is ended; I hope that it has pleased you?

Don F. Ever so much, Aunt Sebastiana; but what I learn from it is, that the souls, notwithstanding that they are blessed, are very tricky.

Aunt S. Now, señor, and is your worship going to insist upon doctrine in a romance, as if it were an example? Why, stories are only to make us laugh, and grow better without precept or name of lesson. God will have a little of all.

Don F. True, Aunt Sebastiana; and what you express with your simple good sense is more wholesome than the critical reverence of the overstrict. But, uncle, I am not going without another to correspond with this, and it is your turn now. If, as I think you have told me that you were on other occasions, you are a devotee of San Tomas,[86] here are some Havanas as an offering to his saintship.

Uncle R. Not to disoblige your worship.

Don F. But I must have the story; I want it for a purpose.

Uncle R. By which your worship means to say that, without an ochavo, you can't make up the real.[87] Well, let me think. Since the talk is about animas, animas it is. Their sodality in a certain place had for mayordomo a poor bread-lost[88] of a member, one of those who are always like the sheep that misses the mouthful.[89] He was without a cloak, and went with teeth chattering and limbs benumbed with cold. What does he do but go and order himself a cloak made, and, without so much as saying chuz or muz,[90] or by your leave, sirs, take money from the funds of the animas to pay for it. When it came home, he put it on, and went into the street as consequential and high-stomached as those rich folks recently raised from the dust. But at every step he took, some one gave the cloak a jerk, and though he kept a sharp lookout he could not see who. The instant he drew it up on the left shoulder, down it slid from the right, causing him to keep a continual hitch, hitch. You would have thought he had a thorn in his foot.

As he went along, pestered and chap-fallen, trying to make out what it could mean, he met a gossip of his, who was mayordomo to the Hermandad del Santísimo.[91] This fellow was stalking loftily, filling the street with his air that said, Get out of the way, I am coming. After "How d'ye do?" this one asked the other, "What is the matter, comrade, that you seem so down at the mouth lately?"

"Matter enough!" answered he of the souls, pulling his cloak up on the right shoulder while it slipped off from the left. "Know that in the beginning of the winter I found myself in difficulties. I had sown a pegujar[92] without seeing the color of wheat. My wife brought me two boys, when, with the nine I had already, one would have been too many; the delivery cost her a long sickness, and me the eyes of my face. In few, I was just stuck to the wall like a star-lizard, and hungrier than an ex-minister. I had to borrow money of the souls to get this cloak; but what the seven ails it I don't know, for, whenever I put it on, it seems as though somebody was giving it a pull here and a jerk there. Two rudder-pins couldn't hold it fast to my shoulders."

"You did wrong, my friend," responded the steward of El Santísimo. "If, like me, you had taken a loan of a great powerful and giving personage, you wouldn't have to go about as you do, chased and persecuted for the debt. If you borrow of miserable destitute wretches, what can you expect but that the poor things will try to get back their own when they need it so much?"