And the phantom, enveloping his face with its burning breath, fixed a glance upon him which pierced his eyes, and descended lower and lower until it tore his very vitals.
"Pardon, Pimento!" groaned the wounded man, terrified by the nightmare, and trembling like a child.
Yes, he ought to forgive him. He had killed him, it was true; but he should consider that he had been the first to attack him. Come! Men who are men ought to be reasonable! It was he who was to blame!
But the dead do not listen to reason, and the spectre, behaving like a bandit, smiled fiercely, and with a bound, landed on the bed, and seated himself upon him, pressing upon the sick man's wound with all his weight.
Batiste groaned painfully, unable to move and cast off the heavy mass.
He tried to persuade him, calling him Toni with familiar tenderness, instead of designating him by his nickname.
"Toni, you are hurting me!"
That was just what the phantom wished, to hurt him, and not satisfied with this, he snatched from him with his glance alone his rags and bandages, and afterward sank his cruel nails into the deep wound, and pulled apart the edges, making him scream with pain.
"Ay! Ay!... Pimento, pardon me!"
Such was his pain that his tremblings, surging up from the shoulder to his head, made his cropped hair bristle, and stand erect, and then it began to curl with the contraction of the pain until it turned into a horrible tangle of serpents.
Then a horrible thing happened. The ghost, seizing him by his strange hair, finally spoke.
"Come ... come...." it said, pulling him along.
It dragged him along with superhuman swiftness, led him flying or swimming, he did not know which, across a space both light and slippery; dizzily they seemed to float toward a red spot which stood out in the far, far distance.
The stain grew larger, it looked in shape like the door of his bedroom, and after it poured out a dense, nauseating smoke, a stench of burning straw which prevented him from breathing.
It must be the mouth of hell: Pimento would hurl him into it, into the immense fire whose splendour lit up the door. Fear conquered his paralysis. He gave a fearful cry, finally moved his arms, and with a back stroke of his hand, hurled Pimento and the strange hair away from him.
Now he had his eyes well opened; the phantom had disappeared. He had been dreaming: it was doubtless a feverish nightmare: now he found himself again in bed with poor Teresa, who, still dressed, was snoring laboriously at his side.
But no; the delirium continued. What strange light was illumining his bedroom? He still saw the mouth of hell, which was like the door of his room, ejecting smoke and ruddy splendour. Was he asleep? He rubbed his eyes, moved his arms, and sat up in bed.
No: he was awake and wide awake.
The door was growing redder all the time, the smoke was denser, he heard muffled cracklings as of cane-brake bursting, licked by tongues of flame, and even saw the sparks dance, and cling like flies of fire to the cretonne curtain which closed the room. He heard a desperate steady barking, like a furiously tolling bell sounding an alarm.
Christ!... The conviction of reality suddenly leaped to his mind, and maddened him.
"Teresa! Teresa!... Up!"
And with the first push, he flung her out of bed. Then he ran to the children's room, and with shouts and blows pulled them out in their shirts, like an idiotic, frightened flock which runs before the stick without knowing where it is going. The roof of his room was already burning, casting a shower of sparks over the bed.
To Batiste, blinded by the smoke, the minutes seemed like centuries till he got the door open; and through it, maddened with terror, all the family rushed out in their nightclothes and ran to the road.
Here, a little more serene, they took count.
All; they were all there, even the poor dog which howled sadly as it watched the burning house.
Teresa embraced her daughter, who, forgetting her danger, trembled with shame, upon seeing herself in her chemise in the middle of the _huerta_, and seated herself upon a sloping bank, shrinking up with modesty, resting her chin upon the knees, and drawing down her white linen night-robe in order to cover her feet.
The two little ones, frightened, took refuge in the arms of their elder brother, and the father rushed about like a madman, roaring maledictions.
Thieves! How well they had known how to do it! They had set fire to the farm-house from all four sides, it had burst into flames from top to bottom; even the corral with its stable and its sheds was crowned with flames.
From it there came forth desperate neighings, cacklings of terror, fierce gruntings; but the farm-house, insensible to the wails of those who were roasting in its depths, went on sending up curved tongues of fire through the door and the windows; and from its burning roof there rose an enormous spiral of white smoke, which reflecting the fire took on a rosy transparency.
The weather had changed: the night was calm, the wind did not blow and the blue of the sky was dimmed only by the columns of smoke, between whose white wisps the curious stars appeared.
Teresa was struggling with her husband, who, recovered from his painful surprise, and spurred on by his interests, which incited him to commit follies, wished to enter the fiery inferno. Just one moment, nothing more: only the time necessary to take from the bedroom the little sack of money, the profit of the harvest.
Ah! Good Teresa! Even now it was no longer necessary to restrain the husband, who endured her violent grasp. A farm-house soon burns; straw and canes love fire. The roof came down with a crash,--that erect roof which the neighbours looked upon as an insult--and out of the enormous bed of live-coals arose a frightful column of sparks, in whose uncertain and vacillating light the _huerta_ seemed to move with fantastic grimaces.
The sides of the corral stirred heavily as if within them a legion of demons were rushing about and striking them. Engarlanded with flame the fowls leaped forth, trying to fly, though burning alive.
A piece of wall of mud and stakes fell, and through the black breach there came forth like a lightning flash, a terrible monster, ejecting smoke through its nostrils, shaking its mane of sparks, desperately beating its tail like a broom of flame, which scattered a stench of burning hair.
It was the horse. With a prodigious bound, he leaped over the family, and ran madly through the fields, instinctively seeking the canal, into which he fell with the sizzling hiss of red-hot iron when it strikes water.
Behind him, dragging itself along like a drunken demon emitting frightful grunts, came another spectre of fire, the pig, which fell to the ground in the middle of the field, burning like a torch of grease.
There remained now only the walls and the grape-vines with their twisted runners distorted by fire, and the posts, which stood up like bars of ink over the red background.
Batistet, in his longing to save something, ran recklessly over the paths, shouting, beating at the doors of the neighbouring farm-houses, which seemed to wink in the reflection of the fire.
"Help! Help! Fire! Fire!"
His shouts died away, raising a funereal echo, like that heard amid ruins and in cemeteries.
The father smiled cruelly. He was calling in vain. The _huerta_ was deaf to them. There were eyes within those white farm-houses, which looked curiously out through the cracks; perhaps there were mouths which laughed with infernal glee, but not one generous voice to say "Here I am!"
Bread! At what a cost it is earned! And how evil it makes man!
In one farm-house there was burning a pale light, yellowing and sad.
Teresa, confused by her misfortune, wished to go there to implore help, with the hope of some relief, of some miracle which she longed for in their misfortune.
Her husband held her back with an expression of terror. No: not there.
Anywhere but there.
And like a man who has fallen low, so low that he already is unable to feel any remorse, he shifted his gaze from the fire and fixed it on that pale light, yellowish and sad; the light of a taper which glows without lustre, fed by an atmosphere in which might almost be perceived the fluttering of the dead.
Good-bye, Pimento! You were departing from the world well-served. The farm-house and the fortune of the odious intruder were lighting up your corpse with merrier splendour than the candles bought by the bereaved Pepeta, mere yellowish tears of light.
Batistet returned desperate from his useless trip. Nobody had answered.
The plain, silent and scowling, had said good-bye to them for ever.
They were more alone than if they had been in the midst of a desert; the solitude of hatred was a thousand times worse than that of Nature.