Don Jaime

“ Then Don Jaime smiled very bitterly. For the moment he had forgotten that his Jacinto Quesada had been born a Spaniard of the people. He swore a vile oath.
"But no, he will be none of those things!" he said. "Cascaras! I am becoming an old driveling fool."
Don Jaime knew that God smiles sardonically upon the Spaniard of the people who seeks to rise in the world. He knew that, just as the United States is a country of unlimited opportunities, just so is Spain a country of opportunities limited and few. The Spaniard of the people, strong with heart and gusto, has but two careers open to him. ”

“ Camila was never cross to Don Jaime and she was never demonstrative. When the sun was shining the two could be seen walking along those artificial terraces in silence, Camila wondering when the felicity would begin that she had always associated with social position, Don Jaime rejoicing merely in the sunlight and anxiously estimating the approach of a cloud. ”

“ A Febrer wishing to marry a peasant of Can Mallorquí! The world was no longer the same; it seemed as if all the laws of the universe were turned upside down, as if the sea were about to cover the island, and that in future the almond trees would put forth their flowers above the waves; but had Don Jaime realized what this desire of his signified? ”

“ When would Don Jaime speak to his father about this family treasure? Since he had put off asking he must not forget his promise to present him another knife. What could a man like himself do, lacking such a companion? Where could he present himself?
"Don't worry," said Febrer. "One of these days I'll go to town. You may count on the gift."
One morning Jaime started for Iviza, eager for a fresh experience, and to renew and vary his impressions in a less rural atmosphere. Iviza seemed to him now like a great city, even to him who had traveled over all Europe. ”

“ Antonia made a gesture of protest. Don Jaime was the finest man on the island. She said so, she who had worshipped him ever since she led him by the hand, in his short trousers, walking among the pines near the castle of Bellver. He was one of the family—of that family of arrogant grand seigniors, and no more could be said.
"And is she of good family?" she questioned in an effort to force her master's reticence. "Of a family of caballeros; undoubtedly the very best in the island—but no—from Madrid, perhaps. Some sweetheart you found when you lived there." ”

“ On the other hand, he said that among his wealthy clients there was no attempt to disguise the desire for a dynastic change: the portrait of Don Jaime hangs in a place of honour in many of the great houses which he visits in the course of his business, and the general devotion of this class to Carlism is open and avowed.
“But,” he said, “what can be done by a party which is all head and no body? The army of Don Jaime may be well supplied with would-be officers and with all the munitions of war, but they have no troops behind them, in the Basque Provinces or anywhere else.” ”

“ She is bery clever, she plays piano and biolin.” Jaime always assumed b and v to be interchangeable in English as they so often are in Spanish. “Her husband is topographic engineer. Candalaria helps him to draw the geographic carts.”
Don Jaime’s sister is married to an officer of engineers; she draws so nicely that she often helps her husband in making his army maps. She is a small, energetic woman with consuming eyes, fiery, energetic, practical, everything Don Jaime is not. She had come to Madrid to see her brother and the carnival. ”

“ He was neither as tall nor as strong as the señor; he would scarcely come up to Don Jaime's ear, but he was agile, and nobody surpassed him in the dance: he could dance whole hours until he tired out every girl in the parish. From his long season at the prison he had returned with a pale and waxy complexion, the complexion of a cloistered nun; but now he was dark like everybody else, with his face bronzed and tanned by the sea air and the African sun of the island. He lived in the mountain, in a hut at the edge of the pine woods near the charcoal-makers, who supplied fuel for his forge. ”

“ I dined with Don Diego, and when his daughter came in with dessert he told her that it was her fault I had gone supperless to bed.
“It shall not happen again,” said she.
“Would you like to come with me to our Lady of Atocha?” said I.
“I should like it very much,” she replied, with a side-glance at her father.
“My girl,” said Don Diego, “true devotion and merriment go together, and the reason is that the truly devout person has trust in God and in the honesty of all men. Thus you can trust in Don Jaime as an honest man, though he has not the good fortune to be born in Spain.” ”

“ When Can Mallorquí was sold the tower had not been included in the contract, possibly through oversight because it seemed worthless. Pèp could do as he liked with it, Don Jaime assured him. Probably he would never return to the place, forgotten since the days of his youth.
When the peasant spoke of future remuneration, Don Jaime silenced him with the gesture of a gran señor. Then he glanced at the girl. She was very pretty; she looked like a señorita in disguise; the young fellows on the island must be wild over her. ”

“ His face wore that aspect of serenity and peace which often appears on men who have died a violent death. A quiet smile played upon his lips. Though only commenced a few days before, the short connection I had had with Don Jaime was now closed. As regards the mysterious link which bound me to Don Tomas, that was not broken for some time after ward.
A year had passed since the death of the Biscayan. I had quitted Mexico. Besides the promise I had given Don Jaime, a less romantic motive, one quite personal, led me into Spain. The embers of the civil war were then fast dying out. ”

“ Patsy asked. The Don always had a flower in his buttonhole, though he often had not a dollar in his pocket.
“It is monthly roses,” said the Don, settling the bud in his coat; “they give every moon. Let us now to the parlor of the great Velasquez.”
We always began with the Velasquez room, studying some one picture, and passing the rest in review. Don Jaime professed great admiration for the portrait of the Fool of Coria, one of the{321} hombres de placer—literally, men of pleasure—of the court. The fool is seated on a stone, with a gourd on either side; his hands rest idly on his knee. ”

“ Feminine curiosity wished to read them, but only Don Horacio Febrer, Jaime's grandfather, received books in Majorca, and the small volumes of "Indiana" and "Lelia," belonging to him, passed from hand to hand without being understood by their readers. A married woman who wrote books and lived with a man who was not her husband! Doña Elvira, Jaime's grandmother, a señora from Mexico, whose portrait he had so often seen, and whom he imagined always dressed in white with her eyes turned heavenward and her gilded harp between her knees, called upon the retiring woman at Son Vent. ”

“ His grandson, he would say, had been born in a glorious epoch, the best of all. Don Horacio recollected the disagreements with his terrible father that had compelled him to travel through Europe; that caballero who had gone out to meet King Ferdinand, to ask him for the reëstablishment of ancient usages, and who blessed his sons, saying: "May God make you a good inquisitor!"
Then he would display before Jaime great books containing views of splendid capitals in which he had lived, and which to the boy seemed like cities beheld in a dream. ”

“ Always getting into scrapes, and dragging your friends into them with you. But what now? Here we are under cover, and I ain't so sorry. But there must have been fifty of those natives down below, as well as the three white men. Jaime and his crew, I suppose?"
"Jaime for sure, and sorry he'll be that he ventured to follow," answered Jim curtly. "I tell you straight, that fellow has been no end of a bother to me. And now, to add to all the mischief he's done, he deliberately fires at Sadie. Luckily the bullet just missed her. But there you are! I say he'll live to be sorry. ”

“ I cannot blame him because he is constant,
True love is better than silver or gold.
⁠A costly jewel to instantly gave him,
Then in her trembling hand she took a knife;
One fatal stroke before they could save her,
Quickly put an end to her life.
⁠Great lamentation was made for this lady:
Jamie on board the ship he did steer
Unto Old England he homeward came sailing,
With a longing desire to meet with his dear.
⁠But when her father head he was returning
He wrote a letter to the batswain, his friend,
Saging, a handsome reward I will give you,
If you the life of young Jamie will end. ”

“ And he extended his arms with a gesture indicating immensity, as if no one could measure the fortune of Jaime, adding convincingly:
"A Febrer is never poor. You can never be that. Better days will come."
Jaime ceased trying to make him realize his poverty. If he thought him rich so much the better. Thus those youths, who knew no broader horizon than that of the island, could not say that he was a ruined man seeking to marry into Pèp's family in order to recover the lands of Can Mallorquí.
Why should the peasant be so surprised at his desire to marry Margalida? ”

“ The other is dated Antrim, July, 1884, and is her answer to my sectarian appeal.
[Pg 170] "Dear boy," she says, "Antrim has had many soldier sons in far-off lands, but you are the first, I think, to have the privilege of visiting the Holy Land. Jamie and I are proud of you. All the old friends have read your letter. They can hardly believe it. Don't worry about our souls. When we come one by one in the twilight of life, each of us, Jamie and I, will have our sheaves. They will be little ones, but we are little people. I want no glory here or hereafter that Jamie cannot share. ”

“ How dark the cell, how heavy the shackles! It is shameful! I am an assassin! Every one has left me! How blue the sky is! How fresh and green the fields! I can’t get out with these horrible irons on my wrists!”
The priest came in time to administer the extreme unction. Jaime died shortly after and the doctor returned home with the packet under his arm. Once in his study, before going to bed, he decided to open the bundle which Jaime had give him with so much mystery. ”

“ There were hundreds of leaves, but each leaf was a banknote of four thousand reals.
Daylight glimmered through the curtains. Doctor Santos had not closed his eyes. He was the owner, the rightful owner of more than four thousand pésétas (one hundred thousand dollars) and the donation was absolutely legitimate. Jaime’s mind, as no one knew better than he, was perfectly clear at the time he made the gift. What should he do with all that money! He would be happy, all his friends would be happy, in [34] fact, everyone would be happy! ”

“ Jaime once more declared to himself. It seemed impossible that men do not realize this great truth; that they dwell in eternal night, believing that they make new things in the glow of illusions which rise daily, as rises the great deception of the sun to accompany us through the infinite, which is dark, but which seems to us blue and radiant with light.
When Febrer thought this, the sun had already set. The sea was almost black, the sky a leaden gray, and in the fog on the horizon the lightning quivered and flashed. Jaime felt on his face and on his hands the moist kiss of drops of rain. ”

“ The loud laughter of the young men attracted his attention as something which he vaguely comprehended as directed against himself with hostile intent. What was that angry lamb saying? The singer's voice, his rustic pronunciation, and the continual clucking with which he ended the verses, were scarcely intelligible to Jaime, but he gradually began to realize that the ballad was directed at young women who desired to abandon the field, to marry caballeros, and who longed to wear the same ornaments as city ladies. ”

“ And thereupon Jamie was treated to a countenance of such solemnity, to folded hands and uprolled eyes—for one instant he caught an expression with which he had been familiar in his boyhood—that he could not help laughing.
“You know,” said Jamie, very soberly, “that I’ve been thinking lately that being a preacher wouldn’t be such a bad profession. You might do a whole lot worse things than try to teach other men to come clean, to shoot straight, to ride hard, to be real men spiritually as well as physically.”
The Scout Master shuffled ahead and beat Jamie to the hot-dog stand. ”

“ Finally, as it became evident that it would be long before he could fly, Jamie took him out of the nest, and made a nice little cage for him, and used to feed him every day, and he would hop about and seem tolerably contented; but it was evident that he would be a lame-winged robin all his days.
Jamie’s mother told him that Tip-Top’s history was an allegory.
“I don’t know what you mean, mamma,” said Jamie.
“When something in a bird’s life is like something in a boy’s life, or when a story is similar in its meaning to reality, we call it an allegory. ”

“ As for Jamie—poor Jamie! The great sorrow of his life is that he knows now he can never walk. For a time we all had hopes. He was here at the Sanatorium under Dr. Ames for a year, and he improved to such an extent that he can go now with crutches. But the poor boy will always be a cripple—so far as his feet are concerned, but never as regards anything else. Someway, after you know Jamie, you seldom think of him as a cripple, his SOUL is so free. I can't explain it, but you'll know what I mean when you see him ”