Rainbows End | Page 8

is dangerous. He raised his hand to me and to Don Pablo."
Sebastian's protests were drowned by the angry voices of the others.
"Tie him to yonder grating," directed Esteban, who was still in the grip
of a senseless rage. "Flog him well and make haste about it."
Sebastian, who had no time in which to recover himself, made but a
weak resistance when Pancho Cueto locked his wrists into a pair of
clumsy, old-fashioned manacles, first passing the chain around one of
the bars of the iron window-grating which Esteban had indicated.
Sebastian felt that his whole world was tumbling about his ears. He
thought he must be dreaming.
Cueto swung a heavy lash; the sound of his blows echoed through the
quinta, and they summoned, among others, Dona Isabel, who watched
the scene from behind her shutter with much satisfaction. The guests
looked on approvingly.
Sebastian made no outcry. The face he turned to his master, however,
was puckered with reproach and bewilderment. The whip bit deep; it
drew blood and raised welts the thickness of one's thumb; nevertheless,
for the first few moments the victim suffered less in body than in spirit.
His brain was so benumbed, so shocked with other excitations, that he
was well-nigh insensible to physical pain. That Evangelina, flesh of his
flesh, had been sold, that his lifelong faithfulness had brought such
reward as this, that Esteban, light of his soul, had turned against
him--all this was simply astounding. More his simple mind could not
compass for the moment. Gradually, however, he began to resent the
shrieking injustice of it all, and unsuspected forces gathered inside of
him. They grew until his frame was shaken by primitive savage
impulses.
After a time Don Esteban cried: "That will do, Cueto! Leave him now
for the flies to punish. They will remind him of his insolence."
Then the guests departed, and Esteban staggered into the house and

went to bed.
All that morning Sebastian stood with his hands chained high over his
head. The sun grew hotter and ever hotter upon his lacerated back: the
blood dried and clotted there; a cloud of flies gathered, swarming over
the raw gashes left by Cueto's whip.
Before leaving for Don Pablo's quinta Evangelina came to bid her
father an agonized farewell, and for a long time after she had gone the
old man stood motionless, senseless, scarcely breathing. Nor did the
other slaves venture to approach him to offer sympathy or succor. They
passed with heads averted and with fear in their hearts.
Since Don Esteban's nerves, or perhaps it was his conscience, did not
permit him to sleep, he arose about noon-time and dressed himself. He
was still drunk, and the mad rage of the early morning still possessed
him; therefore, when he mounted his horse he pretended not to see the
figure chained to the window-grating. Sebastian's affection for his
master was doglike and he had taken his punishment as a dog takes his,
more in surprise than in anger, but at this proof of callous indifference a
fire kindled in the old fellow's breast, hotter by far than the fever from
his fly- blown scores. He was thirsty, too, but that was the least of his
sufferings.
Sometime during the afternoon the negro heard himself addressed
through the window against the bars of which he leaned. The speaker
was Dona Isabel. She had waited patiently until she knew he must be
faint from exhaustion and then she had let herself into the room behind
the grating, whence she could talk to him without fear of observation.
"Do you suffer, Sebastian?" she began in a tone of gentleness and pity.
"Yes, mistress." The speaker's tongue was thick and swollen.
"La! La! What a crime! And you the most faithful slave in all Cuba!"
"Yes, mistress."

"Can I help you?"
The negro raised his head; he shook his body to rid himself of the
insects which were devouring him.
"Give me a drink of water," he said, hoarsely.
"Surely, a great gourdful, all cool and dripping from the well. But first I
want you to tell me something. Come now, let us have an
understanding with each other."
"A drink, for the love of Christ," panted the old man, and Dona Isabel
saw how cracked and dry were his thick lips, how near the torture had
come to prostrating him.
"I'll do more," she promised, and her voice was like honey. "I'll tell
Pancho Cueto to unlock you, even if I risk Esteban's anger by so doing.
You have suffered too much, my good fellow. Indeed you have. Well, I
can help you now and in the future, or--I can make your life just such a
misery as it has been to-day. Will you be my friend? Will