The Torrent | Page 7

not seen! For the don Jaime who spoke for the
unknown party in the deal transferred the cash to the same don Jaime
who spoke for the owner of the horse. Result: the rustic bought an
animal, without chaffering, at double its value, having in addition
borrowed a lot of money at cut-throat interest. In every turn-over of this
sort don Jaime doubled his principal. New straits inevitably developed
for the dupe; the interest kept piling up; hence new concessions, still
more ruinous than the first, that don Jaime might be placated and give
the purchaser a month's reprieve.
Every Wednesday, which was market-day in Alcira and brought a great
crowd of orchard-folk to town, the street where don Jaime lived was the
busiest in the city. People came in droves to ask for renewal of their
notes, each leaving a tip of several pesetas usually, not to be counted
against the debt itself. Others, humbly, timidly, as if they had come to
rob the grasping Shylock, would ask for loans; and the strange thing
about it, as the malicious noted, was that all these people, after leaving
everything they owned in don Jaime's hands, went off content, their
faces beaming with satisfaction, as if they had just been rescued from a
danger.

This was don Jaime's chief skill. He had the trick of making usury look
like kindness; he always spoke of those fellows, those hidden owners of
the money and the horses--heartless wretches who were "after him,"
holding him responsible for the short-comings of all their debtors. The
burdens he thus supposedly assumed won him a reputation as a
kind-hearted soul, and such confidence was the wily old demon able to
instill in his victims that when mortgages were foreclosed on homes or
fields, many of the unfortunates despoiled, would say, resignedly:
"It's not his fault. What could the poor man do if they forced him to it?
It's those other fellows who are sucking the blood of us poor folks."
And so, quietly, leisurely, tranquilly, don Jaime got possession of a
field here, then another there, then a third between the two; and in a
few years he had rounded out a beautiful orchard of orange-trees with
virtually no expenditure of capital at all. Thus his property went on
increasing, and, with his radiant smile, his spectacles on his forehead
and his paunch growing fatter and fatter, he could be seen surrounded
by new victims, addressing them with the affectionate tu, patting them
on the back, and vowing that this weakness he had for the doing of
favors would some day bring him to dying like a dog in the gutter.
Thus he went on prospering. Nor was all the scoffing of city people of
any avail in shaking the confidence reposed in him by that flock of
rustics, who feared him as they feared the Law itself and believed in
him as they believed in God.
A loan to a spendthrift eldest son made him the proprietor of the fine
city mansion, which came to be known as "the Brull place." From that
date he began to hob-nob with the large real-estate owners of the city,
who, though they despised this upstart, made a small place for him in
their midst with the instinctive solidarity that characterizes the
freemasonry of money. To gain a little more standing for his name, he
became a votary of San Bernardo, contributed to the funds for church
festivals, and danced attendance on the alcalde, whoever that "mayor"
might be. In his eyes now, the only people in Alcira were such as
collected thousands of duros, whenever harvest time came around. The
rest were rabble, rabble, sir!

Then, at last he resigned the petty offices he had been filling; and
handing his usury business over to those who formerly had served him
as go-betweens, he set himself to the task of marrying off his son and
sole heir, Ramon, an idling ne'er-do-well, who was always getting into
trouble and upsetting the tranquil comfort that surrounded old Brull as
he rested from his plunderings.
The father felt the satisfaction of a bully in having such a tall, strong,
daring and insolent son, a boy who compelled respect in cafes and
clubs more with his fists than with the special privileges conferred in
small towns by wealth. Let anyone dare make fun of the old usurer
when he had such a fire-eater to protect him!
Ramon had wanted to join the Army; but every time he referred to what
he called his vocation, his father would fly into a rage. "Do you think
that is what I've worked for all these years?" He could remember the
time when, as a poor clerk, he had been forced to fawn on his superiors
and listen humbly, cringingly,