The Cited
Did Alonzo Morelos begrudge liberty or happiness to Felipe Guayos? Surely the life of a Havanese artisan could have mattered little to a prosperous lawyer. Politics may have set the big man’s enmity against the little one, or it may possibly have been that more advanced form of politics that is called patriotism. It was a good time for a man to refrain from airing his opinions, unless they were orthodox, for the revolution of 1829 had just been declared. If Guayos was a party to this rising he was an indifferent and inactive one, or else he kept his counsel wondrous well. His acquaintances testified that he was industrious,—that is, he practised what in Havana passed for industry,—was fond of his wife, cared little for cock-fighting or the bull-ring, was of placid demeanor, and was altogether the sort of man who could be relied on not to attend secret meetings or lose valued sleep by drilling in hot barns or chigger-infested clearings in the woods. Yet it was on Morelos’s oath that this obscure citizen was arrested.
The tongues clacked up and down the by-ways: What was the rich man’s interest in the poor one? the professional man’s in the mechanic? the man of society in the man unknown? Then it was true, eh? that the mulatto (for Guayos was a “yellow man”) had spoken to the lawyer familiarly in the street in presence of ladies and officers? Maybe. The laundress at the second house down the street had said so, but, fie! it was only on a matter of business. Tut! Business was no excuse, considering that Don Alonzo was of Spanish parentage, while the other had been nothing but a Cuban for two centuries. To forget this breach or try to bridge it, to presume on the tolerance of an occasional employer, unless one were a slave or a servant and used to indulgence—that was not to be forgiven. A rumor that travelled more quietly was that Morelos himself was a revolutionary and had caused this arrest as a blind, or in order to silence a tongue that might speak damage. A third rumor, that went in a whisper, and so went farther than the others, said that the yellow man had a pretty wife, and that the lawyer had been seen to call at the little house in the master’s absence. This tale seemed to be doubted, for the wife of the butcher gave it as her opinion that the Señora Guayos was too rusty of complexion to be pleasing, and the Señor Morelos was so faultless in his appearance and his taste; the club steward’s unmarried sister declared the señora’s manners to be rustic and her voice loud; the woman in the carpenter’s family would lend no ear to such a scandal because the subject of it was dumpy, shapeless, and dressed absurdly, even for the wife of a stonemason. Howbeit, the little woman was now in grief, for her husband lay in jail awaiting trial on the gravest charge that could be brought against a Cuban,—the charge of treason. In that day, as on many sad days that were to follow, to be charged with disaffection toward the crown was virtually to be sentenced to death.
Cuban law was at least as tardy and involved as any, but on the day when they tried Guayos it was strangely brisk. The stifling, unclean court-room was crowded, but of all the company none seemed to feel so little concern in the proceedings as the accused man himself. Through an open window he saw a couple of palms swinging softly against the sky in the warm wind. The trees appeared to pacify, to fascinate him. They were his realities, and the goggling throng, the judge, the officers, were visions. Often when his name was spoken by a witness or examiner he would look around with a start, then fall into his dreams again. His case was traversed without waste of words. Evidence was adduced to prove that he had once owned a gun, had attended a certain meeting, had carried letters to such and such persons, had spoken equivocal phrases, had been seen to lift his nose in passing certain men, had admitted a suspect to his house at night. He was declared guilty. The celerity in reaching this verdict led his friends to believe that it had been agreed upon in advance.
During the last hour of the trial Guayos had aroused from his revery, had turned from the window, and had fixed his eyes steadily on Morelos, who was seated among the lawyers in the centre of the room. Morelos returned the gaze calmly for a time; then he frowned and turned the pages of a law-book. After a little he moistened his lips with his tongue, took a studied attitude of listlessness, and showed signs of weariness and boredom. He did not look at the prisoner again until the verdict had been given.
When the chief judge put the usual question as to whether the convicted man had anything to say why death-sentence should not be passed upon him, Guayos arose, his face pale but fixed in a stony calm. Looking at neither judge nor audience, but straight at his accuser, with eyes that were no longer the eyes that had dreamed upon the palms, so great and black they were and searching, he said, in a clear, tense voice, “I go to my death. It is useless to speak, for you have condemned me. But I cite you, Don Alonzo Morelos, to appear beside me at the bar of God, one year from my death-day, and testify how I came to my end.”
There was a moment of silence; then moans and murmurs in the crowd. The lawyer was white, as with wrath. The judges gestured to the officers and left the bench. The court was cleared. As he was led away, Guayos looked once more at the palms, and half smiled as a breath of freshened air came in at the window. Palms! Where had he been told of them? What did they mean? Had they not somewhere, in some far land, been waved in victory when One innocent was about to suffer? Were not palms awarded in another world to the meek and the honest who had been despitefully used in this?
Last to leave the room was Morelos. He had remained, seated at a table, biting a pen, fingering some papers, gazing abstractedly at the vacant bench. The whoop of a barefooted, black-faced urchin in the corridor roused him. With a scowl and a shrug he slowly resumed his hat and went to his home by a roundabout way.
Priests called daily at the prison. Guayos made no appeal, asked for no delay. The loyalists were clamoring for an example that should stay the revolution. In a week the condemned man was hanged. An odd thing happened at the execution: the rope had slipped a little, and the knot, working toward the front, had left an impress there after the body was cut down, as of two crossed fingers. The friends of Guayos held this to be a sign of grace.
Now, if there were any in the world to pray for the peace of a human soul, it was not the soul of Guayos that asked it. He had affirmed his innocence to the end, had been shrived, had gone to the gallows with a dauntless tread, and there were palm branches on his coffin. But the lawyer? In a month after the trial white hairs appeared among his locks, hitherto as black as coal. He grew gray and dry in his complexion, his shoulders began to stoop, his eyes lost their clearness and boldness, his mouth was no longer firm. Often he wore a harried, hunted look. Yet they said he was growing softer in his humor, that he oftener went to church, that he gave more for charity than other men of his means, and that if the widow Guayos did not know from whom the five hundred pesetas came that a messenger left at her home one night the neighbors pretended to. Don Morelos became an object of a wider interest than he knew. Even the boys in the street would point as he passed, with head bent and hands clasped behind his back, and whisper, “There goes El Citado” (the cited), and among the commoners he was known as well by that name as by the one his parents had given to him. But he appeared less and less in public. He began to neglect his practice; he resigned from his club; he avoided the company of his former associates, taking his walks at night alone, even though the sky was moonless, storms were threatening, and the cut-throat crew were abroad that made life at some hours and in some quarters of the city not of a pin’s fee in value. His housekeeper told a neighbor that on some nights he paced the floor till dawn, and that now and again he would mutter to himself and appear to strike something. Was he smiting his own heart?