XIII
The casa at San Isidro had verandas running on either side of its long row of rooms. This row began with the kitchen, store and sleeping rooms, and ended with the comidor and sitting-room. The verandas ran the entire ninety feet in a straight line until they reached the comidor. There they turned at right angles, making thus an outer and an inner corner. These angles enclosed the dining and living rooms. The inner veranda was a sheltered nook when the rain swept up from the savannas down by the sea, the outer one a haven of delightful coolness when the sun glowed in the west and threw its scorching beams, hot and melting, into the inner corner. Here were the steps leading down the very slight incline into the yard and flower garden. Here, to this inner corner, were the bulls and horses driven or led, for mounting or dismounting; here the trunks and boxes of visitors were carried up and into the house; and this was what was happening now.
Agueda looked on listlessly as Felisa's large trunk and basket trunk and Don Noé's various boxes and portmanteaus were deposited with reproachful thumps upon the floor. The peons who had carried them, shining with moisture, dripping streams of water, wiped their brows with hardened forefingers, and snapped the drops from nature's laboratory off on to the ground. They had carried the luggage slung upon poles across country. For this duty six or eight of them were required, for there was no cart road the way that they must come, as the broad camino ran neither to the boat landing, nor extended to the plantation of San Isidro.
The men stood awkwardly about. One could see that they were expectant of a few centavos in payment for this unusual labour. Don Noé kept himself religiously secluded upon the corner of the outer veranda. He well knew that the luggage had arrived. The struggle up the steps, the shuffle of men's feet, the scraping sort of hobble from callous soles, reached his ear. The heavy setting down of boxes shook the uncarpeted bare house, but Don Noé was consciously oblivious of all this. He had come to pay a long visit, and thus redeem a depleted bank account. Should he begin at the first hour to throw away money among these shiftless peons? Beltran had doubtless plenty of them. Such menial work came within the rule of the general demand. To be sure, he had brought many small boxes and portmanteaus. Don Noé thought it a sure sign of a gentleman to travel with all the small pieces that he and a porter or two could carry between them.
A good-sized trunk would easily have held Don Noé's wardrobe, but there was a certain amount of style in staggering out of a car or off a steamer, loaded down with a parcel of canes, fishing-rods, and a gun-case, while the weary servant, who did not care a fig for glory, stumbled along behind with portmanteaus, bags, and hat boxes. It is quite true, as Felisa sometimes reminded Don Noé, that he had never caught a fish or shot a bird. Style, however, is a sine qua non, and reputation, however falsely obtained, if the methods are not exposed, stands by a man his whole life long. Self-valuation had Uncle Noé. From his own account, he was a very remarkable man. And as he usually talked to those who knew nothing of his past, they accepted his statements, perforce, as the truth.
The dripping peons hung about the steps. Their shirts clung to their shoulders, but those the sun would dry. Don Noé sat quiet as a mouse upon the angle of the outer veranda.
Agueda came toward the lingerers.
"It is you that need not wait, Eduardo Juan, nor you, Garcia Garcito. The Don Beltran will see that you get some reward."