"Gentlemen, good afternoon!"
They slung their guns over their shoulders, refusing the proffer of some youths who had run to a tavern to bring glasses. They were offered without fear or rancor; were they not all neighbors, living together on their little island? The guards, however, were firm in their refusal. "Thanks; it is against the rules." They strode away, perhaps to lie in ambush a short distance away and repeat the searching again at sunset when the party was broken up and the people returning to their lonely farmhouses.
After the danger had passed the instruments ceased playing. Febrer saw the Minstrel take the little drum and seat himself in the open space recently occupied by the dancers. The people crowded around him. The venerable matrons drew up their esparto-seated chairs in order to hear better. He was about to sing a romance of his own composition; a relación, accentuated, according to the custom of the country, by a quavering plaint, a cry of pain drawn out as long as the singer had air left in his lungs.
He beat the drum slowly to impart a gloomy solemnity to his monotonous song, dreamy and sad. "How can I sing for you, friends, when my heart is broken?" began the recitative; and then, in the midst of a general silence, came a strident trill, like the long continued lament of a dying bird.
The entire company gazed at the singer, not seeing in him the indolent, sickly youth, despicable on account of his uselessness for work. In their primitive minds stirred a vague something which impelled them to respect the words and complaints of the weakling. It was something extraordinary, which seemed to sweep, with rude beating of wings, over their simple souls.
The Minstrel's voice sobbed as it told of a woman insensible to his sighs, and as he compared her whiteness with the flower of the almond, they turned their eyes to Margalida, who remained impassive, with no sign of virginal flushing, being accustomed to this tribute of crude poesy which was a sort of prelude to gallantry.
The Minstrel continued his laments, reddening with the strain of the painful crowing which ended every strophe. His narrow chest heaved with the effort; two rosettes of sickly purple colored his cheeks; his slender neck dilated, the veins standing out in blue relief. In accordance with custom, he concealed part of his face under an embroidered kerchief, which he held with his arm resting on the drum. Febrer felt anxiety listening to this painful voice. It seemed to him that the singer's lungs would give way, that his throat would burst; but his hearers, accustomed to this barbaric singing, which was as exhausting as the dance, paid no attention to his fatigue, nor did they weary of his interminable narration.
A group of youths, moving away from the circle around the poet, seemed to be holding a consultation, and then they approached the older men. They were in search of Señor Pèp, of Can Mallorquí, to discuss an important matter. They turned their backs scornfully upon the Minstrel, an unhappy creature, good for nothing but to dedicate verses to the girls.
The most venturesome of the group faced Pèp. They wished to speak of the "festeig" of Margalida; they reminded the father of his promise to sanction the courting of the girl.
The peasant-farmer looked at the group deliberately, as if counting their number.