"Don't try my patience too far," he said, moving on. Jose looked
after him with a smile full of hatred.
"It is easy to see he is a grandson of the man who exposed my father
to the sun," he murmured between his teeth. "The same blood!" Then
in a changed tone he added: "But if you pay well--friends!"
XXXV.
HUSBAND AND WIFE.
The fete was over, and the inhabitants of the pueblo now perceived,
as they did every year, that their purses were empty, that in the
sweat of their faces they had earned scant pleasure, and paid dear
for noise and headaches. But what of that? The next year they would
begin again; the next century it would still be the same, for it had
been so up to this time, and there is nothing which can make people
renounce a custom.
The house of Captain Tiago is sad. All the windows are closed; one
scarcely dares make a sound; and nowhere but in the kitchen do they
speak aloud. Maria Clara, the soul of the house, is sick in bed. The
state of her health could be read on all faces, as our actions betray
the griefs of our hearts.
"What do you think, Isabel, ought I to make a gift to the cross at
Tunasan, or that at Matahong?" asks the unhappy father. "The cross
at Tunasan grows, but that at Matahong perspires. Which do you call
the more miraculous?"
Aunt Isabel reflected, nodded her head, and whispered:
"To grow is more miraculous; we all perspire, but we don't all grow."
"That's so, yes, Isabel; but, after all, for wood to perspire--well,
then, the best thing is to make offerings to both."
A carriage stopping before the house cut short the
conversation. Captain Tiago, followed by Aunt Isabel, ran down the
steps to receive the coming guests. They were the doctor, Don Tiburcio
de Espadana, his wife, the Doctora Dona Victorina de Los Reyes de de
Espadana, and a young Spaniard of attractive face and fine appearance.
The doctora wore a silk dress bordered with flowers, and a hat with a
large parrot perched among bows of red and blue ribbons. The dust of
the journey mingling with the rice powder on her cheeks, exaggerated
her wrinkles; as when we saw her at Manila, she had given her arm to
her lame husband.
"I have the pleasure of presenting to you our cousin, Don Alfonso
Linares de Espadana," said Dona Victorina, indicating the young man;
"the adopted son of a relative of Father Damaso's, and private
secretary of all the ministers----"
The young man bowed low; Captain Tiago barely escaped kissing his hand.
While the countless trunks, valises, and bags are being cared for and
Captain Tiago is conducting his guests to their apartments, let us
make a nearer acquaintance with these people whom we have not seen
since the opening chapters.
Dona Victorina is a woman of forty-five summers, which, according to
her arithmetic, are equivalent to thirty-two springs. In her youth she
had been very pretty, but, enraptured in her own contemplation, she
had looked with the utmost disdain on her numerous Filipino adorers,
even scorning the vows of love once murmured in her ears or chanted
under her balcony by Captain Tiago. Her aspirations bore her toward
another race.
Her first youth, then her second, then her third, having passed in
tending nets to catch in the ocean of the world the object of her
dreams, Dona Victorina must in the end content herself with what fate
willed her. It was a poor man torn from his native Estramadure, who,
after wandering six or seven years about the world, a modern Ulysses,
found at length, in the island of Luzon, hospitality, money, and a
faded Calypso.
Don Tiburcio was a modest man, without force, who would not willingly
have injured a fly. He started for the Philippines as under-clerk
of customs, but after breaking his leg was forced to give up his
position. For a while he lived at the expense of some compatriots,
but he found their bread bitter. As he had neither profession nor
money, his advisers counselled him to go into the provinces and offer
himself as a physician. At first he refused, but, necessity becoming
pressing, his friends convinced him of the vanity of his scruples. He
started out, kept by his conscience from asking more than small fees,
and was on the road to prosperity when a jealous doctor called him to
the attention of the College of Physicians at Manila. Nothing would
have come of it, but the affair reached the ears of the people; loss
of confidence followed, and then loss of patrons. Misery again stared
him in the face when he heard of the affliction of Dona Victorina. Don
Tiburcio saw here a patch of blue sky, and asked to be presented.
They met, and after a half-hour of conversation, reached an
understanding. Without doubt she would have preferred a Spaniard less
halting, less bald, without impediment of speech, and with more teeth;
but such a Spaniard had never asked her hand, and at thirty-two what
woman is not prudent?
For his part, Don Tiburcio resigned himself when he saw the spectre
of famine raise its head. Not that he had ever had great ambitions
or great pretensions; but his heart, virgin till now, had pictured a
different divinity. He was, however, somewhat of a philosopher. He
said to himself: "All that was a dream! Is the reality powdered
and wrinkled, homely and ridiculous? Well, I am bald and lame and
toothless."
They were married then, and Dona Victorina was enchanted with her
husband. She had him fitted out with false teeth, attired by the
best tailors of the city, and ordered carriages and horses for the
professional visits she intended him again to make.
While thus transforming her husband, she did not forget herself. She
discarded the silk skirt and jacket of pina for European costume,
loaded her head with false hair, and her person with such extravagances
generally as to disturb the peace of a whole idle and tranquil
neighborhood.
The glamour around the husband first began to dim when he tried to
approach the subject of the rice powder by remarking that nothing is so
ugly as the false or so admirable as the natural. Dona Victorina looked
unpleasantly at his teeth, and he was silent. Indeed, at the end of a
very short time the doctora had arrived at the complete subjugation of
her husband, who no longer offered any more resistance than a little
lap-dog. If he did anything to annoy her, she forbade his going out,
and in her moments of greatest rage she tore out his false teeth,
and left him, sometimes for days, horribly disfigured.
When they were well settled in Manila, Rodoreda received orders to
engrave on a plate of black marble:
"Dr. De Espadana,
Specialist in All Kinds of Diseases."
"Do you wish me to be put in prison?" asked Don Tiburcio in terror.
"I wish people to call you doctor and me doctora," said Dona Victorina,
"but it must be understood that you treat only very rare cases."
The senora signed her own name, Victorina de los Reyes de de
Espadana. Neither the engraver of her visiting cards nor her husband
could make her renounce that second "de."
"If I use only one 'de,' people will think you haven't any,
imbecile!" she said to Don Tiburcio.
Then the number of gewgaws grew, the layer of rice powder was
thickened, the ribbons and laces were piled higher, and Dona Victorina
regarded with more and more disdain her poor compatriots who had not
had the fortune to marry husbands of so high estate as her own.
All this sublimity, however, did not prevent her being each day
older and more ridiculous. Every time Captain Tiago was with her, and
remembered that she had once really inspired him with love, he sent a
peso to the church for a mass of thanksgiving. But he had much respect
for Don Tiburcio, because of his title of specialist, and listened
attentively to the rare sentences the doctor's impediment of speech
let him pronounce. For this reason and because the doctor did not
lavish his visits on people at large he had chosen him to treat Maria.
As to young Linares, Dona Victorina, wishing a steward from the
peninsula, her husband remembered a cousin of his, a law student at
Madrid, who was considered the most astute of the family. They sent
for him, and the young man had just arrived.
Father Salvi entered while Don Santiago and his guests were at the
second breakfast. They talked of Maria Clara, who was sleeping;
they talked of the journey, and Dona Victorina exclaimed loudly
at the costumes of the provincials, their houses of nipa, and
their bamboo bridges. She did not omit to inform the curate of
her friendly relations with the "Segundo Cabo," with this alcalde,
with that councillor, all people of distinction, who had for her the
greatest consideration.
"If you had come two days earlier, Dona Victorina," said Captain
Tiago, profiting by a slight pause in the lady's brilliant loquacity,
"you would have found His Excellency the governor general seated in
this very place."
"What! His Excellency was here? And at your house? Impossible!"
"I repeat that he was seated exactly here. If you had come two days
ago----"
"Ah! What a pity Clarita did not fall ill sooner!" she cried. "You
hear, cousin! His Excellency was here! You know, Don Santiago, that
at Madrid our cousin was the friend of ministers and dukes, and that
he dined with the Count del Campanario."
"The Duke de la Torre, Victorina," suggested her husband.
"It is the same thing!"
"Shall I find Father Damaso at his pueblo to-day?" Linares asked
Brother Salvi.
"Father Damaso is here, and may be with us at any moment."
"I'm very glad! I have a letter for him, and if a happy chance had
not brought me here, I should have come expressly to see him."
Meanwhile the "happy chance," that is to say, poor Maria Clara,
had awakened.
"Come, de Espadana, come, see Clarita," said Dona Victorina. "It
is for you he does this," she went on, turning to Captain Tiago;
"my husband attends only people of quality."
The sick-room was almost in obscurity, the windows closed, for fear
of draughts; two candles, burning before an image of the Virgin of
Antipolo, sent out feeble glimmers.
Enveloped in multiple folds of white, the lovely figure of Maria lay
on her bed of kamagon, behind curtains of jusi and pina. Her abundant
hair about her face increased its transparent pallor, as did the
radiance of her great, sad eyes. Beside her were her two friends,
and Andeng holding a lily branch.
De Espadana felt her pulse, examined her tongue, asked a question or
two, and nodded his head.
"Sh--she is s--sick, but she can be c--cured."
Dona Victorina looked proudly at their audience.
"Lichen with m--m--milk, for the m--m--morning, syrup of
m--m--marshmallow, and two tablets of cynoglossum."
"Take courage, Clarita," said Dona Victorina, approaching the bed,
"we have come to cure you. I'm going to present to you our cousin."
Linares, absorbed, was gazing at those eloquent eyes, which seemed
to be searching for some one; he did not hear Dona Victorina.
"Senor Linares," said the curate, drawing him out of his abstraction,
"here is Father Damaso."
It was indeed he; but it was not the Father Damaso of heretofore,
so vigorous and alert. He walked uncertainly, and he was pale and sad.
XXXVI.
PROJECTS.
With no word for any one else, Father Damaso went straight to Maria's
bed and took her hand.
"Maria," he said with great tenderness, and tears gushed from his eyes,
"Maria, my child, you must not die!"
Maria Clara looked at him with some astonishment. No one of those who
knew the Franciscan would have believed him capable of such display
of feeling.
He could not say another word, but moved aside the draperies and went
out among the plants of Maria's balcony, crying like a child.
"How he loves his god-daughter!" every one thought.
Father Salvi, motionless and silent, watched him intently.
When the father's grief seemed more controlled, Dona Victorino
presented young Linares. Father Damaso, saying nothing, looked him
over from head to foot, took the letter, read it without appearing
to comprehend, and asked:
"Well, who are you?"
"Alfonso Linares, the godson of your brother-in-law----" stammered the
young fellow. Father Damaso threw back his head and examined him anew,
his face clearing.
"What! It's the godson of Carlicos!" he cried, clasping him in his
arms. "I had a letter from him some days ago. And it is you? You were
not born when I left the country. I did not know you!" And Father
Damaso still held in his strong arms the young man, whose face began
to color, perhaps from embarrassment, perhaps from suffocation. Father
Damaso appeared to have completely forgotten his grief.
After the first moments of effusion and questions about Carlicos and
Pepa, Father Damaso asked:
"Let's see, what is it Carlicos wishes me to do for you?"
"I think he says something about it in the letter," stammered Linares
again.
"In the letter? Yes, that's so! He wishes me to find you employment
and a wife. Ah, the employment is easy enough, but as for the
wife!--hem!--a wife----"
"Father, that is not so urgent," said Linares, with confusion.
But Father Damaso was walking back and forth murmuring: "A wife! A
wife!" His face was no longer sad or joyful, but serious and
preoccupied. From a distance Father Salvi watched the scene.
"I did not think the thing could cause me so much pain," Father
Damaso murmured plaintively; "but of two evils choose the least!" Then
approaching Linares:
"Come with me, my boy," he said, "we will talk with Don
Santiago." Linares paled and followed the priest.
XXXVII.
SCRUTINY OF CONSCIENCE.
Long days followed by weary nights were passed by the pillow of the
sick girl. After a confession to Father Salvi, Maria Clara had had a
relapse, and in her delirium she pronounced no name but that of her
mother, whom she had never known. Her friends, her father, her aunt,
watched her, and heaped with gifts and with silver for masses the
altars of miraculous images. At last, slowly and regularly, the fever
began to abate.
The Doctor de Espadana was stupefied at the virtues of the syrup of
marshmallow and the decoction of lichen, prescriptions he had never
varied. Dona Victorina was so satisfied with her husband that one
day when he stepped on her train, in a rare state of clemency she
did not apply to him the usual penal code by pulling out his teeth.
One afternoon, Sinang and Victorina were with Maria; the curate,
Captain Tiago, and the Espadanas were talking in the dining-room.
"I'm distressed to hear it," the doctor was saying; "and Father Damaso
must be greatly disturbed."
"Where did you say he is to be sent?" asked Linares.
"Into the province of Tabayas," replied the curate carelessly.
"Maria Clara will be very sorry too," said Captain Tiago; "she loves
him like a father."
Father Salvi looked at him from the corner of his eye.
"Father," continued Captain Tiago, "I believe her sickness came from
nothing but that trouble the day of the fete."
"I am of the same opinion, so you have done well in not permitting
Senor Ibarra to talk with her; that would only have aggravated her
condition."
"And it is thanks to us alone," interrupted Dona Victorina, "that
Clarita is not already in heaven singing praises with the angels."
"Amen!" Captain Tiago felt moved to say.
"I think I know whereof I speak," said the curate, "when I say that
the confession of Maria Clara brought about the favorable crisis
that saved her life. I do not deny the power of science, but a pure
conscience----"
"Pardon," objected Dona Victorina, piqued; "then cure the wife of
the alferez with a confession!"
"A hurt, senora, is not a malady, to be influenced by the conscience,"
replied Father Salvi severely; "but a good confession would preserve
her in future from such blows as she got this morning."
"She deserved them!" said Dona Victorina. "She is an insolent woman. In
church she did nothing but look at me. I had a mind to ask her what
there was curious about my face; but who would soil her lips speaking
to these people of no standing?"
The curate, as if he had not heard this tirade, continued: "To finish
the cure of your daughter, she should receive the communion to-morrow,
Don Santiago. I think she does not need to confess, and yet, if she
will once more, this evening----"
"I don't know," said Dona Victorina, profiting by the pause to
continue her reflections, "I don't understand how men can marry such
frights. One easily sees where that woman came from. She is dying of
envy, that shows in her eyes. What does an alferez get?"
"So prepare Maria for confession," the curate continued, turning to
Aunt Isabel.
The good aunt left the group and went to her niece's room. Maria Clara
was still in bed, and pale, very pale; beside her were her two friends.
Sinang was giving her her medicine.
"He has not written to you again?" asked Maria, softly.
"No."
"He gave you no message for me?"
"No; he only said he was going to make every effort to have the
archbishop raise the ban of excommunication----"
The arrival of Aunt Isabel interrupted the conversation.
"The father says you are to prepare yourself for confession, my child,"
said she. "Sinang, leave her to examine her conscience. Shall I bring
you the 'Anchor,' the 'Bouquet,' or the 'Straight Road to Heaven,'
Maria?"
Maria Clara did not reply.
"Well, we mustn't fatigue you," said the good aunt consolingly;
"I will read you the examination myself, and you will only have to
remember your sins."
"Write him to think of me no more," murmured the sick girl in
Sinang's ear.
"What!"
But Aunt Isabel came back with her book, and Sinang had to go.
The good aunt drew her chair up to the light, settled her glasses on
the tip of her nose, and opened a little book.
"Give good attention, my child: I will begin with the commandments of
God; I shall go slowly, so that you may meditate: if you don't hear
well, you must tell me, and I will repeat; you know I'm never weary
of working for your good."
In a voice monotonous and nasal, she began to read. Maria Clara
gazed vaguely into space. The first commandment finished, Aunt Isabel
observed her listener over her glasses, and appeared satisfied with
her sad and meditative air. She coughed piously, and after a long
pause began the second. The good old woman read with unction. The
terms of the second commandment finished, she again looked at her
niece, who slowly turned away her head.
"Bah!" said Aunt Isabel within herself, "as to taking His holy name
in vain, the poor thing has nothing to question: pass on to the third."
And the third commandment sifted and commentated, all the causes of
sin against it droned out, she again looked toward the bed. This time
she lifted her glasses and rubbed her eyes; she had seen her niece
raise her handkerchief, as if to wipe away tears.
"Hm!" said she; "hm! the poor child must have fallen asleep during
the sermon." And putting back her glasses on the tip of her nose,
she reflected:
"We shall see if besides not keeping the holy feast days, she has
not honored her father and her mother." And slowly, in a voice more
nasal than ever, she read the fourth commandment.
"What a pure soul!" thought the old lady; "she who is so obedient,
so submissive! I've sinned much more deeply than that, and I've never
been able to really cry!" And she began the fifth commandment with such
enthusiasm that she did not hear the stifled sobs of her niece. It
was only when she stopped after the commentaries on wilful homicide,
that she perceived the groanings of the sinner. Then in a voice that
passed description, and a manner she strove to make menacing, she
finished the commentary, and seeing that Maria had not ceased to weep:
"Cry, my child, cry!" she said, going to her bedside; "the more
you cry the more quickly will God pardon you. Cry, my child, cry;
and beat your breast, but not too hard, for you are ill yet, you know."
But as if grief had need of mystery and solitude, Maria Clara,
finding herself surprised, stopped sobbing little by little and dried
her eyes. Aunt Isabel returned to her reading, but the plaint of her
audience having ceased, she lost her enthusiasm; the second table of
the law made her sleepy, and a yawn broke the nasal monotony.
"No one would have believed it without seeing it," thought the
good woman; "the child sins like a soldier against the first five
commandments, and from the sixth to the tenth not so much as a
peccadillo. That is contrary to the custom of the rest of us. One sees
queer things in these days!" And she lighted a great candle for the
Virgin of Antipolo, and two smaller ones for Our Lady of the Rosary
and Our Lady of the Pillar. The Virgin of Delaroche was excluded from
this illumination: she was to Aunt Isabel an unknown foreigner.
We may not know what passed during the confession in the evening. It
was long, and Aunt Isabel, who at a distance was watching over her
niece, could see that instead of offering his ear to the sick girl,
the curate had his face turned toward her. He went out, pale, with
compressed lips. At the sight of his brow, darkened and moist with
sweat, one would have said it was he who had confessed, and absolution
had been denied him.
"Maria! Joseph!" said the good aunt, crossing herself, "who can
comprehend the girls of to-day!"
XXXVIII.
THE TWO WOMEN.
Dona Victorina was taking a walk through the pueblo, to see of
what sort were the dwellings and the advancement of the indolent
Indians. She had put on her most elegant adornments, to impress the
provincials, and to show what distance separated them from her sacred
person. Giving her arm to her limping husband, she paraded the streets
of the pueblo, to the profound amazement of its inhabitants.
"What ugly houses these Indians have!" she began, with a grimace. "One
must needs be an Indian to live in them! And how ill-bred the people
are! They pass us without uncovering. Knock off their hats, as the
curates do, and the lieutenants of the Civil Guard."
"And if they attack me?" stammered the doctor.
"Are you not a man?"
"Yes, but--but--I am lame."
Dona Victorina grew cross. There were no sidewalks in these streets,
and the dust was soiling the train of her dress. Some young girls who
passed dropped their eyes, and did not admire at all as they should
her luxurious attire. Sinang's coachman, who was driving Sinang and
her cousin in an elegant tres-por-ciento, had the effrontery to cry out
to her "Tabi!" in so audacious a voice that she moved out of the way.
"What a brute of a coachman!" she protested; "I shall tell his master
he had better train his servants. Come along, Tiburcio!"
Her husband, fearing a tempest, turned on his heels, and they found
themselves face to face with the alferez. Greetings were exchanged,
but Dona Victorina's discontent grew. Not only had the officer said
nothing complimentary of her costume, but she believed she detected
mockery in his look.
"You ought not to give your hand to a simple alferez," she said to
her husband, when the officer had passed. "You don't know how to
preserve your rank."
"H--here he is the chief."
"What does that mean to us? Do we happen to be Indians?"
"You are right," said Don Tiburcio, not minded to dispute.
They passed the barracks. Dona Consolacion was at the window, as
usual dressed in flannel, and puffing her puro. As the house was low,
the two women faced each other. The muse examined Dona Victorina from
head to foot, protruded her lip, ejected tobacco juice, and turned
away her head. This affectation of contempt brought the patience of
the doctora to an end. Leaving her husband without support, she went,
trembling with rage, powerless to utter a word, and placed herself
in front of the alfereza's window. Dona Consolacion turned her head
slowly back, regarded her antagonist with the utmost calm, and spat
again with the same cool contempt.
"What's the matter with you, dona?" she asked.
"Could you tell me, senora, why you stare at me in this fashion? Are
you jealous?" Dona Victorina was at last able to say.
"I jealous? And of you?" replied the alfereza calmly. "Yes, I'm
jealous of your frizzes."
"Come away there!" broke in the doctor; "d--d--don't pay
at--t--t--tention to these f--f--follies!"
"Let me alone! I have to give a lesson to this brazenface!" replied
the doctora, joggling her husband, who just missed sprawling in
the dust.