XXXV.

XXXV.Husband and Wife.The fête 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 downthe steps to receive the coming guests. They were the doctor, Don Tiburcio de Espadaña, his wife, the Doctora Doña Victorina de Los Reyes de de Espadaña, 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 Espadaña,” said Doña Victorina, indicating the young man; “the adopted son of a relative of Father Dámaso’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.Doña 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, Doña Victorina must in the end content herself with what fate willed her. It was a poor mantorn 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 Doña 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 Doña 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 piña 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. Doña 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 Espadaña,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 Doña Victorina, “but it must be understood that you treat only very rare cases.”Theseñorasigned her own name, Victorina de los Reyes de de Espadaña. 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 Doña 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, Doña 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 Doña 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, Doña 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 Dámaso at his pueblo to-day?” Linares asked Brother Salvi.“Father Dámaso 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, deEspadaña, come, see Clarita,” said Doña 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 jusiand piña. 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 Espadaña 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.”Doña 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 Doña 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 Doña Victorina.“Señor Linares,” said the curate, drawing him out of his abstraction, “here is Father Dámaso.”It was indeed he; but it was not the Father Dámaso 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 Dámaso 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, Doña Victorino presented young Linares. Father Dámaso, 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 Dámaso 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 Dámaso still held in his strong arms the young man, whose face began to color, perhaps from embarrassment, perhaps from suffocation.Father Dámaso appeared to have completely forgotten his grief.After the first moments of effusion and questions about Carlicos and Pepa, Father Dámaso 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 Dámaso 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 Dámaso 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 Espadaña was stupefied at the virtues of the syrup of marshmallow and the decoction of lichen, prescriptions he had never varied. Doña 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 Espadañas were talking in the dining-room.“I’m distressed to hear it,” the doctor was saying; “and Father Dámaso 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 hersickness came from nothing but that trouble the day of the fête.”“I am of the same opinion, so you have done well in not permitting Señor Ibarra to talk with her; that would only have aggravated her condition.”“And it is thanks to us alone,” interrupted Doña 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 Doña Victorina, piqued; “then cure the wife of the alférez with a confession!”“A hurt, señora, 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 Doña 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 Doña 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 alférez 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.Doña 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.”Doña 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 alférez. Greetings were exchanged, but Doña 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 alférez,” 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. Doña 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 Doña 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 alféreza’s window. Doña 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, doña?” she asked.“Could you tell me, señora, why you stare at me in this fashion? Are you jealous?” Doña Victorina was at last able to say.“I jealous? And of you?” replied the alféreza 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.“Consider to whom you are speaking!” she said haughtily, turning back to Doña Consolacion. “Don’t think I am a provincial or a woman of your class. With us, at Manila, the alférezas are not received; they wait at the door.”“Ho! ho! most worshipful señora, the alférezas wait at the door! But you receive such paralytics as this gentleman! Ha! ha! ha!”Had she been less powdered Doña Victorina might have been seen to blush. She started to rush on her enemy, but the sentinel stood in the way. The street was filling with a curious crowd.“Know that I demean myself in speaking to you; persons of position like me ought not! Will you wash my clothes? I will pay you well. Do you suppose I do not know you are a washerwoman?”Doña Consolacion sat erect. To be called a washerwoman had wounded her.“And do you think we don’t know who you are?” she retorted. “My husband has told me! Señora, I, at least——”But she could not be heard. Doña Victorina, wildly shaking her fists, screamed out:“Come down, you old hussy, come down and let me tear your beautiful eyes out!”Rapidly the medusa disappeared from the window; more rapidly yet she came running down the steps, brandishing her husband’s terrible whip. Don Tiburcio, supplicating both, threw himself between, but he could not have prevented the combat, had not the alférez arrived.“Well, well, señoras!—Don Tiburcio!”“Give your wife a little more breeding, buy her morebeautiful clothes, and if you haven’t the money, steal it from the people of the pueblo; you have soldiers for that!” cried Doña Victorina.“Señora,” said the alférez, furious, “it is fortunate that I remember you are a woman; if I didn’t, I should trample you down, with all your curls and ribbons!”“Se—señor alférez!”“Move on, charlatan! It’s not you who wear the breeches!”Armed with words and gestures, with cries, insults, and injuries, the two women hurled at each other all there was in them of soil and shame. All four talked at once, and in the multitude of words numerous verities were paraded in the light. If they did not hear all, the crowd of the curious did not fail to be diverted. They were looking forward to battle, but, unhappily for these amateurs of sport, the curate came by and established peace.“Señoras! señoras! what a scandal! Señor alférez!”“What are you doing here, hypocrite, carlist!”“Don Tiburcio, take away your wife! Señora, restrain your tongue!”Little by little the dictionary of sounding epithets became exhausted. The shameless shrews found nothing left to say to each other, and still threatening, the two couples drew slowly apart, the curate going from one to the other, lavishing himself on both.“We shall leave for Manila this very day and present ourselves to the captain-general!” said the infuriated Doña Victorina to her husband. “You are no man!”“But—but, wife, the guards, and I am lame.”“You are to challenge him, with swords or pistols, or else—or else——” And she looked at his teeth.“Woman, I’ve never handled——”Doña Victorina let him go no farther; with a sublimemovement she snatched out his teeth, threw them in the dust, and trampled them under her feet. The doctor almost crying, the doctora pelting him with sarcasms, they arrived at the house of Captain Tiago. Linares, who was talking with Maria Clara, was no little disquieted by the abrupt arrival of his cousins. Maria, amid the pillows of her fauteuil, was not less surprised at the new physiognomy of her doctor.“Cousin,” said Doña Victorina, “you are to go and challenge the alférez this instant; if not——”“Why?” demanded the astonished Linares.“You are to go and challenge him this instant; if not, I shall say here, and to everybody, who you are.”“Doña Victorina!”The three friends looked at each other.“The alférez has insulted us. The old sorceress came down with a whip to assault us, and this creature did nothing to prevent it! A man!”“Hear that!” said Sinang regretfully. “There was a fight, and we didn’t see it!”“The alférez broke the doctor’s teeth!” added Doña Victorina.Captain Tiago entered, but he wasn’t given time to get his breath. In few words, with an intermingling of spicy language, Doña Victorina narrated what had passed, naturally trying to put herself in a good light.“Linares is going to challenge him, do you hear? Or don’t let him marry your daughter. If he isn’t courageous, he doesn’t merit Clarita.”“What! you are going to marry this gentleman?” Sinang asked Maria, her laughing eyes filling with tears. “I know you are discreet, but I didn’t think you inconstant.”Maria Clara, white as alabaster, looked with great,frightened eyes from her father to Doña Victorina, from Doña Victorina to Linares. The young man reddened; Captain Tiago dropped his head.“Help me to my room,” Maria said to her friends, and steadied by their round arms, her head on the shoulder of Victorina, she went out.That night the husband and wife packed their trunks, and presented their account—no trifle—to Captain Tiago. The next morning they set out for Manila, leaving to the pacific Linares the rôle of avenger.XXXIX.The Outlawed.By the feeble moonlight that penetrates the thick foliage of forest trees, a man was making his way through the woods. His movement was slow but assured. From time to time, as if to get his bearings, he whistled an air, to which another whistler in the distance replied by repeating it.At last, after struggling long against the many obstacles a virgin forest opposes to the march of man, and most obstinately at night, he arrived at a little clearing, bathed in the light of the moon in its first quarter. Scarcely had he entered it when another man came carefully out from behind a great rock, a revolver in his hand.“Who are you?” he demanded with authority in Tagalo.“Is old Pablo with you?” asked the newcomer tranquilly; “if so, tell him Elias is searching for him.”“You are Elias?” said the other, with a certain respect, yet keeping his revolver cocked. “Follow me!”They penetrated a cavern, the guide warning the helmsman when to lower his head, when to crawl on all fours. After a short passage they arrived at a sort of room, dimly lighted by pitch torches, where twelve or fifteen men, dirty, ragged, and sinister, were talking low among themselves. His elbows resting on a stone, an old man of sombre face sat apart, looking toward the smoky torches. It was a cavern of tulisanes. When Elias arrived, the men startedto rise, but at a gesture from the old man they remained quiet, contenting themselves with examining the newcomer.“Is it thou, then?” said the old chief, his sad eyes lighting a little at sight of the young man.“And you are here!” exclaimed Elias, half to himself.The old man bent his head in silence, making at the same time a sign to the men, who rose and went out, not without taking the helmsman’s measure with their eyes.“Yes,” said the old man to Elias when they were alone, “six months ago I gave you hospitality in my home; now it is I who receive compassion from you. But sit down and tell me how you found me.”“As soon as I heard of your misfortunes,” replied Elias slowly, “I set out, and searched from mountain to mountain. I’ve gone over nearly two provinces.” After a short pause in which he tried to read the old man’s thoughts in his sombre face, he went on:“I have come to make you a proposition. After vainly trying to find some representative of the family which caused the ruin of my own, I have decided to go North, and live among the savage tribes. Will you leave this life you are beginning, and come with me? Let me be a son to you?”The old man shook his head.“At my age,” he said, “when one has taken a desperate resolution it is final. When such a man as I, who passed his youth and ripe age laboring to assure his future and that of his children, who submitted always to the will of superiors, whose conscience is clear—when such a man, almost on the border of the tomb, renounces all his past, it is because after ripe reflection he concludes that there is no such thing as peace. Why go to a strange land to drag out my miserable days? I had two sons, a daughter, a home, a fortune. I enjoyed consideration and respect; now I am like a tree stripped of its branches, bare and desolate. Andwhy? Because a man dishonored my daughter; because my sons wished to seek satisfaction from this man, placed above other by his office; because this man, fearing them, sought their destruction and accomplished it. And I have survived; but if I did not know how to defend my sons, I shall know how to avenge them. The day my band is strong enough, I shall go down into the plain and wipe out my vengeance and my life in fire! Either this day will come or there is no God!”The old man rose, and, his eyes glittering, his voice cavernous, he cried, fastening his hands in his long hair:“Malediction, malediction upon me, who held the avenging hands of my sons! I was their assassin!”“I understand you,” said Elias; “I too have a vengeance to satisfy; and yet, from fear of striking the innocent, I choose to forego that.”“You can; you are young; you have not lost your last hope. I too, I swear it, would not strike the innocent. You see this wound? I got it rather than harm a cuadrillero who was doing his duty.”“And yet,” said Elias, “if you carry out your purpose, you will bring dreadful woes to our unhappy country. If with your own hands you satisfy your vengeance, your enemies will take terrible reprisals—not from you, not from those who are armed, but from the people, who are always the ones accused. When I knew you in other days, you gave me wise counsels: will you permit me——”The old man crossed his arms and seemed to attend.“Señor,” continued Elias, “I have had the fortune to do a great service to a young man, rich, kind of heart, upright, wishing the good of his country. It is said he has relations at Madrid; of that I know nothing, but I know he is the friend of the governor-general. What do you think of interestinghim in the cause of the miserable and making him their voice?”The old man shook his head.“He is rich, you say. The rich think only of increasing their riches. Not one of them would compromise his peace to go to the aid of those who suffer. I know it, I who was rich myself.”“But he is not like the others. And he is a young man about to marry, who wishes the tranquillity of his country for the sake of his children’s children.”“He is a man, then, who is going to be happy. Our cause is not that of fortunate men.”“No, but it is that of men of courage!”“True,” said the old man, seating himself again. “Let us suppose he consents to be our mouthpiece. Let us suppose he wins the captain-general, and finds at Madrid deputies who can plead for us; do you believe we shall have justice?”“Let us try it before we try measures of blood,” said Elias. “It must surprise you that I, an outlaw too, and young and strong, propose pacific measures. It is because I see the number of miseries which we ourselves cause, as well as our tyrants. It is always the unarmed who pay the penalty.”“And if nothing result from our steps?”“If we are not heard, if our grievances are made light of, I shall be the first to put myself under your orders.”The old man embraced Elias, a strange light in his eyes.“I accept the proposition,” he said; “I know you will keep your word. I will help you to avenge your parents; you shall help me to avenge my sons!”“Meanwhile, señor, you will do nothing violent.”“And you will set forth the wrongs of the people; you know them. When shall I have the response?”“In four days send me a man to the lake shore of San Diego. I will tell him the decision, and name the person on whom I count.”“Elias will be chief when Captain Pablo is fallen,” said the old man. And he himself accompanied the helmsman out of the cave.XL.The Enigma.The day after the departure of the doctor and the doctora, Ibarra returned to the pueblo. He hastened to the house of Captain Tiago to tell Maria he had been reconciled to the Church. Aunt Isabel, who was fond of the young fellow, and anxious for his marriage with her niece, was filled with joy. Captain Tiago was not at home.“Come in!” Aunt Isabel cried in her bad Castilian. “Maria, Crisóstomo has returned to favor with the Church; thearchbishophas disexcommunicated him!”ButCrisóstomostood still, the smile froze on his lips, the words he was to say to Maria fled from his mind. Leaning against the balcony beside her was Linares; on the floor lay leafless roses and sampagas. The Spaniard was making garlands with the flowers and leaves from the vines; Maria Clara, buried in her fauteuil, pale and thoughtful, was playing with an ivory fan, less white than her slender hands.At sight of Ibarra Linares paled, and carmine tinted the cheeks of Maria Clara. She tried to rise, but was not strong enough; she lowered her eyes and let her fan fall.For some seconds there was an embarrassing silence; then Ibarra spoke.“I have this moment arrived, and came straight here. You are better than I thought you were.”One would have said Maria had become mute: her eyes still lowered, she did not say a word in reply. Ibarra looked searchingly at Linares; the timid young man bore the scrutiny with haughtiness.“I see my arrival was not expected,” he went on slowly. “Pardon me, Maria, that I did not have myself announced. Some day I can explain to you—for we shall still see each other—surely!”At these last words the girl raised toward her fiancé her beautiful eyes full of purity and sadness, so suppliant and so sweet that Ibarra stood still in confusion.“May I come to-morrow?” he asked after a moment.“You know that to me you are always welcome,” she said in a weak voice.Ibarra left, calm in appearance, but a tempest was in his brain and freezing cold in his heart. What he had just seen and comprehended seemed to him incomprehensible. Was it doubt, inconstancy, betrayal?“Oh, woman!” he murmured.Without knowing where he went, he arrived at the ground where the school was going up. Señor Juan hailed him with delight, and showed him what had been done since he went away.With surprise Ibarra saw Elias among the workmen; the helmsman saluted him, as did the others, and at the same time made him understand that he had something to say to him.“Señor Juan,” said Ibarra, “will you bring me the list of workmen?” Señor Juan disappeared, and Ibarra approached Elias, who was lifting a great stone and loading it on a cart.“If you can, señor,” said the helmsman, “give me an hour of conversation, there is something grave of which I want to talk with you. Will you go on the lake early this evening in my boat?”Ibarra gave a sign of assent and Elias moved away. Señor Juan brought the list, but Ibarra searched it in vain for the name of the helmsman.XLI.The Voice of the Persecuted.The sun was just setting when Ibarra stepped into the little boat on the lake shore. He appeared disturbed.“Pardon me, señor,” said Elias, “for having asked this favor; I wished to speak to you freely, with no possibility of listeners.”“And what have you to say?”They had already shot away from the bank. The sun had disappeared behind the crest of the mountains, and as twilight is of short duration in this latitude, the night was descending rapidly, lighted by a brilliant moon.“Señor,” replied Elias, “I am the spokesman of many unfortunates.” And briefly he told of his conversation with the chief of the tulisanes, omitting the old man’s doubts and threats.“And they wish?” asked Ibarra, when he had finished.“Radical reforms in the guard, the clergy, and the administration of justice.”“Elias,” said Ibarra, “I know little of you, but I believe you will understand me when I say that though I have friends at Madrid whom I might influence, and though I might interest the captain-general in these people, neither they nor he could bring about such a revolution. And more, I would not take a step in this direction, because I believe what you want reformed is at present a necessary evil.”“You also, señor, believe in necessary evil?” said Eliaswith a tremor in his voice. “You think one must go through evil to arrive at good?”“No; but I look at evil as a violent remedy we sometimes use to cure ourselves of illness.”“It is a bad medicine, señor, that does away with the symptoms without searching out the cause of the disease. The Municipal Guard exists only to suppress crime by force and terrorizing.”“The institution may be imperfect, but the terror it inspires keeps down the number of criminals.”“Rather say that this terror creates new criminals every day,” said Elias. “There are those who have become tulisanes for life. A first offence punished inhumanly, and the fear of further torture separates them forever from society and condemns them to kill or to be killed. The terrorism of the Municipal Guard shuts the doors of repentance, and as a tulisan, defending himself in the mountains, fights to much better advantage than the soldier he mocks, we cannot remedy the evil we have made. Terrorism may serve when a people is enslaved, and the mountains have no caverns; but when a desperate man feels the strength of his arm, and anger possesses him, terrorism cannot put out the fire for which it has itself heaped the fuel.”“You would seem to speak reasonably, Elias, if one had not already his own convictions. But let me ask you, Who demand these reforms? You know I except you, whom I cannot class with these others; but are they not all criminals, or men ready to become so?”“Go from pueblo to pueblo, señor, from house to house, and listen to the stifled groanings, and you will find that if you think that, you are mistaken.”“But the Government must have a body of unlimited power, to make itself respected and its authority felt.”“It is true, señor, when the Government is at war withthe country; but is it not unfortunate that in times of peace the people should be made to feel they are at strife with their rulers? If, however, we prefer force to authority, we should at least be careful to whom we give unlimited power. Such a force in the hands of men ignorant, passionate, without moral training or tried honor, is a weapon thrown to a madman in the middle of an unarmed crowd. I grant the Government must have an arm, but let it choose this arm well; and since it prefers the power it assumes to that the people might give it, let it at least show that it knows how to assume it!”Elias spoke with passion; his eyes were brilliant, his voice was resonant. His words were followed by silence; the boat, no longer driven forward by the oars, seemed motionless on the surface of the lake; the moon shone resplendent in the sapphire sky; above the far banks the stars glittered.“And what else do they ask?”“Reform of the religious orders,—they demand better protection——”“Against the religious orders?”“Against their oppression, señor.”“Do the Philippines forget the debt they owe those men who led them out of error into the true faith? It is a pity we are not taught the history of our country!”“We must not forget this debt, no! But were not our nationality and independence a dear price with which to cancel it? We have also given the priests our best pueblos, our most fertile fields, and we still give them our savings, for the purchase of all sorts of religious objects. I realize that a pure faith and a veritable love of humanity moved the first missionaries who came to our shores. I acknowledge the debt we owe those noble men; I know that in those days Spain abounded in heroes, of politics as well as religion. But because the ancestors were true men,must we consent to the excesses of their unworthy descendants? Because a great good has been done us, may we not protest against being done a great wrong? The missionaries conquered the country, it is true; but do you think it is through the monks that Spain will keep the Philippines?”“Yes, and through them only. It is the opinion of all those who have written on the islands.”“Señor,” said Elias in dejection, “I thank you for your patience. I will take you back to the shore.”“No,” said Ibarra, “go on; we should know which is right in so important a question.”“You will excuse me, señor,” said Elias, “I have not eloquence enough to convince you. If I have some education, I am an Indian, and my words would always be suspected. Those who have expressed opinions contrary to mine are Spaniards, and as such disarm in advance all contradiction. Besides, when I see that you, who love your country, you, whose father sleeps below this calm water, you who have been attacked and wronged yourself, have these opinions, I commence to doubt my own convictions, I acknowledge that the people may be mistaken. I must tell these unfortunates who have placed their confidence in men to put it in God or in their own strength.”“Elias, your words hurt me, and make me, too, have doubts. I have not grown up with the people, and cannot know their needs. I only know what books have taught me. If I take your words with caution, it is because I fear you may be prejudiced by your personal wrongs. If I could know something of your story, perhaps it would alter my judgment. I am mistrustful of theories, am guided rather by facts.”Elias thought a moment, then he said:“If this is so, señor, I will briefly tell you my history.”

XXXV.Husband and Wife.The fête 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 downthe steps to receive the coming guests. They were the doctor, Don Tiburcio de Espadaña, his wife, the Doctora Doña Victorina de Los Reyes de de Espadaña, 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 Espadaña,” said Doña Victorina, indicating the young man; “the adopted son of a relative of Father Dámaso’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.Doña 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, Doña Victorina must in the end content herself with what fate willed her. It was a poor mantorn 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 Doña 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 Doña 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 piña 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. Doña 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 Espadaña,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 Doña Victorina, “but it must be understood that you treat only very rare cases.”Theseñorasigned her own name, Victorina de los Reyes de de Espadaña. 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 Doña 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, Doña 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 Doña 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, Doña 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 Dámaso at his pueblo to-day?” Linares asked Brother Salvi.“Father Dámaso 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, deEspadaña, come, see Clarita,” said Doña 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 jusiand piña. 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 Espadaña 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.”Doña 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 Doña 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 Doña Victorina.“Señor Linares,” said the curate, drawing him out of his abstraction, “here is Father Dámaso.”It was indeed he; but it was not the Father Dámaso of heretofore, so vigorous and alert. He walked uncertainly, and he was pale and sad.

The fête 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 downthe steps to receive the coming guests. They were the doctor, Don Tiburcio de Espadaña, his wife, the Doctora Doña Victorina de Los Reyes de de Espadaña, 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 Espadaña,” said Doña Victorina, indicating the young man; “the adopted son of a relative of Father Dámaso’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.

Doña 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, Doña Victorina must in the end content herself with what fate willed her. It was a poor mantorn 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 Doña 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 Doña 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 piña 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. Doña 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 Espadaña,Specialist in All Kinds of Diseases.”

“Dr. De Espadaña,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 Doña Victorina, “but it must be understood that you treat only very rare cases.”

Theseñorasigned her own name, Victorina de los Reyes de de Espadaña. 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 Doña 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, Doña 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 Doña 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, Doña 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 Dámaso at his pueblo to-day?” Linares asked Brother Salvi.

“Father Dámaso 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, deEspadaña, come, see Clarita,” said Doña 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 jusiand piña. 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 Espadaña 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.”

Doña 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 Doña 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 Doña Victorina.

“Señor Linares,” said the curate, drawing him out of his abstraction, “here is Father Dámaso.”

It was indeed he; but it was not the Father Dámaso 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 Dámaso 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, Doña Victorino presented young Linares. Father Dámaso, 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 Dámaso 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 Dámaso still held in his strong arms the young man, whose face began to color, perhaps from embarrassment, perhaps from suffocation.Father Dámaso appeared to have completely forgotten his grief.After the first moments of effusion and questions about Carlicos and Pepa, Father Dámaso 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 Dámaso 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 Dámaso 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.

With no word for any one else, Father Dámaso 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, Doña Victorino presented young Linares. Father Dámaso, 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 Dámaso 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 Dámaso still held in his strong arms the young man, whose face began to color, perhaps from embarrassment, perhaps from suffocation.Father Dámaso appeared to have completely forgotten his grief.

After the first moments of effusion and questions about Carlicos and Pepa, Father Dámaso 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 Dámaso 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 Dámaso 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 Espadaña was stupefied at the virtues of the syrup of marshmallow and the decoction of lichen, prescriptions he had never varied. Doña 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 Espadañas were talking in the dining-room.“I’m distressed to hear it,” the doctor was saying; “and Father Dámaso 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 hersickness came from nothing but that trouble the day of the fête.”“I am of the same opinion, so you have done well in not permitting Señor Ibarra to talk with her; that would only have aggravated her condition.”“And it is thanks to us alone,” interrupted Doña 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 Doña Victorina, piqued; “then cure the wife of the alférez with a confession!”“A hurt, señora, 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 Doña 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 Doña 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 alférez 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!”

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 Espadaña was stupefied at the virtues of the syrup of marshmallow and the decoction of lichen, prescriptions he had never varied. Doña 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 Espadañas were talking in the dining-room.

“I’m distressed to hear it,” the doctor was saying; “and Father Dámaso 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 hersickness came from nothing but that trouble the day of the fête.”

“I am of the same opinion, so you have done well in not permitting Señor Ibarra to talk with her; that would only have aggravated her condition.”

“And it is thanks to us alone,” interrupted Doña 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 Doña Victorina, piqued; “then cure the wife of the alférez with a confession!”

“A hurt, señora, 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 Doña 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 Doña 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 alférez 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.Doña 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.”Doña 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 alférez. Greetings were exchanged, but Doña 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 alférez,” 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. Doña 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 Doña 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 alféreza’s window. Doña 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, doña?” she asked.“Could you tell me, señora, why you stare at me in this fashion? Are you jealous?” Doña Victorina was at last able to say.“I jealous? And of you?” replied the alféreza 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.“Consider to whom you are speaking!” she said haughtily, turning back to Doña Consolacion. “Don’t think I am a provincial or a woman of your class. With us, at Manila, the alférezas are not received; they wait at the door.”“Ho! ho! most worshipful señora, the alférezas wait at the door! But you receive such paralytics as this gentleman! Ha! ha! ha!”Had she been less powdered Doña Victorina might have been seen to blush. She started to rush on her enemy, but the sentinel stood in the way. The street was filling with a curious crowd.“Know that I demean myself in speaking to you; persons of position like me ought not! Will you wash my clothes? I will pay you well. Do you suppose I do not know you are a washerwoman?”Doña Consolacion sat erect. To be called a washerwoman had wounded her.“And do you think we don’t know who you are?” she retorted. “My husband has told me! Señora, I, at least——”But she could not be heard. Doña Victorina, wildly shaking her fists, screamed out:“Come down, you old hussy, come down and let me tear your beautiful eyes out!”Rapidly the medusa disappeared from the window; more rapidly yet she came running down the steps, brandishing her husband’s terrible whip. Don Tiburcio, supplicating both, threw himself between, but he could not have prevented the combat, had not the alférez arrived.“Well, well, señoras!—Don Tiburcio!”“Give your wife a little more breeding, buy her morebeautiful clothes, and if you haven’t the money, steal it from the people of the pueblo; you have soldiers for that!” cried Doña Victorina.“Señora,” said the alférez, furious, “it is fortunate that I remember you are a woman; if I didn’t, I should trample you down, with all your curls and ribbons!”“Se—señor alférez!”“Move on, charlatan! It’s not you who wear the breeches!”Armed with words and gestures, with cries, insults, and injuries, the two women hurled at each other all there was in them of soil and shame. All four talked at once, and in the multitude of words numerous verities were paraded in the light. If they did not hear all, the crowd of the curious did not fail to be diverted. They were looking forward to battle, but, unhappily for these amateurs of sport, the curate came by and established peace.“Señoras! señoras! what a scandal! Señor alférez!”“What are you doing here, hypocrite, carlist!”“Don Tiburcio, take away your wife! Señora, restrain your tongue!”Little by little the dictionary of sounding epithets became exhausted. The shameless shrews found nothing left to say to each other, and still threatening, the two couples drew slowly apart, the curate going from one to the other, lavishing himself on both.“We shall leave for Manila this very day and present ourselves to the captain-general!” said the infuriated Doña Victorina to her husband. “You are no man!”“But—but, wife, the guards, and I am lame.”“You are to challenge him, with swords or pistols, or else—or else——” And she looked at his teeth.“Woman, I’ve never handled——”Doña Victorina let him go no farther; with a sublimemovement she snatched out his teeth, threw them in the dust, and trampled them under her feet. The doctor almost crying, the doctora pelting him with sarcasms, they arrived at the house of Captain Tiago. Linares, who was talking with Maria Clara, was no little disquieted by the abrupt arrival of his cousins. Maria, amid the pillows of her fauteuil, was not less surprised at the new physiognomy of her doctor.“Cousin,” said Doña Victorina, “you are to go and challenge the alférez this instant; if not——”“Why?” demanded the astonished Linares.“You are to go and challenge him this instant; if not, I shall say here, and to everybody, who you are.”“Doña Victorina!”The three friends looked at each other.“The alférez has insulted us. The old sorceress came down with a whip to assault us, and this creature did nothing to prevent it! A man!”“Hear that!” said Sinang regretfully. “There was a fight, and we didn’t see it!”“The alférez broke the doctor’s teeth!” added Doña Victorina.Captain Tiago entered, but he wasn’t given time to get his breath. In few words, with an intermingling of spicy language, Doña Victorina narrated what had passed, naturally trying to put herself in a good light.“Linares is going to challenge him, do you hear? Or don’t let him marry your daughter. If he isn’t courageous, he doesn’t merit Clarita.”“What! you are going to marry this gentleman?” Sinang asked Maria, her laughing eyes filling with tears. “I know you are discreet, but I didn’t think you inconstant.”Maria Clara, white as alabaster, looked with great,frightened eyes from her father to Doña Victorina, from Doña Victorina to Linares. The young man reddened; Captain Tiago dropped his head.“Help me to my room,” Maria said to her friends, and steadied by their round arms, her head on the shoulder of Victorina, she went out.That night the husband and wife packed their trunks, and presented their account—no trifle—to Captain Tiago. The next morning they set out for Manila, leaving to the pacific Linares the rôle of avenger.

Doña 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.”

Doña 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 alférez. Greetings were exchanged, but Doña 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 alférez,” 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. Doña 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 Doña 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 alféreza’s window. Doña 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, doña?” she asked.

“Could you tell me, señora, why you stare at me in this fashion? Are you jealous?” Doña Victorina was at last able to say.

“I jealous? And of you?” replied the alféreza 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.

“Consider to whom you are speaking!” she said haughtily, turning back to Doña Consolacion. “Don’t think I am a provincial or a woman of your class. With us, at Manila, the alférezas are not received; they wait at the door.”

“Ho! ho! most worshipful señora, the alférezas wait at the door! But you receive such paralytics as this gentleman! Ha! ha! ha!”

Had she been less powdered Doña Victorina might have been seen to blush. She started to rush on her enemy, but the sentinel stood in the way. The street was filling with a curious crowd.

“Know that I demean myself in speaking to you; persons of position like me ought not! Will you wash my clothes? I will pay you well. Do you suppose I do not know you are a washerwoman?”

Doña Consolacion sat erect. To be called a washerwoman had wounded her.

“And do you think we don’t know who you are?” she retorted. “My husband has told me! Señora, I, at least——”

But she could not be heard. Doña Victorina, wildly shaking her fists, screamed out:

“Come down, you old hussy, come down and let me tear your beautiful eyes out!”

Rapidly the medusa disappeared from the window; more rapidly yet she came running down the steps, brandishing her husband’s terrible whip. Don Tiburcio, supplicating both, threw himself between, but he could not have prevented the combat, had not the alférez arrived.

“Well, well, señoras!—Don Tiburcio!”

“Give your wife a little more breeding, buy her morebeautiful clothes, and if you haven’t the money, steal it from the people of the pueblo; you have soldiers for that!” cried Doña Victorina.

“Señora,” said the alférez, furious, “it is fortunate that I remember you are a woman; if I didn’t, I should trample you down, with all your curls and ribbons!”

“Se—señor alférez!”

“Move on, charlatan! It’s not you who wear the breeches!”

Armed with words and gestures, with cries, insults, and injuries, the two women hurled at each other all there was in them of soil and shame. All four talked at once, and in the multitude of words numerous verities were paraded in the light. If they did not hear all, the crowd of the curious did not fail to be diverted. They were looking forward to battle, but, unhappily for these amateurs of sport, the curate came by and established peace.

“Señoras! señoras! what a scandal! Señor alférez!”

“What are you doing here, hypocrite, carlist!”

“Don Tiburcio, take away your wife! Señora, restrain your tongue!”

Little by little the dictionary of sounding epithets became exhausted. The shameless shrews found nothing left to say to each other, and still threatening, the two couples drew slowly apart, the curate going from one to the other, lavishing himself on both.

“We shall leave for Manila this very day and present ourselves to the captain-general!” said the infuriated Doña Victorina to her husband. “You are no man!”

“But—but, wife, the guards, and I am lame.”

“You are to challenge him, with swords or pistols, or else—or else——” And she looked at his teeth.

“Woman, I’ve never handled——”

Doña Victorina let him go no farther; with a sublimemovement she snatched out his teeth, threw them in the dust, and trampled them under her feet. The doctor almost crying, the doctora pelting him with sarcasms, they arrived at the house of Captain Tiago. Linares, who was talking with Maria Clara, was no little disquieted by the abrupt arrival of his cousins. Maria, amid the pillows of her fauteuil, was not less surprised at the new physiognomy of her doctor.

“Cousin,” said Doña Victorina, “you are to go and challenge the alférez this instant; if not——”

“Why?” demanded the astonished Linares.

“You are to go and challenge him this instant; if not, I shall say here, and to everybody, who you are.”

“Doña Victorina!”

The three friends looked at each other.

“The alférez has insulted us. The old sorceress came down with a whip to assault us, and this creature did nothing to prevent it! A man!”

“Hear that!” said Sinang regretfully. “There was a fight, and we didn’t see it!”

“The alférez broke the doctor’s teeth!” added Doña Victorina.

Captain Tiago entered, but he wasn’t given time to get his breath. In few words, with an intermingling of spicy language, Doña Victorina narrated what had passed, naturally trying to put herself in a good light.

“Linares is going to challenge him, do you hear? Or don’t let him marry your daughter. If he isn’t courageous, he doesn’t merit Clarita.”

“What! you are going to marry this gentleman?” Sinang asked Maria, her laughing eyes filling with tears. “I know you are discreet, but I didn’t think you inconstant.”

Maria Clara, white as alabaster, looked with great,frightened eyes from her father to Doña Victorina, from Doña Victorina to Linares. The young man reddened; Captain Tiago dropped his head.

“Help me to my room,” Maria said to her friends, and steadied by their round arms, her head on the shoulder of Victorina, she went out.

That night the husband and wife packed their trunks, and presented their account—no trifle—to Captain Tiago. The next morning they set out for Manila, leaving to the pacific Linares the rôle of avenger.

XXXIX.The Outlawed.By the feeble moonlight that penetrates the thick foliage of forest trees, a man was making his way through the woods. His movement was slow but assured. From time to time, as if to get his bearings, he whistled an air, to which another whistler in the distance replied by repeating it.At last, after struggling long against the many obstacles a virgin forest opposes to the march of man, and most obstinately at night, he arrived at a little clearing, bathed in the light of the moon in its first quarter. Scarcely had he entered it when another man came carefully out from behind a great rock, a revolver in his hand.“Who are you?” he demanded with authority in Tagalo.“Is old Pablo with you?” asked the newcomer tranquilly; “if so, tell him Elias is searching for him.”“You are Elias?” said the other, with a certain respect, yet keeping his revolver cocked. “Follow me!”They penetrated a cavern, the guide warning the helmsman when to lower his head, when to crawl on all fours. After a short passage they arrived at a sort of room, dimly lighted by pitch torches, where twelve or fifteen men, dirty, ragged, and sinister, were talking low among themselves. His elbows resting on a stone, an old man of sombre face sat apart, looking toward the smoky torches. It was a cavern of tulisanes. When Elias arrived, the men startedto rise, but at a gesture from the old man they remained quiet, contenting themselves with examining the newcomer.“Is it thou, then?” said the old chief, his sad eyes lighting a little at sight of the young man.“And you are here!” exclaimed Elias, half to himself.The old man bent his head in silence, making at the same time a sign to the men, who rose and went out, not without taking the helmsman’s measure with their eyes.“Yes,” said the old man to Elias when they were alone, “six months ago I gave you hospitality in my home; now it is I who receive compassion from you. But sit down and tell me how you found me.”“As soon as I heard of your misfortunes,” replied Elias slowly, “I set out, and searched from mountain to mountain. I’ve gone over nearly two provinces.” After a short pause in which he tried to read the old man’s thoughts in his sombre face, he went on:“I have come to make you a proposition. After vainly trying to find some representative of the family which caused the ruin of my own, I have decided to go North, and live among the savage tribes. Will you leave this life you are beginning, and come with me? Let me be a son to you?”The old man shook his head.“At my age,” he said, “when one has taken a desperate resolution it is final. When such a man as I, who passed his youth and ripe age laboring to assure his future and that of his children, who submitted always to the will of superiors, whose conscience is clear—when such a man, almost on the border of the tomb, renounces all his past, it is because after ripe reflection he concludes that there is no such thing as peace. Why go to a strange land to drag out my miserable days? I had two sons, a daughter, a home, a fortune. I enjoyed consideration and respect; now I am like a tree stripped of its branches, bare and desolate. Andwhy? Because a man dishonored my daughter; because my sons wished to seek satisfaction from this man, placed above other by his office; because this man, fearing them, sought their destruction and accomplished it. And I have survived; but if I did not know how to defend my sons, I shall know how to avenge them. The day my band is strong enough, I shall go down into the plain and wipe out my vengeance and my life in fire! Either this day will come or there is no God!”The old man rose, and, his eyes glittering, his voice cavernous, he cried, fastening his hands in his long hair:“Malediction, malediction upon me, who held the avenging hands of my sons! I was their assassin!”“I understand you,” said Elias; “I too have a vengeance to satisfy; and yet, from fear of striking the innocent, I choose to forego that.”“You can; you are young; you have not lost your last hope. I too, I swear it, would not strike the innocent. You see this wound? I got it rather than harm a cuadrillero who was doing his duty.”“And yet,” said Elias, “if you carry out your purpose, you will bring dreadful woes to our unhappy country. If with your own hands you satisfy your vengeance, your enemies will take terrible reprisals—not from you, not from those who are armed, but from the people, who are always the ones accused. When I knew you in other days, you gave me wise counsels: will you permit me——”The old man crossed his arms and seemed to attend.“Señor,” continued Elias, “I have had the fortune to do a great service to a young man, rich, kind of heart, upright, wishing the good of his country. It is said he has relations at Madrid; of that I know nothing, but I know he is the friend of the governor-general. What do you think of interestinghim in the cause of the miserable and making him their voice?”The old man shook his head.“He is rich, you say. The rich think only of increasing their riches. Not one of them would compromise his peace to go to the aid of those who suffer. I know it, I who was rich myself.”“But he is not like the others. And he is a young man about to marry, who wishes the tranquillity of his country for the sake of his children’s children.”“He is a man, then, who is going to be happy. Our cause is not that of fortunate men.”“No, but it is that of men of courage!”“True,” said the old man, seating himself again. “Let us suppose he consents to be our mouthpiece. Let us suppose he wins the captain-general, and finds at Madrid deputies who can plead for us; do you believe we shall have justice?”“Let us try it before we try measures of blood,” said Elias. “It must surprise you that I, an outlaw too, and young and strong, propose pacific measures. It is because I see the number of miseries which we ourselves cause, as well as our tyrants. It is always the unarmed who pay the penalty.”“And if nothing result from our steps?”“If we are not heard, if our grievances are made light of, I shall be the first to put myself under your orders.”The old man embraced Elias, a strange light in his eyes.“I accept the proposition,” he said; “I know you will keep your word. I will help you to avenge your parents; you shall help me to avenge my sons!”“Meanwhile, señor, you will do nothing violent.”“And you will set forth the wrongs of the people; you know them. When shall I have the response?”“In four days send me a man to the lake shore of San Diego. I will tell him the decision, and name the person on whom I count.”“Elias will be chief when Captain Pablo is fallen,” said the old man. And he himself accompanied the helmsman out of the cave.

By the feeble moonlight that penetrates the thick foliage of forest trees, a man was making his way through the woods. His movement was slow but assured. From time to time, as if to get his bearings, he whistled an air, to which another whistler in the distance replied by repeating it.

At last, after struggling long against the many obstacles a virgin forest opposes to the march of man, and most obstinately at night, he arrived at a little clearing, bathed in the light of the moon in its first quarter. Scarcely had he entered it when another man came carefully out from behind a great rock, a revolver in his hand.

“Who are you?” he demanded with authority in Tagalo.

“Is old Pablo with you?” asked the newcomer tranquilly; “if so, tell him Elias is searching for him.”

“You are Elias?” said the other, with a certain respect, yet keeping his revolver cocked. “Follow me!”

They penetrated a cavern, the guide warning the helmsman when to lower his head, when to crawl on all fours. After a short passage they arrived at a sort of room, dimly lighted by pitch torches, where twelve or fifteen men, dirty, ragged, and sinister, were talking low among themselves. His elbows resting on a stone, an old man of sombre face sat apart, looking toward the smoky torches. It was a cavern of tulisanes. When Elias arrived, the men startedto rise, but at a gesture from the old man they remained quiet, contenting themselves with examining the newcomer.

“Is it thou, then?” said the old chief, his sad eyes lighting a little at sight of the young man.

“And you are here!” exclaimed Elias, half to himself.

The old man bent his head in silence, making at the same time a sign to the men, who rose and went out, not without taking the helmsman’s measure with their eyes.

“Yes,” said the old man to Elias when they were alone, “six months ago I gave you hospitality in my home; now it is I who receive compassion from you. But sit down and tell me how you found me.”

“As soon as I heard of your misfortunes,” replied Elias slowly, “I set out, and searched from mountain to mountain. I’ve gone over nearly two provinces.” After a short pause in which he tried to read the old man’s thoughts in his sombre face, he went on:

“I have come to make you a proposition. After vainly trying to find some representative of the family which caused the ruin of my own, I have decided to go North, and live among the savage tribes. Will you leave this life you are beginning, and come with me? Let me be a son to you?”

The old man shook his head.

“At my age,” he said, “when one has taken a desperate resolution it is final. When such a man as I, who passed his youth and ripe age laboring to assure his future and that of his children, who submitted always to the will of superiors, whose conscience is clear—when such a man, almost on the border of the tomb, renounces all his past, it is because after ripe reflection he concludes that there is no such thing as peace. Why go to a strange land to drag out my miserable days? I had two sons, a daughter, a home, a fortune. I enjoyed consideration and respect; now I am like a tree stripped of its branches, bare and desolate. Andwhy? Because a man dishonored my daughter; because my sons wished to seek satisfaction from this man, placed above other by his office; because this man, fearing them, sought their destruction and accomplished it. And I have survived; but if I did not know how to defend my sons, I shall know how to avenge them. The day my band is strong enough, I shall go down into the plain and wipe out my vengeance and my life in fire! Either this day will come or there is no God!”

The old man rose, and, his eyes glittering, his voice cavernous, he cried, fastening his hands in his long hair:

“Malediction, malediction upon me, who held the avenging hands of my sons! I was their assassin!”

“I understand you,” said Elias; “I too have a vengeance to satisfy; and yet, from fear of striking the innocent, I choose to forego that.”

“You can; you are young; you have not lost your last hope. I too, I swear it, would not strike the innocent. You see this wound? I got it rather than harm a cuadrillero who was doing his duty.”

“And yet,” said Elias, “if you carry out your purpose, you will bring dreadful woes to our unhappy country. If with your own hands you satisfy your vengeance, your enemies will take terrible reprisals—not from you, not from those who are armed, but from the people, who are always the ones accused. When I knew you in other days, you gave me wise counsels: will you permit me——”

The old man crossed his arms and seemed to attend.

“Señor,” continued Elias, “I have had the fortune to do a great service to a young man, rich, kind of heart, upright, wishing the good of his country. It is said he has relations at Madrid; of that I know nothing, but I know he is the friend of the governor-general. What do you think of interestinghim in the cause of the miserable and making him their voice?”

The old man shook his head.

“He is rich, you say. The rich think only of increasing their riches. Not one of them would compromise his peace to go to the aid of those who suffer. I know it, I who was rich myself.”

“But he is not like the others. And he is a young man about to marry, who wishes the tranquillity of his country for the sake of his children’s children.”

“He is a man, then, who is going to be happy. Our cause is not that of fortunate men.”

“No, but it is that of men of courage!”

“True,” said the old man, seating himself again. “Let us suppose he consents to be our mouthpiece. Let us suppose he wins the captain-general, and finds at Madrid deputies who can plead for us; do you believe we shall have justice?”

“Let us try it before we try measures of blood,” said Elias. “It must surprise you that I, an outlaw too, and young and strong, propose pacific measures. It is because I see the number of miseries which we ourselves cause, as well as our tyrants. It is always the unarmed who pay the penalty.”

“And if nothing result from our steps?”

“If we are not heard, if our grievances are made light of, I shall be the first to put myself under your orders.”

The old man embraced Elias, a strange light in his eyes.

“I accept the proposition,” he said; “I know you will keep your word. I will help you to avenge your parents; you shall help me to avenge my sons!”

“Meanwhile, señor, you will do nothing violent.”

“And you will set forth the wrongs of the people; you know them. When shall I have the response?”

“In four days send me a man to the lake shore of San Diego. I will tell him the decision, and name the person on whom I count.”

“Elias will be chief when Captain Pablo is fallen,” said the old man. And he himself accompanied the helmsman out of the cave.

XL.The Enigma.The day after the departure of the doctor and the doctora, Ibarra returned to the pueblo. He hastened to the house of Captain Tiago to tell Maria he had been reconciled to the Church. Aunt Isabel, who was fond of the young fellow, and anxious for his marriage with her niece, was filled with joy. Captain Tiago was not at home.“Come in!” Aunt Isabel cried in her bad Castilian. “Maria, Crisóstomo has returned to favor with the Church; thearchbishophas disexcommunicated him!”ButCrisóstomostood still, the smile froze on his lips, the words he was to say to Maria fled from his mind. Leaning against the balcony beside her was Linares; on the floor lay leafless roses and sampagas. The Spaniard was making garlands with the flowers and leaves from the vines; Maria Clara, buried in her fauteuil, pale and thoughtful, was playing with an ivory fan, less white than her slender hands.At sight of Ibarra Linares paled, and carmine tinted the cheeks of Maria Clara. She tried to rise, but was not strong enough; she lowered her eyes and let her fan fall.For some seconds there was an embarrassing silence; then Ibarra spoke.“I have this moment arrived, and came straight here. You are better than I thought you were.”One would have said Maria had become mute: her eyes still lowered, she did not say a word in reply. Ibarra looked searchingly at Linares; the timid young man bore the scrutiny with haughtiness.“I see my arrival was not expected,” he went on slowly. “Pardon me, Maria, that I did not have myself announced. Some day I can explain to you—for we shall still see each other—surely!”At these last words the girl raised toward her fiancé her beautiful eyes full of purity and sadness, so suppliant and so sweet that Ibarra stood still in confusion.“May I come to-morrow?” he asked after a moment.“You know that to me you are always welcome,” she said in a weak voice.Ibarra left, calm in appearance, but a tempest was in his brain and freezing cold in his heart. What he had just seen and comprehended seemed to him incomprehensible. Was it doubt, inconstancy, betrayal?“Oh, woman!” he murmured.Without knowing where he went, he arrived at the ground where the school was going up. Señor Juan hailed him with delight, and showed him what had been done since he went away.With surprise Ibarra saw Elias among the workmen; the helmsman saluted him, as did the others, and at the same time made him understand that he had something to say to him.“Señor Juan,” said Ibarra, “will you bring me the list of workmen?” Señor Juan disappeared, and Ibarra approached Elias, who was lifting a great stone and loading it on a cart.“If you can, señor,” said the helmsman, “give me an hour of conversation, there is something grave of which I want to talk with you. Will you go on the lake early this evening in my boat?”Ibarra gave a sign of assent and Elias moved away. Señor Juan brought the list, but Ibarra searched it in vain for the name of the helmsman.

The day after the departure of the doctor and the doctora, Ibarra returned to the pueblo. He hastened to the house of Captain Tiago to tell Maria he had been reconciled to the Church. Aunt Isabel, who was fond of the young fellow, and anxious for his marriage with her niece, was filled with joy. Captain Tiago was not at home.

“Come in!” Aunt Isabel cried in her bad Castilian. “Maria, Crisóstomo has returned to favor with the Church; thearchbishophas disexcommunicated him!”

ButCrisóstomostood still, the smile froze on his lips, the words he was to say to Maria fled from his mind. Leaning against the balcony beside her was Linares; on the floor lay leafless roses and sampagas. The Spaniard was making garlands with the flowers and leaves from the vines; Maria Clara, buried in her fauteuil, pale and thoughtful, was playing with an ivory fan, less white than her slender hands.

At sight of Ibarra Linares paled, and carmine tinted the cheeks of Maria Clara. She tried to rise, but was not strong enough; she lowered her eyes and let her fan fall.

For some seconds there was an embarrassing silence; then Ibarra spoke.

“I have this moment arrived, and came straight here. You are better than I thought you were.”

One would have said Maria had become mute: her eyes still lowered, she did not say a word in reply. Ibarra looked searchingly at Linares; the timid young man bore the scrutiny with haughtiness.

“I see my arrival was not expected,” he went on slowly. “Pardon me, Maria, that I did not have myself announced. Some day I can explain to you—for we shall still see each other—surely!”

At these last words the girl raised toward her fiancé her beautiful eyes full of purity and sadness, so suppliant and so sweet that Ibarra stood still in confusion.

“May I come to-morrow?” he asked after a moment.

“You know that to me you are always welcome,” she said in a weak voice.

Ibarra left, calm in appearance, but a tempest was in his brain and freezing cold in his heart. What he had just seen and comprehended seemed to him incomprehensible. Was it doubt, inconstancy, betrayal?

“Oh, woman!” he murmured.

Without knowing where he went, he arrived at the ground where the school was going up. Señor Juan hailed him with delight, and showed him what had been done since he went away.

With surprise Ibarra saw Elias among the workmen; the helmsman saluted him, as did the others, and at the same time made him understand that he had something to say to him.

“Señor Juan,” said Ibarra, “will you bring me the list of workmen?” Señor Juan disappeared, and Ibarra approached Elias, who was lifting a great stone and loading it on a cart.

“If you can, señor,” said the helmsman, “give me an hour of conversation, there is something grave of which I want to talk with you. Will you go on the lake early this evening in my boat?”

Ibarra gave a sign of assent and Elias moved away. Señor Juan brought the list, but Ibarra searched it in vain for the name of the helmsman.

XLI.The Voice of the Persecuted.The sun was just setting when Ibarra stepped into the little boat on the lake shore. He appeared disturbed.“Pardon me, señor,” said Elias, “for having asked this favor; I wished to speak to you freely, with no possibility of listeners.”“And what have you to say?”They had already shot away from the bank. The sun had disappeared behind the crest of the mountains, and as twilight is of short duration in this latitude, the night was descending rapidly, lighted by a brilliant moon.“Señor,” replied Elias, “I am the spokesman of many unfortunates.” And briefly he told of his conversation with the chief of the tulisanes, omitting the old man’s doubts and threats.“And they wish?” asked Ibarra, when he had finished.“Radical reforms in the guard, the clergy, and the administration of justice.”“Elias,” said Ibarra, “I know little of you, but I believe you will understand me when I say that though I have friends at Madrid whom I might influence, and though I might interest the captain-general in these people, neither they nor he could bring about such a revolution. And more, I would not take a step in this direction, because I believe what you want reformed is at present a necessary evil.”“You also, señor, believe in necessary evil?” said Eliaswith a tremor in his voice. “You think one must go through evil to arrive at good?”“No; but I look at evil as a violent remedy we sometimes use to cure ourselves of illness.”“It is a bad medicine, señor, that does away with the symptoms without searching out the cause of the disease. The Municipal Guard exists only to suppress crime by force and terrorizing.”“The institution may be imperfect, but the terror it inspires keeps down the number of criminals.”“Rather say that this terror creates new criminals every day,” said Elias. “There are those who have become tulisanes for life. A first offence punished inhumanly, and the fear of further torture separates them forever from society and condemns them to kill or to be killed. The terrorism of the Municipal Guard shuts the doors of repentance, and as a tulisan, defending himself in the mountains, fights to much better advantage than the soldier he mocks, we cannot remedy the evil we have made. Terrorism may serve when a people is enslaved, and the mountains have no caverns; but when a desperate man feels the strength of his arm, and anger possesses him, terrorism cannot put out the fire for which it has itself heaped the fuel.”“You would seem to speak reasonably, Elias, if one had not already his own convictions. But let me ask you, Who demand these reforms? You know I except you, whom I cannot class with these others; but are they not all criminals, or men ready to become so?”“Go from pueblo to pueblo, señor, from house to house, and listen to the stifled groanings, and you will find that if you think that, you are mistaken.”“But the Government must have a body of unlimited power, to make itself respected and its authority felt.”“It is true, señor, when the Government is at war withthe country; but is it not unfortunate that in times of peace the people should be made to feel they are at strife with their rulers? If, however, we prefer force to authority, we should at least be careful to whom we give unlimited power. Such a force in the hands of men ignorant, passionate, without moral training or tried honor, is a weapon thrown to a madman in the middle of an unarmed crowd. I grant the Government must have an arm, but let it choose this arm well; and since it prefers the power it assumes to that the people might give it, let it at least show that it knows how to assume it!”Elias spoke with passion; his eyes were brilliant, his voice was resonant. His words were followed by silence; the boat, no longer driven forward by the oars, seemed motionless on the surface of the lake; the moon shone resplendent in the sapphire sky; above the far banks the stars glittered.“And what else do they ask?”“Reform of the religious orders,—they demand better protection——”“Against the religious orders?”“Against their oppression, señor.”“Do the Philippines forget the debt they owe those men who led them out of error into the true faith? It is a pity we are not taught the history of our country!”“We must not forget this debt, no! But were not our nationality and independence a dear price with which to cancel it? We have also given the priests our best pueblos, our most fertile fields, and we still give them our savings, for the purchase of all sorts of religious objects. I realize that a pure faith and a veritable love of humanity moved the first missionaries who came to our shores. I acknowledge the debt we owe those noble men; I know that in those days Spain abounded in heroes, of politics as well as religion. But because the ancestors were true men,must we consent to the excesses of their unworthy descendants? Because a great good has been done us, may we not protest against being done a great wrong? The missionaries conquered the country, it is true; but do you think it is through the monks that Spain will keep the Philippines?”“Yes, and through them only. It is the opinion of all those who have written on the islands.”“Señor,” said Elias in dejection, “I thank you for your patience. I will take you back to the shore.”“No,” said Ibarra, “go on; we should know which is right in so important a question.”“You will excuse me, señor,” said Elias, “I have not eloquence enough to convince you. If I have some education, I am an Indian, and my words would always be suspected. Those who have expressed opinions contrary to mine are Spaniards, and as such disarm in advance all contradiction. Besides, when I see that you, who love your country, you, whose father sleeps below this calm water, you who have been attacked and wronged yourself, have these opinions, I commence to doubt my own convictions, I acknowledge that the people may be mistaken. I must tell these unfortunates who have placed their confidence in men to put it in God or in their own strength.”“Elias, your words hurt me, and make me, too, have doubts. I have not grown up with the people, and cannot know their needs. I only know what books have taught me. If I take your words with caution, it is because I fear you may be prejudiced by your personal wrongs. If I could know something of your story, perhaps it would alter my judgment. I am mistrustful of theories, am guided rather by facts.”Elias thought a moment, then he said:“If this is so, señor, I will briefly tell you my history.”

The sun was just setting when Ibarra stepped into the little boat on the lake shore. He appeared disturbed.

“Pardon me, señor,” said Elias, “for having asked this favor; I wished to speak to you freely, with no possibility of listeners.”

“And what have you to say?”

They had already shot away from the bank. The sun had disappeared behind the crest of the mountains, and as twilight is of short duration in this latitude, the night was descending rapidly, lighted by a brilliant moon.

“Señor,” replied Elias, “I am the spokesman of many unfortunates.” And briefly he told of his conversation with the chief of the tulisanes, omitting the old man’s doubts and threats.

“And they wish?” asked Ibarra, when he had finished.

“Radical reforms in the guard, the clergy, and the administration of justice.”

“Elias,” said Ibarra, “I know little of you, but I believe you will understand me when I say that though I have friends at Madrid whom I might influence, and though I might interest the captain-general in these people, neither they nor he could bring about such a revolution. And more, I would not take a step in this direction, because I believe what you want reformed is at present a necessary evil.”

“You also, señor, believe in necessary evil?” said Eliaswith a tremor in his voice. “You think one must go through evil to arrive at good?”

“No; but I look at evil as a violent remedy we sometimes use to cure ourselves of illness.”

“It is a bad medicine, señor, that does away with the symptoms without searching out the cause of the disease. The Municipal Guard exists only to suppress crime by force and terrorizing.”

“The institution may be imperfect, but the terror it inspires keeps down the number of criminals.”

“Rather say that this terror creates new criminals every day,” said Elias. “There are those who have become tulisanes for life. A first offence punished inhumanly, and the fear of further torture separates them forever from society and condemns them to kill or to be killed. The terrorism of the Municipal Guard shuts the doors of repentance, and as a tulisan, defending himself in the mountains, fights to much better advantage than the soldier he mocks, we cannot remedy the evil we have made. Terrorism may serve when a people is enslaved, and the mountains have no caverns; but when a desperate man feels the strength of his arm, and anger possesses him, terrorism cannot put out the fire for which it has itself heaped the fuel.”

“You would seem to speak reasonably, Elias, if one had not already his own convictions. But let me ask you, Who demand these reforms? You know I except you, whom I cannot class with these others; but are they not all criminals, or men ready to become so?”

“Go from pueblo to pueblo, señor, from house to house, and listen to the stifled groanings, and you will find that if you think that, you are mistaken.”

“But the Government must have a body of unlimited power, to make itself respected and its authority felt.”

“It is true, señor, when the Government is at war withthe country; but is it not unfortunate that in times of peace the people should be made to feel they are at strife with their rulers? If, however, we prefer force to authority, we should at least be careful to whom we give unlimited power. Such a force in the hands of men ignorant, passionate, without moral training or tried honor, is a weapon thrown to a madman in the middle of an unarmed crowd. I grant the Government must have an arm, but let it choose this arm well; and since it prefers the power it assumes to that the people might give it, let it at least show that it knows how to assume it!”

Elias spoke with passion; his eyes were brilliant, his voice was resonant. His words were followed by silence; the boat, no longer driven forward by the oars, seemed motionless on the surface of the lake; the moon shone resplendent in the sapphire sky; above the far banks the stars glittered.

“And what else do they ask?”

“Reform of the religious orders,—they demand better protection——”

“Against the religious orders?”

“Against their oppression, señor.”

“Do the Philippines forget the debt they owe those men who led them out of error into the true faith? It is a pity we are not taught the history of our country!”

“We must not forget this debt, no! But were not our nationality and independence a dear price with which to cancel it? We have also given the priests our best pueblos, our most fertile fields, and we still give them our savings, for the purchase of all sorts of religious objects. I realize that a pure faith and a veritable love of humanity moved the first missionaries who came to our shores. I acknowledge the debt we owe those noble men; I know that in those days Spain abounded in heroes, of politics as well as religion. But because the ancestors were true men,must we consent to the excesses of their unworthy descendants? Because a great good has been done us, may we not protest against being done a great wrong? The missionaries conquered the country, it is true; but do you think it is through the monks that Spain will keep the Philippines?”

“Yes, and through them only. It is the opinion of all those who have written on the islands.”

“Señor,” said Elias in dejection, “I thank you for your patience. I will take you back to the shore.”

“No,” said Ibarra, “go on; we should know which is right in so important a question.”

“You will excuse me, señor,” said Elias, “I have not eloquence enough to convince you. If I have some education, I am an Indian, and my words would always be suspected. Those who have expressed opinions contrary to mine are Spaniards, and as such disarm in advance all contradiction. Besides, when I see that you, who love your country, you, whose father sleeps below this calm water, you who have been attacked and wronged yourself, have these opinions, I commence to doubt my own convictions, I acknowledge that the people may be mistaken. I must tell these unfortunates who have placed their confidence in men to put it in God or in their own strength.”

“Elias, your words hurt me, and make me, too, have doubts. I have not grown up with the people, and cannot know their needs. I only know what books have taught me. If I take your words with caution, it is because I fear you may be prejudiced by your personal wrongs. If I could know something of your story, perhaps it would alter my judgment. I am mistrustful of theories, am guided rather by facts.”

Elias thought a moment, then he said:

“If this is so, señor, I will briefly tell you my history.”

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