The Social Cancer, José Rizal [read a book .txt] 📗

with a certain Lucas, who was an enemy of his, as could be proved, and who committed suicide, perhaps from remorse. It was proved that the papers found on the corpse were forged, since the handwriting was like that of Señor Ibarra’s seven years ago, but not like his now, which leads to the belief that the model for them may have been that incriminating letter. Besides, the lawyer says that if Señor Ibarra had refused to acknowledge the letter, he might have been able to do a great deal for him—but at sight of the letter he turned pale, lost his courage, and confirmed everything written in it.”

“Did you say that the letter was directed to a woman?” asked a Franciscan. “How did it get into the hands of the prosecutor?”

The lieutenant did not answer. He stared for a moment at Padre Salvi and then moved away, nervously twisting the sharp point of his gray beard. The others made their comments.

“There is seen the hand of God!” remarked one. “Even the women hate him.”

“He had his house burned down, thinking in that way to save himself, but he didn’t count on the guest, on his querida, his babaye,” added another, laughing. “It’s the work of God! Santiago y cierra España!” [170]

Meanwhile the old soldier paused in his pacing about and approached Maria Clara, who was listening to the conversation, motionless in her chair, with the flowers scattered at her feet.

“You are a very prudent girl,” the old officer whispered to her. “You did well to give up the letter. You have thus assured yourself an untroubled future.”

With startled eyes she watched him move away from her, and bit her lip. Fortunately, Aunt Isabel came along, and she had sufficient strength left to catch hold of the old lady’s skirt.

“Aunt!” she murmured.

“What’s the matter?” asked the old lady, frightened by the look on the girl’s face.

“Take me to my room!” she pleaded, grasping her aunt’s arm in order to rise.

“Are you sick, daughter? You look as if you’d lost your bones! What’s the matter?”

“A fainting spell—the people in the room—so many lights—I need to rest. Tell father that I’m going to sleep.”

“You’re cold. Do you want some tea?”

Maria Clara shook her head, entered and locked the door of her chamber, and then, her strength failing her, she fell sobbing to the floor at the feet of an image.

“Mother, mother, mother mine!” she sobbed.

Through the window and a door that opened on the azotea the moonlight entered. The musicians continued to play merry waltzes, laughter and the hum of voices penetrated into the chamber, several times her father, Aunt Isabel, Doña Victorina, and even Linares knocked at the door, but Maria did not move. Heavy sobs shook her breast.

Hours passed—the pleasures of the dinner-table ended, the sound of singing and dancing was heard, the candle burned itself out, but the maiden still remained motionless on the moonlit floor at the feet of an image of the Mother of Jesus.

Gradually the house became quiet again, the lights were extinguished, and Aunt Isabel once more knocked at the door.

“Well, she’s gone to sleep,” said the old woman, aloud. “As she’s young and has no cares, she sleeps like a corpse.”

When all was silence she raised herself slowly and threw a look about her. She saw the azotea with its little arbors bathed in the ghostly light of the moon.

“An untroubled future! She sleeps like a corpse!” she repeated in a low voice as she made her way out to the azotea.

The city slept. Only from time to time there was heard the noise of a carriage crossing the wooden bridge over the river, whose undisturbed waters reflected smoothly the light of the moon. The young woman raised her eyes toward a sky as clear as sapphire. Slowly she took the rings from her fingers and from her ears and removed the combs from her hair. Placing them on the balustrade of the azotea, she gazed toward the river.

A small banka loaded with zacate stopped at the foot of the landing such as every house on the bank of the river has. One of two men who were in it ran up the stone stairway and jumped over the wall, and a few seconds later his footsteps were heard on the stairs leading to the azotea.

Maria Clara saw him pause on discovering her, but only for a moment. Then he advanced slowly and stopped within a few paces of her. Maria Clara recoiled.

“Crisostomo!” she murmured, overcome with fright.

“Yes, I am Crisostomo,” replied the young man gravely. “An enemy, a man who has every reason for hating me, Elias, has rescued me from the prison into which my friends threw me.”

A sad silence followed these words. Maria Clara bowed her head and let her arms fall.

Ibarra went on: “Beside my mother’s corpse I swore that I would make you happy, whatever might be my destiny! You can have been faithless to your oath, for she was not your mother; but I, I who am her son, hold her memory so sacred that in spite of a thousand difficulties I have come here to carry mine out, and fate has willed that I should speak to you yourself. Maria, we shall never see each other again—you are young and perhaps some day your conscience may reproach you—I have come to tell you, before I go away forever, that I forgive you. Now, may you be happy and—farewell!”

Ibarra started to move away, but the girl stopped him.

“Crisostomo,” she said, “God has sent you to save me from desperation. Hear me and then judge me!”

Ibarra tried gently to draw away from her. “I didn’t come to call you to account! I came to give you peace!”

“I don’t want that peace which you bring me. Peace I will give myself. You despise me and your contempt will embitter all the rest of my life.”

Ibarra read the despair and sorrow depicted in the suffering girl’s face and asked her what she wished.

“That you believe that I have always loved you!”

At this he smiled bitterly.

“Ah, you doubt me! You doubt the friend of your childhood, who has never hidden a single thought from you!” the maiden exclaimed sorrowfully. “I understand now! But when you hear my story, the sad story that was revealed to me during my illness, you will have mercy on me, you will not have that smile for my sorrow. Why did you not let me die in the hands of my ignorant physician? You and I both would have been happier!”

Resting a moment, she then went on: “You have desired it, you have doubted me! But may my mother forgive me! On one of the sorrowfulest of my nights of suffering, a man revealed to me the name of my real father and forbade me to love you—except that my father himself should pardon the injury you had done him.”

Ibarra recoiled a pace and gazed fearfully at her.

“Yes,” she continued, “that man told me that he could not permit our union, since his conscience would forbid it, and that he would be obliged to reveal the name of my real father at the risk of causing a great scandal, for my father is—” And she murmured into the youth’s ear a name in so low a tone that only he could have heard it.

“What was I to do? Must I sacrifice to my love the memory of my mother, the honor of my supposed father, and the good name of the real one? Could I have done that without having even you despise me?”

“But the proof! Had you any proof? You needed proofs!” exclaimed Ibarra, trembling with emotion.

The maiden snatched two papers from her bosom.

“Two letters of my mother’s, two letters written in the midst of her remorse, while I was yet unborn! Take them, read them, and you will see how she cursed me and wished for my death, which my father vainly tried to bring about with drugs. These letters he had forgotten in a building where he had lived; the other man found and preserved them and only gave them up to me in exchange for your letter, in order to assure himself, so he said, that I would not marry you without the consent of my father. Since I have been carrying them about with me, in place of your letter, I have, felt the chill in my heart. I sacrificed you, I sacrificed my love! What else could one do for a dead mother and two living fathers? Could I have suspected the use that was to be made of your letter?”

Ibarra stood appalled, while she continued: “What more was left for me to do? Could I perhaps tell you who my father was, could I tell you that you should beg forgiveness of him who made your father suffer so much? Could I ask my father that he forgive you, could I tell him that I knew that I was his daughter—him, who desired my death so eagerly? It was only left to me to suffer, to guard the secret, and to die suffering! Now, my friend, now that you know the sad history of your poor Maria, will you still have for her that disdainful smile?”

“Maria, you are an angel!”

“Then I am happy, since you believe me—”

“But yet,” added the youth with a change of tone, “I’ve heard that you are going to be married.”

“Yes,” sobbed the girl, “my father demands this sacrifice. He has loved me and cared for me when it was not his duty to do so, and I will pay this debt of gratitude to assure his peace, by means of this new relationship, but—”

“But what?”

“I will never forget the vows of faithfulness that I have made to you.”

“What are you thinking of doing?” asked Ibarra, trying to read the look in her eyes.

“The future is dark and my destiny is wrapped in gloom! I don’t know what I should do. But know, that I have loved but once and that without love I will never belong to any man. And you, what is going to become of you?”

“I am only a fugitive, I am fleeing. In a little while my flight will have been discovered. Maria—”

Maria Clara caught the youth’s head in her hands and kissed him repeatedly on the lips, embraced him, and drew abruptly away. “Go, go!” she cried. “Go, and farewell!”

Ibarra gazed at her with shining eyes, but at a gesture from her moved away—intoxicated, wavering.

Once again he leaped over the wall and stepped into the banka. Maria Clara, leaning over the balustrade, watched him depart. Elias took off his hat and bowed to her profoundly.