They met, and after a half-hour of conversation, reached an understanding. Without doubt she would have preferred a Spaniard less halting, less bald, without impediment of speech, and with more teeth; but such a Spaniard had never asked her hand, and at thirty-two what woman is not prudent?

For his part, Don Tiburcio resigned himself when he saw the spectre of famine raise its head. Not that he had ever had great ambitions or great pretensions; but his heart, virgin till now, had pictured a different divinity. He was, however, somewhat of a philosopher. He said to himself: "All that was a dream! Is the reality powdered and wrinkled, homely and ridiculous? Well, I am bald and lame and toothless."

They were married then, and Dona Victorina was enchanted with her husband. She had him fitted out with false teeth, attired by the best tailors of the city, and ordered carriages and horses for the professional visits she intended him again to make.

While thus transforming her husband, she did not forget herself. She discarded the silk skirt and jacket of pina for European costume, loaded her head with false hair, and her person with such extravagances generally as to disturb the peace of a whole idle and tranquil neighborhood.

The glamour around the husband first began to dim when he tried to approach the subject of the rice powder by remarking that nothing is so ugly as the false or so admirable as the natural. Dona Victorina looked unpleasantly at his teeth, and he was silent. Indeed, at the end of a very short time the doctora had arrived at the complete subjugation of her husband, who no longer offered any more resistance than a little lap-dog. If he did anything to annoy her, she forbade his going out, and in her moments of greatest rage she tore out his false teeth, and left him, sometimes for days, horribly disfigured.

When they were well settled in Manila, Rodoreda received orders to engrave on a plate of black marble:

"Dr. De Espadana, Specialist in All Kinds of Diseases."

"Do you wish me to be put in prison?" asked Don Tiburcio in terror.

"I wish people to call you doctor and me doctora," said Dona Victorina, "but it must be understood that you treat only very rare cases."

The senora signed her own name, Victorina de los Reyes de de Espadana. Neither the engraver of her visiting cards nor her husband could make her renounce that second "de."

"If I use only one 'de,' people will think you haven't any, imbecile!" she said to Don Tiburcio.

Then the number of gewgaws grew, the layer of rice powder was thickened, the ribbons and laces were piled higher, and Dona Victorina regarded with more and more disdain her poor compatriots who had not had the fortune to marry husbands of so high estate as her own.

All this sublimity, however, did not prevent her being each day older and more ridiculous. Every time Captain Tiago was with her, and remembered that she had once really inspired him with love, he sent a peso to the church for a ma.s.s of thanksgiving. But he had much respect for Don Tiburcio, because of his t.i.tle of specialist, and listened attentively to the rare sentences the doctor's impediment of speech let him p.r.o.nounce. For this reason and because the doctor did not lavish his visits on people at large he had chosen him to treat Maria.

As to young Linares, Dona Victorina, wishing a steward from the peninsula, her husband remembered a cousin of his, a law student at Madrid, who was considered the most astute of the family. They sent for him, and the young man had just arrived.

Father Salvi entered while Don Santiago and his guests were at the second breakfast. They talked of Maria Clara, who was sleeping; they talked of the journey, and Dona Victorina exclaimed loudly at the costumes of the provincials, their houses of nipa, and their bamboo bridges. She did not omit to inform the curate of her friendly relations with the "Segundo Cabo," with this alcalde, with that councillor, all people of distinction, who had for her the greatest consideration.

"If you had come two days earlier, Dona Victorina," said Captain Tiago, profiting by a slight pause in the lady's brilliant loquacity, "you would have found His Excellency the governor general seated in this very place."

"What! His Excellency was here? And at your house? Impossible!"

"I repeat that he was seated exactly here. If you had come two days ago----"

"Ah! What a pity Clarita did not fall ill sooner!" she cried. "You hear, cousin! His Excellency was here! You know, Don Santiago, that at Madrid our cousin was the friend of ministers and dukes, and that he dined with the Count del Campanario."

"The Duke de la Torre, Victorina," suggested her husband.

"It is the same thing!"

"Shall I find Father Damaso at his pueblo to-day?" Linares asked Brother Salvi.

"Father Damaso is here, and may be with us at any moment."

"I'm very glad! I have a letter for him, and if a happy chance had not brought me here, I should have come expressly to see him."

Meanwhile the "happy chance," that is to say, poor Maria Clara, had awakened.

"Come, de Espadana, come, see Clarita," said Dona Victorina. "It is for you he does this," she went on, turning to Captain Tiago; "my husband attends only people of quality."

The sick-room was almost in obscurity, the windows closed, for fear of draughts; two candles, burning before an image of the Virgin of Antipolo, sent out feeble glimmers.

Enveloped in multiple folds of white, the lovely figure of Maria lay on her bed of kamagon, behind curtains of jusi and pina. Her abundant hair about her face increased its transparent pallor, as did the radiance of her great, sad eyes. Beside her were her two friends, and Andeng holding a lily branch.

De Espadana felt her pulse, examined her tongue, asked a question or two, and nodded his head.

"Sh--she is s--sick, but she can be c--cured."

Dona Victorina looked proudly at their audience.

"Lichen with m--m--milk, for the m--m--morning, syrup of m--m--marshmallow, and two tablets of cynoglossum."

"Take courage, Clarita," said Dona Victorina, approaching the bed, "we have come to cure you. I'm going to present to you our cousin."

Linares, absorbed, was gazing at those eloquent eyes, which seemed to be searching for some one; he did not hear Dona Victorina.

"Senor Linares," said the curate, drawing him out of his abstraction, "here is Father Damaso."

It was indeed he; but it was not the Father Damaso of heretofore, so vigorous and alert. He walked uncertainly, and he was pale and sad.

x.x.xVI.

PROJECTS.

With no word for any one else, Father Damaso went straight to Maria's bed and took her hand.

"Maria," he said with great tenderness, and tears gushed from his eyes, "Maria, my child, you must not die!"

Maria Clara looked at him with some astonishment. No one of those who knew the Franciscan would have believed him capable of such display of feeling.

He could not say another word, but moved aside the draperies and went out among the plants of Maria's balcony, crying like a child.

"How he loves his G.o.d-daughter!" every one thought.

Father Salvi, motionless and silent, watched him intently.

When the father's grief seemed more controlled, Dona Victorino presented young Linares. Father Damaso, saying nothing, looked him over from head to foot, took the letter, read it without appearing to comprehend, and asked:

"Well, who are you?"