An Eagle Flight
Copyright© 2024 by José Rizal
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 down the 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 man torn from his native Estramadure, who, after wandering six or seven years about the world, a modern Ulysses, found at length, in the island of Luzon, hospitality, money, and a faded Calypso.
Don Tiburcio was a modest man, without force, who would not willingly have injured a fly. He started for the Philippines as under-clerk of customs, but after breaking his leg was forced to give up his position. For a while he lived at the expense of some compatriots, but he found their bread bitter. As he had neither profession nor money, his advisers counselled him to go into the provinces and offer himself as a physician. At first he refused, but, necessity becoming pressing, his friends convinced him of the vanity of his scruples. He started out, kept by his conscience from asking more than small fees, and was on the road to prosperity when a jealous doctor called him to the attention of the College of Physicians at Manila. Nothing would have come of it, but the affair reached the ears of the people; loss of confidence followed, and then loss of patrons. Misery again stared him in the face when he heard of the affliction of 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.
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