“God, who commands honor for father and mother, will pardon it, God will not excommunicate him! And I tell you that if that young man comes to my house I will receive him and talk with him, and if I had a daughter I would want him for a son-in-law; he who is a good son will be a good husband and a good father—believe it, Sister Rufa!”
“Well, I don’t think so. Say what you like, and even though you may appear to be right, I’ll always rather believe the curate. Before everything else, I’ll save my soul. What do you say, Capitana Tinny?”
“Oh, what do you want me to say? You’re both right—the curate is right, but God must also be right. I don’t know, I’m only a foolish woman. What I’m going to do is to tell my son not to study any more, for they say that persons who know anything die on the gallows. María Santísima, my son wants to go to Europe!”
“What are you thinking of doing?”
“Tell him to stay with me—why should he know more? Tomorrow or the next day we shall die, the learned and the ignorant alike must die, and the only question is to live in peace.” The good old woman sighed and raised her eyes toward the sky.
“For my part,” said Capitana María gravely, “if I were rich like you I would let my sons travel; they are young and will some day be men. I have only a little while to live, we should see one another in the other life, so sons should aspire to be more than their fathers, but at our sides we only teach them to be children.”
“Ay, what rare thoughts you have!” exclaimed the astonished Capitana Tinay, clasping her hands. “It must be that you didn’t suffer in bearing your twin boys.”
“For the very reason that I did bear them with suffering, that I have nurtured and reared them in spite of our poverty, I do not wish that, after the trouble they’ve cost me, they be only half-men.”
“It seems to me that you don’t love your children as God commands,” said Sister Rufa in a rather severe tone.
“Pardon me, every mother loves her sons in her own way. One mother loves them for her own sake and another loves them for their sake. I am one of the latter, for my husband has so taught me.”
“All your ideas, Capitana María,” said Sister Rufa, as if preaching, “are but little religious. Become a sister of the Holy Rosary or of St. Francis or of St. Rita or of St. Clara.”
“Sister Rufa, when I am a worthy sister of men then I’ll try to be a sister of the saints,” she answered with a smile.
To put an end to this chapter of comments and that the reader may learn in passing what the simple country folk thought of the incident, we will now go to the plaza, where under the large awning some rustics are conversing, one of them—he who dreamed about doctors of medicine—being an acquaintance of ours.
“What I regret most,” said he, “is that the schoolhouse won’t be finished.”
“What’s that?” asked the bystanders with interest.
“My son won’t be a doctor but a carter, nothing more! Now there won’t be any school!”
“Who says there won’t be any school?” asked a rough and robust countryman with wide cheeks and a narrow head.
“I do! The white padres have called Don Crisóstomo plibastiero.98 Now there won’t be any school.”
All stood looking questioningly at each other; that was a new term to them.
“And is that a bad name?” the rough countryman made bold to ask.
“The worst thing that one Christian can say to another!”
“Worse than tarantado and sarayate?”99
“If it were only that! I’ve been called those names several times and they didn’t even give me a bellyache.”
“Well, it can’t be worse than ‘indio,’ as the alferez says.”
The man who was to have a carter for a son became gloomier, while the other scratched his head in thought.
“Then it must be like the betelapora100 that the alferez’s old woman says. Worse than that is to spit on the Host.”
“Well, it’s worse than to spit on the Host on Good Friday,” was the grave reply. “You remember the word ispichoso101 which when applied to a man is enough to have the civil-guards take him into exile or put him in jail—well, plibustiero is much worse. According to what the telegrapher and the directorcillo said, plibustiero, said by a Christian, a curate, or a Spaniard to another Christian like us is a santusdeus with requimiternam,102 for if they ever call you a plibustiero then you’d better get yourself shriven and pay your debts, since nothing remains for you but to be hanged. You know whether the telegrapher and the directorcillo ought to be informed; one talks with wires and the other knows Spanish and works only with a pen.”
All were appalled.
“May they force me to wear shoes and in all my life to drink nothing but that vile stuff they call beer, if I ever let myself be called pelbistero!” swore the countryman, clenching his fists. “What, rich as Don Crisóstomo is, knowing Spanish as he does, and able to eat fast with a knife and spoon, I’d laugh at five curates!”
“The next civil-guard I catch stealing my chickens I’m going to call palabistiero, then I’ll go to confession at once,” murmured one of the rustics in a low voice as he withdrew from the group.
XXXVI
The First Cloud
In Capitan Tiago’s house reigned no less disorder than in the people’s imagination. María Clara did nothing but weep and would not listen
