The girl seemed to have been stricken dumb; she neither said anything nor raised her eyes.
Ibarra looked Linares over from head to foot with a stare which the bashful youth bore haughtily.
“Well, I see that my arrival was unexpected,” said Ibarra slowly. “María, pardon me that I didn’t have myself announced. At some other time I’ll be able to make explanations to you about my conduct. We’ll still see one another—surely.”
These last words were accompanied by a look at Linares. The girl raised toward him her lovely eyes, full of purity and sadness. They were so beseeching and eloquent that Ibarra stopped in confusion.
“May I come tomorrow?”
“You know that for my part you are always welcome,” she answered faintly.
Ibarra withdrew in apparent calm, but with a tempest in his head and ice in his heart. What he had just seen and felt was incomprehensible to him: was it doubt, dislike, or faithlessness?
“Oh, only a woman after all!” he murmured.
Taking no note of where he was going, he reached the spot where the schoolhouse was under construction. The work was well advanced, Ñor Juan with his mile and plumb-bob coming and going among the numerous laborers. Upon catching sight of Ibarra he ran to meet him.
“Don Crisóstomo, at last you’ve come! We’ve all been waiting for you. Look at the walls, they’re already more than a meter high and within two days they’ll be up to the height of a man. I’ve put in only the strongest and most durable woods—molave, dungon, ipil, langil—and sent for the finest—tindalo, malatapay, pino, and narra—for the finishings. Do you want to look at the foundations?”
The workmen saluted Ibarra respectfully, while Ñor Juan made voluble explanations. “Here is the piping that I have taken the liberty to add,” he said. “These subterranean conduits lead to a sort of cesspool, thirty yards away. It will help fertilize the garden. There was nothing of that in the plan. Does it displease you?”
“Quite the contrary, I approve what you’ve done and congratulate you. You are a real architect. From whom did you learn the business?”
“From myself, sir,” replied the old man modestly.
“Oh, before I forget about it—tell those who may have scruples, if perhaps there is anyone who fears to speak to me, that I’m no longer excommunicated. The Archbishop invited me to dinner.”
“Abá, sir, we don’t pay any attention to excommunications! All of us are excommunicated. Padre Dámaso himself is and yet he stays fat.”
“How’s that?”
“It’s true, sir, for a year ago he caned the coadjutor, who is just as much a sacred person as he is. Who pays any attention to excommunications, sir?”
Among the laborers Ibarra caught sight of Elías, who, as he saluted him along with the others, gave him to understand by a look that he had something to say to him.
“Ñor Juan,” said Ibarra, “will you bring me your list of the laborers?”
Ñor Juan disappeared, and Ibarra approached Elías, who was by himself, lifting a heavy stone into a cart.
“If you can grant me a few hours’ conversation, sir, walk down to the shore of the lake this evening and get into my banka.” The youth nodded, and Elías moved away.
Ñor Juan now brought the list, but Ibarra scanned it in vain; the name of Elías did not appear on it!
XLIX
The Voice of the Hunted
As the sun was sinking below the horizon Ibarra stepped into Elías’s banka at the shore of the lake. The youth looked out of humor.
“Pardon me, sir,” said Elías sadly, on seeing him, “that I have been so bold as to make this appointment. I wanted to talk to you freely and so I chose this means, for here we won’t have any listeners. We can return within an hour.”
“You’re wrong, friend,” answered Ibarra with a forced smile. “You’ll have to take me to that town whose belfry we see from here. A mischance forces me to this.”
“A mischance?”
“Yes. On my way here I met the alferez and he forced his company on me. I thought of you and remembered that he knows you, so to get away from him I told him that I was going to that town. I’ll have to stay there all day, since he will look for me tomorrow afternoon.”
“I appreciate your thoughtfulness, but you might simply have invited him to accompany you,” answered Elías naturally.
“What about you?”
“He wouldn’t have recognized me, since the only time he ever saw me he wasn’t in a position to take careful note of my appearance.”
“I’m in bad luck,” sighed Ibarra, thinking of María Clara. “What did you have to tell me?”
Elías looked about him. They were already at a distance from the shore, the sun had set, and as in these latitudes there is scarcely any twilight, the shades were lengthening, bringing into view the bright disk of the full moon.
“Sir,” replied Elías gravely, “I am the bearer of the wishes of many unfortunates.”
“Unfortunates? What do you mean?”
In a few words Elías recounted his conversation with the leader of the tulisanes, omitting the latter’s doubts and threats. Ibarra listened attentively and was the first to break the long silence that reigned after he had finished his story.
“So they want—”
“Radical reforms in the armed forces, in the priesthood, and in the administration of justice; that is to say, they ask for paternal treatment from the government.”
“Reforms? In what sense?”
“For example, more respect for a man’s dignity, more security for the individual, less force in the armed forces, fewer privileges for that corps which so easily abuses what it has.”
“Elías,” answered the youth, “I don’t know who you are, but I suspect that you are
