CHAPTER XLI
FATHER DAMASO EXPLAINS.
In vain the costly wedding gifts were heaped upon the table. Neither
the diamonds in their blue velvet caskets, nor the embroidered pina,
nor the pieces of silk had any attractions for Maria Clara. The
maiden looked at the paper which gave the account of Ibarra's death,
drowned in the lake, but she neither saw nor read it.
Of a sudden, she felt two hands over her eyes. They held her fast
while a joyous voice, Father Damaso's, said to her:
"Who am I? Who am I?"
Maria Clara jumped from her seat and looked at him with terror in
her eyes.
"You little goose, were you frightened, eh? You were not expecting
me? Well, I have come from the provinces to attend your wedding."
And coming up to her again with a smile of satisfaction, he stretched
out his hand to her. Maria Clara approached timidly and, raising it
to her lips, kissed it.
"What is the matter with you, Maria?" asked the Franciscan, losing
his gay smile, and becoming very uneasy. "Your hand is cold, you are
pale... Are you ill, my little girl?"
And Father Damaso drew her up to him with a fondness of which no one
would have thought him capable. He grasped both the maiden's hands
and gave her a questioning look.
"Haven't you any confidence in your godfather?" he asked in a
reproachful tone. "Come, sit down here and tell me your little
troubles, just as you used to do when you were a child, when you
wanted wax-candles to make wax figures. You surely know that I have
always loved you... I have never scolded you..."
Father Damaso's voice ceased to be brusque; its modulations were even
caressing. Maria Clara began to weep.
"Are you weeping, my child? Why are you weeping? Have you quarrelled
with Linares?"
Maria Clara covered her eyes with her hands.
"No! It is not he now!" cried the maiden.
Father Damaso looked at her full of surprise.
"Do you not want to entrust your secrets to me? Have I not always
managed to satisfy your smallest caprices?"
The young woman raised her eyes full of tears toward him. She looked
at him for some time, and then began to weep bitterly.
"Do not cry so, my child, for your tears pain me! Tell me your
troubles. You will see how your godfather loves you."
Maria Clara approached him slowly and fell on her knees at his
feet. Then raising her face, bathed in tears, she said to him in a
low voice, scarcely audible:
"Do you still love me?"
"Child!"
"Then ... protect my father, and break off the marriage!"
Then she related her last interview with Ibarra, omitting the reference
to her birth.
Father Damaso could scarcely believe what he heard.
"While he lived," continued the maiden, "I intended to fight, to wait,
to trust. I wanted to live to hear him spoken of ... but now that they
have killed him, now there is no reason for my living and suffering."
She said this slowly, in a low voice, calmly and without a tear.
"But, you goose; isn't Linares a thousand times better than...?"
"When he was living, I could have married ... I was thinking of fleeing
afterward ... my father wanted nothing more than the relative. Now that
he is dead, no other man will call me his wife... While he lived,
I could have debased myself and still had the consolation of knowing
that he existed and perhaps was thinking of me. Now that he is dead
... the convent or the tomb."
Her voice had a firmness in its accent which took away Father Damaso's
joy and set him to thinking.
"Did you love him so much as that?" he asked, stammering.
Maria Clara did not reply. Father Damaso bowed his head upon his
breast and remained silent.
"My child!" he exclaimed, his voice breaking. "Forgive me for making
you unhappy without knowing it. I was thinking of your future; I
wanted you to be happy. How could I permit you to marry a native;
how could I see you an unhappy wife and a miserable mother? I could
not get your love out of your head, and I opposed it with all my
strength. All that I have done has been for you, for you alone. If
you had become his wife, you would have wept afterward on account
of the condition of your husband, exposed to all kinds of vengeance,
without any means of defense. As a mother, you would have wept over
the fortune of your sons; if you educated them, you would prepare a
sad future for them, you would have made them enemies of the Church
and would have seen them hanged or exiled; if you left them ignorant,
you would have seen them oppressed and degraded. I could not consent
to it! This is why I sought as a husband for you one who might
make you the happy mother of sons born not to obey but to command,
not to suffer but to punish. I knew that your friend was good from
infancy. I liked him as I had liked his father, but I hated them both
when I saw that they were going to make you unhappy, because I love
you, I idolize you, I love you as my daughter. I have nothing dearer
than you. I have seen you grow. No hour passes but I think of you;
I dream of you; you are my only joy."
And Father Damaso began to weep like a child.
"Well, then, if you love me do not make me eternally unhappy. He no
longer lives; I want to be a nun."
The old man rested his head on his hand.
"To be a nun, to be a nun!" he repeated. "You do not know, my child,
the life, the misery, which is hidden behind the walls of the
convent. You do not know it! I prefer a thousand times to see you
unhappy in the world than to see you unhappy in the cloister. Here
your complaints can be heard, there you will have only the walls. You
are beautiful, very beautiful, and you were not born for it, you were
not born to be the bride of Christ! Believe me, my child, time will
blot it all out. Later you will forget, you will love your husband
... Linares."
"Either the convent or ... death!" repeated Maria Clara.
"The convent, the convent or death!" exclaimed Father Damaso. "Maria,
I am already old, I will not be able to watch you or your happiness
much longer... Choose another course, seek another love, another
young man, whoever he may be, but not the convent."
"The convent or death!"
"My God, my God!" cried the priest, covering his head with his
hands. "Thou punisheth me. So be it! But watch over my child."
And turning to the young woman: "You want to be a nun? You shall be
one. I do not want you to die."
Maria Clara took his two hands, clasped them in her own and kissed
them as she knelt.
"Godfather, my godfather!" she repeated.
Immediately, Father Damaso went out, sad, with drooping head and
sighing.
"God, O God! Thou existeth, for Thou punisheth. But avenge Thyself
on me and do not harm the innocent. Save my child!"