Her mother again kissed her hand with effusion, and then drew her to her, and covered her face with kisses.
"Forgive me for torturing you like this. Much as you suffer, I suffer more. Yesterday evening your sister came and told me. Imagine my distress and grief. My first impulse was to kill her, for I was sure that she was most to blame. She gave me proof that they have been carrying on for some time, and showed me letters which made Gonzalo's faithlessness very clear to me. When I was convinced of his treachery I said that I would have nobody make a laughing-stock of my daughter, and Gonzalo should not set foot again in this house, that he was as bad as she; in short, I said all that came into my head. But this morning, this morning—I learned something still worse. I learned that your sister has gone farther than I can, or wish to, say. There is nothing for them but marriage, and that as soon as possible. Now you know why I have had this pain, which all but kills me, and would that it did so! Your father and I are both trapped—our hands are tied. If it were not so I would sooner be cut into little pieces than consent to this marriage. The infamous way this man has treated you will make me hate him all my life. Yes, all my life!" she added in an angry tone.
Cecilia did not answer. She sat with her hands clasped in her lap, her head hanging on her bosom and her horror-struck eyes fixed on the ground.
Neither the vehement broken utterances of her mother nor the sobs which succeeded them made her change her position. She remained thus for some time, motionless, and white as a statue.
In those large, limpid eyes there at last trembled a tear; it grew, it moved, then overflowing, it left a wet track upon her wan cheek, and fell like a drop of fire upon her hand, and there remained. A little later it evaporated. An angel had gathered it up and taken it to God in protest for her who had shed it.
CHAPTER XIII
"THE LIGHT OF SARRIO"
A NEW bright day dawned upon Sarrio after the recent heavy gloom. By the mercy and grace of God the beautiful town was now, when least expected, provided with a press organ, which was to be biweekly, or as the illustrious organizer expressed it, "hepdomenal." Grave obstacles and perilous difficulties were at first opposed to the realization of the undertaking, but the genius of the wonderful man who undertook it overcame them all. The first difficulty was that of money. Fifty shares of a thousand ducats each were issued for the support of the periodical. The friends of Don Rosendo only took up nine. Don Rudesindo had five allotted to him, Don Feliciano two, and Don Pedro Miranda, in spite of his large income, only another two—no more. Alvaro Peña, Don Rufo, Navarro, et al., excused themselves for want of funds, and that with reason; besides, they gave the business the benefit of their brains, which no doubt was a great thing. So Don Rosendo, with a generosity which greatly impressed the rest of the company, was the holder of the remaining forty-one shares.
Messengers were despatched to Lancia in search of a printing press, but the negotiations proving fruitless, the press organizer went himself to the town. At the end of some days he was fortunate enough to find a printer who had been ruined for some years, and no purchaser had been forthcoming for his broken-down, rotting apparatus which lay covered with dust in a dark cellar. When Don Rosendo proceeded to examine it with its owner, he could not help feeling respectful emotion, and grave thoughts filled his mind as he contemplated it.
"Here," he said, "is lying in idleness the most influential instrument of human progress, and this not from any fault of the owner, but through the desertion of mankind. How much information, how much spiritual food might it not have produced during these barren dumb years! While barbarism and ignorance are rampant in the greater part of our country, that printing apparatus, the only agent of their dispersion, stands motionless for the want of a hand to work it and to bring forth from it the secrets of science and politics."
He almost kissed and fondled the machine in his enthusiasm. The printer, seeing his visitor so well disposed in its favor, could not be outdone, and he declared himself so devotedly attached to the very skeleton of his machine that he would not part with it for any money, for it had always been the faithful companion by which he had earned his bread (and according to report, his wine too). He descanted upon its perfections with as much enthusiasm as if he were its offspring and indebted to it for his life's breath; and he moreover made the solemn statement that it printed better and cleaner than all the printing presses of the day.