“That man talks to you in a way which arouses my indignation. I had a hard time to keep still. How can you bear it?”
“No, no, not that; don’t even say it! He is my husband, and can’t stop to choose his words.”
“Indeed, he ought to choose them. To a woman like you, who are goodness and holiness in person, one ought to speak in this posture—so—do you see?” I murmured, kneeling before her.
“If you don’t get up I shall be angry, and so I shall if you ever say that again,” answered she, standing up resolutely. “I don’t thank you for this attempt to comfort me, Salustio; it seems more like flattery, and flattering me is lost time. Do you want me to tell you the truth? Well, then, I am to blame, entirely to blame, for that unpleasant scene. I ought not to have gone contrary to Felipe, but to have waited till the first outburst was over, and then have reasoned with him. It is only natural that he should feel annoyed at papa’s marriage. Let us be fair. No husband ever gets angry with his wife if she does not contradict him. The tongue causes all matrimonial dissensions. It is a wife’s duty to keep quiet.”
“No, you foolish girl, your duty is to speak when you are right; the same as we do, although we often talk a great deal when we are wrong. So you think that even if your husband were to break forth with some barbarous remark,—such as to say there is no God,—you ought not to answer him?”
“Not while he is irritated—no, what good would it do! It would be like throwing wood into the fire, and would never persuade him. But as soon as he gets calm, then I ought to tell him my objections, affectionately and mildly, as well as I know how, and then he would listen to me and would be persuaded.”
I did not know what to reply, since, even though a thousand reflections occurred to me, my aunt’s way of reasoning conquered me completely, and seemed the only one worthy of her.
It was a very cloudy day. The dining-room opened into the court, and the thick curtains cut off the light and made it more gloomy. The folds of those dark, thick woolen curtains seemed to me, by a sudden freak of the imagination, to look like a friar’s garb, the heavy cord that looped them up helping to make the resemblance all the more striking. The arabesque patterns on the curtain, at a certain height, looked to me like a man’s face. It was a strange bit of self-suggestion that evoked there the shadow of Father Moreno, listening to our conversation, and ridiculing me with a mocking air. “Cursed friar!” I ejaculated mentally, addressing the curtain. “You are going to be disappointed, I promise you. Because nothing that outrages human nature and is contrary to its laws will last, and this heroic abnegation of my aunt and the violence she does to her own deepest feelings cannot go on indefinitely; the time will come when the spring will break, and I shall watch for that hour to come. I swear to you, you stupid friar, you have never tasted the only real happiness in life.”
By chance my aunt fixed her eyes on the curtain with the intensity of those who gaze into vacancy and are distracted by their sad reflections. I fancied that she also saw what I did in the folds of the curtains, and that to her eyes also the shadow of the friar stood forth, silent but eloquent in its attitude.
What would I not have given then to penetrate into the hidden recesses of that woman’s mind, and read the revolutionary proclamation which was undoubtedly written there by an invisible hand! But the wife allowed nothing to come to the surface. She arose and went into the kitchen to ask whether lunch was ready. “For you must be hungry by this time, Salustio,” she said when she came back, calm and self-possessed.