“With you I have forgotten my duty; I should be on my way to the pueblo. To-morrow is the Feast of the Dead.”
Maria was silent. She fixed on him her great, thoughtful eyes, then turned to pick some flowers.
“Go,” she said, and her voice was deep and sweet; “I keep you no longer. In a few days we shall see each other again. Put these flowers on your father’s grave.”
A little later, Captain Tiago found Maria in the chapel, at the foot of a statue of the Virgin, weeping. “Come, come,” said he, to console her; “burn some candles to St. Roch and St. Michael, patrons of travellers, for the tulisanes are numerous: better spend four réales for wax than pay a ransom.”
VIII.
Reminiscences.
Ibarra’s carriage was crossing one of the most animated quarters of Manila. The street life that had saddened him the night before, now, in spite of his sorrow, made him smile. Everything awakened a world of sleeping recollections.
These streets were not yet paved, so if the sun shone two days continuously, they turned to powder which covered everything. But let it rain a day, you had a mire, reflecting at night the shifting lamps of the carriages and bespattering the foot-passengers on the narrow walks. How many women had lost their embroidered slippers in these muddy waves!
The good and honorable pontoon bridge, so characteristically Filipino, doing its best to be useful in spite of natural faults, and rising or falling with the caprices of the Pasig,—that brave bridge was no more. The new Spanish bridge drew Ibarra’s attention. Carriages passed continuously, drawn by groups of dwarf horses, in splendid harness. In these sat at ease government clerks going to their bureaus, officers, Chinese, self-satisfied and ridiculously grave monks, canons. In an elegant victoria, Ibarra thought he recognized Father Dámaso, deep in thought. From an open carriage, where his wife and two daughters accompanied him, Captain Tinong waved a friendly greeting.