United States or New Zealand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In the joy of her triumph doña Bernarda was thinking anxiously of her son's marriage to Remedios, and, coming down one peg on the ladder of her dignity toward don Matias, she began to treat the exporter as a member of the family, commenting contentedly upon the growing affection that united their two children.
All day long city councilors would go trotting back and forth from the City Hall to the Brull patio. The few enemies don Ramón had in the Council meddlers, doña Bernarda called them idiots who swallowed everything in print provided it were against the King and religion attacked the cacique persistently, censuring everything he did. Don Ramón's henchmen would tremble with impotent rage.
His bride, Bernarda Monicha, was a Chinese mestiza of the neighboring hacienda of San Pedro Tunasan, who had been early orphaned and from childhood had lived in Biñan. As the coadjutor priest of the parish bore the same name, one uncommon in the Biñan records of that period, it is possible that he was a relative.
Loyal party adherents were received as cordially as before and the same favors were done, nor was there any decline of influence in places that don Andrés referred to as "the spheres of public administration." There came an election for Parliament, and as usual, doña Bernarda secured the triumph of the individual whose nomination had been dictated from Madrid.
In Rafael's father there still remained much of the wild student who had caused so many tongues to wag in his youthful days. But his doings with peasant girls were hushed up now; fear of the cacique's power stifled all gossip; and since, moreover, affairs with such lowly women cost very little money, doña Bernarda pretended to know nothing about them. She did not love her husband much.
His wife had died shortly after his retirement from business, and the old codger stamped in rage at the slovenliness and laziness displayed by his servants. He would marry Ramón to Bernarda an ugly, ill-humored, yellowish, skinny creature but sole heiress to her father's three beautiful orchards.
Doña Bernarda might be killed, but never conquered! Oh, no! How horrible! Leonora knew what filial cruelty was! How had she treated her father? She must not now come between a son and a mother! Was she, perhaps, a creature accursed, born forever to corrupt with her very name the sacredest, purest relations on earth? "No, you must be good, my heart. I must go away.
Don Andrés took charge of settling Rafael in Valencia when he began his university studies. The dream of old don Jaime, disillusioned in the son, would be fulfilled in the third generation! "This one at least will be a lawyer!" said doña Bernarda, who in the old days had imbibed don Jaime's eagerness for the university degree, which to her seemed like a title of nobility for the family.
Well, doña Bernarda did love him agreed: he was her only son; but ambition was the decisive thing in her schemes, her passion for the aggrandizement of the House the controlling motive of her whole life. She was openly, frankly, using him as security in an alliance she was planning with a great fortune.
And at night, alone in the dining-room with don Andrés, when the hour of confidences came, doña Bernarda would forget the affairs of "the House" and of "the Party," to say with satisfaction: "It's going better." "Is Rafael taking to her?" "More and more every day. We're getting there, we're getting there! That boy is the living image of his father when it comes to matters like this.
Word Of The Day