Dona Maria set out directly for home in her sedan-chair. When she got there she noticed a great uproar and commotion and immediately tried to discover its cause. One of her niece’s slave-men was waiting for her with a letter. As soon as she had read it Dona Maria was not so much saddened as set back on her heels.
“Don’t remove the sedan-chair; just wait, for I’ll be going out again.” And indeed she climbed into it anew and ordered that she be taken to her niece’s house.
The situation was as follows. José Manuel had had to be carried into the house after suffering a violent attack of apoplexy on the street as he was returning from the registry, where he had had a serious conflict with Dona Maria’s lawyer about the suit in which they were engaged. Poor Luisinha, seeing herself in this situation and not knowing what to do, had immediately sent a messenger to her aunt.
As soon as she entered, Dona Maria had a doctor called. After he had examined the patient, the doctor declared that the case was beyond help. Some procedures were taken nonetheless, but they had no effect.
“You are a widow, my child,” said Dona Maria, somewhat compunctious from the doctor’s declaration. Luisinha broke into tears, but only in the way that she would cry for any creature, having, as she did, a tender heart.
Some people from the neighborhood were present, and one of the woman among them said quietly to another, “Those aren’t widow’s tears.” And they were not, as we have said. Most of the time the world makes a crime of that. But what of antecedent factors? Had José Manuel perchance ever been Luisinha’s husband in his heart? He had been such only as regards the proprieties, and for the proprieties those tears served equally well. Neither the doctor nor Dona Maria had been wrong: At nightfall José Manuel expired.
The next day they made arrangements for the funeral. The comadre, who had been informed of everything, came by in sympathy to lend her good offices and her consolations.
The funeral procession set out accompanied by the friends of the family; the household slaves raised a tremendous wail. All the neighborhood was at its windows, and everything was analyzed, from the handles and fixtures on the casket to the number and standing of the invitees. And on each of those points three or four different opinions were registered.
In those times funeral orations were not common practice, nor were obituaries, so much in fashion today. Thus we at least escape that. José Manuel sleeps in peace in his last resting place.
As the comadre had promised, someone arrived almost at nightfall. It was Leonardo. When he entered Dona Maria’s drawing room, she could not restrain a cry of surprise. He came in wearing the complete uniform of a sergeant of the company of grenadiers!
“What! Look what the major did! How can it be?”
“It’s true, ma’am,” Leonardo answered. “I owe it all to him.”
It was the object of general amazement. They would all have been satisfied with Leonardo’s mere release, and he turned up not only released and free but even elevated to the rank of sergeant, which is no small thing in the army.
Leonardo began to seek with his eyes something or someone he was curious to see. He came upon it: It was Luisinha. The two had not seen each other for a long time; they could not hide the sense of awkwardness that came over them. And that emotion was all the greater for their both being surprised at the other. Luisinha found Leonardo a handsome, robust young man with a moustache and sideburns—elegant to the utmost, a grenadier soldier in his well-tailored sergeant’s uniform. Leonardo found Luisinha a grown-up, even elegant, young lady, her eyes and hair black, completely devoid of her former physical timidity. Moreover, her eyes, reddened by tears, her face paled if not truly by the unpleasant happenings of that day then surely by their antecedents, had on this occasion a touch of melancholy beauty about them that as a general rule might not capture the attention of a sergeant of grenadiers but that certainly moved Sergeant Leonardo, who, after all, was not just any sergeant. And so much so that, during the mute scene that took place when their eyes met, Leonardo’s thoughts swiftly returned to the events of his prior life and, going back over it event by event, he reached that ridiculous but ingenuous scene of the declaration of love he had made to Luisinha. It seemed to him that he had chosen the time badly back then and that now it would have a much more appropriate one.
The comadre, who paid a perspicacious attention to everything that was happening, all but read those thoughts in her godson’s mind. She made an almost imperceptible gesture of delight; some radiant notion began to glow in her mind. She then began to retrace an old plan whose realization she had worked for over a long period of time and whose chance for success had been presented to her anew by what had just happened.
When her first emotions subsided, Luisinha rose and made Leonardo a cautious curtsy. He responded with something between an awkward bow and a military salute.
At that point the comadre broke into the conversation, endeavoring to engage Dona Maria and leave the two young people in each other’s company. “Tell me,” said she, addressing Dona Maria, “what about that lawsuit between yourself and the deceased?”
“Death was the judge this time. He has no heirs; he was alone in the world.… I didn’t complete my objective, it’s true, because I can’t really say that I won; but neither did I lose. Now of course I take great pleasure in giving everything to the girl, but I didn’t want to have things taken away from me other than by my own free will.”
“That’s just fine; let the past be over and done with. That is how God is: He writes straight with crooked lines.”
And so they continued on in their conversation. The two young people, after some time in silence—as all the visitors had now departed—gradually, word by word, began a dialogue, and after a while they were as engrossed in conversation as were the comadre and Dona Maria, with the difference that the two women’s conversation was carried out at full voice and with a lack of concern while theirs was quiet and reserved.
There is nothing that, if interrupted, is more quickly resumed than that familiarity in which the heart has an interest. Do not be surprised, therefore, that Luisinha and Leonardo had given themselves over to it.
And do you wish to see a peculiarity that sometimes occurs? Since reaching her majority and becoming a young lady, Luisinha had never had moments of real pleasure such as those she was enjoying in this conversation, on a mourning day, after the departure of the coffin that was taking to the cemetery the man who was supposed to have brought her happiness. Leonardo, for his part, had also never, amid all the vicissitudes of his exorbitant life, experienced moments that raced by as fast as these in which he observed the object of his first love under the weight of misfortune on a day of weeping.
It seems, then, that these very circumstances had brought the past back to life: The comadre, over there in her chair, was rejoicing in it all and, while seeming to pay full attention to Dona Maria, was not missing a single detail.
The time of leave-taking finally arrived, not for the comadre, who had offered to keep the widow company, but for Leonardo, whom the major was awaiting. It was, after all, a day in which he was on duty, and he had obtained permission to carry out the bipartite task of presenting his condolences to Dona Maria and thanking her for the interest she had shown in him by, through the intermediary of Maria-Regalada, causing the major to secure both his pardon from the punishment to which he had been destined and also the promotion in rank that he had so rapidly received.
Upon their leave-taking Luisinha involuntarily extended her hand to Leonardo, who pressed it forcefully. Now, in those times that itself was enough to set everyone’s tongues awagging!