The Social Cancer, by José Rizal - Home

CHAPTER LX 279
Maria Clara saw him pause on discovering her, but only for a moment. Then he advanced slowly and stopped
within a few paces of her. Maria Clara recoiled.
"Crisostomo!" she murmured, overcome with fright.
"Yes, I am Crisostomo," replied the young man gravely. "An enemy, a man who has every reason for hating
me, Elias, has rescued me from the prison into which my friends threw me."
A sad silence followed these words. Maria Clara bowed her head and let her arms fall.
Ibarra went on: "Beside my mother's corpse I swore that I would make you happy, whatever might be my
destiny! You can have been faithless to your oath, for she was not your mother; but I, I who am her son, hold
her memory so sacred that in spite of a thousand difficulties I have come here to carry mine out, and fate has
willed that I should speak to you yourself. Maria, we shall never see each other again--you are young and
perhaps some day your conscience may reproach you--I have come to tell you, before I go away forever, that I
forgive you. Now, may you be happy and--farewell!"
Ibarra started to move away, but the girl stopped him.
"Crisostomo," she said, "God has sent you to save me from desperation. Hear me and then judge me!"
Ibarra tried gently to draw away from her. "I didn't come to call you to account! I came to give you peace!"
"I don't want that peace which you bring me. Peace I will give myself. You despise me and your contempt
will embitter all the rest of my life."
Ibarra read the despair and sorrow depicted in the suffering girl's face and asked her what she wished.
"That you believe that I have always loved you!"
At this he smiled bitterly.
"Ah, you doubt me! You doubt the friend of your childhood, who has never hidden a single thought from
you!" the maiden exclaimed sorrowfully. "I understand now! But when you hear my story, the sad story that
was revealed to me during my illness, you will have mercy on me, you will not have that smile for my sorrow.
Why did you not let me die in the hands of my ignorant physician? You and I both would have been happier!"
Resting a moment, she then went on: "You have desired it, you have doubted me! But may my mother forgive
me! On one of the sorrowfulest of my nights of suffering, a man revealed to me the name of my real father
and forbade me to love you--except that my father himself should pardon the injury you had done him."
Ibarra recoiled a pace and gazed fearfully at her.
"Yes," she continued, "that man told me that he could not permit our union, since his conscience would forbid
it, and that he would be obliged to reveal the name of my real father at the risk of causing a great scandal, for
my father is--" And she murmured into the youth's ear a name in so low a tone that only he could have heard
it.
"What was I to do? Must I sacrifice to my love the memory of my mother, the honor of my supposed father,
and the good name of the real one? Could I have done that without having even you despise me?"
"But the proof! Had you any proof? You needed proofs!" exclaimed Ibarra, trembling with emotion.