An Eagle Flight Part 27

"Senor----" stammered Captain Tiago, wiping drops of sweat from his brow.

"Then nothing is settled, I see. If witnesses are lacking, it will give me the greatest pleasure to be one of them."

"Yes, senor," said Captain Tiago, with a smile to stir compa.s.sion.

Ibarra had gone off almost running to find Maria Clara. He had so much to talk over with her. Through a door he heard the murmur of girls'

voices. He knocked.

"Who is there?" asked Maria.

"I."

The voices were hushed, but the door did not open.

"It's I. May I come in?" demanded Crisostomo, his heart beginning to beat violently.

The silence continued. After some moments, light foot-steps approached the door, and the voice of Sinang said through the keyhole:

"Crisostomo, we're going to the theatre to-night. Write what you have to say to Maria Clara."

"What does that mean?" said Ibarra to himself as he slowly left the door.

x.x.xII.

THE PROCESSION.

That evening, in the light of countless lanterns, to the sound of bells and of continuous detonations, the procession started for the fourth time.

The captain-general, who had set out on foot, accompanied by his two aides-de-camp, Captain Tiago, the alcalde, the alferez, and Ibarra, and preceded by the guards, to open a pa.s.sage, was to view the procession from the house of the gobernadorcillo. This functionary had built a platform for the recitation of a loa, a religious poem in honor of the patron saint.

Ibarra would gladly have renounced the hearing of this composition, but His Excellency had ordered his attendance, and Crisostomo must console himself with the thought of seeing his fiancee at the theatre.

The procession began by the march of the silver candelabra, borne by three sacristans. Then came the school children and their master, then other children, all with paper lanterns, shaped and ornamented according to the taste of each child--for each was his own lantern-maker--hoisted on bamboo poles of various lengths and lighted by bits of candles. An effigy of St. John the Baptist followed, borne on a litter, and then came St. Francis, surrounded by crystal lamps. A band followed, and then the standard of the saint, borne by the brothers of the Third Order, praying aloud in a sort of lamentation. San Diego came next, his car drawn by six brothers of the Third Order, probably fulfilling some vow. St. Mary Magdalen followed him, a beautiful image with splendid hair, wearing a costume of silk spangled with gold, and holding a handkerchief of embroidered pina in her jewelled hands. Lights and incense surrounded her, and her gla.s.s tears reflected the varied colors of Bengal lights. St. John the Baptist moved far ahead, as if ashamed of his camel's hair beside all this gold and glitter.

After the Magdalen came the women of the order, the elder first, so that the young girls should surround the car of the Virgin; behind them was the curate under his dais. The car of the Virgin was preceded by men dressed as phantoms, to the great terror of the children; the women wore habits like those of religious orders. In the midst of this obscure ma.s.s of robes and cowls and cordons one saw, like dainty jasmines, like fresh sampages amid old rags, twelve little girls in white, their hair free. Their eyes shone like their necklaces. One might have thought them little genii of the light taken prisoner by spectres. By two wide blue ribbons they were attached to the car of the Virgin, like the doves which draw the car of Spring.

At the gobernadorcillo's the procession stopped, all the images and their attendants were drawn up around the platform, and all eyes were fixed on the half-open curtain. At length it parted, and a young man appeared, winged, booted like a cavalier, with sash and belt and plumed hat, and in Latin, Castilian, and Tagal recited a poem as extraordinary as his attire. The verses ended, St. John pursued his bitter way.

At the moment when the figure of the Virgin pa.s.sed the house of Captain Tiago, a celestial song greeted it. It was a voice, sweet and tender, almost weeping out the Gounod "Ave Maria." The music of the procession died away, the prayers ceased. Father Salvi himself stood still. The voice trembled; it drew tears; it was more than a salutation: it was a supplication and a complaint.

Ibarra heard, and fear and darkness entered his heart. He felt the suffering in the voice and dared not ask himself whence it came.

The captain-general was speaking to him.

"I should like your company at table. We will talk to those children who have disappeared," he said.

Crisostomo, looking at the general without seeing him, asked himself under his breath: "Can I be the cause?" And he followed the governor mechanically.

x.x.xIII.

DOnA CONSOLACION.

Why were the windows of the house of the alferez not only without lanterns, but shuttered? Where, when the procession pa.s.sed, were the masculine head with its great veins and purple lips, the flannel shirt, and the big cigar of the "Muse of the Munic.i.p.al Guard"?

The house was sad, as Sinang said, because the people were gay. Had not a sentinel paced as usual before the door one might have thought the place uninhabited.

A feeble light showed the disorder of the room, where the alfereza was sitting, and pierced the dusty and spider-webbed conches of the windows. The dame, according to her idle custom, was dozing in a fauteuil. To deaden the sound of the bombs, she had coifed her head in a handkerchief, from which escaped her tangled hair, short and thin. This morning she had not been to ma.s.s, not because she did not wish it, but because her husband had not permitted it, accompanying his prohibition with oaths and threats of blows. Dona Consolacion was now dreaming of revenge. She bestirred herself at last and ran over the house from one end to the other, her dark face disquieting to look at. A spark flashed from her eyes like that from the pupil of a serpent trapped and about to be crushed. It was cold, luminous, penetrating; it was viscous, cruel, repulsive. The smallest error on the part of a servant, the least noise, drew forth words injurious enough to smirch the soul; but n.o.body replied; to offer excuse would have been to commit another crime.

In this way the day pa.s.sed. Meeting no opposition--her husband had been invited to the gobernadorcillo's--she stored up spleen; the cells of her organism seemed slowly charging with electric force, which burst out, later on, in a tempest.

Sisa had been in the barracks since her arrest the day before. The alferez, fearing she might become the sport of the crowd, had ordered her to be kept until the fete was over.

This evening, whether she had heard the song of Maria Clara, whether the bands had recalled airs that she knew, for some reason she began to chant, in her sympathetic voice, the songs of her youth. The soldiers heard and became still; they knew these airs, had sung them themselves when they were young and free and innocent. Dona Consolacion heard, too, and inquired for the singer.

"Have her come up at once," she said, after a moment's reflection, something like a smile flickering on her dry lips.

The soldiers brought Sisa, who came without fear or question. When she entered she seemed to see no one, which wounded the vanity of the dreadful muse. Dona Consolacion coughed, motioned the soldiers to withdraw, and, taking down her husband's riding whip, said in a sinister voice:

"Vamos, magcanter icau!"

It was an order to sing, in a mixture of Castilian and Tagalo. Dona Consolacion affected ignorance of her native tongue, thinking thus to give herself the air of a veritable Orofea, as she said in her attempt at Europea. For if she martyred the Tagalo, she treated Castilian worse, though her husband, and chairs and shoes, had contributed to giving her lessons.

Sisa had been happy enough not to understand. The forehead of the shrew unknotted a bit, and a look of satisfaction animated her face.

"Tell this woman to sing!" she said to the orderly. "She doesn't understand; she doesn't know Spanish!"

The orderly spoke to Sisa, and she began at once the "Night Song."

At first Dona Consolacion listened with a mocking smile, but little by little it left her lips. She became attentive, then serious. Her dry and withered heart received the rain. "The sadness, the cold, the dew come down from the sky in the mantle of the night," seemed to fall upon her heart; she understood "the flower, full of vanity, and prodigal with its splendors in the sun, now, at the fall of day, withered and stained, repentant and disillusioned, trying to raise its poor petals toward heaven, begging a shade to hide it from the mockery of the sun, who had seen it in its pomp, and was laughing at the impotence of its pride; begging also a drop of dew to be let fall upon it."

"No! Stop singing!" she cried in perfect Tagal. "Stop! These verses bore me!"

Sisa stopped. The orderly thought: "Ah, she knows the Tagal!" And he regarded his mistress with admiration.

She saw she had betrayed herself, became ashamed, and shame in her unfeminine nature meant rage. She showed the door to the imprudent orderly, and shut it behind him with a blow. Then she took several turns around the room, wringing the whip in her nervous hands. At last, planting herself before Sisa, she said to her in Spanish: "Dance!"

Sisa did not move.

"Dance! Dance!" she repeated in a threatening voice. The poor thing looked at her with vacant eyes. The vixen took hold of one of her arms and then the other, raising them and swaying them about. It was of no use. Sisa did not understand.