An Eagle Flight Part 5

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-pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sed 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 Damaso, deep in thought. From an open carriage, where his wife and two daughters accompanied him, Captain Tinong waved a friendly greeting.

Then came the Botanical Gardens, then old Manila, still enclosed in its ditches and walls; beyond that the sea; beyond that, Europe, thought Ibarra. But the little hill of Bagumbayan drove away all fancies. He remembered the man who had opened the eyes of his intelligence, taught him to find out the true and the just. It was an old priest, and the holy man had died there, on that field of execution!

To these thoughts he replied by murmuring: "No, after all, first the country, first the Philippines, daughters of Spain, first the Spanish home-land!"

His carriage rolled on. It pa.s.sed a cart drawn by two horses whose hempen harness told of the back country. Sometimes there sounded the slow and heavy tread of a pensive carabao, drawing a great tumbrel; its conductor, on his buffalo skin, accompanying, with a monotonous and melancholy chant, the strident creaking of the wheels. Sometimes there was the dull sound of a native sledge's worn runners. In the fields grazed the herds, and among them white herons gravely promenaded, or sat tranquil on the backs of sleepy oxen beatifically chewing their cuds of prairie gra.s.s. Let us leave the young man, wholly occupied now with his thoughts. The sun which makes the tree-tops burn, and sends the peasants running, when they feel the hot ground through their thick shoes; the sun which halts the countrywoman under a clump of great reeds, and makes her think of things vague and strange--that sun has no enchantment for him.

While the carriage, staggering like a drunken man over the uneven ground, pa.s.ses a bamboo bridge, mounts a rough hillside or descends its steep slope, let us return to Manila.

IX.

AFFAIRS OF THE COUNTRY.

Ibarra had not been mistaken. It was indeed Father Damaso he had seen, on his way to the house which he himself had just left.

Maria Clara and Aunt Isabel were entering their carriage when the monk arrived. "Where are you going?" he asked, and in his preoccupation he gently tapped the young girl's cheek.

"To the convent to get my things," said she.

"Ah! ah! well, well! we shall see who is the stronger, we shall see!" he murmured, as he left the two women somewhat surprised and went up the steps.

"He's probably committing his sermon," said Aunt Isabel. "Come, we are late!"

We cannot say whether Father Damaso was committing a sermon, but he must have been absorbed in important things, for he did not offer his hand to Captain Tiago.

"Santiago," he said, "we must have a serious talk. Come into your office."

Captain Tiago felt uneasy. He answered nothing, but followed the gigantic priest, who closed the door behind them.

While they talk, let us see what has become of Father Sibyla.

The learned Dominican, his ma.s.s once said, had set out for the convent of his order, which stands at the entrance to the city, near the gate bearing alternately, according to the family reigning at Madrid, the name of Magellan or Isabella II.

Brother Sibyla entered, crossed several halls, and knocked at a door.

"Come in," said a faint voice.

"G.o.d give health to your reverence," said the young Dominican, entering. Seated in a great armchair was an old priest, meagre, jaundiced, like Rivera's saints. His eyes, deep-sunken in their orbits, were arched with heavy brows, intensifying the flashes of their dying light.

Brother Sibyla was moved. He inclined his head, and seemed to wait.

"Ah!" gasped the sick man, "they recommend an operation! An operation at my age! Oh, this country, this terrible country! You see what it does for all of us, Hernando!"

"And what has your reverence decided?"

"To die! Could I do otherwise? I suffer too much, but--I've made others suffer. I'm paying my debt. And you? How are you? What do you bring me?"

"I came to talk of the mission you gave me."

"Ah! and what is there to say?"

"They've told us fairy tales," answered Brother Sibyla wearily. "Young Ibarra seems a sensible fellow. He is not stupid at all, and thoroughly manly."

"Is it so!"

"Hostilities began yesterday."

"Ah! and how?"

Brother Sibyla briefly recounted what had pa.s.sed between Brother Damaso and Crisostomo.

"Besides," he said in conclusion, "the young man is going to marry the daughter of Captain Tiago, who was educated at the convent of our sisters. He is rich; he would not go about making himself enemies and compromise at once his happiness and his fortune."

The sick man moved his hand in sign of a.s.sent.

"Yes, you are right. He should be ours, body and soul. But if he declare himself our enemy, so much the better!"

Brother Sibyla looked at the old man in surprise.

"For the good of our sacred order, you understand," he added, breathing with difficulty; "I prefer attack to the flatteries and adulations of friends; besides, those are bought."

"Your reverence believes that?"

The old man looked at him sadly.

"Remember this well," he went on, catching his breath; "our power lasts as long as it's believed in. If we're attacked, the Government reasons: 'They are a.s.sailed because in them is seen an obstacle to liberty: therefore we must support them!'"

"But if the Government should listen to our enemies, if it should come to covet what we have ama.s.sed--if there should be a man hardy enough----"

"Ah! then beware!"

Both were silent.

"And too," the sick man continued, "we have need of attack to show us our faults and make us better them. Too much flattery deceives us; we sleep; and more, it makes us ridiculous, and the day we become ridiculous we fall as we have fallen in Europe. Money will no longer come to our churches. No one will buy scapulary, penitential cords, anything; and when we cease to be rich, we can no longer convince the conscience. And the worst is, that we're working our own destruction. For one thing, this immoderate thirst for gain, which I've combated in vain in all our chapters, this thirst will be our ruin. I fear we are already declining. G.o.d blinds whom He will destroy."

"We shall always have our lands."

"But every year we raise their price, and force the Indian to buy of others. The people are beginning to murmur. We ought not to increase the burdens we've already laid on their shoulders."