An Eagle Flight Part 6

"So your reverence believes that the revenues----"

"Talk no more of money," interrupted the old man with aversion. "You say the lieutenant threatened Father Damaso?"

"Yes, Father," replied Sibyla, half smiling; "but this morning he told me the sherry had mounted to his head, and he thought it must have been the same with Brother Damaso. 'And your threat?' I asked jestingly. 'Father,' said he, 'I know how to keep my word when it doesn't smirch my honor; I was never an informer--and that's why I am only a lieutenant.'"

Though the lieutenant had not carried out his threat to go to Malacanang, the captain-general none the less knew what had happened. A young officer told the story.

"From whom do you have it?" demanded His Excellency, smiling.

"From De Laruja."

The captain-general smiled again, and added:

"Woman's tongue, monk's tongue doesn't wound. I don't wish to get entangled with these men in skirts. Besides, the provincial made light of my orders; to punish this priest I demanded that his parish be changed. Well, they gave him a better. Monkishness! as we say in Spain."

Alone, His Excellency ceased to smile.

"Oh! if the people were not so dense, how easy to bridle their reverences! But every nation merits its lot!"

Meanwhile Captain Tiago finished his conference with Father Damaso.

"And now you are warned," said the Franciscan upon leaving. "This would have been avoided if you hadn't equivocated when I asked you how the matter stood. Don't make any more false moves, and trust her G.o.dfather."

Captain Tiago took two or three turns about the room, reflecting and sighing. Then suddenly, as if a happy thought had struck him, running to the oratory, he extinguished the two candles lighted for the safeguard of Ibarra.

X.

THE PUEBLO.

Almost on the banks of the lake, in the midst of meadows and streams, is the pueblo of San Diego. It exports sugar, rice, coffee, and fruits, or sells these articles of merchandise at low prices to Chinese traders.

When, on a clear day, the children climb to the top stage of the moss-grown and vine-clad church tower, there are joyous exclamations. Each picks out his own little roof of nipa, tile, zinc, or palm. Beyond they see the rio, a monstrous crystal serpent asleep on a carpet of green. Trunks of palm trees, dipping and swaying, join the two banks, and if, as bridges, they leave much to be desired for trembling old men and poor women who must cross with heavy baskets on their heads, on the other hand they make fine gymnastic apparatus for the young.

But what besides the rio the children never fail to talk about is a certain wooded peninsula in this sea of cultivated land. Its ancient trees never die, unless the lightning strikes their high tops. Dust gathers layer on layer in their hollow trunks, the rain makes soil of it, the birds bring seeds, a tropical vegetation grows there in wild freedom: bushes, briers, curtains of netted bind-weed, spring from the roots, reach from tree to tree, hang swaying from the branches, and Flora, as if yet unsatisfied, sows on the trees themselves; mosses and fungi live on the creased bark, and graceful aerial guests pierce with their tendrils the hospitable branches.

This wood is the subject of a legend.

When the pueblo was but a group of poor cabins, there arrived one day a strange old Spaniard with marvellous eyes, who scarcely spoke the Tagal. He wished to buy lands having thermal springs, and did so, paying in money, dress, and jewelry. Suddenly he disappeared, leaving no trace. The people of the pueblo had begun to think of him as a magician, when one day his body was found hanging high to the branch of a giant fig tree. After it had been buried at the foot of the tree, no one cared much to venture in that quarter.

A few months later there arrived a young Spanish halfbreed, who claimed to be the old man's son. He settled, and gave himself to agriculture. Don Saturnino was taciturn and of violent temper, but very industrious. Late in life he married a woman of Manila, who bore him Don Rafael, the father of Crisostomo.

Don Rafael, from his youth, was much beloved. He rapidly developed his father's lands, the population multiplied, the Chinese came, the hamlet grew to a pueblo, the native curate died and was replaced by Father Damaso. And all this time the people respected the sepulchre of the old Spaniard, and held it in superst.i.tious awe. Sometimes, armed with sticks and stones, the children dared run near it to gather wild fruits; but while they were busy at this, or stood gazing at the bit of rope still dangling from the limb, a stone or two would fall from no one knew where. Then with cries of "The old man! the old man!" they threw down sticks and fruit, ran in all directions, between the rocks and bushes, and did not stop till they were out of the woods, all pale and breathless, some crying, few daring to laugh.

XI.

THE SOVEREIGNS.

Who was the ruler of the pueblo? Not Don Rafael during his lifetime, though he possessed the most land, and nearly every one owed him. As he was modest, and gave little value to his deeds, no party formed around him, and we have seen how he was deserted and attacked when his fortunes fell.

Was it Captain Tiago? It is true his arrival was always heralded with music, he was given banquets by his debtors, and loaded with presents; but he was laughed at in secret, and called Sacristan Tiago.

Was it by chance the town mayor, the gobernadorcillo? Alas! he was an unfortunate, who governed not, but obeyed; did not dispose, but was disposed of. And yet he had to answer to the alcalde for all these dispositions, as if they emanated from his own brain. Be it said in his favor that he had neither stolen nor usurped his honors, but that they cost him five thousand pesos and much humiliation.

Perhaps then it was G.o.d? But to most of these good people, G.o.d seemed one of those poor kings surrounded by favorites to whom their subjects always take their supplications, never to them.

No, San Diego was a sort of modern Rome. The curate was the pope at the Vatican; the alferez of the civil guard, the King in the Quirinal. Here as there, difficulties arose from the situation.

The present curate, Brother Bernardo Salvi, was the young and silent Franciscan we have already seen. In mode of life and in appearance he was very unlike his predecessor, Brother Damaso. He seemed ill, was always thoughtful, accomplished strictly his religious duties, and was careful of his reputation. Through his zeal, almost all his parishioners had speedily become members of the Third Order of St. Francis, to the great dismay of the rival order, that of the Holy Rosary. Four or five scapularies were suspended around every neck, knotted cords encircled all the waists, and the innumerable processions of the order were a joy to see. The head sacristan took in a small fortune, selling--or giving as alms, to put it more correctly--all the paraphernalia necessary to save the soul and combat the devil. It is well known that this evil spirit, who once dared attack G.o.d face to face, and accuse His divine word, as the book of Job tells us, is now so cowardly and feeble that he flees at sight of a bit of painted cloth, and fears a knotted cord.

Brother Salvi again greatly differed from Brother Damaso--who set everything right with fists or ferrule, believing it the only way to reach the Indian--in that he punished with fines the faults of his subordinates, rarely striking them.

From his struggles with the curate, the alferez had a bad reputation among the devout, which he deserved, and shared with his wife, a hideous and vile old Filipino woman named Dona Consolacion. The husband avenged his conjugal woes on himself by drinking like a fish; on his subordinates, by making them exercise in the sun; and most frequently on his wife, by kicks and drubbings. The two fought famously between themselves, but were of one mind when it was a question of the curate. Inspired by his wife, the officer ordered that no one be abroad in the streets after nine at night. The priest, who did not like this restriction, retorted in lengthy sermons, whenever the alferez went to church. Like all impenitents, the alferez did not mend his ways for that, but went out swearing under his breath, arrested the first sacristan he met, and made him clean the yard of the barracks. So the war went on. All this, however, did not prevent the alferez and the curate chatting courteously enough when they met.

And they were the rulers of the pueblo of San Diego.

XII.

ALL SAINTS' DAY.

The cemetery of San Diego is in the midst of rice-fields. It is approached by a narrow path, powdery on sunny days, navigable on rainy. A wooden gate and a wall half stone, half bamboo stalks, succeed in keeping out men, but not the curate's goats, nor the pigs of his neighbors. In the middle of the enclosure is a stone pedestal supporting a great wooden cross. Storms have bent the strip of tin on which were the I. N. R. I., and the rain has washed off the letters. At the foot of the cross is a confused heap of bones and skulls thrown out by the grave-digger. Everywhere grow in all their vigor the bitter-sweet and rose-bay. Some tiny flowerets, too, tint the ground--blossoms which, like the mounded bones, are known to their Creator only. They are like little pale smiles, and their odor scents of the tomb. Gra.s.s and climbing plants fill the corners, cover the walls, adorning this otherwise bare ugliness; they even penetrate the tombs, through earthquake fissures, and fill their yawning gaps.

At this hour two men are digging near the crumbling wall. One, the grave-digger, works with the utmost indifference, throwing aside a skull as a gardener would a stone. The other is preoccupied; he perspires, he breathes hard.

"Oh!" he says at length in Tagalo. "Hadn't we better dig in some other place? This grave is too recent."

"All the graves are the same, one is as recent as another."

"I can't endure this!"

"What a woman! You should go and be a clerk! If you had dug up, as I did, a boy of twenty days, at night, in the rain----"

"Uh-h-h! And why did you do that?"