The Reign of Greed Part 3

"Utopia, Utopia!" responded Simoun dryly. "The engine is about to meet--in the meantime, I'll drink my beer." So, without any word of excuse, he left the two friends.

"But what's the matter with you today that you're so quarrelsome?" asked Basilio.

"Nothing. I don't know why, but that man fills me with horror, fear almost."

"I was nudging you with my elbow. Don't you know that he's called the Brown Cardinal?"

"The Brown Cardinal?"

"Or Black Eminence, as you wish."

"I don't understand."

"Richelieu had a Capuchin adviser who was called the Gray Eminence; well, that's what this man is to the General."

"Really?"

"That's what I've heard from _a certain person,_--who always speaks ill of him behind his back and flatters him to his face."

"Does he also visit Capitan Tiago?"

"From the first day after his arrival, and I'm sure that _a certain person_ looks upon him as a rival--in the inheritance. I believe that he's going to see the General about the question of instruction in Castilian."

At that moment Isagani was called away by a servant to his uncle.

On one of the benches at the stern, huddled in among the other pa.s.sengers, sat a native priest gazing at the landscapes that were successively unfolded to his view. His neighbors made room for him, the men on pa.s.sing taking off their hats, and the gamblers not daring to set their table near where he was. He said little, but neither smoked nor a.s.sumed arrogant airs, nor did he disdain to mingle with the other men, returning the salutes with courtesy and affability as if he felt much honored and very grateful. Although advanced in years, with hair almost completely gray, he appeared to be in vigorous health, and even when seated held his body straight and his head erect, but without pride or arrogance. He differed from the ordinary native priests, few enough indeed, who at that period served merely as coadjutors or administered some curacies temporarily, in a certain self-possession and gravity, like one who was conscious of his personal dignity and the sacredness of his office. A superficial examination of his appearance, if not his white hair, revealed at once that he belonged to another epoch, another generation, when the better young men were not afraid to risk their dignity by becoming priests, when the native clergy looked any friar at all in the face, and when their cla.s.s, not yet degraded and vilified, called for free men and not slaves, superior intelligences and not servile wills. In his sad and serious features was to be read the serenity of a soul fortified by study and meditation, perhaps tried out by deep moral suffering. This priest was Padre Florentino, Isagani's uncle, and his story is easily told.

Scion of a wealthy and influential family of Manila, of agreeable appearance and cheerful disposition, suited to shine in the world, he had never felt any call to the sacerdotal profession, but by reason of some promises or vows, his mother, after not a few struggles and violent disputes, compelled him to enter the seminary. She was a great friend of the Archbishop, had a will of iron, and was as inexorable as is every devout woman who believes that she is interpreting the will of G.o.d. Vainly the young Florentine offered resistance, vainly he begged, vainly he pleaded his love affairs, even provoking scandals: priest he had to become at twenty-five years of age, and priest he became. The Archbishop ordained him, his first ma.s.s was celebrated with great pomp, three days were given over to feasting, and his mother died happy and content, leaving him all her fortune.

But in that struggle Florentine received a wound from which he never recovered. Weeks before his first ma.s.s the woman he loved, in desperation, married a n.o.body--a blow the rudest he had ever experienced. He lost his moral energy, life became dull and insupportable. If not his virtue and the respect for his office, that unfortunate love affair saved him from the depths into which the regular orders and secular clergymen both fall in the Philippines. He devoted himself to his parishioners as a duty, and by inclination to the natural sciences.

When the events of seventy-two occurred, [9] he feared that the large income his curacy yielded him would attract attention to him, so, desiring peace above everything, he sought and secured his release, living thereafter as a private individual on his patrimonial estate situated on the Pacific coast. He there adopted his nephew, Isagani, who was reported by the malicious to be his own son by his old sweetheart when she became a widow, and by the more serious and better informed, the natural child of a cousin, a lady in Manila.

The captain of the steamer caught sight of the old priest and insisted that he go to the upper deck, saying, "If you don't do so, the friars will think that you don't want to a.s.sociate with them."

Padre Florentino had no recourse but to accept, so he summoned his nephew in order to let him know where he was going, and to charge him not to come near the upper deck while he was there. "If the captain notices you, he'll invite you also, and we should then be abusing his kindness."

"My uncle's way!" thought Isagani. "All so that I won't have any reason for talking with Dona Victorina."

CHAPTER III

LEGENDS

Ich weiss nicht was soil es bedeuten Da.s.s ich so traurig bin!

When Padre Florentino joined the group above, the bad humor provoked by the previous discussion had entirely disappeared. Perhaps their spirits had been raised by the attractive houses of the town of Pasig, or the gla.s.ses of sherry they had drunk in preparation for the coming meal, or the prospect of a good breakfast. Whatever the cause, the fact was that they were all laughing and joking, even including the lean Franciscan, although he made little noise and his smiles looked like death-grins.

"Evil times, evil times!" said Padre Sibyla with a laugh.

"Get out, don't say that, Vice-Rector!" responded the Canon Irene, giving the other's chair a shove. "In Hongkong you're doing a fine business, putting up every building that--ha, ha!"

"Tut, tut!" was the reply; "you don't see our expenses, and the tenants on our estates are beginning to complain--"

"Here, enough of complaints, _punales,_ else I'll fall to weeping!" cried Padre Camorra gleefully. "We're not complaining, and we haven't either estates or banking-houses. You know that my Indians are beginning to haggle over the fees and to flash schedules on me! Just look how they cite schedules to me now, and none other than those of the Archbishop Basilio Sancho, [10] as if from his time up to now prices had not risen. Ha, ha, ha! Why should a baptism cost less than a chicken? But I play the deaf man, collect what I can, and never complain. We're not avaricious, are we, Padre Salvi?"

At that moment Simoun's head appeared above the hatchway.

"Well, where've you been keeping yourself?" Don Custodio called to him, having forgotten all about their dispute. "You're missing the prettiest part of the trip!"

"Pshaw!" retorted Simoun, as he ascended, "I've seen so many rivers and landscapes that I'm only interested in those that call up legends."

"As for legends, the Pasig has a few," observed the captain, who did not relish any depreciation of the river where he navigated and earned his livelihood. "Here you have that of _Malapad-na-bato,_ a rock sacred before the coming of the Spaniards as the abode of spirits. Afterwards, when the superst.i.tion had been dissipated and the rock profaned, it was converted into a nest of tulisanes, since from its crest they easily captured the luckless bankas, which had to contend against both the currents and men. Later, in our time, in spite of human interference, there are still told stories about wrecked bankas, and if on rounding it I didn't steer with my six senses, I'd be smashed against its sides. Then you have another legend, that of Dona Jeronima's cave, which Padre Florentino can relate to you."

"Everybody knows that," remarked Padre Sibyla disdainfully.

But neither Simoun, nor Ben-Zayb, nor Padre Irene, nor Padre Camorra knew it, so they begged for the story, some in jest and others from genuine curiosity. The priest, adopting the tone of burlesque with which some had made their request, began like an old tutor relating a story to children.

"Once upon a time there was a student who had made a promise of marriage to a young woman in his country, but it seems that he failed to remember her. She waited for him faithfully year after year, her youth pa.s.sed, she grew into middle age, and then one day she heard a report that her old sweetheart was the Archbishop of Manila. Disguising herself as a man, she came round the Cape and presented herself before his grace, demanding the fulfilment of his promise. What she asked was of course impossible, so the Archbishop ordered the preparation of the cave that you may have noticed with its entrance covered and decorated with a curtain of vines. There she lived and died and there she is buried. The legend states that Dona Jeronima was so fat that she had to turn sidewise to get into it. Her fame as an enchantress sprung from her custom of throwing into the river the silver dishes which she used in the sumptuous banquets that were attended by crowds of gentlemen. A net was spread under the water to hold the dishes and thus they were cleaned. It hasn't been twenty years since the river washed the very entrance of the cave, but it has gradually been receding, just as the memory of her is dying out among the people."

"A beautiful legend!" exclaimed Ben-Zayb. "I'm going to write an article about it. It's sentimental!"

Dona Victorina thought of dwelling in such a cave and was about to say so, when Simoun took the floor instead.

"But what's your opinion about that, Padre Salvi?" he asked the Franciscan, who seemed to be absorbed in thought. "Doesn't it seem to you as though his Grace, instead of giving her a cave, ought to have placed her in a nunnery--in St. Clara's, for example? What do you say?"

There was a start of surprise on Padre Sibyla's part to notice that Padre Salvi shuddered and looked askance at Simoun.

"Because it's not a very gallant act," continued Simoun quite naturally, "to give a rocky cliff as a home to one with whose hopes we have trifled. It's hardly religious to expose her thus to temptation, in a cave on the banks of a river--it smacks of nymphs and dryads. It would have been more gallant, more pious, more romantic, more in keeping with the customs of this country, to shut her up in St. Clara's, like a new Eloise, in order to visit and console her from time to time."

"I neither can nor should pa.s.s judgment upon the conduct of archbishops," replied the Franciscan sourly.

"But you, who are the ecclesiastical governor, acting in the place of our Archbishop, what would you do if such a case should arise?"

Padre Salvi shrugged his shoulders and calmly responded, "It's not worth while thinking about what can't happen. But speaking of legends, don't overlook the most beautiful, since it is the truest: that of the miracle of St. Nicholas, the ruins of whose church you may have noticed. I'm going to relate it to Senor Simoun, as he probably hasn't heard it. It seems that formerly the river, as well as the lake, was infested with caymans, so huge and voracious that they attacked bankas and upset them with a slap of the tail. Our chronicles relate that one day an infidel Chinaman, who up to that time had refused to be converted, was pa.s.sing in front of the church, when suddenly the devil presented himself to him in the form of a cayman and upset the banka, in order to devour him and carry him off to h.e.l.l. Inspired by G.o.d, the Chinaman at that moment called upon St. Nicholas and instantly the cayman was changed into a stone. The old people say that in their time the monster could easily be recognized in the pieces of stone that were left, and, for my part, I can a.s.sure you that I have clearly made out the head, to judge from which the monster must have been enormously large."

"Marvelous, a marvelous legend!" exclaimed Ben-Zayb. "It's good for an article--the description of the monster, the terror of the Chinaman, the waters of the river, the bamboo brakes. Also, it'll do for a study of comparative religions; because, look you, an infidel Chinaman in great distress invoked exactly the saint that he must know only by hearsay and in whom he did not believe. Here there's no room for the proverb that 'a known evil is preferable to an unknown good.' If I should find myself in China and get caught in such a difficulty, I would invoke the obscurest saint in the calendar before Confucius or Buddha. Whether this is due to the manifest superiority of Catholicism or to the inconsequential and illogical inconsistency in the brains of the yellow race, a profound study of anthropology alone will be able to elucidate."

Ben-Zayb had adopted the tone of a lecturer and was describing circles in the air with his forefinger, priding himself on his imagination, which from the most insignificant facts could deduce so many applications and inferences. But noticing that Simoun was preoccupied and thinking that he was pondering over what he, Ben-Zayb, had just said, he inquired what the jeweler was meditating about.

"About two very important questions," answered Simoun; "two questions that you might add to your article. First, what may have become of the devil on seeing himself suddenly confined within a stone? Did he escape? Did he stay there? Was he crushed? Second, if the petrified animals that I have seen in various European museums may not have been the victims of some antediluvian saint?"

The tone in which the jeweler spoke was so serious, while he rested his forehead on the tip of his forefinger in an att.i.tude of deep meditation, that Padre Camorra responded very gravely, "Who knows, who knows?"