stopped at the entrance to the cemetery. Ibarra got out, followed by
an old servant, and silently made his way along the path.
"It is there, behind the great cross, senor," said the servant,
as they approached the spot where the grave-digger was sitting.
Arrived at the cross, the old servant looked on all sides, and became
greatly confused. "It was there," he muttered; "no, there, but the
ground has been broken."
Ibarra looked at him in anguish.
The servant appealed to the grave-digger.
"Where is the grave that was marked with a cross like this?" he
demanded; and stooping, he traced a Byzantine cross on the ground.
"Were there flowers growing on it?"
"Yes, jasmine and pansies."
The grave-digger scratched his ear and said with a yawn:
"Well, the cross I burned."
"Burned! and why?"
"Because the curate ordered it."
Ibarra drew his hand across his forehead.
"But at least you can show us the grave."
"The body's no longer there," said the grave-digger calmly.
"What are you saying!"
"Yes," the man went on, with a smile, "I put a woman in its place,
eight days ago."
"Are you mad?" cried the servant; "it isn't a year since he was
buried."
"Father Damaso ordered it; he told me to take the body to the Chinese
cemetery; I----"
He got no farther, and started back in terror at sight of Crisostomo's
face. Crisostomo seized his arm. "And you did it?" he demanded,
in a terrible voice.
"Don't be angry, senor," replied the grave-digger, pale and
trembling. "I didn't bury him with the Chinese. Better be drowned
than that, I thought to myself, and I threw him into the water."
Ibarra stared at him like a madman. "You're only a poor fool!" he
said at length, and pushing him away, he rushed headlong for the
gate, stumbling over graves and bones, and painfully followed by the
old servant.
"That's what the dead bring us," grumbled the gravedigger. "The curate
orders me to dig the man up, and this fellow breaks my arm for doing
it. That's the way with the Spaniards. I shall lose my place!"
XIII.
THE LITTLE SACRISTANS.
The little old man of the cemetery wandered absent-minded along
the streets.
He was a character of the pueblo. He had once been a student in
philosophy, but abandoned his course at the demands of his mother. The
good woman, finding that her son had talent, feared lest he become a
savant and forget God; she let him choose, therefore, between studying
for the priesthood and leaving the college of San Jose. He was in love,
took the latter course, and married. Widowed and orphaned within a
year, he found in books a deliverance from sadness, idleness, and
the gallera. Unhappily he studied too much, bought too many books,
neglected to care for his fortune, and came to financial ruin. Some
people called him Don Astasio, or Tasio the philosopher; others,
and by far the greater number, Tasio the fool.
The afternoon threatened a tempest. Pale flashes of lightning illumined
the leaden sky; the atmosphere was heavy and close.
Arrived at the church door, Tasio entered and spoke to two little boys,
one ten years old perhaps, the other seven.
"Coming with me?" he asked. "Your mother has ready a dinner fit
for curates."
"The head sacristan won't let us leave yet," said the elder. "We're
going into the tower to ring the bells."
"Take care! don't go too near the bells in the storm," said Tasio, and,
head down, he went off, thinking, toward the outskirts of the town.
Soon the rain came down in torrents, the thunder echoed clap on clap,
each detonation preceded by an awful zig-zag of fire. The tempest
grew in fury, and, scarce able to ride on the shifting wind, the
plaintive voices of the bells rang out a lamentation.
The boys were in the tower, the younger, timid, in spite of his great
black eyes, hugging close to his brother. They resembled one another,
but the elder had the stronger and more thoughtful face. Their dress
was poor, patched, and darned. The wind beat in the rain a little,
where they were, and set the flame of their candle dancing.
"Pull your rope, Crispin," said the elder to his little brother.
Crispin pulled, and heard a feeble plaint, quickly silenced by
a thunder crash. "If we were only home with mama," he mourned,
"I shouldn't be afraid."
The other did not answer. He watched the candle melt, and seemed
thoughtful.
"At least, no one there would call me a thief; mama would not have
it. If she knew they had beaten me----" The elder gave the great cord
a sharp pull; a deep, sonorous tone trembled out.
"Pay what they say I stole! Pay it, brother!"
"Are you mad, Crispin? Mama would have nothing to eat; they say you
stole two onces, and two onces make thirty-two pesos."
The little fellow counted thirty-two on his fingers.
"Six hands and two fingers. And each finger makes a peso, and each
peso how many cuartos?"
"A hundred sixty."
"And how much is a hundred sixty?"
"Thirty-two hands."
Crispin regarded his little paws.
"Thirty-two hands," he said, "and each finger a cuarto! O mama! how
many cuartos! and with them one could buy shoes, and a hat for the sun,
and an umbrella for the rain, and clothes for mama."
Crispin became pensive.
"What I'm afraid of is that mama will be angry with you when she
hears about it."
"You think so?" said Crispin, surprised. "But I've never had a cuarto
except the one they gave me at Easter. Mama won't believe I stole;
she won't believe it!"
"But if the curate says so----"
Crispin began to cry, and said through his sobs:
"Then go alone, I won't go. Tell mama I'm sick."
"Crispin, don't cry," said his brother. "If mama seems to believe what
they say, you'll tell her that the sacristan lies, that the curate
believes him, that they say we are thieves because our father----"
A head came out of the shadows in the little stairway, and as if it
had been Medusa's, it froze the words on the children's lips.
The head was long and lean, with a shock of black hair. Blue glasses
concealed one sightless eye. It was the chief sacristan who had thus
stolen upon the children.
"You, Basilio, are fined two reales for not ringing regularly. And you,
Crispin, stay to-night till you find what you've stolen."
"We have permission," began Basilio; "our mother expects us at nine."
"You won't go at nine o'clock either; you shall stay till ten."
"But, senor, after nine one can't pass through the streets----"
"Are you trying to dictate to me?" demanded the sacristan, and he
seized Crispin's arm.
"Senor, we have not seen our mother for a week," entreated Basilio,
taking hold of his brother as if to protect him.
With a stroke on the cheek the sacristan made him let go, and dragged
off Crispin, who commenced to cry, let himself fall, tried to cling
to the floor, and besought Basilio to keep him. But the sacristan,
dragging the child, disappeared in the shadows.
Basilio stood mute. He heard his little brother's body strike
against the stairs; he heard a cry, blows, heart-rending words,
growing fainter and fainter, lost at last in the distance.
"When shall I be strong enough?" he murmured, and dashed down the
stairs.
He reached the choir and listened. He could still hear his little
brother's voice; then over the cry, "Mama!--Brother!" a door
shut. Trembling, damp with sweat, holding his mouth with his hand to
stifle a cry, he stood a moment looking about in the dim church. The
doors were closed, the windows barred. He went back to the tower, did
not stop at the second stage, where the bells were rung, but climbed
to the third, loosed the ropes that held the tongues of the bells,
then went down again, pale, his eyes gleaming, but without tears.
The rain commenced to slacken and the sky to clear. Basilio knotted
the ropes, fastened an end to a beam of the balcony, and, forgetting
to blow out the candle, glided down into the darkness.
Some minutes later voices were heard in a street of the pueblo,
and two rifle shots rang out; but it raised no alarm, and all again
became silent.
XIV.
SISA.
Nearly an hour's walk from the pueblo lived the mother of Basilio and
Crispin, wife of a man who passed his time in lounging or watching
cock-fights while she struggled to bring up their children. The
husband and wife saw each other rarely, and their interviews were
painful. To feed his vices, he had robbed her of her few trinkets,
and when the unhappy Sisa had nothing more with which to satisfy
his caprices he began to abuse her. Without much strength of will,
dowered with more heart than reason, she only knew how to love
and to weep. Her husband was a god, her children were angels. He,
who knew how much he was adored and feared, like other false gods,
grew more and more arbitrary and cruel.
The stars were glittering in the sky cleared by the tempest. Sisa
sat on the wooden bench, her chin in her hand, watching some branches
smoulder on her hearth of uncut stones. On these stones was a little
pan where rice was cooking, and among the cinders were three dry
sardines.
She was still young, and one saw she had been beautiful. Her eyes,
which, with her soul, she had given to her sons, were fine, deep,
and fringed with dark lashes; her face was regular; her skin pure
olive. In spite of her youth, suffering, hunger sometimes, had begun
to hollow her cheeks. Her abundant hair, once her glory, was still
carefully dressed--but from habit, not coquetry.
All day Sisa had been thinking of the pleasure coming at night. She
picked the finest tomatoes in her garden--favorite dish of little
Crispin; from her neighbor, Tasio, she got a fillet of wild boar and
a wild duck's thigh for Basilio, and she chose and cooked the whitest
rice on the threshing-floor.
Alas! the father arrived. Good-by to the dinner! He ate the rice,
the filet of wild boar, the duck's thigh, and the tomatoes. Sisa said
nothing, happy to see her husband satisfied, and so much happier
that, having eaten, he remembered he had children and asked where
they were. The poor mother smiled. She had promised herself to eat
nothing--there was not enough left for three; but the father had
thought of his sons, that was better than food.
Sisa, left alone, wept a little; but she thought of her children,
and dried her tears. She cooked the little rice she had left, and
the three sardines.
Attentive to every sound, she now sat listening: a footfall strong
and regular, it was Basilio's; light and unsteady, Crispin's.
But the children did not come.
To pass the time, she hummed a song. Her voice was beautiful, and when
her children heard her sing "Kundiman" they cried, without knowing
why. To-night her voice trembled, and the notes came tardily.
She went to the door and scanned the road. A black dog was there,
searching about. It frightened Sisa, and she threw a stone, sending
the dog off howling.
Sisa was not superstitious, but she had so often heard of black dogs
and presentiments that terror seized her. She shut the door in haste
and sat down by the light. She prayed to the Virgin, to God Himself,
to take care of her boys, and most for the little Crispin. Then, drawn
away from prayer by her sole preoccupation, she thought no longer
of aught but her children, of all their ways, which seemed to her so
pleasing. Then the terror returned. Vision or reality, Crispin stood
by the hearth, where he often sat to chatter to her. He said nothing,
but looked at her with great, pensive eyes, and smiled.
"Mother, open! Open the door, mother!" said Basilio's voice outside.
Sisa shuddered, and the vision disappeared.
XV.
BASILIO.
Life is a Dream.
Basilio had scarcely strength to enter and fall into his mother's
arms. A strange cold enveloped Sisa when she saw him come alone. She
wished to speak, but found no words; to caress her son, but found
no force. Yet at the sight of blood on his forehead, her voice came,
and she cried in a tone which seemed to tell of a breaking heartstring:
"My children!"
"Don't be frightened, mama; Crispin stayed at the convent."
"At the convent? He stayed at the convent? Living?"
The child raised his eyes to hers.
"Ah!" she cried, passing from the greatest anguish to the utmost
joy. She wept, embraced her child, covered with kisses his wounded
forehead.
"And why are you hurt, my son? Did you fall?"
Basilio told her he had been challenged by the guard, ran, was shot
at, and a ball had grazed his forehead.
"O God! I thank Thee that Thou didst save him!" murmured the mother.
She went for lint and vinegar water, and while she bandaged his wound:
"Why," she asked, "did Crispin stay at the convent?"
Basilio looked at her, kissed her, then little by little told the
story of the lost money; he said nothing of the torture of his little
brother. Mother and child mingled their tears.
"Accuse my good Crispin! It's because we are poor, and the poor must
bear everything," murmured Sisa. Both were silent a moment.
"But you have not eaten," said the mother. "Here are sardines and
rice."
"I'm not hungry, mama; I only want some water."
"Yes, eat," said the mother. "I know you don't like dry sardines,
and I had something else for you; but your father came, my poor child."
"My father came?" and Basilio instinctively examined his mother's
face and hands.
The question pained the mother; she sighed.
"You won't eat? Then we must go to bed; it is late."
Sisa barred the door and covered the fire. Basilio murmured his
prayers, and crept on the mat near his mother, who was still on her
knees. She was warm, he was cold. He thought of his little brother,
who had hoped to sleep this night close to his mother's side, trembling
with fear in some dark corner of the convent. He heard his cries as
he had heard them in the tower; but Nature soon confused his ideas
and he slept.
In the middle of the night Sisa wakened him.
"What is it, Basilio? Why are you crying?"
"I was dreaming. O mama! it was a dream, wasn't it? Say it was nothing
but a dream!"
"What were you dreaming?"
He did not answer, but sat up to dry his tears.
"Tell me the dream," said Sisa, when he had lain down again. "I
cannot sleep."
"It is gone now, mama; I don't remember it all."
Sisa did not insist: she attached no importance to dreams.
"Mama," said Basilio after a moment of silence, "I'm not sleepy
either. I had a project last evening. I don't want to be a sacristan."
"What?"
"Listen, mama. The son of Don Rafael came home from Spain to-day;
he should be as kind as his father. Well, to-morrow I find Crispin,
get my pay, and say I'm not going to be a sacristan. Then I'll go
see Don Crisostomo and ask him to make me a buffalo-keeper. Crispin
could go on studying with old Tasio. Tasio's better than the curate
thinks; I've often seen him praying in the church when no one else was
there. What shall I lose in not being a sacristan? One earns little and
loses it all in fines. I'll be a herdsman, mama, and take good care of
the cows and carabaos, and make my master love me; then perhaps he'll
let us have a cow to milk: Crispin loves milk. And I could fish in the
rivers and go hunting when I get big. And by and by perhaps I could
have a little land and sow sugar-cane. We could all live together,
then. And old Tasio says Crispin is very bright. By and by we would
send him to study at Manila, and I would work for him. Shall we,
mama? He might be a doctor; what do you say?"
"What can I say, except that you are right," answered Sisa, kissing
her son.
Basilio went on with his projects, talking with the confidence of a
child. Sisa said yes to everything. But little by little sleep came
back to the child's lids, and this time he did not cry in his dreams:
that Ole-Luk-Oie, of whom Andersen tells us, unfurled over his head
the umbrella with its lining of gay pictures. But the mother, past
the age of careless slumbers, did not sleep.
XVI.
AT THE MANSE.
It was seven o'clock when Brother Salvi finished his last mass. He
took off his priestly robes without a word to any one.
"Look out!" whispered the sacristans; "it is going to rain fines! And
all for the fault of those children!"
The father came out of the sacristy and crossed to the manse. On the
porch six or seven women sat waiting for him, and a man was walking
to and fro. The woman rose, and one bent to kiss his hand, but the
priest made such a gesture of impatience that she stopped short.
"He must have lost a real miser," she cried mockingly, when he had
passed. "This is something unheard of: refuse his hand to the zealous
Sister Rufa?"
"He was not in the confessional this morning," said a toothless
old woman, Sister Sipa. "I wanted to confess, so as to get some
indulgences."
"I have gained three plenary indulgences," said a young woman of
pleasing face, "and applied them all to the soul of my husband."
"You have done wrong," said Sister Rufa, "one plenary is enough;
you should not squander the holy indulgences. Do as I do."
"I said to myself, the more there are the better," replied young
sister Juana, smiling; "but what do you do?"
Sister Rufa did not respond at once; she chewed her buyo, and scanned
her audience attentively; at length she decided to speak.
"Well, this is what I do. Suppose I gain a year of indulgences; I say:
Blessed Senor Saint Dominic, have the kindness to see if there is some
one in purgatory who has need of precisely a year. Then I play heads
or tails. If it falls heads, no; if tails, yes. If it falls heads,
I keep the indulgence, and so I make groups of a hundred years, for
which there is always use. It's a pity one can't loan indulgences at
interest. But do as I do, it's the best plan."
At this point Sisa appeared. She said good morning to the women,
and entered the manse.
"She's gone in, let us go too," said the sisters, and they followed
her.
Sisa felt her heart beat violently. She did not know what to say to the
curate in defence of her child. She had risen at daybreak, picked all
the fine vegetables left in her garden, and arranged them in a basket
with platane leaves and flowers, and had been to the river to get a
fresh salad of pako. Then, dressed in the best she had, the basket
on her head, without waking her son, she had set out for the pueblo.
She went slowly through the manse, listening if by chance she might
hear a well-known voice, fresh and childish. But she met no one,
heard nothing, and went on to the kitchen.
The servants and sacristans received her coldly, scarcely answering
her greetings.
"Where may I put these vegetables?" she asked, without showing offence.
"There--wherever you want to," replied the cook curtly.
Sisa, half-smiling, placed all in order on the table, and laid on
top the flowers and the tender shoots of the pako; then she asked a
servant who seemed more friendly than the cook:
"Do you know if Crispin is in the sacristy?"
The servant looked at her in surprise.
"Crispin?" said he, wrinkling his brows; "isn't he at home?"
"Basilio is, but Crispin stayed here."
"Oh, yes, he stayed, but he ran off afterward with all sorts of things
he'd stolen. The curate sent me to report it at the quarters. The
guards must be on their way to your house by this time."
Sisa could not believe it; she opened her mouth, but her lips moved
in vain.
"Go find your children," said the cook. "Everybody sees you're a
faithful woman; the children are like their father!"
Sisa stifled a sob, and, at the end of her strength, sat down.
"Don't cry here," said the cook still more roughly, "the curate is ill;
don't bother him! Go cry in the street!"
The poor woman got up, almost by force, and went down the steps with
the sisters, who were still gossiping of the curate's illness. Once
on the street she looked about uncertain; then, as if from a sudden
resolution, moved rapidly away.
XVII.
STORY OF A SCHOOLMASTER.
The lake, girt with hills, lies tranquil, as if it had not been
shaken by yesterday's tempest. At the first gleam of light which
wakes the phosphorescent spirits of the water, almost on the bounds
of the horizon, gray silhouettes slowly take shape. These are the
barks of fishermen drawing in their nets; cascos and paraos shaking
out their sails.
From a height, two men in black are silently surveying the lake. One
is Ibarra, the other a young man of humble dress and melancholy face.
"This is the place," said the stranger, "where the gravedigger brought
us, Lieutenant Guevara and me."
Ibarra uncovered, and stood a long time as if in prayer.
When the first horror at the story of his father's desecrated grave
had passed, he had bravely accepted what could not be undone. Private
wrongs must go unavenged, if one would not add to the wrongs of the
country: Ibarra had been trained to live for these islands, daughters
of Spain. In his country, too, a charge against a monk was a charge
against the Church, and Crisostomo was a loyal Catholic; if he knew
how in his mind to separate the Church from her unworthy sons, most of
his fellow-countrymen did not. And, again, his intimate life was all
here. The last of his race, his home was his family; he loved ideally,
and he loved the goddaughter of the malevolent priest. He was rich,
and therefore powerful still--and he was young. Ibarra had taken up
his life again as he had found it.
His prayer finished, he warmly grasped the young man's hand.
"Do not thank me," said the other; "I owe everything to your father. I
came here unknown; your father protected me, encouraged my work,
furnished the poor children with books. How far away that good
time seems!"
"And now?"
"Ah! now we get along as best we can."
Ibarra was silent.
"How many pupils have you?"
"More than two hundred on the list--in the classes, fifty-five."
"And how is that?"
The schoolmaster smiled sadly.
"It is a long story."
"Don't think I ask from curiosity," said Ibarra. "I have thought much
about it, and it seems to me better to try to carry out my father's
ideas than to weep or to avenge his death. I wish to inspire myself
with his spirit. That is why I ask this question."
"The country will bless your memory, senor, if you carry out the
splendid projects of your father. You wish to know the obstacles I
meet? In a word, the plan of instruction is hopeless. The children
read, write, learn by heart passages, sometimes whole books, in
Castilian, without understanding a single word. Of what use is such
a school to the children of our peasants!"
"You see the evil, what remedy do you propose?"
"I have none," said the young man; "one cannot struggle alone against
so many needs and against certain influences. I tried to remedy
the evil of which I just spoke; I tried to carry out the order
of the Government, and began to teach the children Spanish. The
beginning was excellent, but one day Brother Damaso sent for me. I
went up immediately, and I said good-day to him in Castilian. Without
replying, he burst into laughter. At length he said, with a sidelong
glance: 'What buenos dias! buenos dias! It's very pretty. You know
Spanish?' and he began to laugh again."
Ibarra could not repress a smile.
"You laugh," said the teacher, "and I, too, now; but I assure you
I had no desire to then. I started to reply, I don't know what,
but Brother Damaso interrupted:
"'Don't wear clothes that are not your own,' he said in Tagal; 'be
content to speak your own language. Do you know about Ciruela? Well,
Ciruela was a master who could neither read nor write, yet he kept
school.' And he left the room, slamming the door behind him. What
was I to do? What could I, against him, the highest authority of the
pueblo, moral, political, and civil; backed by his order, feared by the
Government, rich, powerful, always obeyed and believed. To withstand
him was to lose my place, and break off my career without hope of
another. Every one would have sided with the priest. I should have
been called proud, insolent, no Christian, perhaps even anti-Spanish
and filibustero. Heaven forgive me if I denied my conscience and my
reason, but I was born here, must live here, I have a mother, and I
abandoned myself to my fate, as a cadaver to the wave that rolls it."
"And you lost all hope? You have tried nothing since?"
"I was rash enough to try two more experiments, one after our change
of curates; but both proved offensive to the same authority. Since
then I have done my best to convert the poor babies into parrots."
"Well, I have cheerful news for you," said Ibarra. "I am soon to
present to the Government a project that will help you out of your
difficulties, if it is approved."
The school-teacher shook his head.
"You will see, Senor Ibarra, that your projects--I've heard something
of them--will no more be realized than were mine!"
XVIII.
THE STORY OF A MOTHER.