An Eagle Flight Part 42

L.

ACCURST.

The news spread that the prisoners were to be taken to the capital, and members of their families ran wildly from convent to barracks, from barracks to tribunal, but found no consolation anywhere. The curate was said to be ill. The guards dealt roughly with the supplicating women, and the gobernadorcillo was more useless than ever. The friends of the accused, therefore, had collected near the prison, waiting for them to be brought out. Doray, Don Filipo's young wife, wandered back and forth, her child in her arms, both crying. The Capitana Tinay called on her son Antonio, and brave Capitana Maria watched the grating behind which were her twins, her only children.

At two in the afternoon, an uncovered cart drawn by two oxen stopped in front of the tribunal. It was surrounded, and there were loud threats of breaking it.

"Don't do that!" cried Capitana Maria; "do you wish them to go on foot?" In a few moments, twenty soldiers came out and surrounded the ox-cart; then the prisoners appeared. The first was Don Filipo, who smiled at his wife. Doray responded by bitter sobs, and would have rushed to her husband, had not the guards held her back. The son of Capitana Tinay was crying like a child, which did not help to check the lamentations of his family. The twins were calm and grave. Ibarra came last. He walked between two guards, his hand free; his eyes sought on all sides for a friendly face.

"He is the guilty one!" cried numerous voices. "He is the guilty one, and his hands are unbound!"

"Bind my arms," said Ibarra to his guards.

"We have no orders."

"Bind me!"

The soldiers obeyed.

The alferez appeared on horseback, armed to the teeth, and followed by an escort of soldiers. The prisoners' friends saluted them with affectionate words; only Ibarra was friendless.

"What has my husband done to you?" sobbed Doray. "See my child; you have robbed him of his father!"

Grief began to turn to hate against the man who was said to have provoked the uprising.

The alferez gave the order to start.

"Coward!" cried a woman, as the cart moved off. "While the others fought, you were in hiding! Coward!"

"Curses on you!" cried an old man, running after. "Cursed be the gold heaped up by your family to take away our peace. Accurst! accurst!"

"May you be hung, heretic!" cried a woman, picking up a stone and throwing it after him. Her example was promptly followed, and a shower of dust and pebbles beat against the unhappy man. Crisostomo bore this injustice without a sign. It was the farewell of his beloved country. He bent his head and sat motionless. Perhaps he was thinking of a man beaten in the pueblo streets; perhaps of the body of a girl, washed up by the waves.

The alferez felt obliged to drive away the crowd, but stones did not cease to fall, nor insult to sound. One mother only did not curse Ibarra; the Capitana Maria watched her sons go, with compressed lips and eyes full of silent tears.

Of all the people in the open windows as he pa.s.sed, none but the indifferent and curious showed Ibarra the least compa.s.sion. All his friends had deserted him, even Captain Basilio, who had forbidden Sinang to weep. When Crisostomo pa.s.sed the smoking ruins of his home, that home where he was born, and spent his happy childhood and youth, the tears, long repressed, gushed from his eyes, and bound as he was, he had to experience the bitterness of showing a grief that could not rouse the slightest sympathy.

From a hill, an old man, pale and thin, wrapped in a mantle, and leaning on a stick, watched the sad procession. At the news of what had happened, old Tasio had left his bed, and tried to go to the pueblo, but his strength had failed him. He followed the cart with his eyes, until it disappeared in the distance. Then, after resting a while in thought, he got up painfully, and started toward his home, halting for breath at almost every step. The next day some shepherds found him dead under the shadow of his solitary house.

LI.

PATRIOTISM AND INTEREST.

The telegraph had secretly transmitted to Manila the news of the uprising, and thirty-six hours later, the newspapers, their accounts expanded, corrected, and mutilated by the attorney-general, talked about it with much mystery and no little menace. Meanwhile the private accounts, coming out of the convents, had gone from mouth to mouth, to the great alarm of those who heard them. The fact, distorted in countless versions, was accepted as true with more or less readiness, according to its fitness to the pa.s.sions and ideas of the different hearers.

Though public tranquillity was not disturbed, the peace of the hearthstones became like that of a fish-pond, all on top; underneath was commotion. Crosses, gold lace, office, power, honors of all kinds began to hover over one part of the population, like b.u.t.terflies in a golden suns.h.i.+ne. For the others a dark cloud rose on the horizon, and against this ashy background stood in relief bars, chains, and the fateful arms of the gibbet. Destiny presented the event to the Manila imagination, like certain Chinese fans: one face painted black, the other gilded, and gorgeous with birds and flowers.

There was great agitation in the convents. The provincials ordered their carriages, and held secret conferences; then presented themselves at the palace, to offer their support to the imperiled government.

"A Te Deum, a Te Deum!" said a monk in one convent. "Through the goodness of G.o.d, our worth is made manifest in these perilous times!"

"This petty general, this prophet of evil, will gnaw his moustaches after this little lesson," said another.

"What would have become of him without the religious orders?"

"The papers almost go to the point of demanding a mitre for Brother Salvi."

"And he will get it! He's consumed with desire for it!"

"Do you think so?"

"Why shouldn't he be? In these days mitres are given for the asking."

"If mitres had eyes, and could see on what craniums----"

We spare our readers other comments of this nature. Let us enter the home of a private citizen, and as we know few people at Manila, we will knock at the door of Captain Tinong, the friendly and hospitable gentleman whom we saw inviting Ibarra, with so much insistence, to honor his house with a visit.

In his rich and s.p.a.cious drawing-room, at Tondo, Captain Tinong is seated in a great arm-chair, pa.s.sing his hand despairingly across his brow; while his weeping wife, the Capitana Tinchang, reads him a sermon, listened to by their two daughters, who are seated in a corner, mute with stupefaction.

"Ah, Virgin of Antipolo!" cried the wife. "Ah, Virgin of the Rosary; I told you so! I told you so! Ah, Virgin of Carmel! Ah!"

"Why, no! You didn't tell me anything," Captain Tinong finally ventured to reply. "On the contrary, you said I did well to keep up the friends.h.i.+p with Captain Tiago, and to go to his house, because--because he was rich; and you said----"

"What did I say? I didn't say it! I didn't say anything! Ah, if you had listened to me!"

"Now you throw the blame back on me!" said the captain bitterly, striking the arm of his chair with his fist. "Didn't you say I did well to invite him to dinner, because, as he was rich----"

"It is true I said that, because--because it couldn't be helped; you had already invited him; and you did nothing but praise him. Don Ibarra here, and Don Ibarra there, and Don Ibarra on all sides. But I didn't advise you to see him or to speak to him at the dinner. That you cannot deny!"

"Did I know, for instance, that he was to be there?"

"You ought to have known it!"

"How, if I wasn't even acquainted with him?"

"You ought to have been acquainted with him!"

"But, Tinchang, if it was the first time I had ever seen him or heard him spoken of?"