"But the excommunication and the condemnation?" exclaimed Sister Rufa. "What are honor and a good name in this life if in the other we are damned? Everything passes away quickly--but the excommunication--to outrage a minister of Christ! No one less than the Pope can pardon that!"

"God, who commands honor for father and mother, will pardon it, God will not excommunicate him! And I tell you that if that young man comes to my house I will receive him and talk with him, and if I had a daughter I would want him for a son-in-law; he who is a good son will be a good husband and a good father--believe it, Sister Rufa!"

"Well, I don't think so. Say what you like, and even though you may appear to be right, I'll always rather believe the curate. Before everything else, I'll save my soul. What do you say, Capitana Tinny?"

"Oh, what do you want me to say? You're both right the curate is right, but God must also be right. I don't know, I'm only a foolish woman. What I'm going to do is to tell my son not to study any more, for they say that persons who know anything die on the gallows. _Maria Santisima_, my son wants to go to Europe!"

"What are you thinking of doing?"

"Tell him to stay with me--why should he know more? Tomorrow or the next day we shall die, the learned and the ignorant alike must die, and the only question is to live in peace." The good old woman sighed and raised her eyes toward the sky.

"For my part," said Capitana Maria gravely, "if I were rich like you I would let my sons travel; they are young and will some day be men. I have only a little while to live, we should see one another in the other life, so sons should aspire to be more than their fathers, but at our sides we only teach them to be children."

"Ay, what rare thoughts you have!" exclaimed the astonished Capitana Tinay, clasping her hands. "It must be that you didn't suffer in bearing your twin boys."

"For the very reason that I did bear them with suffering, that I have nurtured and reared them in spite of our poverty, I do not wish that, after the trouble they're cost me, they be only half-men."

"It seems to me that you don't love your children as God commands,"

said Sister Rufa in a rather severe tone.

"Pardon me, every mother loves her sons in her own way. One mother loves them for her own sake and another loves them for their sake. I am one of the latter, for my husband has so taught me."

"All your ideas, Capitana Maria," said Sister Rufa, as if preaching, "are but little religious. Become a sister of the Holy Rosary or of St. Francis or of St. Rita or of St. Clara."

"Sister Rufa, when I am a worthy sister of men then I'll try to be a sister of the saints," she answered with a smile.

To put an end to this chapter of comments and that the reader may learn in passing what the simple country folk thought of the incident, we will now go to the plaza, where under the large awning some rustics are conversing, one of them--he who dreamed about doctors of medicine--being an acquaintance of ours.

"What I regret most," said he, "is that the schoolhouse won't be finished."

"What's that?" asked the bystanders with interest.

"My son won't be a doctor but a carter, nothing more! Now there won't be any school!"

"Who says there won't be any school?" asked a rough and robust countryman with wide cheeks and a narrow head.

"I do! The white padres have called Don Crisostomo _plibastiero_. [98]

Now there won't be any school."

All stood looking questioningly at each other; that was a new term to them.

"And is that a bad name?" the rough countryman made bold to ask.

"The worst thing that one Christian can say to another!"

"Worse than _tarantado_ and _sarayate?"_ [99]

"If it were only that! I've been called those names several times and they didn't even give me a bellyache."

"Well, it can't be worse than '_indio,_' as the alferez says."

The man who was to have a carter for a son became gloomier, while the other scratched his head in thought.

"Then it must be like the _betelapora_ [100] that the alferez's old woman says. Worse than that is to spit on the Host."

"Well, it's worse than to spit on the Host on Good Friday," was the grave reply. "You remember the word _ispichoso_ [101] which when applied to a man is enough to have the civil-guards take him into exile or put him in jail well, _plibustiero_ is much worse. According to what the telegrapher and the directorcillo said, _plibustiero_, said by a Christian, a curate, or a Spaniard to another Christian like us is a _santusdeus with requimiternam_, [102] for if they ever call you a _plibustiero_ then you'd better get yourself shriven and pay your debts, since nothing remains for you but to be hanged. You know whether the telegrapher and the directorcillo ought to be informed; one talks with wires and the other knows Spanish and works only with a pen." All were appalled.

"May they force me to wear shoes and in all my life to drink nothing but that vile stuff they call beer, if I ever let myself be called _pelbistero!_" swore the countryman, clenching his fists. "What, rich as Don Crisostomo is, knowing Spanish as he does, and able to eat fast with a knife and spoon, I'd laugh at five curates!"

"The next civil-guard I catch stealing my chickens I'm going to call _palabistiero_, then I'll go to confession at once," murmured one of the rustics in a low voice as he withdrew from the group.

CHAPTER XXXVI

The First Cloud

In Capitan Tiago's house reigned no less disorder than in the people's imagination. Maria Clara did nothing but weep and would not listen to the consoling words of her aunt and of Andeng, her foster-sister. Her father had forbidden her to speak to Ibarra until the priests should absolve him from the excommunication. Capitan Tiago himself, in the midst of his preparations for receiving the Captain-General properly, had been summoned to the convento.

"Don't cry, daughter," said Aunt Isabel, as she polished the bright plates of the mirrors with a piece of chamois. "They'll withdraw the excommunication, they'll write now to the Pope, and we'll make a big poor-offering. Padre Damaso only fainted, he's not dead."

"Don't cry," whispered Andeng. "I'll manage it so that you may talk with him. What are confessionals for if not that we may sin? Everything is forgiven by telling it to the curate."

At length Capitan Tiago returned. They sought in his face the answer to many questions, and it announced discouragement. The poor fellow was perspiring; he rubbed his hand across his forehead, but was unable to say a single word.

"What has happened, Santiago?" asked Aunt Isabel anxiously.

He answered by sighing and wiping away a tear.

"For God's sake, speak! What has happened?"

"Just what I feared," he broke out at last, half in tears. "All is lost! Padre Damaso has ordered me to break the engagement, otherwise he will damn me in this life and in the next. All of them told me the same, even Padre Sibyla. I must close the doors of my house against him, and I owe him over fifty thousand pesos! I told the padres this, but they refused to take any notice of it. 'Which do you prefer to lose,' they asked me, 'fifty thousand pesos or your life and your soul?' Ay, St. Anthony, if I had only known, if I had only known! Don't cry, daughter," he went on, turning to the sobbing girl. "You're not like your mother, who never cried except just before you were born. Padre Damaso told me that a relative of his has just arrived from Spain and you are to marry him."

Maria Clara covered her ears, while Aunt Isabel screamed, "Santiago, are you crazy? To talk to her of another sweetheart now! Do you think that your daughter changes sweethearts as she does her camisa?"

"That's just the way I felt, Isabel. Don Crisostomo is rich, while the Spaniards marry only for love of money. But what do you want me to do? They've threatened me with another excommunication. They say that not only my soul but also my body is in great danger--my body, do you hear, my body!"

"But you're only making your daughter more disconsolate! Isn't the Archbishop your friend? Why don't you write to him?"

"The Archbishop is also a friar, the Archbishop does only what the friars tell him to do. But, Maria, don't cry. The Captain-General is coming, he'll want to see you, and your eyes are all red. Ay, I was thinking to spend a happy evening! Without this misfortune I should be the happiest of men--every one would envy me! Be calm, my child, I'm more unfortunate than you and I'm not crying. You can have another and better husband, while I--I've lost fifty thousand pesos! Ay, Virgin of Antipolo, if tonight I may only have luck!"

Salvos, the sound of carriage wheels, the galloping of horses, and a band playing the royal march, announced the arrival of his Excellency, the Captain-General of the Philippines. Maria Clara ran to hide herself in her chamber. Poor child, rough hands that knew not its delicate chords were playing with her heart! While the house became filled with people and heavy steps, commanding voices, and the clank of sabers and spurs resounded on all sides, the afflicted maiden reclined half-kneeling before a picture of the Virgin represented in that sorrowful loneliness perceived only by Delaroche, as if he had surprised her returning from the sepulcher of her Son. But Maria Clara was not thinking of that mother's sorrow, she was thinking of her own. With her head hanging down over her breast and her hands resting on the floor she made the picture of a lily bent by the storm. A future dreamed of and cherished for years, whose illusions, born in infancy and grown strong throughout youth, had given form to the very fibers of her being, to be wiped away now from her mind and heart by a single word! It was enough to stop the beating of one and to deprive the other of reason.

Maria Clara was a loving daughter as well as a good and pious Christian, so it was not the excommunication alone that terrified her, but the command and the ominous calmness of her father demanding the sacrifice of her love. Now she felt the whole force of that affection which until this moment she had hardly suspected. It had been like a river gliding along peacefully with its banks carpeted by fragrant flowers and its bed covered with fine sand, so that the wind hardly ruffled its current as it moved along, seeming hardly to flow at all; but suddenly its bed becomes narrower, sharp stones block the way, hoary logs fall across it forming a barrier--then the stream rises and roars with its waves boiling and scattering clouds of foam, it beats against the rocks and rushes into the abyss!

She wanted to pray, but who in despair can pray? Prayers are for the hours of hope, and when in the absence of this we turn to God it is only with complaints. "My God," cried her heart, "why dost Thou thus cut a man off, why dost Thou deny him the love of others? Thou dost not deny him thy sunlight and thy air nor hide from him the sight of thy heaven! Why then deny him love, for without a sight of the sky, without air or sunlight, one can live, but without love--never!"