CHAPTER XVIII
THE FIRST CLOUD.
The house of Captain Tiago was no less disturbed than the imagination
of the people. Maria Clara, refusing to listen to the consolation
of her aunt and foster sister, did nothing but weep. Her father had
forbidden her to speak to Ibarra until the priests should absolve
him from the excommunication which they had pronounced upon him.
Captain Tiago, though very busy preparing his house for the reception
of the Governor General, had been summoned to the convent.
"Don't cry, my girl," said Aunt Isabel as she dusted off the
mirrors. "They will certainly annul the excommunication; they will
write the Pope... We will make a large donation... Father Damaso
had nothing more than a fainting spell... He is not dead."
"Don't cry," said Andeng to her, in a low voice. "I will certainly
arrange it so that you can speak to him. What are the confessionals
made for, if we are not expected to sin? Everything is pardoned when
one has told it to the curate."
Finally, Captain Tiago arrived. They scanned his face for an answer
to their many questions, but his expression announced too plainly
his dismay. The poor man was sweating, and passing his hand over his
forehead. He seemed unable to utter a word.
"How is it, Santiago?" asked Aunt Isabel, anxiously.
He answered her with a sigh and dried away a tear.
"For God's sake, speak! What has happened?"
"What I had already feared!" he broke out finally half crying. "All is
lost! Father Damaso orders that the engagement be broken. If it is not
broken off, I am condemned in this life and in the next. They all tell
me the same thing, even Father Sibyla! I ought to shut the doors of
my house and ... I owe him more than fifty thousand pesos. I told the
Fathers so, but they would take no notice of it. 'Which do you prefer
to lose,' they said to me, 'fifty thousand pesos, or your life and your
soul?' Alas! Ay! San Antonio! If I had known it, if I had known it!"
Maria Clara was sobbing.
"Do not cry, my daughter," he added, turning to her. "You are not
like your mother. She never cried ... she never cried except when she
was whimsical just before your birth... Father Damaso tells me that
a relative of his has just arrived from Spain ... and that he wants
him to be your fiance."...
Maria Clara stopped up her ears.
"But, Santiago, are you out of your head?" cried Aunt Isabel. "Speak
to her now of another fiance! Do you think that your daughter can
change lovers as easily as she changes her dress?"
"I was thinking the same thing, Isabel. Don Crisostomo is rich... The
Spaniards only marry for love of money... But what would you have
me do? They have threatened me with excommunication. They say that
I am in great peril: not only my soul, but also my body ... my body,
do you hear? My body!"
"But you only give sorrow to your daughter. Are you not a friend of
the Archbishop? Why don't you write him?"
"The Archbishop is also a friar. The Archbishop does only what the
friars say. But, Maria, do not cry. The Governor General will come. He
will want to see you and your eyes are all inflamed... Alas! I
was thinking what a happy afternoon I was going to pass... Without
this misfortune, I would be the happiest of men and all would envy
me... Calm yourself, my girl. I am more unfortunate than you and I
do not cry. You can have another and better fiance, but I lose fifty
thousand pesos. Ah! Virgin of Antipolo! If I could only have some
luck to-night!"
Noises, detonations, the rumbling of carriages, the galloping of
horses, and a band playing the Marcha Real announced the arrival of
His Excellency, the Governor General of the Philippine Islands. Maria
Clara ran to hide in her bedroom... Poor girl! Gross hands were
playing with her heart, ignorant of the delicacy of its fibers.
In the meantime, the house filled with people. Loud steps, commands,
and the clanking of sabers and swords resounded on all sides. The
afflicted maiden was half kneeling before an engraving of the Virgin,
a picture representing her in that attitude of painful solitude,
known only to Delaroche, as if she had been surprised on returning
from the sepulchre of her Son. But Maria Clara was not thinking of
the grief of that Mother; she was thinking of her own. With her head
resting on her breast and her hands on the floor, she looked like a
lily bent by the storm. A future, cherished for years in her dreams;
a future whose illusions, born in her infancy and nursed through her
youth, gave form to the cells of her being-that future was now to
be blotted from the mind and heart by a single word!
Maria Clara was as good and as pious a Christian as her aunt. The
thought of an excommunication terrified her. The threat to destroy
the peace of her father demanded that she sacrifice her love. She
felt the entire strength of that affection which until now she had
not known. It was like a river which glides along smoothly; its banks
carpeted with fragrant flowers, its bed formed by fine sand, the wind
scarcely rippling its surface, so quiet and peaceful that you would
say that its waters were dead; until suddenly its channel is pent up,
ragged rocks obstruct its course, and the entangled trunks of trees
form a dike. Then the river roars; it rises up; its waves boil; it
is lashed into foam, beats against the rocks and rushes into the abyss.
She wanted to pray, but who can pray without hope? One prays when
there is hope. When there is none, we surrender ourselves to God
and wail. "My God!" cried her heart, "why shouldst thou separate me
thus from him I love? Why deny me the love of others? Thou dost not
deny me the sun, nor the air, nor dost thou hide the heavens from my
sight. Why dost thou deny me love, when it is possible to live without
sun, without air, and without the heavens, but without love, never?"
"Mother, mother," she was moaning.
Aunt Isabel came to take her from her grief. Some of her girl friends
had arrived and the Governor General also desired to talk with her.
"Aunt, tell them that I am ill!" begged the frightened maiden. "They
wish to make me play the piano and sing."
"Your father has promised it. You are not going to go back on your
father?"
Maria Clara arose, looked at her aunt, clasped her beautiful arms
about her and murmured: "Oh, if I had ..."
But, without finishing the sentence, she dried her tears and began
to make her toilet.