“You remember the old ex-artilleryman who collected taxes? He became the laughing-stock of the pueblo, and grew brutal and churlish accordingly. One day he chased some boys who were annoying him, and struck one down. Unfortunately your father interfered. There was a struggle and the man fell. He died within a few hours.
“Naturally your father was arrested, and then his enemies unmasked. He was called heretic, filibustero, his papers were seized, everything was made to accuse him. Any one else in his place would have been set at liberty, the physicians finding that the man died of apoplexy; but your father’s fortune, his honesty, and his scorn of everything illegal undid him. When his advocate, by the most brilliant pleading, had exposed these calumnies, new accusations arose. He had taken lands unjustly, owed men for imaginary wrongs, had relations with the tulisanes, by which his plantations and herds were unmolested. The affair became so complicated that no one could unravel it. Your father gave way under the strain, and died suddenly—alone—in prison.”
They had reached the quarters.
The lieutenant hesitated. Ibarra said nothing, but grasped the old man’s long, thin hand; then turned away, caught sight of a coach, and signalled the driver.
“Fonda de Lala,” he said, and his words were scarcely audible.
V.
A Star in the Dark Night.
Ibarra went up to his chamber, which faced the river, threw himself down, and looked out through the open window. Across the river a brilliantly lighted house was ringing with joyous music. Had the young man been so minded, with the aid of a glass he might have seen, in that radiant atmosphere, a vision. It was a young girl, of exceeding beauty, wearing the picturesque costume of the Philippines. A semicircle of courtiers was round her. Spaniards, Chinese, natives, soldiers, curates, old and young, intoxicated with the light and music, were talking, gesturing, disputing with animation. Even Brother Sibyla deigned to address this queen, in whose splendid hair Doña Victorina was wreathing a diadem of pearls and brilliants. She was white, too white perhaps, and her deep eyes, often lowered, when she raised them showed the purity of her soul. About her fair and rounded neck, through the transparent tissue of the piña, winked, as say the Tagals, the joyous eyes of a necklace of brilliants. One man alone seemed unreached by all this light and loveliness; it was a young Franciscan, slim, gaunt, pale, who watched all from a distance, still as a statue.
But Ibarra sees none of this. Another spectacle appears to his fancy, commands his eyes. Four walls, bare and dank, enclose a narrow cell, lighted by a single streak of day. On the moist and noisome floor is a mat; on the mat an old man dying. Beaten down by fever, he lies and looks about him, calling a name, in strangling voice, with tears. No one—a clanking chain, an echoed groan somewhere; that was all. And away off in the bright world, laughing, singing, drenching flowers with wine, a young man.... One by one the lights go out in the festal house: no more of noise, or song, or harp; but in Ibarra’s ears always the agonizing cry.