The Reign of Greed Part 8

The friar-administrator shrugged his shoulders: he had nothing to do with it, it was a matter of tulisanes and he had merely done his duty. True it was that if he had not entered the complaint, perhaps the arms would not have been taken up, and poor Tales would not have been captured; but he, Fray Clemente, had to look after his own safety, and that Tales had a way of staring at him as if picking out a good target in some part of his body. Self-defense is natural. If there are tulisanes, the fault is not his, it is not his duty to run them down--that belongs to the Civil Guard. If Cabesang Tales, instead of wandering about his fields, had stayed at home, he would not have been captured. In short, that was a punishment from heaven upon those who resisted the demands of his corporation.

When Sister Penchang, the pious old woman in whose service Juli had entered, learned of it, she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed several _'Susmarioseps_, crossed herself, and remarked, "Often G.o.d sends these trials because we are sinners or have sinning relatives, to whom we should have taught piety and we haven't done so."

Those _sinning relatives_ referred to Juliana, for to this pious woman Juli was a great sinner. "Think of a girl of marriageable age who doesn't yet know how to pray! _Jesus_, how scandalous! If the wretch doesn't say the _Dios te salve Maria_ without stopping at _es contigo_, and the _Santa Maria_ without a pause after _pecadores_, as every good Christian who fears G.o.d ought to do! She doesn't know the _oremus gratiam_, and says _mentibus_ for _mentibus_. Anybody hearing her would think she was talking about something else. _'Susmariosep!_"

Greatly scandalized, she made the sign of the cross and thanked G.o.d, who had permitted the capture of the father in order that the daughter might be s.n.a.t.c.hed from sin and learn the virtues which, according to the curates, should adorn every Christian woman. She therefore kept the girl constantly at work, not allowing her to return to the village to look after her grandfather. Juli had to learn how to pray, to read the books distributed by the friars, and to work until the two hundred and fifty pesos should be paid.

When she learned that Basilio had gone to Manila to get his savings and ransom Juli from her servitude, the good woman believed that the girl was forever lost and that the devil had presented himself in the guise of the student. Dreadful as it all was, how true was that little book the curate had given her! Youths who go to Manila to study are ruined and then ruin the others. Thinking to rescue Juli, she made her read and re-read the book called _Tandang Basio Macunat_, [17] charging her always to go and see the curate in the convento, [18] as did the heroine, who is so praised by the author, a friar.

Meanwhile, the friars had gained their point. They had certainly won the suit, so they took advantage of Cabesang Tales' captivity to turn the fields over to the one who had asked for them, without the least thought of honor or the faintest twinge of shame. When the former owner returned and learned what had happened, when he saw his fields in another's possession,--those fields that had cost the lives of his wife and daughter,--when he saw his father dumb and his daughter working as a servant, and when he himself received an order from the town council, transmitted through the headman of the village, to move out of the house within three days, he said nothing; he sat down at his father's side and spoke scarcely once during the whole day.

CHAPTER X

WEALTH AND WANT

On the following day, to the great surprise of the village, the jeweler Simoun, followed by two servants, each carrying a canvas-covered chest, requested the hospitality of Cabesang Tales, who even in the midst of his wretchedness did not forget the good Filipino customs--rather, he was troubled to think that he had no way of properly entertaining the stranger. But Simoun brought everything with him, servants and provisions, and merely wished to spend the day and night in the house because it was the largest in the village and was situated between San Diego and Tiani, towns where he hoped to find many customers.

Simoun secured information about the condition of the roads and asked Cabesang Tales if his revolver was a sufficient protection against the tulisanes.

"They have rifles that shoot a long way," was the rather absent-minded reply.

"This revolver does no less," remarked Simoun, firing at an areca-palm some two hundred paces away.

Cabesang Tales noticed that some nuts fell, but remained silent and thoughtful.

Gradually the families, drawn by the fame of the jeweler's wares, began to collect. They wished one another merry Christmas, they talked of ma.s.ses, saints, poor crops, but still were there to spend their savings for jewels and trinkets brought from Europe. It was known that the jeweler was the friend of the Captain-General, so it wasn't lost labor to get on good terms with him, and thus be prepared for contingencies.

Capitan Basilio came with his wife, daughter, and son-in-law, prepared to spend at least three thousand pesos. Sister Penchang was there to buy a diamond ring she had promised to the Virgin of Antipolo. She had left Juli at home memorizing a booklet the curate had sold her for four cuartos, with forty days of indulgence granted by the Archbishop to every one who read it or listened to it read.

"_Jesus!_" said the pious woman to Capitana Tika, "that poor girl has grown up like a mushroom planted by the _tikbalang._ I've made her read the book at the top of her voice at least fifty times and she doesn't remember a single word of it. She has a head like a sieve--full when it's in the water. All of us hearing her, even the dogs and cats, have won at least twenty years of indulgence."

Simoun arranged his two chests on the table, one being somewhat larger than the other. "You don't want plated jewelry or imitation gems. This lady," turning to Sinang, "wants real diamonds."

"That's it, yes, sir, diamonds, old diamonds, antique stones, you know," she responded. "Papa will pay for them, because he likes antique things, antique stones." Sinang was accustomed to joke about the great deal of Latin her father understood and the little her husband knew.

"It just happens that I have some antique jewels," replied Simoun, taking the canvas cover from the smaller chest, a polished steel case with bronze tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and stout locks. "I have necklaces of Cleopatra's, real and genuine, discovered in the Pyramids; rings of Roman senators and knights, found in the ruins of Carthage."

"Probably those that Hannibal sent back after the battle of Cannae!" exclaimed Capitan Basilio seriously, while he trembled with pleasure. The good man, thought he had read much about the ancients, had never, by reason of the lack of museums in Filipinas, seen any of the objects of those times.

"I have brought besides costly earrings of Roman ladies, discovered in the villa of Annius Mucius Papilinus in Pompeii."

Capitan Easilio nodded to show that he understood and was eager to see such precious relics. The women remarked that they also wanted things from Rome, such as rosaries blessed by the Pope, holy relics that would take away sins without the need of confessions, and so on.

When the chest was opened and the cotton packing removed, there was exposed a tray filled with rings, reliquaries, lockets, crucifixes, brooches, and such like. The diamonds set in among variously colored stones flashed out brightly and s.h.i.+mmered among golden flowers of varied hues, with petals of enamel, all of peculiar designs and rare Arabesque workmans.h.i.+p.

Simoun lifted the tray and exhibited another filled with quaint jewels that would have satisfied the imaginations of seven debutantes on the eves of the b.a.l.l.s in their honor. Designs, one more fantastic than the other, combinations of precious stones and pearls worked into the figures of insects with azure backs and transparent forewings, sapphires, emeralds, rubies, turquoises, diamonds, joined to form dragon-flies, wasps, bees, b.u.t.terflies, beetles, serpents, lizards, fishes, sprays of flowers. There were diadems, necklaces of pearls and diamonds, so that some of the girls could not withhold a _naku_ of admiration, and Sinang gave a cluck with her tongue, whereupon her mother pinched her to prevent her from encouraging the jeweler to raise his prices, for Capitana Tika still pinched her daughter even after the latter was married.

"Here you have some old diamonds," explained the jeweler. "This ring belonged to the Princess Lamballe and those earrings to one of Marie Antoinette's ladies." They consisted of some beautiful solitaire diamonds, as large as grains of corn, with somewhat bluish lights, and pervaded with a severe elegance, as though they still reflected in their sparkles the shuddering of the Reign of Terror.

"Those two earrings!" exclaimed Sinang, looking at her father and instinctively covering the arm next to her mother.

"Something more ancient yet, something Roman," said Capitan Basilio with a wink.

The pious Sister Penchang thought that with such a gift the Virgin of Antipolo would be softened and grant her her most vehement desire: for some time she had begged for a wonderful miracle to which her name would be attached, so that her name might be immortalized on earth and she then ascend into heaven, like the Capitana Ines of the curates. She inquired the price and Simoun asked three thousand pesos, which made the good woman cross herself--_'Susmariosep!_

Simoun now exposed the third tray, which was filled with watches, cigar- and match-cases decorated with the rarest enamels, reliquaries set with diamonds and containing the most elegant miniatures.

The fourth tray, containing loose gems, stirred a murmur of admiration. Sinang again clucked with her tongue, her mother again pinched her, although at the same time herself emitting a _'Susmaria_ of wonder.

No one there had ever before seen so much wealth. In that chest lined with dark-blue velvet, arranged in trays, were the wonders of the _Arabian Nights,_ the dreams of Oriental fantasies. Diamonds as large as peas glittered there, throwing out attractive rays as if they were about to melt or burn with all the hues of the spectrum; emeralds from Peru, of varied forms and shapes; rubies from India, red as drops of blood; sapphires from Ceylon, blue and white; turquoises from Persia; Oriental pearls, some rosy, some lead-colored, others black. Those who have at night seen a great rocket burst in the azure darkness of the sky into thousands of colored lights, so bright that they make the eternal stars look dim, can imagine the aspect the tray presented.

As if to increase the admiration of the beholders, Simoun took the stones out with his tapering brown fingers, gloating over their crystalline hardness, their luminous stream, as they poured from his hands like drops of water reflecting the tints of the rainbow. The reflections from so many facets, the thought of their great value, fascinated the gaze of every one.

Cabesang Tales, who had approached out of curiosity, closed his eyes and drew back hurriedly, as if to drive away an evil thought. Such great riches were an insult to his misfortunes; that man had come there to make an exhibition of his immense wealth on the very day that he, Tales, for lack of money, for lack of protectors, had to abandon the house raised by his own hands.

"Here you have two black diamonds, among the largest in existence,"

explained the jeweler. "They're very difficult to cut because they're the very hardest. This somewhat rosy stone is also a diamond, as is this green one that many take for an emerald. Quiroga the Chinaman offered me six thousand pesos for it in order to present it to a very influential lady, and yet it is not the green ones that are the most valuable, but these blue ones."

He selected three stones of no great size, but thick and well-cut, of a delicate azure tint.

"For all that they are smaller than the green," he continued, "they cost twice as much. Look at this one, the smallest of all, weighing not more than two carats, which cost me twenty thousand pesos and which I won't sell for less than thirty. I had to make a special trip to buy it. This other one, from the mines of Golconda, weighs three and a half carats and is worth over seventy thousand. The Viceroy of India, in a letter I received the day before yesterday, offers me twelve thousand pounds sterling for it."

Before such great wealth, all under the power of that man who talked so unaffectedly, the spectators felt a kind of awe mingled with dread. Sinang clucked several times and her mother did not pinch her, perhaps because she too was overcome, or perhaps because she reflected that a jeweler like Simoun was not going to try to gain five pesos more or less as a result of an exclamation more or less indiscreet. All gazed at the gems, but no one showed any desire to handle them, they were so awe-inspiring. Curiosity was blunted by wonder. Cabesang Tales stared out into the field, thinking that with a single diamond, perhaps the very smallest there, he could recover his daughter, keep his house, and perhaps rent another farm. Could it be that those gems were worth more than a man's home, the safety of a maiden, the peace of an old man in his declining days?

As if he guessed the thought, Simoun remarked to those about him: "Look here--with one of these little blue stones, which appear so innocent and inoffensive, pure as sparks scattered over the arch of heaven, with one of these, seasonably presented, a man was able to have his enemy deported, the father of a family, as a disturber of the peace; and with this other little one like it, red as one's heart-blood, as the feeling of revenge, and bright as an orphan's tears, he was restored to liberty, the man was returned to his home, the father to his children, the husband to the wife, and a whole family saved from a wretched future."

He slapped the chest and went on in a loud tone in bad Tagalog: "Here I have, as in a medicine-chest, life and death, poison and balm, and with this handful I can drive to tears all the inhabitants of the Philippines!"

The listeners gazed at him awe-struck, knowing him to be right. In his voice there could be detected a strange ring, while sinister flashes seemed to issue from behind the blue goggles.

Then as if to relieve the strain of the impression made by the gems on such simple folk, he lifted up the tray and exposed at the bottom the _sanctum sanctorum_. Cases of Russian leather, separated by layers of cotton, covered a bottom lined with gray velvet. All expected wonders, and Sinang's husband thought he saw carbuncles, gems that flashed fire and shone in the midst of the shadows. Capitan Basilio was on the threshold of immortality: he was going to behold something real, something beyond his dreams.

"This was a necklace of Cleopatra's," said Simoun, taking out carefully a flat case in the shape of a half-moon. "It's a jewel that can't be appraised, an object for a museum, only for a rich government."

It was a necklace fas.h.i.+oned of bits of gold representing little idols among green and blue beetles, with a vulture's head made from a single piece of rare jasper at the center between two extended wings--the symbol and decoration of Egyptian queens.

Sinang turned up her nose and made a grimace of childish depreciation, while Capitan Basilio, with all his love for antiquity, could not restrain an exclamation of disappointment.

"It's a magnificent jewel, well-preserved, almost two thousand years old."

"Pshaw!" Sinang made haste to exclaim, to prevent her father's falling into temptation.

"Fool!" he chided her, after overcoming his first disappointment. "How do you know but that to this necklace is due the present condition of the world? With this Cleopatra may have captivated Caesar, Mark Antony! This has heard the burning declarations of love from the greatest warriors of their time, it has listened to speeches in the purest and most elegant Latin, and yet you would want to wear it!"