"That is very true. I perceive you are an astute politician. Becauseyou are so far-sighted, you cannot fail to realize that if you areenabled to satisfactorily settle a dispute that has been ragingfor three centuries, and give America the Philippines to exploit,you will have distinguished yourself in a way that is sure to bringreward. Perhaps not at once. The military hero may come first, whileyour reputation is in process of building; but if you succeed, yourtime will come."
"The people are very forgetful."
"But men of affairs are not, and they are the folks who count. Thesubstantial business men, who see the advantages that accrue tothem because of these things, will remember; and the holy churchnever forgets. We alone poll two million votes in America now. But,remember, I am only musing. I am asking nothing. I shall report,however, the kindness you have shown me, which will, I feel sure,help to make your task easier."
"For your suggestions I thank you. You shall be welcome whenever youchoose to call--in your individual capacity."
"You are a sly dog, Judge. I confess myself completely out-generaledin diplomacy, and have dropped it. Hereafter I wish to be known onlyas your friend. In the language of the Spaniards, buenas noches,amizo mio."
Never more of a diplomat than when he was claiming to have abandoneddiplomacy, the priest took his departure, knowing that he had leftthoughts that would cling and bear fruit. He understood that, thoughthe Judge might have been able to handle the simple-minded Saguanaldoby his diplomacy, every good has its better and he had been bestedwithout realizing it. It is the true test of wit that cuts so smoothlyone does not know of his wound at the time it is given.
The Jesuit sought Bishop Lonzello and spoke imperiously and exultantly:
"I am to have an order from the American governor that the soldiersare to protect in possession either side of the controversy thatmay have possession of churches and convents. You want to summon allyou can command and seize at night on all these buildings that youcan. You haven't half of them now, and by this means you may securepractically all of them. And the American army is pledged to maintainyou in possession of them, once you are in charge. There is no timefor delay."
Lonzello was not a man who needed to have explained to him theadvantage this gave the friars. He sprang up, before the Jesuit wasthrough speaking, and began preparing to go on the street and sethis machinery in motion.
"You will not find me sleeping," he said.
The Jesuit leered: "Am I to confess that young woman as my reward?"
Lonzello opened the door and showed him from the room, kicking athim as he passed. Once the Jesuit was outside, however, he said:
"I will send the girl to the cathedral at ten o'clock tomorrow."
Then he closed the door.
X.
SECRETS.
Ambrosia's mother had again received a visit from Bishop Lonzello. Thistime he had insisted that his daughter confess in order that shemight be forgiven and the curse pronounced against her renderednull. It is possible that the bishop himself believed that thecurse held power. Certain it is that the woman feared it and hadwept almost constantly since that day that it had been pronouncedon Ambrosia. Now she fell in with the idea of Ambrosia confessingand securing release from the curse. She brought the matter beforeher daughter, who demurred. Then she urged it with such insistence,declaring that filial duty required some reparation on her part,that Ambrosia was touched, and, at the same time, being plagued bythe importunity of her mother, consented to confess, and even toconfess before the foreign friar, in the church against which shewas in rebellion. Indeed, she preferred the foreigner to one of thepriests who had long resided in the islands and fallen with its ways.
Behold, then, Ambrosia Lonzello at the cathedral before theconfessional in which Violeta was seated. She did not know it, butthe moment she entered the confessional the door had been lockedbehind her by an attendant, at the signal from the officiating priest.
Ambrosia knelt at the confessional, troubled in heart. She felt outof place in a church against which she was in rebellion; and, whilefeeling that she ought to atone for disrespect shown a father, stillshe knew not what to say. She knelt in prayer, and as she prayed,the priest within the cell gazed upon her with lustful eyes, studyingher points as a sportsman might study the creature he meant to killand devour. As he looked, the appetite for sex, the fiercest passionthat sways mankind, took possession of and began to rage withinhim. Finally he spoke:
"Daughter, have you been guilty of disloyalty to the holy church? Haveyou consorted with those who are the enemies of the religion and oftheir country?"
Naturally, the question, so unexpected, disconcerted the girl kneelingbefore the cell with her eyes so downcast that she did not see thepriest within the cell. Various emotions surged within her. Herfirst impulse was to deny rebellion to true religion and rush fromthe church. But she concluded that it were best to remain and admitthe thing that had caused her mother sorrow. So she confessed:
"I have met the general of the insurrectionists and am his friend. ButI am not an enemy of the true religion."
"Have you met him at night?"
The girl, although, knowing it compromised her, said softly, "Yes."
"Late at night or early in the morning?"
Again she faltered as she replied, "Both."
"Were you two alone?"
"Yes."
"Did he employ embraces or kisses toward you?"
Still lower, hardly above a whisper, "Yes; but we are engaged."
"Did he caress you, feeling over your person with his hands--likethis?"
The priest's hands were upon her, and he was taking liberties noother man had ever done. She tried to arise from the cushion where sheknelt, but strong arms about her prevented. Then the priest steppedfrom the confessional and held her in his arms.
"Did he kiss you--like this?" the priest asked. "Did he press you tohis bosom--like this?" She was now in his embrace, struggling in vainto free herself. "Nay, do not struggle, little bird. If you grantsuch favors to enemies of religion, you ought not to refuse them torepresentatives of the Lord."
"How can you call yourself a representative of the Lord when you dothese things?" she managed to ask between his kisses.
"Why, Chuleta, did not the Holy Ghost overshadow even the blessedvirgin? And is it not an honor to be embraced by one who stands,as it were, in the very person of Christ? If you have yielded to theenemy of the Master, ought you not yield to the true representativeof the Master, and so make atonement to him?"
For answer, she managed to free one hand and slap his face.
"You do not know the manner of my country," said the priest, thrustinghis hand in her bosom. "The instructions for confession, issued bySaint Liguori, says: 'Kisses, embraces, squeezing of the hands andsimilar things not indecent, if done only as marks of affability orbenevolence, according to the custom of the country, in an honest way,are not sins.' Again: 'To speak, hear, read, write indecent thingswith a legitimate reason is no sin. Hence, in order to administerthe sacrament of penance priests can lawfully hear and read all theywish.' Tell me what this insurgent did to you."
The girl wrenched herself away, and, flying to the door, tried toopen it. The priest stood and smiled.
"The case is hopeless," he said. "You might as well confess."
"Have you no regard for your sacred calling? Have you no regard forthis sacred place?" she asked.
"Nothing is more sacred than love," said he. "Saint Liguori says:'Concerning the locality, every external carnal action, althoughhidden in a sacred place, is a sacrilege. However, cells, a cloister,the vestry, the roof above the church, its door and vestibule, areexcluded.' You see we are excused."
"Excused! Oh, the wickedness of your heart! I wonder not thatSaguanaldo broke away from the church you represent."
"Nay, child, you misunderstand. If it is given to Peter and hissuccessors to forgive sins, then whatever they may do can be nosin, but is, as it were, the act of God himself. You who think y
ourhighest virtue is to love God ought to esteem it an honor that youhave provoked the love of God's representative on earth."
"Fiend!" shrieked the girl. "Help, help!" The words echoed from thewall, but seemed to penetrate no further.
There was no response, and the priest smiled: "It is foolish to resistthe Lord who loves you," he said. "It is in my power to absolve youfrom sin, and even to grant you indulgence to commit that which mightunder other circumstances be sin. Don't be foolish, child."
He sought to grasp her in his arms again, but she eluded him. Thenhe began in a pleading voice:
"Is it my fault that I love you? Why are you not as kind to me as youwere to that heretic? You are in the confessional, and I can not onlyabsolve you from sin, but I am also pledged to secrecy. Be kind to me."
"Oh, loathsome thing, I hate you."
"But I love you."
"Love, indeed! You pollute the word, like you do the office you holdand the building here and all else that should be sacred."
"You know not how I love you. Oh, how I long toward you! 'Itemordinarie mortalia nabenda sunt escula in ore, seu lingua in oreintroducta vel excepta. [11]' Are you not, indeed, the bride ofChrist?"
"Oh, devil that you are! It is you who have confessed to me, and thoughyou live to be a century of age, confessing every day such villainyas this, I could but hate you worse with every morn, and never couldforgive you. If there is hell, where he who burns in lust and anger,burns in flame, then there's your place. If there is a heaven thathears the voice of innocence, sending the white angels down to giveit succor, then will the heaven open now, and white-robed creatureswill deliver me. Oh, thou divine Christ, come now and judge betweenus. Oh, God of purity, deliver me from this, thine enemy."
"You do not understand. I wish you no wrong. Love is not wrong."
"Love thinketh no evil."
"Love is not expressed in words. It never can be told, but in embracesand fondlings. Christ, how I love you and long toward you! 'Delectatiovenerea autem seu carnalisest ca, quea oritur ex commotione spiritumgenertioni inservientum et sentitur circa partes genitales.' You cannot comprehend how I am stirred."
"You know not how you fright me. Oh, sir, I plead with you to letme go. Do not for a moment's passion damn your own soul and ruin meforever. Show but the manhood that will set me free, and for thatmanhood's sake I will say that, though tempted, you had the hardihoodto overcome, and I, for that hardihood that won, will be silent asto all you have done and said."
"What do you think I am? Does the sportsman set the bird free whenit chirps? I am not so foolish or so weak."
"Then let me ask one thing: Did my father deliver me into your hands?"
"Is the Bishop Lonzello your father?"
"He is."
"Oh, then I understand some things that have been dark. I also havefull license now for anything I can do, and you can find no faultin the fault that marked both your parents. Come and give me a kiss,like a good girl, Chuleta!"
"God in heaven, send me protection," gasped the girl in a faint voice.
A moment later the priest grasped her in his arms, and his lips seizedhers in a long, hard, passionate kiss.
XI.
WHAT RUIN MEANS.
Early the following morning Ambrosia Lonzello was released fromthe convento [12] in which she had been detained the night long,and staggered into the street. Suffering physically, nervous almostto prostration, and mentally overwhelmed with horror, she walked,she scarcely knew where. She felt that she dare not go home--thatfather and mother had betrayed her, and that now she was an outcast,with no friend and with no place on earth. Even heaven had been deafto her call, and she felt that the divine Father, too, and the Christwho had sympathized with Magdalene, cared nothing for her.
It is a wise provision of nature, apparently attesting her sympathywith suffering, that when sorrow and pain tug almost to the point ofdestruction at the heart or body, she provides her own opiate. Inthe article of death almost all creatures are at peace, and fearnothing. Gradually this numbness came over Ambrosia. She apparentlycould not realize all that had happened. She ceased to feel the fullburden of her anguish, and became numb, as it were. She no longerplanned, she followed her heart. Indeed, she became more consciousof the glory of the morning than of her own ruin, and in spite ofher mind's declaration that there was no place in the world for her,she saw nature beautiful and friendly about her and felt that notyet had God excluded her.
Her brain would not work, but her heart thought of Saguanaldo and thosewhom she had thought to be her friends. It was this thread invisiblethat led her to the camp of the Americans. When she arrived she metfirst a minor officer and asked to be shown to the commander in charge.
"All right, Miss, just go into the tent and wait until I bring him,"was the reply to her request.
She entered the tent and seated herself. As she waited a feeling ofdrowsiness overpowered her. Finally, scarcely knowing what she did,she threw herself on the cot in the tent and slept. The soldier whooccupied the tent peeped in and saw her.
"Gee," said he to his messmate, "she don't want the commander now. Shehas already made a night of it and needs nothing so bad as sleep."
"Let's wait till she awakens and then keep her to ourselves."
"We ought to have some rent for our tent."
"Sure."
When Ambrosia awakened several hours later one of the soldiers wasat her side and the tent was closed and darkened. She remained in thetent two days, during which time she was repeatedly assaulted by thetwo soldiers. Instead of finding a refuge, she had merely fallen intoanother trap. There really is no escape for a creature that is hunted,especially if that creature be a woman.
XII.
A CHANGE OF SEX.
When next Ambrosia Lonzello regained consciousness she was reposingin a room familiar to her, at the home of Mrs. Rizal. After herlast bitter experience she had been cast into the street in a feverand delirium, and, happily for her, had soon been picked up byMrs. Rizal, who had taken her to her home and nursed her through asiege of fever. Now, as Ambrosia opened her eyes with a rational look,Mrs. Rizal, smiling on her, said:
"You are better now."
"How do I come to be here?" asked the girl in confusion.
"I found you wandering on the street in a fever and brought you here."
"Oh, then it is true," cried the girl in horror as memory came toher. "I must go, I am not fit to be in this room with you."
"Nonsense," responded the older woman, smoothing her pillow. "Youhave been having bad dreams, and you must forget about them."
"Are you sure they were dreams?"
"Perfectly. You have been very sick."
"Where is mother?"
"She has been to see you often, and will come again."
"Did she say where I had been?"
"She said you had started to confessional, and I suppose the fevercame upon you while you were on the way."
The girl lay silent for a time. Finally tears gathered in her eyes. Itwas a good sign that the power of crying had returned to her; tearsare a mark of humanity, and only they who are dehumanized or renderedoutcasts by persecution or sorrow are unable to weep. Mrs. Rizalstooped and kissed the girl. It was the one act of sympathy she neededto break up the fountains of her heart, for it showed that she wasnot entirely abandoned, and Ambrosia wept unrestrainedly.
"You will be better now," said Mrs. Rizal when the flood of tearshad passed.
"Does--General Saguanaldo know?" asked Ambrosia.
"If he did, he would have come." Again it was the wisest word thatcould have been spoken, simple and unlearned though it may have been,for it intimated that her lover had not ceased to care, and this wasof all things the most consoling. Yet a moment after it occurred toAmbrosia that if Saguanaldo had desired to come and not been able, he,too, had been burdened and in trouble. Then it was, with a woman'sabnegation, Ambrosia thought of the woe of her dear one rather thanof her own sorrow, and this, too, was an advantage
to her.
"Are they having trouble at the front?" she asked.
"Yes," Mrs. Rizal replied. "The friars have seized on the churches,the hospitals and convents, and now the American troops are maintainingthem in possession of the property they hold. It is the same as thoughthe Americans, after Saguanaldo had turned the city of Manila overto them, had turned against him and were making war on him and infavor of the friars."
"Someone is behind this change," declared the girl after a moment'sthought.
"Yes, there is a Jesuit here, an envoy from the Pope."
Ambrosia sat up in bed, her eyes distended in horror.
"Then it is true," she said. "It was not a dream. It was good in youto care for me and not desert me in my pollution, but I know now itis true, and you need not deny it."
"But,"--began Mrs. Rizal.
"I will not talk about it," interrupted the girl, "and God willreward you who are so different from other women in that you didnot turn away from the victim as from a thing polluted. No, do notinterrupt. I am strong now. There is only one thing I may do withthe remnant of life left to me. I have no longer father or mother,God or redeemer. I have no place in society on earth. I have no lover,no chance for home or respectability. But I have hope and a purpose. Ithas just come to me. Do not deny me in the plan I have."
"I will listen to your plan, but you are weak and not yet able todo anything."