The Woman with a Stone Heart / A Romance of the Philippine War

Love Defeated

Marie Sampalit and her fiancee, Rolando Dimiguez, were walking arm-in-arm along the sandy beach of Manila bay, just opposite old Fort Malate, talking of their wedding day which had been postponed because of the Filipino insurrection which was in progress.

The tide was out. A long waved line of sea-shells and drift-wood marked the place to which it had risen the last time before it began to recede. They were unconsciously following this line of ocean debris. Occasionally Marie would stop to pick up a spotted shell which was more pretty than the rest. Finally, when they had gotten as far north as the semi-circular drive-way which extends around the southern and eastern sides of the walled-city, or Old Manila, as it is called, and had begun to veer toward it, Marie looked back and repeated a beautiful memory gem taught to her by a good friar when she was a pupil in one of the parochial schools of Manila:

"E'en as the rise of the tide is told,

By drift-wood on the beach,

So can our pen mark on the page

How high our thoughts can reach."

They turned directly east until they reached the low stone-wall that prevents Manila bay from overflowing the city during the periods of high tides. Dimiguez helped Marie to step upon it; then they strolled eastward past the large stake which marked the place where the Spaniards had shot Dr. Jose Rizal, the brainiest patriot ever produced by the Malay race.

When they came to the spot, Marie stopped and told Dimiguez how she had watched the shooting when it took place, and how bravely Rizal had met his fate.

"If it hadn't been for this outrage committed by the Spaniards," remarked Dimiguez, "this insurrection would not have lasted these two years, and we would have been married before now; but our people are determined to seek revenge for his death."

Then they started on, changed their course to the northward, entered the walled-city by the south gate, walked past the old Spanish arsenal, and then passed out of the walled-city by the north gate. Here they crossed the Pasig river on the old "Bridge of Spain" (the large stone bridge near the mouth of the river, built over 300 years ago) and entered the Escolta, the main business street of Manila. After making their way slowly up the Escolta they meandered along San Miguel street until they finally turned and walked a short distance down a side street to a typical native shack, built of bamboo and thatched with Nipa palms, happily tucked away beneath the overhanging limbs of a large mango tree in a spacious yard,-the home of the Sampalits.

Here Marie had been born just seventeen years before; in fact the next day, April 7, would be her seventeenth birthday. When she was born, her father instituted one of the accustomed Filipino dances which last from three to five days and nights, and at its conclusion she had been christened "Maria," subsequently changed by force of habit to "Marie."

Late that evening, while they were seated side-by-side on a bamboo bench beside of her home, tapping the toes of their wooden-soled slippers on the hard ground, and indulging in a wandering lovers' conversation, Marie said to him (calling him affectionately by his first name), "Rolando, when did you first decide to postpone our wedding day?"

"Well, I'll tell you how it was," answered he, meditatingly. "The thought of serving my country had been lingering on my mind all last summer-in fact, ever since the insurrection first broke out in the spring of 1896. You know I intended coming down to see you last Christmas, but I couldn't get away. That night I walked the floor all night in our home at Malolos, debating in my mind whether we had better get married in March, as we had planned, or if it would not be wiser and more manly for me to go to war, take chances on getting back alive and postpone our wedding day until after the war is over. Toward morning, I decided that it was my duty to become a soldier; so I called my father and mother, got an early breakfast, bade them goodby and started for Malabon, which was Aguinaldo's headquarters, and enlisted. He was glad to see me. You know, he and I attended school together for one year at Hongkong. Well, Aguinaldo at once commissioned me a spy and assigned me to very important duty."

"My God!" interrupted Marie, "you are not on that duty now, are you, Rolando?"

Dimiguez arose. "Marie," said he firmly, "I must be off."

"But won't you tell me where you are going and what task lies before you?" pleaded Marie, as she threw both arms about his neck and began to sob, "I'll never tell a living soul, so help me God, but I must know!"

"A spy never tells his plans to anyone, Marie," said Dimiguez slowly. "He takes his orders from his chief, plays his part; and if he gets caught, he refuses to speak and dies without a murmur, like a man. Good night, Marie, I must be off; duty lies before me."

Marie cried herself to sleep.

The next morning she started down town, as usual, for the market place, with her bamboo basket filled with bananas, sitting on her head, and a cigarette in her mouth. She had only gone a block when she met a neighbor girl, one of her chums of equal years to her own, who was a chamber-maid in the German consul's home on San Miguel Street.

Her friend looked excited. "Have you heard the awful news, Marie?" said she.

"No!" exclaimed Marie, "What is it?"

"Why, Dimiguez was caught last night by Spanish guards inside the yard of the governor-general's summer palace up on the Malacanan, just as he was slipping out of the palace itself. How he got in there, nobody knows."

Marie dropped her basket. "Heavens!" gasped she, "Did he do anything wrong?"

"They found in his pocket diagrams of the interior of the palace, showing the entries to it, the room where the governor-general sleeps, and many other things; also your picture. See here! the morning paper gives a full account of it."

Marie glanced at the head lines and then started on a vigorous run for the building in which the Spanish military court was sitting. Rushing in, past an armed guard, she began to plead for her lover's life. But he had already been tried, convicted and sentenced to death by strangulation in the old chute at Cavite. Dimiguez never moved a muscle when he saw Marie. Armed guards forced her abruptly out of the building and ordered her to leave.

Inside of two hours, on the same day, April 7, the anniversary of Marie's birth, he was taken to the little town of Cavite, seven miles southwest of Manila, and was there placed in the lower end of a long chute built out into Manila Bay. This chute was just wide enough for a man to enter. Its sides, top and bottom were all built of heavy planks. The side planks lacked a few inches of connecting with the top, although of course the side posts ran clear up and the top was firmly bolted to them. The entrance to it was well elevated near the docks. The lower end protruded into the bay, so that it was visible about eighteen inches above the water during the period of low tide, and submerged several feet during high tide.

Tides come in slowly at Cavite, each succeeding wave rising but a trifle higher than the others, until the usual height is reached. Thus, a prisoner placed in this chute, forced to the lower end and then fastened securely during low tide, can look out over the side planks at the hideous spectators, watch the tide as it begins to rise and see slow death approaching. It was in this chute that Marie's lover met his death.

Marie saw the launch that carried him away as it left Manila. She rushed down to the Pasig river, loosened her little boat from the tree to which it was tied, jumped in, seized the oars and started in pursuit. The launch on which he was being carried had for its power a gasoline engine, and, of course, it soon left her far behind. When she first started, the swells caused by the launch rocked her little canoe quite roughly and impeded her progress. As she approached the mouth of the river, passed the monument of Magellan and came between the walled-city on the southern bank and the docks on the northern bank, a crowd of excited natives thronged the shore, and many of them recognized her. She heard some one cry out, "Vive Marie!" With might and main she strove forward.

The launch made its seven-mile run to Cavite; the victim was placed in the chute; the tide had risen to the danger line; her lover, with his head thrown back, had just begun to gurgle the salt water, when Marie, in frantic agony, almost exhausted, rowed around the lower end of the chute and came near enough to the dying hero to be recognized by him. Straining ever muscle to keep his head above the water a second longer, he cried out in chocking tones that were interrupted by the merciless sea which was rapidly filling his mouth, "Goodby, Marie, God bless you. Avenge my death!"

Hush! At this moment another tidal wave engulfed the apex of the chute. Not a sound could be heard save the slight flapping of the waves against the pier, and the dismal chant of three priests, who stood on the shore near by, and who had not been permitted to attend the young spy before his death. Marie trembled; she dropped the oars; her eyes fell; for a moment it seemed that her young heart stood still: then her face flushed; the tears stopped flowing; anguish gave vent to determined revenge; pent-up sorrows yielded to out-spoken threats; and in tones sufficiently audible to be heard ashore, she cried, "I'll do it."

The Spaniard knows no pity. If Marie were to have stepped ashore immediately after her lover's strangulation, she might have come to grief. It is strange that she escaped punishment for having followed. She, therefore, rowed directly east and landed on the beach of the bay, about four miles south of Manila, just west of the little city of Paranaque.

From sheer exhaustion, she needed food; therefore, she walked northward along the shore until she found a Mango tree heavily laden with fruit. After eating a few luscious mangoes, she crept into a clump of bamboo and had a good cry: tears so ease a woman's soul.

From her position on the beach she could readily see the Spaniards as they took her dead lover from the chute when the tide had lowered toward evening. She saw them even strike his corpse, and she bit her finger nails as she watched them place him in a rough wooden box and haul him up through the streets of the village on an old two-wheeled cart drawn by a caribou.

With the approach of sunset, things grew strangely quiet. The spring zephyr that had blown modestly during the day died away. There was no longer even a dimple in the blue surface of Manila Bay. Not a leaf was astir. It seemed to Marie that the only sound she could hear was the the throbbing of her own heart. To her the whole world seemed like an open sepulcher. Looking down she discovered that she was unconsciously sitting on a flowery terrace and that all about her was life. She pulled one of those exquisite white flowers with wide pink veins, peculiar alone to the Philippines, and pressed it to her lips.

The sun was just setting beyond Corregidor. The island's long shadows seemed to extend completely across the bay to her feet. As the solar fires burned themselves out, the orange tint which they left behind against the reddened sky reminded Marie of the night before, when she and her lover had strolled along the shore of the bay about three miles farther north; and as the sun slowly nodded its evening farewell and buried its face in the pillow of night, she remembered how he, on the previous night, had called to her attention the lingering glow of its fading beams. Before her lay the Spanish fleet, it, too, casting shadows that first grew longer and longer and then dimmer and dimmer until they in turn had died away in the spectral phenomenon of night.

Marie's thoughts turned toward home. What about her mother? She walked back to her little boat, pushed it out into the bay, and, stepping into it, sat down, took hold of the oars and started northward near the beach. Just opposite Fort Malate, she swung westward, and, passing outside of the break-water a mile from shore, she entered the Pasig river and hurried homeward. When she arrived, about nine o'clock, she found her mother on the verge of prostration; for that very day, strange to say, Marie's father, who was a colonel in the Filipino infantry, had been killed at San Francisco del Monte, six miles north-east of Manila, in a battle with Spanish troops.

"Don't cry, mother," expostulated Marie, "from now on I intend to kill every foe of ours in these islands!"