"What the deuce are you thinking about?" at last exclaimed the missionary, suddenly very much aware of his loquacity.
"By Jove, I've got it," said the Maestro, rising to his feet like an automaton, his eyes fixed as if he saw written in space the solution of some sore world-problem. He took three great strides across the room, wheeled, and stopped before the missionary. "Yes, sir, I've got it," he repeated, enthusiasm beginning to thrill in his voice.
"For goodness' sake," asked the missionary, "got what?"
"I've got—well, something for you to do," answered the Maestro, enigmatically; "yes, sir, I've a job for you, Huston."
He sat down at the table and scribbled two notes. "Tolio," he called. The boy appeared at the door. "Take this," ordered the Maestro, giving the boy the first note, "to Maestro Ledesma. Tell him to come right away. Tell him to come around by the river so that the Maestra cannot see him."
"Si, Señor," said the faithful servant.
"And after Maestro Ledesma has entered the house here, not before, mind you, Tolio, you go to Señorita Constancia and give her this note," went on the Maestro, giving the boy the second slip of paper.
"Si, Señor," said the boy, carefully taking one note in his left hand and the other in the right.
The two friends were again left alone, but the spell had been broken and they did not renew their outpourings. The Maestro was the prey of a fixed idea. He paced back and forth like a lion in his cage, full of the fever of resolve. At intervals he punched his left palm with his right fist, then varied the performance by punching his right palm with his left fist; incoherent exclamations growled in his throat: "He's got to, that's all; things are going to smash; I'll make him; it's the only way!"
Huston looked on curiously. He had been scrub on the football team when the Maestro had been captain and star; and the relation had left indelible marks upon him in an unreasoning, instinctive respect, a subtle sense of inferiority which no achievement in after-life would ever enable him to overcome. Now, however, this sense of fealty was being rudely put to proof. A horrible suspicion was setting his heart a-pound.
The shrinking appearance of Ledesma at the doorbroke the painful silence. He was a slim, limp young man, with pomaded hair, clad in a white suit generously sprinkled with cologne water, and, in spite of the cigarette held delicately between his fingers, was evidently ill at ease.
And little chance he had to recover from his emotion. "Ah, Ledesma," said the Maestro, frigidly. "I want to talk to you, my boy, and seriously, too. Come into my room."
And, placing a heavy hand upon the young fellow's shoulder, he steered him into an interior chamber, closing the door behind them.
To Huston, left alone, there came sounds of a furious altercation—that is, furious from one party; for from one weak voice there seemed to come only mild expostulation, faint denials, pathetic pleas, negatived by the cold, incisive tones of the Maestro. Little by little, however, the begging voice rose, grew rebellious, squealed, trembled with an indignation that seemed almost righteous. The Maestro began to thunder. "You've got to; you've got to," he shouted. "I'll make you do it!" "No, no, I won't," answered the other voice, settling down to hopeless, stubborn denial; "I won't, I won't!"
The door opened and the Maestro dashed out. He gave a wild look around the room, and his eyes lit upon the missionary's revolver upon the table. Hepounced upon it, snapped it open, and the cartridges fell out. After a rapid examination, to make sure that the cylinder was empty, the Maestro snapped the weapon shut again and bounded back into the interior room, closing the door after him. Then his voice became icy and menacing. There was a sharp click; the protesting voice weakened into a faint wail, and there was silence.
"Huston," shouted the Maestro, "let me know when Señorita Constancia comes in."
But at the sound of the sweet name there was a scuffle inside. The door burst open, and Ledesma dived head first across the threshold; but a long muscular arm went out after him, grabbed him by the trousers, and jerked him back inside.
Again the Maestro's voice rose in a few crisp sentences, and there was no answer to them, only a faint snivelling, which diminished gradually. The door reopened slowly, and the Maestro and Ledesma came in together, arm in arm—that is, the Maestro's arm was twined flexibly but inexorably about Ledesma's limp member. Ferocious triumph beamed upon the face of the gentle pedagogue; Ledesma was wilted, tear-stained, and despairing. At the same moment, radiant, smiling, alert as a kitten, Señorita Constancia appeared at the outer door. She wore a long-train blue-silk skirt, a cream-coloured camisa throughwhose shimmering, puffing sleeves her arms glowed like frosted gold; over her bare shoulders a jusi pañuelo was lightly laid, the two ends meeting upon her breast in a golden brooch. She swept gracefully through the room, her bracelets clinking on her wrists, toward Huston, whom she had met before, shook hands with him Anglo-Saxon style, bowed to the Maestro, calmly ignored Ledesma, and whirred down into the depths of a cane chair.
"Huston," said the Maestro, gravely, "I want you to marry these two people."
But the missionary, so far petrified with wonder, suddenly rebelled. "Look here, Paul," he burst out, "what kind of a thing are you getting me into? To me it looks—well, at least irregular, very irregular. To tell the truth, old fellow, your actions seem to me—er—well, singular, very singular. I—you——"
"You just leave this thing to me," interrupted the Maestro, with an authoritative nod toward the poor churchman, whose protesting attitude was fast oozing away in the subtle sense of inferiority still sticking to him from the days when the Maestro was gridiron captain and star and he a humble "scrub"; "you just leave that to me. Go ahead with the ceremony; that's all you have to do!"
But, with the courage of the meek, Huston fought on. "I at least must know," he said, firmly,"whether these two people consent to this—er—union." He turned to the Maestra. "Do you want to marry this young man?" he asked, pointing to the snivelling Ledesma.
"Oh, yes," answered the Maestra, suavely, "he must marry me."
"And you," went on Huston, turning to Ledesma, "do you wish to take this maid to wife?"
Ledesma opened his mouth like a carp, then shut it again. He looked fearfully toward the Maestro. The Maestro glared significantly. Ledesma's hands began to wring each other; beads of perspiration appeared about his lips. "I—I——" he stammered.
"Look a-here," thundered the Maestro, impatiently; "what the deuce is the need of all this fuss? He's got to marry her, that's all. He's got to marry her, do you understand?" he repeated, a vision of his ruined schools aflame in his mind; "it's the kind of marriage that'sgotto be, catch on?"
It is the misfortune of us humans that our speech is, after all, but a poor instrument for the expression of our thoughts. The same words, the same phrases, are capable of diverse interpretation. For instance, to the Maestro, the kind of marriage thathasto be was merely the marriage that would settle the crisis of his schools. For the missionary there was onlyone species of marriage that has to be—not at all that in the Maestro's mind.
"Oh," said the missionary; "oh,that'sthe way it is, is it?" He turned to Ledesma and, pointing to him a long finger trembling with righteous indignation, "Stand up and be married, young man," he said, icily.
As Ledesma was already on his feet, the command was hardly necessary; but it dashed out of that youth's heart the last spark of hope that had flamed up at the missionary's intervention. Taking Señorita Constancia's arm, the Maestro led her to the groom.
"Take her hand," said the missionary, sternly.
Tremblingly the groom obeyed, and was bound for better or for worse.
It cannot be said that the ceremony was followed by the usual joyous whirr of congratulations. The bride calmly turned her back upon the groom and engaged Huston in a lively conversation. The Maestro, suddenly turned craven, went out into the kitchen on the pretext of seeking refreshments, and meanwhile Ledesma quietly but hurriedly slunk out of the house. The Maestra, from the window, saw him running along the street, but she only laughed. She alone was at ease. The Maestro, returning with a bottle of Spanish wine and a plate of bananas, seemed to have lost all his assurance; the missionary's virtuousindignation was fast leaving him, in spite of his efforts, and doubt again was disturbing his spirit. There was something ominous in the air.
Nor was this presentiment to prove a false one. Perhaps half an hour later, as the Maestra was saying good-by, Isidro pattered in with a note to the Maestro. It was from Ledesma.
Señor Maestro, Tyrant and Darkest Despot:—When you will receive this note I will be gone and out of the reach of your most unjust, tyrannic and unholy arm. I am embarking at the present time upon a banca, I will take a lorcha at the dismouthing of the Ilog River to Ilo-Ilo and from that charming city I will go to Manila to study typewriting and thus enable me to enter the Administration of the Government of this my sore-tried and much in the past tyrannized and devastated country which will rise like the phenix bird from its cinders, blooming afresh from the long-sleeping volcano when it awakes and lights up the world with the blessings of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity which to my ignorant countrymen I will teach like the swallow which none die without God on High knowing it feed his little young one that do not know how to flie above the dark ignorance at the all-around of them. It gives me great pleasure, oh, sir, to proclamate to you that the unholy union in which you like the blackest czar of despotic Russia forced upon my palpitating heart is null. My father who has returned from his hacienda tells me that according to the law I cannot marry without his permission until I am twenty-five. I am only twenty and my father—Oh, sir, how sweetly paternal is a father—will not permitme to marry Señorita Constancia de la Rama y Lacson, so my so-called marriage is a void.Hoping sir, that Remorse will soon cause your heart to weep I amNo longer your pupil and assistant-maestroMauro Ledesma y Goles.
Señor Maestro, Tyrant and Darkest Despot:—When you will receive this note I will be gone and out of the reach of your most unjust, tyrannic and unholy arm. I am embarking at the present time upon a banca, I will take a lorcha at the dismouthing of the Ilog River to Ilo-Ilo and from that charming city I will go to Manila to study typewriting and thus enable me to enter the Administration of the Government of this my sore-tried and much in the past tyrannized and devastated country which will rise like the phenix bird from its cinders, blooming afresh from the long-sleeping volcano when it awakes and lights up the world with the blessings of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity which to my ignorant countrymen I will teach like the swallow which none die without God on High knowing it feed his little young one that do not know how to flie above the dark ignorance at the all-around of them. It gives me great pleasure, oh, sir, to proclamate to you that the unholy union in which you like the blackest czar of despotic Russia forced upon my palpitating heart is null. My father who has returned from his hacienda tells me that according to the law I cannot marry without his permission until I am twenty-five. I am only twenty and my father—Oh, sir, how sweetly paternal is a father—will not permitme to marry Señorita Constancia de la Rama y Lacson, so my so-called marriage is a void.
Hoping sir, that Remorse will soon cause your heart to weep I am
No longer your pupil and assistant-maestroMauro Ledesma y Goles.
No longer your pupil and assistant-maestroMauro Ledesma y Goles.
"Thunder!" exclaimed the Maestro, suddenly again belligerent. "Let's get after him!"
But the Maestra had picked up the letter and was reading it.
"Oh," she said, when she had finished; "oh, that is very nice. Now I can—what you call?—ah, divorce; I can divorce—just like an American girl!"
And thus it is that the Girls' School of Balangilang is still the envy of the maestros for leagues around.
It was rather a disreputable place, and really we were there by chance, a dance upon the British warship anchored near Cavité and the breakdown of the returning launch leaving us upon the stone quay of the Binondoesteroat a shameful hour. The time spent bobbing upon the waters while with fervent ejaculations the engineer experimented with the frivolous gasoline engine had been ecstatically cool. Now the city exhaled upon us her feverish breath, in a short time the sun would pour down its blistering rays, and we could not bear thought of room and bed. So we sat around the big narra table at Timke's, clinking with straws the ice in our glasses.
There was a scuffle in an obscure corner of the room; then, carried by muchachos, there passed beneath the light a limp, dangling corpse. They were not over-careful, the muchachos. Two were at the legs, two at the arms, so that the head hung down, lamentable, with mouth open. They crossed the room and vanished through a door into the rear apartment;and our last glimpse was of the opalescent reflection of a lamp upon a cranium astonishingly bald.
"Old man Dickson," somebody said, significantly; "paralysed, as usual."
"That man," said Courtland, with a vague gesture toward the door just slammed; "that man is the victim of a most atrocious and absurd tragedy."
And he told it to us thus:
I first knew him through his newspaper work. Every morning he shuffled gently into my office and asked if there was anything new. He did this with a want of assurance strange in a reporter, and yet not at all with humility; but rather in a dreamy, detached manner, as if he really did not care if there was anything new, and would probably not remember it if there were; as if the thing of importance, after all, were the internal problem upon which he was pondering, pondering with a discreet intensity that left his arms to hang in uncouth limpness, his feet to drag, his head to sink sideways toward his right shoulder, his whole body to appear as if abandoned, utterly abandoned, of the spiritual being—to hang, loose, limp, ungoverned, like a scarcrow which lives, gesticulates, postures only with the caprices of the wind. His whole body, I said; I should except the eyes. They were magnificent eyes, large, limpid, serenely blue.They were not abandoned; they were fixed. But it was not at anything outside. It was at something within. As you sought them you became aware of that. You were not seen—you were not of importance. The sun, the sky, men, women, were not seen—they were not of importance. These eyes were looking inside. As you examined them, you realised that it was the back of them that was turned toward you, the reflective back wall of them, and that their working, searching, penetrating part was turned inward, poring there in the shifting gloom at—I don't know what vision.
Don't think that I noted all this at first. It came slowly, by degrees. No, the first thing that impressed me was his baldness, his extraordinary baldness. It seems nothing to tell you that on his head there was not a suspicion of hair; that's common enough, doesn't express it at all. Likewise to explain that there were no brows, that the lashes were gone, that, of course, his whole face was hairless—this is prattle, mere childish, puerile prattle. Usual expressions, the ordinarily adequate figures—comparisons with knees, with billiard balls—sink into impotence, are sacrilege before the Awfulness of the thing. Nothing usual can express it. It was something appalling. It was a curse, a visitation. It was as if God's lightning had struck his pate,blasted it clean—No, that does not express it. There was something solid, established, immutable about the thing that cannot be explained by visions of accidents, of cataclysms, however potent. It savoured rather of some law of Nature, of the patient, irrevocable work of obscure Forces through the ages—say like the glacier-polishing of granite domes such as I've seen in the California Sierra, something geologic and eternal. Yes, that was it: that man's pate must have been polished and repolished with malevolent earnestness for years, for ages, through inconceivable æons. His father, his grandfather, his ancestors after and before the deluge, from the first day of creation, nay, back into the reign of chaos, must have been bald, abominably bald, to explain that mournful head there before me. As a matter of fact, I should have been surprised at something else; for, at the sight of a volume lying open upon my desk, he had launched upon a dissertation on Keats, something absolutely precious in quaint insight, in subtlety of appreciation. But I was fascinated with the head; that baldness held me in its toils, froze my eyes, tugged my heart, drugged my brains. And it was not till he had gone that I realised I had been listening to exquisite discourse.
Do not be too much surprised. Such a thing is to be accepted, almost expected, from a Manilanewspaper man. The Manila newspaper man is a singular genus. Always he has talent; sometimes more than that. But of course there's always something the matter. This something is what makes him so interesting. And it leads, also, to a certain conventionality in intercourse with him. For instance, to a Manila newspaper man you never mention the Past. Thereisno past. He is supposed to have sprung like Venus from the sea, full-panoplied—with his education, his talent, his gentle scepticism—right on the Escolta. That's the rule.
I knew the rule; so if I broke it, it shows merely that my awakened curiosity was too much for mysavoir faire. I wanted to know, that's all. I searched for and found his haunt.
Every evening, after his work, he crossed over to the Metropole. He had a queer, apologetic way of progressing, with his right side ahead of his left, as if ceaselessly jostled by an imaginary crowd. Gently, with that sideways motion, he shuffled into the big room and made for a table in the corner of the veranda. He was always very cleanly dressed in white, unstarched, which I suspected was the result of his own industry in his little back room; but his shoes were down by the heels, which added greatly to the general humility of his appearance. Carefully he placed his chair at a certain distance, known ofhim only, from the table; then he sat down slowly, folded his arms upon the table, his body inclined a little forward. Without a movement of the folded arms he raised one finger of the right hand, in a gesture almost heraldic in its sobriety, and the boy, attentive by his side, immediately brought him a small glass of cloudy green liquid. This he sipped slowly. A gray, opalescent cloud came over his eyes; his head fell slightly toward his right shoulder in an attitude of careful consideration. When he had finished, he remained thus a long time, immovable, petrified in his gentle brooding; then up would go his finger in that strange gesture, almost imperceptible, but infinitely commanding, as if it came not from himself, but as a manifestation of some superior power—and the boy, attentive, immediately brought another glass of the cloudy-green stuff, which he sipped to the dregs, motionless and fatal like some hierarchic figure. Two hours, three hours, he kept this up, then suddenly he moved. Both his arms went up and around in a wide, noble gesture; his hands—long, fine-veined hands—settled upon his head, his absurd bald head, as if in protection, in vague protest at possible levity; he leaned forward and was asleep. He slept there, upon the table, his hands upon his head, his cheek upon his arms; his face, turned to the light, was relaxed in infinite lassitude, as a child'safter crying; his mouth, slightly open, let pass his breathing, faint, like a babe's—and once in a while he sighed, a sigh not deep, not peevish, not rebellious, but resigned, rather, patient and unhappy. There was something incredibly babyish about the whole thing—the sleep, the sigh, the posture, even that extraordinary bald head gleaming between the fingers, pudgy with shadow—something that would have drawn the heart of woman in tenderness, tugged at it with the pang-desire to console, to cherish, to kiss. Yes, a woman would have kissed that absurd bald head, would have smothered that gentle sigh. A woman would have, I tell you! And he didn't know, didn't know, the fool baby-man!
After a time I began to sit at his table. He accepted me without emotion. Life to him, evidently, was full of such facts as my presence there, facts to which one must adapt one's self with the least possible fuss. He seemed, in fact, in perpetual process of readjustment. He'd sit there quietly, sipping his green poison, till diabolically I'd mention some name of literary fame. It was like pressing a button—the effect was so instantaneously sure. First would come a few detached sentences, like a modulation. Then insensibly he had slid into the main theme, and it was—what shall I call it?—exquisite, there's no other word for it. There was such depth to the thing, suchsubtlety of dissection, such a wealth of sudden, baring illuminations—and all that cloaked, softened in a haze of gentle scepticism that left nothing of dogmatic asperities. I compared it with the snorting, imperial utterances of my German Professor at college. It was French, that's what it was, in its breadth, its charity, its continual attenuation and inter-correction, its horror of the dictatorial, the pedantic. But don't think that he animated himself in this. No, he kept his immovable—I came near saying "silent," and really, even while he spoke, he gave an impression of silence—his immovable, detached calm. All this, it came as from another man. Itwasanother man, the past man. He was not creating now; he was merely re-reading the creations of the past man, objectively, too, with a certain mild astonishment at the performance.
"You must have studied deeply," I said, one night, as I sat, still dazzled, long after he had spoken his last word.
He looked at me hazily. "I have my Harvard Ph.D.," he said, absent-mindedly. "I lectured afterward."
"Then, for God's sake," I blurted out, tortured by the vision of that life calmly ruining itself; "for God's sake, what are you doing here?"
His eyes turned absolutely inside out. From theirinterior contemplation they flashed outward. He was looking at me; for the first time I had that feeling completely—that he was looking at me, a hard, profound, startled stare.
Then, before I could make a movement, a gesture of protest, he had risen to his feet. "Good-night," he said, brusquely, and he had shuffled out of the room.
For three days he did not appear. I had hurt him, insulted him. I waited for him, with a desire for reparation. Yet when he finally came I saw that I was mistaken. There was no resentment, absolutely none, in his manner as he shuffled up to the table and sat down. But before even the usual green poison had been set before him he had drawn from his breast pocket a square piece of cardboard and had thrown it to me.
I looked at it stupidly, at first without comprehension. Then the whole thing flashed upon me in an understanding so sudden, so complete, so profound, that it simply dazed me, left me there inert between two extraordinary and conflicting desires to laugh and weep—laugh, extravagantly, madly; weep, with the same abandon, thoroughly, humidly, sentimentally.
It was an answer to my question. And it was a picture. A picture of himself—I recognised the fine,white forehead, the sensitive mouth, the wide, pure eyes. But on the cranium there was hair, hair, do you hear? Not a little of it, not a mere trifle, but hair, an abundance of it, a magnificent leonine mane, a wealth of it, waving and rolling, curling over the ears, setting off the whole person in distinction. There was hair on his head; there were brows over his eyes, dark brows that must have contrasted finely with the wide, blue orbs. There it was, the answer. He had had hair; he was bald. This was the whole of his ridiculous tragedy. He had had hair, do you understand?—and now he had none.
There I had it, complete; but he evidently did not think so. Or rather he didn't bother about me at all. A powerful impulse to unburden himself possessed him now; all the accumulated wonder and pain at Fate's wanton outrage poured out of him, hurling away like so much chaff the rigid dam of restraint held against it so long. He talked now, at first in broken phrases, then more freely as he went on, in a smooth current, hopeless, fatalistic, but tinged with a strange self-compassion. And yet there was the old detachment. He seemed analysing someone else, telling the pitiful adventure of some other man, as if he could not believe it had occurred to himself, as if his credulity did not suffice before the wonder and cruelty of the thing. A mild astonishment pervaded him.
It had begun with a little gray spot on the crown, a very little spot. That was several years ago. He counted, and I was astonished: he must be very young yet. He didn't pay much attention to it. He was happy, then, he explained, and it took much to bother him. He had just accepted a post in the English department of a Western University. It was a lovely place, by the sea. There were hills behind, all velvety gray and gold. His house was covered with climbing roses, absolutely covered, embowered in them like a nest. His associations were pleasant; he loved his work. His lectures were attracting some attention. It was lovely. He was happy. And then there was——
He stopped and was silent quite a while; his eyes, hazy with retrospection, took on tones of marvellous softness. And when he began again I had the impression that he had left out something.
Well, after a while that little patch of gray hair began falling out, and finally it was a neat round tonsure on the top of the head. Then, down by his right ear, another spot began to gray. He watched it with some concern. After a while, just as before, the gray hair fell out, and he had two little bald places. It began to make some difference, really. The first little tonsure was at least symmetrical, could be called interesting. But that incongruous spot above hisright ear—no words could soften that. It was at least strange, singular.
People thought it so; at least he imagined that they did. Sometimes a co-ed in his class would break out in a sudden giggle. That hurt his work. He studied much over his lectures; but as to the form, he was wont to extemporise a great deal. And one can't extemporise while a co-ed giggles. Besides, he was in the grasp of a perverse doom. A third gray spot had appeared, above the neck. He knew that three bald spots would be clear ridicule. He began to haunt barber shops; oils, restorers, all sorts of extravagant shampoos did no good. Soon three bald spots shone white, like famine in the remaining luxuriance of his hair.
There was no mistaking it now. At first, at the Faculty Club, they had slapped him on the back and joked. Now they were discreetly and ominously silent. The very word hair, when dropped by some giddy confrère, fell into something like a vacuum of sombre consternation. In the lecture room he often lost the thread of his thought, remained long pained minutes in speechless befuddlement. It was becoming intolerable.
Then came the crowning disaster. In the blindness of his desperation he was induced by a magazine advertisement to try some new and wondroushair-remedy. The result was fatal. The stuff turned in spots the colour of his hair from brown to rusty red. In spots, mind you; so that now he was piebald—red, brown, gray, and white. The morning that, before a glass, he faced the hideous fact, he nearly cut his throat. And he was never able to get to his lecture. He tried three times; three times he stalked firmly along the walk, his hat pulled deep about his shame; he circled the Hall a dozen times. He could not enter, simply could not.
Happily, it was near the summer vacation, and he had no trouble obtaining leave for the rest of the term. He fled the college town. He wandered through the big city nearby, aimless, alone, tortured. A good deal of his time was spent upon the water-front. It's always windy there, and men pull their hats down about their ears. Ships began to exercise on him a strange fascination. He dreamed of islands, desert islands, lonely, unpeopled islands. One day, hardly aware of it, he walked the plank of a little brigantine—theTropic Bird, some such name—and begged the captain to take him. The captain did, as a green hand. They sailed off.
He was still full of gratitude toward that captain. It seemed that he never could get used to seamen's work. "I couldn't climb spars," he explained; "I'd get dizzy. I tried and tried; I couldn't." Thecaptain made a cabin-boy of him. Hence his eternal gratitude. "He was a gentleman, a thorough gentleman, with all his roughness. When he saw that I couldn't climb spars, he made me a cabin boy. I swabbed the floor, waited at meals, washed dishes, and helped the cook. That captain, sir, was a gentleman!"
Really, he was absolutely broken. The insidious disease was continuing its damnable work. From Honolulu they picked up a charter for the Philippines. When they arrived in Manila, he was absolutely bald, bald as I saw him now. "No hair, no brows, no lashes; bald, ludicrous, ignoble, unclean!" He raised one finger; the boy ran to him; he sipped the green liquor.
But he did not stop there. He began it again, the lamentable tale, with new details, with inexorable precision. He was a long time on a description of his departed hair. A wealth of adjectives, subtle and splendid, came to his lips without effort. He found new, caressing words, as a mother speaking of her dead babe. And one got no impression of vanity from it, either. It was something past now, extraneous, so irrevocably detached from him that he could speak of it without egotism. He dwelled again upon his happiness—the Western College, the silvery hills, the rose-covered cottage. "And then there was——"
Again he stopped, and again, when he resumed, Ihad the impression of something vital left out. It was this, I think, that kept me at it; for every night, now, I heard it, the odious story, with an augmentation of details, a progressive firmness of construction. He'd begin with his gray spot and run the whole gamut of his pilous degradation. I grew infinitely weary of it, but there was the secret, the secret still held from me. It was exasperation at this continuous evasion, I think, coupled with invincible lassitude at the old tale, that led me, one night, madly to exclaim:
"Yes, yes, Dickson; but the girl, the girl; tell me about the girl now!"
By his sudden start, by his affrighted stare, I knew that I had hit it, absolutely hit it. Oh, no, I don't take much credit for that.Cherchez la femme; divested of the cynicism placed upon it by its makers, this precept is fundamental in the game of human analysis.
There was a She—yes, there was. A young girl (he's far from old himself, remember, in spite of his pate); an angel. He loved her; she loved him. She had a precious gift of imagination. He had hoped, under his critical guidance, to see it bloom into something—a talent, a genius, perhaps. But now——
"Man, man!" I almost screamed; "you fool, you imbecile; why don't you go back, go back to her? What the deuce is it, this more or less vegetation uponyour head, when you have that, that of all things precious, when you have Love, Love, man!"
I was furious with him. I talked in the same vein, very extravagantly, no doubt. I gesticulated; I shouted. He listened quietly, a considering frown over his browless eyes.
No, it could not be; it could not be. I didn't understand, couldn't understand. He had left when it began. I couldn't understand. He used to walk with her in the evening. He was working hard those days; at night he'd be tired. They'd stroll gently up a canyon (Co-ed Canyon, I think he called it). They'd sit in the grass. He'd rest his head on her shoulder. Then she'd stroke that tired head, run her light fingers through his——
"Man, man!" he shouted; "imagine that, now. Imagine me there once more, and she, with that familiar gesture, that sacred gesture, running her fingers——"
Slowly he passed his hands over the atrocious smoothness of his cranium in a long, shuddering movement. "Imagine that," he said, once more, in a broken whisper.
He raised his finger. He sipped. I gave up. Really, you know, the way he told it, it was rather convincing. I left him to his self-abasement. He lived on his harmless life:—by day the uncongenial task; themaudlin dissipation by night. And every evening he told me his story, his lugubrious story, till at times a whiff of his madness communicated itself to me, entered my blood, and, taking up my own particular wrongs, I descended with him into orgies of tremulous self-compassion.
Then occurred something which gave me a ray of hope.
It was at a fire. Cholera had broken out in the city and the health officials, with that brisk cruelty in which revels man, from medieval inquisitor to common policeman, when persuaded of the righteousness of his cause, werecleaning outbarrios. This particular barrio was a miserable assemblage of nipa huts in the Paco district. It was burning well when I arrived, in one large, clear flame that rose with a single, powerful twist toward a sky purple with sunset. It was quite a fine spectacle. Society had deserted the Luneta drive for the more flaring show; out on the rosy edge of the conflagration was an intricacy of victorias and calesins; a stamping of pony hoofs. Jusis shimmered; white suits gleamed; beneath the crackling of tortured nipa rose a low hum of polite conversation, musical laughter, melodious Ohs and Ahs at particularly brilliant pyrotechnics. All Society was there, reclining upon cushioned seats with a fine feeling of security before this proof of official energy.But in the shadow, on the other side, I could vaguely descry other spectators, unkempt men and women, standing up, stiff and motionless, with little bundles in their hands, on their heads, stupid before this magnificent destruction of their homes. Probably it had never occurred to them that these huts, these hearths, held such possibilities of splendour. The revelation paralysed them. They gazed with wide-open eyes, with open mouths, silent, dark, immovable.
Then suddenly, in the peace, the security of the moment, there rose a shrill, mad cry, right from the flames. The buzz of conversation halted brusquely. White handkerchiefs rose convulsively to whitening lips. The firemen, off on one side, began an inexplicable running to and fro. The nipa roared. And right from the flame, in maddening continuance, as if from a soul bodyless and in torture, came the high, shrill, quavering cry.
Ladies began to faint in their victorias; officers bent over them in impotent solicitude, their faces as white as the women's. Other men sprang from their carriages with extraordinary resolution, ran forward and stopped short before the heat. A Met. policeman, huge and gaunt, skipped up and down in some sort of monstrous dance, wringing his hands in plain view. But on the other side, the sombre spectatorsremained banked in immobility. Only, their eyes opened wider and their pupils gleamed.
Then I saw Dickson. He was walking toward the furnace, his right shoulder pushed forward, his body flattened apologetically, begging passage through an imaginary throng. He entered the circle of light; a whiff of hot air sent his hat off, and his head, his monstrous bald head, shone a moment in rosy hues. I shouted. He kept straight on, humble, mournful. A roar of warning, of astonishment, came from the crowd. He kept on, his head pensively drooped sideways. He disappeared into the fire. Shrieks, yells, a terrific tumult came from the carriages. And still, as if borne up in the flame, springing with one single, powerful twist to the purple sky, there rang the long, shrill, continuous cry. It rose louder, more piercing, till it vibrated in our marrow in intolerable pain. And then we became aware that it was nearer—it was among us. A muffled, dripping, inchoate figure was stumbling into the outer circle of light. I sprang forward; I tore off the dripping mantle, and there was Dickson, his head dropped sideways, pensively considering a little girl in his arms, a little Malay girl, half-naked, who screamed still, too dazed with the horror to know that it was past.
Really, he started to protest right away, it was quite easy. And he made it almost so with his calmexplanation. The huts were built on poles, so that the fire was rather high, and close to the ground it was not so hot—rather cool, he would have us believe. Then the barrio was laid out with a plaza in the centre, and it was there that, crouching on the ground, the little girl had been, still unhurt. He had noticed, before going in, a pile of old blankets lying in the dirt, and a barrel of water, the barrio's old supply, nearby. By soaking the blankets, muffling them about him and keeping low, he had been able to get in and out without much discomfort—he coughed—a little smoke, that's all, a few superficial burns—he staggered.
Many willing hands there were to claim the little girl, who was sobbing gently now. We started toward my carriage. A thunder of clapping hands, a roar of acclaim, announced his first step, and then his calm deserted him. "My hat, my hat!" he shouted; "where's my hat? Give it to me quick!" He trembled with excitement. He began to swear. "My hat; who's got my hat?" he shrieked, absolutely unstrung. I gave him mine. He crushed it down to his ears. We slunk off to the carriage, and I drove off with my Hero cowering and darting haunted side-looks.
As we passed the Parian gate, he said: "Come on; let's go to the Metropole."
"No, you don't," I said, briskly. "You're goingstraight to your room. You're going to sit down, with a box of cigars at your elbow. You're going to think, sit up all night and think. I'll give you the theme. Imagine Her at that fire, a while ago. Imagine Her impression, and weigh that against the puerility of hair."
"Good Lord, Courtland, what a sentimentalist you are," he exclaimed. "What a sentimentalist!" he repeated, a while later, musingly.
But he did not get off at the Metropole, and I left him at the door of his house. He was not at the Metropole the next day, nor the next, nor the next. A week later I heard that he had gone over to a new paper, under much more pleasant management, and that he held a desk position. I did not follow the evolution closely, for I was busy those days. We had been wrestling long with the monetary problem, and now the United States Government was sending us an Expert, an Authority, a Professor Jenkinson, who was to settle the whole thing for us as by legerdemain. We were preparing data for him and were infernally busy. But what I did see of Dickson was rather encouraging. The little red veins were disappearing from his cheeks, a certain twitch of the right corner of his mouth was relaxing; an indefinable briskness was pervading his whole being, the manner of the man who works hard and likes his work.
Finally the Big Man came. There was a tremor of expectation in official and social circles—official, for obvious reasons; in social, because of the charming fact that the Professor came to Manila with a bride, romantically wooed and won in California, in passing, as it were. A reception was announced at the Malicañan.
I went. I was late. The place was ablaze with lights as I drove up, and polite conversation hummed out of the windows like honey-laden bees. I did not leave my carriage right away, my curiosity being aroused by the suspicious behaviour of a man.
He was dodging among the shadows like a malefactor, first behind one veranda post, then behind another. Then he stood a while at the bottom of the steps, buttoning up his white jacket with an air of great resolution, and mounted. He got up four steps, then, suddenly turning, pell-melled down again in ridiculous funk. More sneaking in the massed gloom beneath the veranda; then again he stood at the bottom of the steps, pulling down his jacket in immense resolution. Up half-a-dozen steps, and again the helter-skelter retreat. But this time I had followed, and he ran plump into my arms.
It was Dickson, and his face in the light showed shockingly haggard. I don't think he knew me atfirst. But when he did, he gripped my arm convulsively and ran me into the shadow.
"What the devil——" I began, exasperated.
"It is she," he said; "she—my God!"
"She," I repeated, stupidly; "who isshe?"
"Mrs. Jenkinson," he gasped; "good God, Courtland, can't you understand? The girl, the girl, you know—she's up there"—he pointed upward to the light—"she's up there; she's Mrs. Jenkinson!"
I was incredibly affected. A great disillusion, an immense discouragement, weighed upon me. I discovered that I had dreamed, that I had hoped, that I had taken an enormous interest in that idiotic man, there, with his absurd moral problem. And this thing, this sudden finale, staggered me, seemed wanton and cruel as the torturing of a little child. I was speechless.
After a while he said, very calmly, very firmly: "Courtland, I want to see her, once more. No, there won't be any scene. I won't come near; I won't be seen. But I must see her, once more. Take me up there."
I seized his arm and we climbed the stairs. We came to the threshold of the big reception room. I stood there a moment, dazed by the lights, the play of colour. Then I made her out in the centre. He had been quicker than I, for I had felt his fingers sink convulsively into my arm.
She was standing within a circle of bowing, smiling men—a gracious, girlish figure, with magnificent dark eyes. She was evidently a little bored—not bored: lonely. Unconsciously her eyes wandered from the curvetting bipeds in front, in search of something, some warmer, more intimate sympathy, toward a knot of black-garbed men conversing seriously in a corner—the official group, I decided, right away. Perhaps one of these appealing glances reached it, for it broke; a tall figure stalked across the room toward her. It was the Big Man—you could tell it from the sudden illumination of her whole being. She looked up, girlish, admiring. He looked down, protectingly. I heard Dickson panting behind me.
A horrid, racking feeling took possession of me, a mad, monstrous desire to laugh, laugh insanely, in maniac shrieks, to shout and slap my thighs, stamp my feet, scream, scandalise——
The Professor, standing beneath the centre candelabra, bent his head paternally over his young wife. The light poured down upon that head. And it was bald.
The muchacho, in a corner of the room, turned something with a sharp click. The lights went out, and the gray pallor of dawn floated in slowly by doorand window. Courtland rose, walked to the rear door, opened it. We followed.
He was asleep upon the table. He slept there, his hands upon his head, his right cheek upon his arm. In the wan light his features showed relaxed, in infinite lassitude, as those of a child after crying; his mouth, a little open, let pass his breathing, equal and faint like a babe's—and once in a while he sighed, a sigh not deep, not peevish, not rebellious, but resigned, rather, patient, gently unhappy.
We left him there. It was the end; the gods had had their jest.
As the prao, its two wide outriggers spread out on each side like wings, its sail rising above straight and stiff like a backfin, skimmed over the whitecapped crests like a gigantic flying fish, the Maestro, his white suit gleaming in the sun, stood at the peak, erect and tense as a Viking of old. But he was madder than any Viking had ever been.
For three long days he had been on that prao, while it tacked and beat against a monsoon that was southern, although, according to the dictates of the almanac and the Maestro's own ardent desires, it should have been northern. For three days, trying to make Ilo-Ilo, thirty miles across the strait, the little craft, with its crew clinging like monkeys at the ends of the outriggers, had darted right and left like a startled and very dizzy gull, while from the rudimentary rudder, where sat the Maestro, there poured forth a stream of most piratical objurgations. Neither these spiritual pleas, however, nor the mad flurries of the flat-bottomed boat had prevailed against the wind's blustering stubbornness, and at length theyhad turned tail and run before it, and now the Maestro was looking upon a golden strip of beach and a curtain of coconut palms, behind which peeped the nipa roofs of his own little pueblo. In a few minutes more the prao, balanced upon a white curling swell, had slid its nose up upon the sand, and the Maestro, with a great leap, found himself at the identical spot from which, three days before, his heart a-pound with strange tumult, he had embarked, too impatient to wait for the lazy little steamer which offered regular, if slow, passage once a week.
"Damn!" said the Maestro, as his foot struck the sand. "Damn! a deuce of a bridegroom I make, I do!"
But Tolio, his muchacho, who had stayed behind in guard of the house, was running down the beach toward him, waving a dirty piece of paper. It was a telegram, transmitted by carrier from Bacolod, which was in cable communication with Ilo-Ilo. The Maestro read it quickly; then he re-read it aloud, pausing upon each word as if to sink its dread significance deep into his dazed brain.
"Have missed you in Ilo-Ilo. Am coming on tomorrow's steamer. Girlie."
Behind the Maestro a cast-up log was bleaching in the sun, and he sat down upon it very suddenly and limply, as if his bony carcass had turned to water."Lordie," he murmured, "and the sky-pilot gone south!"
And truly the situation was a delicate one. For "Girlie" of the telegram was none other than Miss Florence Yeats, come ten thousand miles over the sea to wed him. He should have met her in Ilo-Ilo, where the whole American population had made gleeful preparations for the event; but his uncalculating impatience and the immoral conduct of the winds had foiled him in his attempted crossing of the straits from his own town in Negros; and now she was coming by the day's steamer—with the sky-pilot, otherwise Rev. David Houston, head of the United Protestant Missions of Negroes, who might have afforded a much-needed alternative, far, far away on an inspection tour to the southern stations of the island, and not likely to be back for a month.
So the Maestro remained on his log, inwardly tossed by a cyclone of contradictory feelings. He could but admire the splendid confidence of the girl, coming straight to him without a question after he had failed her, failed her in an appointment to be classed among those, well, of higher importance. At the same time it did seem to him that some kind person in Ilo-Ilo might have warned her of the fact that he was absolutely the only white man in his town, and at that neither a clergyman nor justice of the peace. He didnot rise and go home, where he could have spent a very profitable hour changing his bedraggled garments and washing his salt-grimed face. The crisis was too near for that. The little wheezy teapot of a steamer, with its precious and disturbing freight, was due in anywhere from one to four hours; and he would not have missed the sight of its first smoky signal at the horizon for luxuries much more dazzling. So, joyful and unhappy, expectant and horrified, he sat there, while Jack, his little fox terrier, who had come down with Tolio, romped unappreciated between his legs. Out a few hundred yards from shore, planted upon a submerged sand bar, a long bamboo fish-corral screened the horizon; and the Maestro recited metally to himself the approach of the little steamer. The smoke would first appear at the lower end, then slowly would crawl along behind the high paling, slowly, very slowly, till finally the ship itself would burst into view past the upper end, and stand for shore. And then——
But it was a good hour before the Maestro finally rose to his feet. "Ah," he said, "here she comes."
Behind the fish-corral, at its lower end, a thin thread of vapour was mounting toward the sky. The Maestro's heart expanded queerly within his breast. But as he looked, behind the exasperating barrier a big yellow ring, as from some gigantic pipe, roseslowly, then another that broke through the first, and a third that enveloped them all in one ugly smother.
"Good golly," ejaculated the Maestro, "but the little kettle is steaming!"
And the smoke, beginning to crawl along the corral, ceased puffing up in rings; it rose in one dense, funnel-shaped cloud. "It's that soft Japanese coal," murmured the Maestro, "that darned Japanese coal!"
But with eyes staring ahead, as if hypnotised, he was walking down the beach. A ripple washed over his feet, then a curling comber splashed up to his knees; but he took another step, unconscious of the water now about his hips.
Suddenly he turned, and was running back up the beach toward a shed full of drying copra. He climbed one of the thick corner-posts to the roof. The nipa thatch gave beneath his weight, and it was changing ground with fierce plunging stride that he looked out to sea. But he was not high enough. The fish-corral still made inscrutable the mystery behind, and he could see only the smoke, now a sooty black, rising in heavy volutes to the green sky.
He slid down and paced the sand, trying to calm himself. But the smoke, ever more voluminous and threatening, allowed him no peace. He ran back farther up the shore to a coconut palm and tried to climb the lithe, slippery trunk. The notches cut bythe monkey-like tuba-men were too far apart; the silvery bark was like a greased pole. Twice he went up some twenty feet, only to slip, fighting and clawing, clear back to the ground again. He tore off his shoes and started up again, cutting his feet, scratching and biting in a frenzy of impotent effort. He went up higher this time, and then the slender, elastic trunk began to sway back and forth gracefully, dizzying him, making it difficult merely to hold on; and with bitterness he realised that the northern monsoon was now on, the wind for which he had prayed in vain for three days. He could go no higher, and still he could not see what was happening behind that stolid barrier of bamboo poles out at sea, only the black threat of the smoke, now drifting south like a great piratical banner, and he slid back to the ground full of a terrible unsatiated curiosity.
He looked down at his feet, torn and bloody, at his disordered clothing, and noticed with strange, objective curiosity that his whole body was trembling as if palsy-stricken. "Oh, shucks," he said, pulling himself together; "I guess it's all right. It's that Japanese coal, that darned Japanese coal." He sat down upon the sand, trying to keep command over himself, but his hands, independently of his will, began wringing each other between his knees. And then he was up and running along the crazy, sagging wharf,his dog barking playfully at his heels. At the end he found a banca, a little, narrow dug-out, steadied with long outriggers. He sprang into it, cast off the rotten piece of rope, seized the only paddle, and shoved off with one big heave. He swirled the boat's nose around till it pointed at the upper end of the corral, then bent down to mad toil, slapping the water in vibrating rhythm. And as he strained, his whole strength in each stroke, his eyes, round with terrible curiosity, followed the smoke as it crawled slowly along the corral, blacker, denser, more significant every moment. For a while he was in the smooth water, in the shelter of the northern cape, but ahead he could see the monsoon tearing the liquid surface into white shreds. He bore up and was soon in the midst of it, the short waves pounding the flanks of the boat, the spray spitting spitefully into his eyes. He added a new frenzy to his efforts, and then he shot past the end of the fish-corral and saw.
Not a quarter of a mile away, the ship was coming toward him, and it was a phantom ship. Of the material thing, of the fabric of wood and iron, there showed nothing; but from what was about the height of the deck a cataract of smoke poured down the sides in opalescent plays of grays and blacks till it met the water and rebounded, banking up in rolling, shifting gauze about the ship-nucleus hidden within, while,above, the monsoon seized the vapour, shaping it with twists and whirls into a huge, flaccid, black hand suspended like a curse in the sky. A sudden great calmness came over the Maestro. Wavering from side to side, as if the craft itself were staggering beneath the horror of the thing, the whole phantasmagoric fabric was coming toward him; and with slow, deliberate stroke he paddled to meet it, his eyes searching for a clew of the conditions, his mind working to meet them. The air became vibrant with a low growl, split with explosive cracklings, and, in the inky smother at the bow, little red tongues flashed up and out. He twisted his canoe around till its nose pointed with the course of the approaching vessel and waited, keyed up to some last possible opportunity that must be met swiftly and unerringly. And then the steamer passed slowly above him. A cataract of smoke poured down upon him, a hot, furnace-breath whelmed him with its fevered exhalation; and he was paddling madly beneath the stern, peering into the trailing smoke. A more furious puff of the monsoon tore the thing to shreds, and then he saw the boat's population. They were clustered at the stern, hanging to poop-rail and rope and moulding and anchor chain and to each other, like a troop of panic-stricken apes at a river crossing, snarling and fighting for the safer positions. But on the deck behind them,apart in the spiritual retirement of higher nature and greater courage, was a slim, blue-garbed form. She was standing straight and proudly, her skirts, gathered in her left hand in a familiar movement, drawn close about her, away from that defiling moral puddle of humanity.
"Girlie!" he shouted, his whole being going out to her.
"Lad!" came back the answer, clear and true. She moved forward a step, her arms stretched gropingly before her.
"Jump! Jump! Jump!" he commanded. "Jump!"
She took another step and with unhesitating confidence leaped out into the void.
She disappeared beneath the water; he sent the banca ahead with two long strokes, and then she rose to the surface alongside. He leaned over and, passing both arms below hers, he let her float back to the stern of the boat. But before raising her he suddenly let go with his right arm, seized the paddle, and hit at the water a blow that struck some slimy, slippery body. Then with a great effort he raised her into the boat and laid her down gently. For a moment he did not look at her, but gazed behind, shuddering, at a sharp fin cutting the water behind in a circle.
When he turned to her she was standing, and thelight of their eyes met in a spiritual caress. Slowly his arms spread out in an unconscious movement and with a little choking cry she threw herself upon him, hiding her face on his breast, while his arms closed about her. "I knew you would be there," she murmured. He clasped her a little closer, and they stood there on their crazy little craft, in the clash of waters, wrapped together into one being, the shudder of the past uniting them in the same thrill, the ecstasy of the present stealing through their veins like bubbling wine. A squall had the little boat in its grasp; it passed above in the upper layers of air with great sharp cries; the boat drifted madly down the coast and away from it; but they knew of no danger, knew only that they were in each other's arms, that the past was fading away from them like a gone and impotent nightmare. Vague and faint, a sound like the bursting of a paper bag came to his ears, and toward the shore he saw, with eyes that did not understand, incongruous objects falling from the sky—a twisted smokestack, half of a jolly-boat, a bucket, boards, a multitude of smaller shredded bits, and aperch on the reef was a shell of a ship, undecked, the blackened interior opened to the skies, pouring out a cone of black smoke. He held her closer, her eyes against his breast, and a palm-lined cape drifted past, hiding the thing from view, hiding the lastvestige of what had happened, and they slid on into the illimitable sea, into the future of far horizons.
After a while she disengaged herself a bit and, toying with the middle button of her jacket, "You love me a whole lot, don't you?" she asked in a question that was not a question.
"Yes, little girl," he answered obediently.
There was another long silence and the boat drifted another two hundred yards.
"Oh, what a pretty dog!" she exclaimed, for her eyes had been wandering below his arms. "Is it yours?"
And then he became aware of Jack beneath the thwart, whining, with eye apologetic and tail conciliatory, in the warring impulses of friendliness and reserve. She stooped down with inviting gesture, and the pup, with a little yelp, leaped into her arms. The Maestro looked down upon them, a little jealousy in his approving smile. But the interruption had suddenly made him alive to the situation.
"Jehoshaphat!" he exclaimed, looking at the now distant shore, down which and away from which they were drifting at a rapid rate; "it's about time to pull in!"
But this very sane remark was not immediately followed by action. The Maestro was looking blankly at the bottom of the canoe where lay what once had beena paddle, but was now only a handle without blade. The memory of the manner in which this transformation had taken place sent his eyes back over the water behind, and a frown came on his face. Right and left, with a movement regular as that of a sentinel pacing his beat, a black fin like a butcher's cleaver was cutting the water.
"What's the matter, Lad?" asked the young lady, still stooping over the dog, and astonished at the silence. "Can't you find the oars?"
"Well, no; fact is—these boats have no oars."
"Oh," cried the bride, immediately interested by this picturesque fact, and rising to her feet; "don't they have any oars? How do you make them go?"
"Paddle them, usually," answered the groom ruefully.
Her eyes fell upon the lamentable remains of the lone paddle, and suddenly the air was a-thrill with a joyous laughing peal.
"Oh, how jolly!" she exclaimed. "We're shipwrecked, aren't we? We'll go away out in the ocean, won't we? Isn't this a land of adventure, though!"
"Well, rather," said the Maestro dryly.
And, there being nothing else to do, he sat down at the bottom of the boat and drew her to his knees. She, with feminine altruism, completed the chain by takingJack upon hers, and they drifted on upon the flashing sea. "It's just delicious," murmured the bride, feeling the warm tropical sun drying her clothes upon her. But the groom did not chime in. He was thinking.
There was no immediate danger in the situation, but the prospects for the future were hardly to be termed "delicious." The monsoon that, probably aided by the tide-current, was sweeping them on, had not yet kicked up much of a sea and seemed to be abating in strength; and the little banca, buoyant like a cork upon its outriggers, rode the waves with cheerful alacrity. The spray that now and then dashed upon them was blood-warm and occasioned no discomfort, and their wet clothes were fairly steaming under the rays of the tropical sun. Still they were drifting steadily, with the island of Panay some thirty miles to their right, Negros to their left, its shores, diverging from their course, farther and farther away. They might drift on thus between the islands without touching either of them for days, till out into the China Sea, though the lack of food made even that undelightful alternative but a vague one. As for the chances of meeting a vessel, they were slighter still, only a few lorchas plying between the islands at long intervals. And then there was the grim diagnosis of the being with the fin, swimmingback and forth, back and forth, behind the boat, with ominous patience.
"If we're shipwrecked, we ought to be doing something," said the bride suddenly, in the tone of one announcing the concluding clause of a syllogism.
"That's right," acquiesced the Maestro; "we ought to do something."
"We should empanel a jury," said the bride briskly.
"Empanel a jury," repeated the Maestro, somewhat dazed.
"Oh," said the bride, blushing, "I mean a jury-rudder. We should empanel a jury-rudder."
"You mean rig up a jury-rudder," exclaimed the Maestro, a flashing light of understanding in his eyes; "rig is the more nautical term."
"Oh, yes," cried the bride delightedly; "that's it; we must rig up a jury-rudder!"
"Well," said the Maestro, after a moment's thought; "jury-rudders, you know, are rigged up when the real rudder has been carried away. But we never had a real rudder; therefore we can't very well have a jury one."
"Oh," said the bride, disappointed.
She was silent a moment; then inspiration again flamed up.
"We should signal a ship," she said decidedly.
"Signal a ship," repeated the Maestro, looking about him idiotically.
"Yes," said the bride; "put up the flag upside down in sign of distress."
"But we have no flag," said the groom hopelessly.
"Use my kerchief," said the bride resourcefully.
"Upside down?" queried the Maestro. "But there is no mast."
"Put up an oar," she said bravely.
"But there is no oar."
"Oh," she said, again discouraged.
There was another thoughtful silence; but she was not to be overwhelmed.
"We must get food," she said; "we must fish."
"That's right," chimed the Maestro resolutely; "we must fish. Have you any hooks?"
"I have pins," she said.
"I have string," he said.
He fumbled through his pockets and drew two pieces of sorry twine. She turned her back upon him, worked mysteriously at her garments, and handed him five pins. "Bend them into hooks," she said.
He kneeled down and, after pricking his fingers several times, succeeded in bending two pins against the thwart. He passed them through the ends of the twine, and they were the possessors of two fishing lines.
"You fish in front and I'll fish in back," she said; "that way we won't catch the same fish."
"No," said the Maestro, looking behind at the water where the black fin seemed playfully trying to cut its initials; "you fish at the bow and I'll fish at the stern."
They took their respective positions and cast conscientiously. Jack, interested, began to run from one to the other, barking. "S-s-s-h," hissed the Maestro; "you'll scare the fish!" But the warning evidently came too late; the fish refused to bite.
"I'm lonely," finally said a voice at the bow; "come here and talk to me while I fish."
The Maestro dropped his tackle with suspicious alacrity and went forward. The bride continued casting with a gradual diminuendo of enthusiasm.
"I don't think this is much fun, do you?" she pouted. "Let's stop."
So they sat down again, she on his knees, Jack in her arms. The wind was going down, the sun was less scorching, and it was pleasant and quiet. To the left the palm-lined shore showed farther and farther away; and they were still drifting in the grip of some stubborn current. Suddenly she was laughing, a quiet, self-contained peal at some pleasant thought hers only.
"It's dinner time," she said between two musical ripples.
"But you didn't catch any fish," he said.
She laughed again. "Bring me my grip," she ordered. And she pointed to a little dripping satchel, to which, with the tenacity of unconsciousness, she had clung throughout the crisis, and which now lay, unheeded, at the bottom of the boat.
He handed it to her; but when they went to open it, they found it locked, and she had lost the key.
He brought his knife out of his pocket and opened the blade.
"Oh, my poor grip," she exclaimed in dismay. But he slashed at it unsentimentally.
The interior was only slightly wet. Through the gaping hole she took a white lace kerchief and spread it upon the centre thwart. Again her hand went into the grip and successively she drew a little bottle of olives, four figs, three crackers, and a diminutive flask of milk. She arranged them daintily upon the cloth and then, sitting at the bottom of the boat with the table between them, face to face, they gaily dined together.
"Oh, I've eaten so much," she sighed at last as she presented the last fig to Jack, who gulped it down trustingly. "I think I should have a nap, don't you?"
He took her up in his arms as a child and cradled her, but she did not sleep right away. Out in the China Sea ahead, the sun was setting in gloomy splendour. They watched it till it was only a puddle of blood upon the waters; and then darkness dropped like a leaden curtain upon the shimmering sea. From all sides the horizon drew near in black walls across which the heat-lightning wrote in rageful zigzags. The wind had gone down still more and little waves slapped up against the sides of the boat like caresses. A great loneliness, half sweet, half bitter, descended upon them.
"I'm a little afraid, Lad," she murmured. Jack began to whine and she took him up; then, cuddling closer, she went asleep. And the little boat drifted on in the illimitable darkness, the girl and the dog asleep, and the man awake with care and tenderness, while behind a phosphorescence streaked back and forth, back and forth, in ceaseless vigil.
Toward midnight he saw a light far to the left, fixed as if on shore, and he began shouting over the water. This awakened the girl and she joined her melodious halloo to his cries, while Jack barked wildly. But there came no response, and after a while they stopped and went back to their first position. Later, a sudden creaking in the silence startled him, and not a hundred feet away a lorcha was passing like ashadow, all sails set wing-and-wing, the helm lashed, with no man on the watch. Again he shouted and the voice of the girl and the bark of the dog joined him; but again there was no response, and slowly, like some enchanted fabric, the vessel melted into the darkness ahead. Then again the girl went asleep in his arms, the dog upon her knees, while he watched in the night and the silence, a great tenderness at his heart.
Later he must have gone asleep, for, when stirred by a murmur in his ear and a caress on his brow, he looked up into her eyes, the sky above was all green and rose with the dawn, and Jack was yelping madly at the bow. He started to get up but she detained him.
"No, sir; you mustn't look," she said; "I have a surprise for you." She placed her hands over his eyes and turned his head as he rose to his knees. "Now look!" she exclaimed, suddenly freeing him. And his eyes opened upon a line of coconut palms, with a golden thread of beach at their feet, not a hundred feet away.
He sprang out into the shallow water and pulled the boat up on shore. The sun was rising and they lay down on the sand, thawing their limbs, stiffened by the heavy night-dew, while Jack ran up and down the shore, barking at the rippling waves. It was abalmy morning; before them stretched the sea, a smooth shimmering gray sheet, with vague palpitations of darker hues; from behind came the scented exhalation of the land—and the mad barks of the dog, precipitated one upon the other, filled the air with a wild tumult of joy. A sweet lethargy stole through their veins; the problems of their existence, of their whereabouts, of food and shelter, of their return to his town were things for the future, for a far, remote, hazy future; the present had them in its enchantment.