Papa Gato sauntered up close, "And now, will you tell us how many men there are in Bagum-Bagum?" he asked suavely.
The inspector did not answer. His face was very red and his jaws were very salient. A few dry twigs were placed upon the fire, which sprang up, crackling. There was a faint smell of burning hair.
Something like a beskirted cyclone whirred into the circle. Biff—bang; two kicks scattered the little fire to the four winds. Zip—the liana was cut with a big jackknife, and the widow, gurgling and choking, was bending over the luckless Mr. Rued. "You poor dear," she gulped; "you poor baby"—and shepressed him to her arid bosom. "Here, water, you heathen, water!"
But the inspector, very much alive, was struggling to get loose; and her glance, falling upon Papa Gato, watching the strange performance with wonder-dilated eyes, suddenly changed the nature of her emotion. "You devil!" she shrieked, and she sprang to her feet; "You fiend!"—and she started toward him.
To Papa Gato's eternal credit be it said that he held his ground for several distinct seconds. But the vision of vengeance bearing down upon him was more than mortal man could bear. He broke one step, hesitated, then all his courage oozing out of him suddenly, he turned deliberately and ran. Once around the clearing he loped, the sound of flapping skirts ominous in his ears; then a second time, for the widow had picked up a stick, and with mechanical precision it was rising and falling only a few inches behind his head; a third lap he began, and by that time all the dogs of the camp had joined the chase in tumultuous glee. And it was a strange sight, up in that lonely clearing, surrounded on all sides by an impenetrable and poisonous vegetation, beneath the shadow of Taal, brooding and sinister with its black banner of vapours, in the hollow silence of high altitudes, that man running in sober earnest, withan immense concentration of his simple purpose, and behind him that incredible woman, flashing-eyed, hook-nosed, her garments to the wind, seemingly gliding over the high grass, a gigantic and fearful witch, riding a broomstick. In the centre, from a few dying embers, a little smoke rose, and about that were grouped the tulisanes, in frozen attitudes, like a bronze bas-relief, and they looked at their running chief, at the pursuing woman, without a gesture, without a cry, without the single flapping of an eyelid. And behind the nightmare couple ran the dogs, the curs of the camp, snarling and laughing and gurgling like a pack of hyenas.
To this preoccupation of man and dog may be ascribed the ensuing catastrophe. For suddenly, close, so close that the vibration of it could be felt, but muffled in the impenetrability of the jungle, a shot rang out. This was followed by a crepitating volley; a buzz of lead passed overhead. Silently, with a minimum of movement, the ladrones, as if at a preconceived signal, slid across the clearing and into the wilderness beyond. Just at that psychological moment, the widow caught up with Gato. Calmly, dexterously, as one spanks a child, she upset him, face down, and resolutely sat upon him. Then, readjusting her skirts about her limbs and her spectacles upon her nose, she grimly waited.
Shouts came to her ears, a hewing and hacking of bushes, a crackling of bamboo. Vague brown spots appeared against the metallic green foliage; they massed, detached themselves and burst into the clearing—a detachment of constabulary. At their head, charging furiously, was a lieutenant, slender and boyish, in accoutrement ridiculously new. He was enjoying himself immensely. A fine ardour was in his face; his cap was off, his hair streaming in the wind; he held a naked sword extended up and forward in statuesque gesture. Across the clearing he came, straight as a bee; his eyes flashing, his nostrils distended, all a-thrill with military glory.
And suddenly he was nose to nose with the widow, who had slowly risen and now confronted him majestically, her foot upon the luckless Papa Gato. An extraordinary change came over the young warrior. His martial excitement, his keen zest, his bravado collapsed; his sword dropped till its point touched the ground; his flaming uniform took on cringing folds.
"Mamma!" he cried, a little wistfully.
"Boy," shouted the widow; "boy, what are you doing here! Quick, give me this"—she snatched the sword from his hand—"that also"—she whisked the revolver out of his holster. "Oh, that child, that child," she wailed. Out in the jungle there were cries,hollow and muffled in the crape of vegetation; a few shots rang, dull as if underground. Three or four bullets whirred overhead.
"Down! Down!" cried the widow; "down, boy"—and her iron claw sank into his shoulder, bearing him down, and unresistingly he fell upon the luckless Gato. "That's right, sit on him," the widow whispered hoarsely; "and don't you move, don't you budge. My God, if only I can get you out of this——" She turned toward the jungle, straight to her full height, a strange, inflexible figure with the sabre in her right hand, the revolver in her left; a heroic figure, really, keeping guard there upon her boy, her son, her baby, her treasure in life; the object upon which had flowed all her wealth of love, of tenderness, leaving her, soul and body, arid and sterile and bitter and awesome.
In the depths toward which she peered with watchful eyes, a vague, mysterious tumult was taking place, lost, devoured in the brooding silence about it. It came in multitudinous attenuated noises, like a ventriloquist performance; murmurs rose from the ground at her feet, wails sighed overhead.
Her back to her son, tensely keeping guard, she was questioning feverishly.
"Oh, why did you come? How could you, how could you! Without telling me. This country is notfit for you. And the constabulary! How could you, how could you!"
He answered her as well as he could. Really, he would have preferred to be out there, with his men in the jungle. But he was subjugated. The training of his childhood had fallen back upon him like an unshakable harness. So he remained, seated upon Papa Gato, answering hysterical questions.
Really, it was a pretty bit of coincidence—the young man, suddenly boiling with desire to do, leaving his college, taking a commission in the Philippine constabulary, arriving over the sea just in time to learn of his mother's capture, begging for a place in the rescuing party, then, in feverish impatience, distancing with his detachment all the others——
From the depths of the jungle, piercing above the muffled tumult, there came a great, clear cry. Then there was absolute silence. A fly buzzed about the group. A squad of constabulary men, soiled, bloody, and dishevelled, carrying a bound prisoner, broke into the clearing. Another—the affair was over.
The sword fell with a clang from the widow's hand; the revolver rolled after it; and then, stiffly, with extraordinary dignity, she slowly fell into the arms of her son. The widow had fainted.
But it was a weakness that was but momentary. By the time that civilisation was reached, she wasagain in possession of all her faculties. Thus it was that young Pinney sat down, and, beneath the rigid shadow of her dominating presence, filled out a blank form of resignation for the benefit of the chief in Manila; and thus it is that he now catches flies in the drowsy office of one of the "snap" departments, while the widow spanks young hopefuls in the Manila normal school.
Far down the palm-lined road they appeared, nearing with perplexing rapidity. The head of my companion snapped forward and his eyes flamed. They came in a file down the road, between the palm trees, in the glowing tropic light, swinging along with smooth, resistless progress. They seemed to glide; the bamboo poles, balanced on their shoulders, slid as if on invisible tracks laid above the ground, and the tuba buckets at the ends were steady as if floating in the air. Soon they were near. The play of their great thigh muscles became visible. They turned the corner of the plaza with a new burst of speed, and then they passed us in magnificent action. Down their naked heels came in turn, pounding the ground; in one long, smooth sweep from waist to toe the legs flashed back in a quivering of ropy sinew. Their naked bronze busts glistening with sweat, and the supple back muscles, giving at each step beneath thebamboo poles, undulated liquidly beneath the golden skin. Through the palm leaves covering the buckets a slight froth played like silver lace. They passed us in a flash of gleaming bronze; the creak of the bamboo poles shrieked in our ears; the pungent, sulphurous odour of the tuba stung our nostrils, and then they vanished in the kaleidoscopic colour-play of the market.
My eyes fell upon my companion. He was leaning forward, his shrivelled legs collapsed beneath the trunk, his whole weight upon his hands, his head straining ahead like that of a bird in flight, and in his eyes something strange and moving—a soft, regretful gleam, yes—God bless me, how strange it seemed in that sullen, stolid cripple!—a look of longing, longing infinite.
From this day I watched him, watched him as the tuba-carriers flashed into the pueblo, at high noon.
He was about forty years old, and above the waist he was beautiful. From the belt the body shot upward, broadening like a Greek urn into a deep chest, and wide, massive shoulders. Beneath the gleaming terra-cotta skin the muscle played in elastic bundles of power. His face was hatchet-carved, with a relentless jaw and eagle nose, and his straight black hair was ennobled by a sprinkle of gray.
But below the waist was ruin. He had been ham-strung. His legs were folded flaccidly beneath the trunk, the calf against the thigh—powerless things which, as he dragged himself on his hands, trailed limply behind as if some ignoble, useless attachment of the great body above.
It was not often that he courted this humiliation. Usually he was in his nipa hut in the coconuts, silent and alone. But regularly, a little before noon, he dragged himself to his station in front of the store of Gong Ah Deam, merchant and usurer, and there, leaning against the wall, he watched and waited for the coming of the mañangetes. There was something tragic about the man, a singular dignity of woe, and as he crouched there, that quality made him appear as tall as those about him. He never spoke, and an awe—partly superstitious, I think—kept a vacant circle around him.
One day that man told me his story. He told it to me in hoarse whispers, impelled by some torturing desire to unburden himself, in front of the store of Gong Ah Deam, there, awaiting the coming of the tuba-carriers.
"I was one of them, señor," he said, pointing with his chin toward the far vista where the tuba-men would presently appear; "I was a mañangete; yes,the strongest and fleetest of them. For five years I was the leader of the file. They would challenge me often at first. As we strained toward the far pueblo, in turn each would move up and try to pass me, but I only quickened a little as the man tugged at my side, his breath whistling like the wind through the coco trees, his legs stiffening till they cracked, till finally he dropped back, gasping, to the foot of the line, the tuba running down the sides of the bucket, while another spurted up to wrest from me the honour. After two years they ceased to challenge me—all except one. I was their acknowledged king—except by one. His name was Herrera. He was small and light and stringy. He had no chance against me. I could laugh and sing as he walked at my elbow, agonising with the effort. Day after day, as I raced proudly along, the long line behind me, the bamboo pole springing lightly on my shoulder, the tuba frothing in the buckets, I felt him start out of his place; soon his hot breath was on my neck, and out of the corner of my eye I saw his evil, yellow face. I hummed and sang and cracked my muscle with walking. And he hung on, I don't know how, señor, he hung on mile after mile, till I thought he would die. Then suddenly he reeled and sobbed, and inch by inch I passed him, proudly smiling, while his heart burst with bitterness. We rushed into thepueblo, and as I, raising my head, spurted with new speed, and each man, his eyes glued upon the back ahead, strained to keep up, I knew that he was last in the line, staggering blindly, his tuba spilling at every step, a disgraceful spectacle. And to my ears came the laughter of the women, pointing their fingers at him.
"They looked at me with longing eyes; they laughed at him. For I was strong and beautiful, señor. Look at these arms—they were a third bigger then. And my thighs—they are shrivelled and soft now, like meat that has hung in the market too long—but they were like the trunk of the iron tree, strong as the carabao's, fleet as the mountain deer's. And he was small and dried, and his legs were bowed.
"Señor, I knew why he challenged me thus day after day. He loved Constancia Torres. And I loved her, too.
"We had played together when children; we were youths and did not know it; one day I saw her come out of the bath and suddenly I was a man. Her dripping patadyon, wrapped high beneath her armpits, followed the curves of her body like a long caress; above, her shoulders glowed like polished gold, and over all there fell to her heels the glistening glory of her black hair. And her eyes were deep as the pools of the Cabancalan, and her voice was softas the sigh of the breeze through the sugar cane at sundown, and I loved her, señor.
"Of course I won her. I went to her father one evening and asked for her and got her. She stood aside while I spoke; a corner of her camisa had slipped down from her left shoulder and the light shone on the golden skin. She did not smile when her father assented. Next day we were married by Padre Marcelino, and she did not smile.
"But I did not care, señor. It seemed such a little thing, her indifference, near my love. Señor, you have seen the hot breath of the monsoon pass over the land, day after day, month after month, till the palms and the bamboo and the sugar cane all bend its self-willed way. My love was the hot monsoon and she was the bamboo wisp.
"I took her away to my new nipa-hut, under the coconut palms. And I trembled to my own happiness as the violin vibrates to its own music.
"I could not sleep those days, señor, I was so happy. At sundown I climbed the tall coconut trees, my bolo between my teeth. I hacked at the shoots above and hung my buckets, and then slid down and found her. We stood long at the window, señor, in the night. The wind blew softly through the trees. Beneath the leaves the stars shone upon our love, and when the breeze ceased, so quiet was it, señor,that we could hear the gentle dripping of the tuba in the buckets, above us in the sky. And we would stay thus many hours of the night, señor, my arms about her, her soft body against mine, and it was only later that I remembered that all the caresses came from me.
"Señor, I was so happy, that I forgot to hate. The day after my marriage I let Herrera lead into the pueblo. The next day he was not in line, nor ever after. Señor, the man who forgets to hate is a fool.
"All about me there was a rippling of evil laughter, and winkings and signs and tappings of fingers on foreheads. And I was blind.
"One afternoon, late, as I was coming back to my hut, my empty buckets swinging on the pole, my eyes fixed upon the little nipa-roof already showing through the trees, and hunger of love in my heart, I tripped against a liana across the path. There was a whirr of pliable bamboo and something sharp whistled through the air and struck me there, behind the knee, with the sound of the butcher's cleaver cutting meat. I fell, and my legs were as they are now. Señor, you have fought in the war; you know the bamboo-trap. A bamboo-trap had been laid for me.
"My legs were gone, but something terriblewhispered in my heart that I should be home. And I was there almost as quick as if I had been still a man, and not a worm.
"Señor, the house was deserted. As I crawled about like a dog smelling tracks, there was not a trace of the woman I loved.
"Then all that my eyes had refused to see, all that my ears had refused to hear poured into me in a black tide. I knew why the pueblo had laughed. And throwing myself on my back I shivered all night with pain and lust to kill."
The man suddenly leaned forward and his eyes flamed. The mañangetes were rushing into the town. Smoothly they glided around the plaza, and then they passed us in a flash of gleaming bronze. The creaking of the bamboo poles shrieked in our ears, the pungent sulphurous odour of the tuba bit our nostrils, and long with a wistful look the cripple followed them till they were lost in the palpitating colour-play of the market.
Four miles from Cabancalan there is a lonely pile of rocks of evil repute. Heavy, cannon-like reports come from it at times, and a sickening smell of sulphur pinches the nostrils a quarter of a mile away.
I was passing the place at noon one day when Isaw a man crawling queerly among the rocks. His movements were so suspicious that I dismounted and followed him.
I gained fast and finally a full look as he passed around a big boulder intensified my surprise. It was the cripple of the pueblo, the old mañangete.
He was labouring heavily, dragging himself on his hands, his big chest wet with perspiration, and a glint of baneful determination in his eye. After a dolorous scramble through putrescent vegetation and leprous rocks, he slid down a little ravine into a cup-like depression bare of plant life except at the farther end, where a gigantic banyan embraced the earth with its huge tentacle roots.
He crawled to the middle of the clearing, and then he stopped, on his hands and knees, looking at something on the ground which I could not see. I waited for half an hour, but he remained thus in this strange posture and I silently crawled back and away.
The next morning, early, I was back at the place. I slid down the little ravine into the cup-like depression. It was deserted. A white object on the ground caught my eye. It was a human skull.
It was a human skull, white and polished with age. And its lower jaw was twisted in a most abominable grin.
I touched the thing to roll it over. It was fast. Ifelt beneath. The sharp, saw-like edge of vertebræ rasped my fingers. I dug the earth beneath. The vertebræ extended downward for a few inches and then the smooth collar bones crossed them at right angles.
I understood. An entire skeleton was there, buried upright to the neck. I thought I understood also the abominable grin.
I did not want to see any more; but as I turned away a whiteness among the octopus-like tentacles of the banyan compelled me.
I took a few steps and stood before a skeleton. It was tied upright to the banyan roots by an iron chain, corroded with rust. There was no flesh on the thing, but a stream of heavy black hair cascaded down from the skull to the heels, undulating in and out of the ribs.
One more thing I noticed. The hollow eyes of the skeleton among the banyan roots were focused upon the centre of the clearing. In the centre of the clearing was the skull of the horrible grin, and its staring orbits were turned upon the roots of the banyan tree.
For a moment I was too cold to climb out of the place. Yet when I succeeded my body was wet with perspiration.
[1]Mañangete is a Negros Visayan dialect word, denominating the men who gather tuba. Tuba is the fermented sap of the coconut palm, obtained by incisions made at the top of the tree.
[1]Mañangete is a Negros Visayan dialect word, denominating the men who gather tuba. Tuba is the fermented sap of the coconut palm, obtained by incisions made at the top of the tree.
The coconut palms rose straight to heaven, bending pliably to the western breeze; their heads tapped gently against each other and a murmur of secrets sighed overhead. From the shifting shreds of sky the sun fell upon the sands in heavy gold spots. To the east, through the lithe, silver trunks, the vivid green of the rice fields flashed; to the west a tawny thread of beach banked up the rippling tide.
In the darkness of the recess a frail hut of nipa leaves and bamboo slowly shaped itself as I advanced, and suddenly a shrill voice, rasping as the violin note of the tyro, pierced the peace of the place. In the doorway, at the head of the cane ladder, old Marietta was gesticulating.
"Oh, señor," she called asthmatically; "pray come in; visit your humble servant. The house is yours, the tuba is fresh, and coconuts are in the trees."
"Not to-day, Marietta; not to-day," I called back, "I'm going on to Suay; I can't stop."
She threw her arms up in consternation. "ToSuay, señor, to Suay? José-Maria! do you not see the baguio coming? Soon it will be upon you, the trees will bend, the coconuts will fall, and you will die!"
The typhoon of the Philippines is not to be disdained. A picture formed in my mind of falling trees, rent bridges, melted roads. I stopped, hesitating, looked up at the blue sky above, listened to the regular breath of the wind. "Nonsense!" I said, and just then a sudden gust screeched overhead; the coconuts bent in half circles, snapped back, bent again with weird elasticity. Before my mind could fairly seize them, before the impression of them could be more than hazy and faint as those of a dream, these manifestations ceased. The wind fell dead, the trees came back to equilibrium. A heavy torpor descended upon the land.
"I'll come in, Marietta," I decided, "and you'll tell me more of the Negritos in the hills."
She did not answer, but waited for me at the head of the bamboo ladder—a weird, dried-up mummy of a woman, with teeth corroded by the betel-nut, and eyes that flashed hard beneath the heavy, yellow folds of the lids—an old witch, fit for broomstick rides and the nightmares of children. Inside, I sat down upon the bench by the window while she squatted upon the bamboo-strip floor, a big cheroot tied upwith hemp fibre in her mouth, a hollow coconut filled with tuba at her side. But she did not speak. A strange taciturnity was upon her; she sat there speechless, motionless, like some monstrous idol, her lids half-dropped over eyes that showed opaque and dead.
"Well, Marietta," I said at length; "what about that coconut milk you promised me?"
"Oh, señor, pardon me, pardon your servant. 'Tis the baguio. When I feel the baguio coming I forget; I think of other days."
She half rose, then sank again upon her heels, her mind refusing to stay with the present.
"For there were other days, señor," she said gently; "ah, yes, far other days!"
She rocked herself slowly to and fro, her face in her hands. Outside, the heavy torpor was suddenly torn by a shriek in the upper layers of air. A few great drops pattered resoundingly upon the nipa roof, then heat and silence reigned again, with the torment of the woman's soul.
Curiously I looked upon the old crone. She sat there rocking gently from side to side, her lips bubbling in meaningless mutters. Then her yellow paw crept down her arid bosom, fumbled beneath her camisa, and reappeared with something in it that flashed gold. She pressed it to her withered lips—andI saw that it was a locket—pressed it to her withered lips with a singular intensity of passion; pressed it there again and again—and that sudden flash of something long gone, of a spark, dying, perhaps, but which in that ruined body should have been long dead, moved me with uneasiness, as if I were watching, and a party to, a sacrilege.
But she dropped her hands upon her lap in a gesture of infinite hopelessness and she began to speak, to speak in a queer sing-song, a monotonous chant, like some religious recital of her Malay ancestors suddenly coming back to her through the ages.
"Ah, he was beautiful, señor; he was beautiful, he was beautiful, he was beautiful! He was tall and straight like the coco tree; his hair curled like the waves upon the sand, and his eyes were deep and soft like the pools of the Cabancalan. He came to me from over the seas, señor; from far-away Spain. I was standing on the beach, right over there. There were many boat-loads of soldiers landing, and he was on the foremost prao. It came straight to me, foaming with eagerness, its wings spread out like those of a butterfly, flying over the waves, and he stood at the bow. His cap was in his hand; the wind blew his hair of gold into a halo like that of the Christ of the Santa Iglesia; the sun beat down uponhis white suit and he glistened like a god. Straight for the spot where I stood, señor; straight as your compass needle points to the north, the prao steered from afar, and not a palm's breadth either way did it turn as it foamed toward me. And when, heeling over like a wounded bird, it grounded in the shallows, and ten men jumped out into the water to carry him ashore, he motioned them off, sprang himself into the waves waist-deep, and impatiently, as a horse paws, he forced his way toward me. Then a fear entered my heart and I fled, fled back into the woods, to my hut, and threw myself upon the floor panting, panting and dreaming.
"I was not ugly, then, señor; ah, no, I was not ugly; age and sorrow had not yet knotted me like the roots of the banyan. I was Queen then, señor; the Queen of Beauty among my own people. At the procession it was I that stood on a pedestal, clad in gold and silk, the picture of the Mother of God. At the bailes it was I that the young men sought, and it was for me, señor, that Juan Perez had a knife plunged between his shoulders, one dark night, long ago. It was long ago, señor; it was long ago.
"I was beautiful, señor, and I knew my beauty. I was proud, proud of my dark eyes, of my golden shoulders, of the hair that fell about me like a garment to the ground when I unrolled it in the sun, afterthe bath at the spring. I was loved, señor; I was desired; my fame was all over Negros and had no boundaries but the sea; but I, I loved no one; I railed and scoffed at all; I loved no one, till he came.
"Then, señor, railing and scoffing died upon my lips; all things hard and mean died within me, and I felt my heart open, bloom, till it seemed my breast would not hold it. Ah, those were happy days, señor; days of beauty. Then the sky was blue, the sun was golden, the breeze was soft—it was long ago, señor; it was long ago. He was my sun, and the warmth and the beauty of him entered my heart till it burst into bloom like the purple moon-flower. We were of different race, but he taught me. He taught me, ah, many things, but what are they, señor, what is anything, compared to love? And he taught me to love. In the evenings, after sundown, we roamed the groves together, in the pale moonshine, and the sea shimmered and the trees whispered, and in my ear was the music of his voice, on my hand the caress of his hand—ah, señor, señor, why do these things stay with us; why, when they pass, do they not leave us, and not stay and stay and stay and torment and torture, hooked to our hearts with double barbs—señor, you who know so many things, can you tell me that?
"Listen, señor! Over there, where the river goes into the sea and the bamboos grow almost into thesky, he built a little nipa house. And it was ours, ours, all our own; and it was there that we lived.Lived, you understand; it is true that some of his time was passed elsewhere; he had the cuartel and his soldiers, but it was here that he lived, for it was here that he loved. Señor, in that little house by the side of the sea, it was there that happiness dwelled, happiness such as there never had been, such as there never will be. Señor, I was beautiful then—now I am old and dried; I chew betel; I drink tuba; I spit. But this is not all the work of years. I might have grown old as the corn grows old—golden-ripe, but now, you see, I do not care. He taught me, then he left me, and my heart fell back like a rock, aye, and lower than he had found it.
"For, of course, he left me, señor. I have learned since it is the way—you whites, you always leave. He went back to his Spain. He was to return in a year. The year passed and he did not come back. Then another and another. It was many years before he returned. The little hut in the bamboos by the river sagged, drooped, rotted; till there was left nothing but the four big corner-posts of narra standing upright, with between them a little mound upon which the grass grew high, a little mound like a grave, the grave of our love. I grew old with the waiting, the longing; my heart was all alone, all alone; and whenhe landed again, in the green dawn, one day, he did not know the woman squatting on the beach, so near that one of his soldiers pushed her away with his foot to let him pass. He came not alone, señor. With him was a white woman, his wife, with eagle nose and proud bearing and skin like the flesh of the coconut. He did not allow his soldiers to carry her, but went in himself, all booted, to the hips in the surf. His arm went around her waist; but, señor, she only looked that her dress would not touch the water. And I knew within me that when he had forsaken me for her, love had lost.
"I did not die, señor, although I thought I would as I sat there long after he had gone, sat there through the biting of the midday sun till the poisoned breath of the night blew into my face. I went back to my hut and lived. I lived as others; I married, I bore children. These children have borne children; their children have borne children. I lived, but I did not love.
"And he, he also lived, and his wife had children. He lived, but he did not love, señor.
"And thus year passed after year. I saw him little. Once, at sundown, as I was crossing the plaza the portals of his stone mansion clanged open and his carriage rolled out. I saw them pass, he and his wife, she straight and proud, he leaning forward alittle, as if tired, and as long as the carriage was in sight I saw them, side by side, but both looking straight ahead—far, far ahead, as if seeking something—and not once at each other. And he, he saw me not at all.
"One night, señor, the baguio swept the land, as it will to-day soon. There were shrieks all night, and the sea-roar and the tree-roar filled the darkness.
"And, in the morning, señor, as the sun rose upon the ruins of the night, there was noise and crying and a moving to and fro among the people of the pueblo. Squads of soldiers tramped about, taos beat the bush, and bloodhounds sniffed the ground. People whispered that the Commandant had left his house in the evening and had not yet returned.
"They found him, señor, in the bamboos by the river, midst the rotting remains of an old hut. One of the big corner posts had fallen upon him, and he lay there dead, stretched across the grass-grown mound that looked like a grave.
"But I had found him first, señor. And in his hand there was a locket, and in the locket there was a wisp of hair. And the hair was not of his wife."
Marietta stopped. Her mouth twisted in a convulsive grimace and two glistening things ran down the lines of her cheek.
And outside, with a long-drawn wail, the baguio at length swooped down upon us. The hut shuddered like a live thing, the trees clashed, the sea pounded and hissed. But in the dark, silent, immovable, squatting in infinite lassitude of posture, Marietta wept, wept over the past, the past with its irrevocable ruins, the past, gone beyond recalling, beyond amendment, but still with her, ever with her, with its double-barbed torture.
Little Carnota Roa was dead, and they were burying him.
The father came first, bearing the coffin on his shoulder. He was a mañangete; that is, for a living he climbed the coconut trees, hanging his buckets till full of tuba sap and then carrying them, balanced at the ends of a bamboo pole, seven miles to the pueblo, on the trot. This occupation had made him very strong, so that now he bore the little box as if it were a feather. It was a pretty coffin. On a frame of bamboo sticks they had stretched a new patadyon, bright red and yellow, and on this they had stuck rosettes of white, pink, and blue tissue paper. It was beautiful. The brother followed the father. He carried a big shovel for the hole that had to be dug over there, in the black ooze of the cemetery, amid bones of men and carabaos. He wore a camisa, but no pantaloons, for they were very poor. Behind the brother came the mother. From her armpits a flaming red patadyon fell to her naked feet, red being the colour that must be worn for children andCarnota being only six. In her left hand she carried a big, black cotton umbrella; in her right hand she carried a tallow candle. The tiny flame sputtered and crackled in the stifling air and a thread of vapour rose from it toward heaven, humble incense praying to the Great God for the little soul ascending to Him.
The forlorn procession, man with coffin, boy with shovel, woman with candle, wound through the high grass across the plaza. The passage of a ditch caused some disorder. From the coffin, leaping across on the man's shoulder, a pink-and-blue rosette fell. The woman picked it up and they stopped while she pinned it back with a bamboo thorn. During the operation the candle dropped and went out. The man laid the coffin down, scratched some matches and finally relit it. Meanwhile the boy sat down on the shovel. He was very small and the shovel was very big. At last the man picked up the coffin, the boy picked up the shovel, and they moved on to the church.
The church was closed, for the padres had been driven out by the revolution two years before and had never returned. So the coffin was laid on the ground at the great barred doors, a naïve little object begging for a mite of the holy emanation that still clung about the great building as some vague odour ofincense. The mother let tallow drip upon the frame, then stuck the candle upright into it. She opened the big umbrella and set it down so that the stinging sun-rays of noon should not shine through the thin cloth of the coffin into the closed eyes of Carnota. The man crouched down against the church wall, the boy sat on the shovel, and the woman squatted on her heels by her husband.
It was noon, and the perpendicular sun dripped molten lead upon the land. The tin roof of the church crackled, white with heat; the tin roof of the school crackled back to it; the heat, reverberated from one to the other, fell into the space between, and the pink-and-blue rosettes on the coffin shrunk like sensitive things.
A big fly buzzed near and the woman wafted it away. A little fly struck the candle and boiled to death in the molten tallow. From a hole in the church wall a big gee-kaw lizard uttered his hoarse, spasmodic cry three times, then stopped, smothered by the heat. Ten feet away a carabao plumped into a mud hole with a cool, squashy sound. A heavy silence fell upon the plaza, punctuated only by the raucous breathing of a big American cavalry-horse, dying of the surra by the cuartel.
The door of the schoolhouse opened, and the Maestro came out. Almost at the same time theLieutenant stepped out of the cuartel. He stopped to look at the horse and the Maestro joined him.
The animal, a big gray, was standing with his four legs wide apart, like the tripod of a camera. His ribs stood out like the ribs of a long-stranded derelict; his legs were puffed up as big as barrels, and a viscous fluid oozed from his nostrils. A cloud of flies buzzed about this already half-carrion flesh.
The Maestro looked into the patient, bulging, blood-shot eyes.
"He will die?" he asked.
"Yes, they all die," said the officer.
"Why don't you have it shot?"
The officer smiled, a trifle embarrassed.
"Well," he said, "you know they're great on red-tape in the army. If the horse dies naturally, the post-surgeon can fill out a comparatively brief report; if he orders it shot, he will have to write out some five foolscap pages. The Doc, you know, is pretty lazy; so he chooses the short report."
"I see," said the Maestro.
They separated. The forlorn group at the church door drew a shrug of the shoulders from the officer. The Maestro stopped and approached it.
The woman nudged the man with her elbow. "The Maestro!" she whispered, awestruck.
They scrambled to their feet and stood respectfully before him. Their downcast eyes peered at him half-anxious, half-wondering. For he was a strange person, the Maestro. Carnota had often told about him.
The first day he had come to school he had been very angry because, turning around upon the crash of a chart, upset by one of the boys in a sly antic, he had found all the index-fingers converging dutifully upon the abashed culprit.
He was very queer. He did not like the boys to tell on each other.
Every morning he made them go through violent movements with their arms, their legs, their bodies; and they were very tired, for the palay crop had failed and they had little in their stomachs.
But if he was queer at school, he was still more queer at home.
One Saturday afternoon, Carnota, peering with his brother into the Maestro's house, had retreated suddenly, very much awed and astonished.
For the Maestro, in his shirt sleeves, was insanely pounding away at a big, round ball that hung from the ceiling by a string. He hit and hit and hit, and the ball rebounded from his fist to the ceiling so fast that it sounded like the escribiente beating a bandillo upon his drum, only much louder.
The man and the woman stood before the Maestro, thinking of these things. And he stood before them, also thinking. He was before a result, and he wondered if it was good.
He thought of the little boy. He saw him again as he had seen him on his first day as Teacher of Balangilang—a little niño with a big round head sunk in between sharp shoulders, and big brown eyes that looked up into his own, half-scared, half-loving. He was a very little boy, Carnota, and his peculiar uncertainty of movement made him still more babyish. His face was dirty and his nose needed a handkerchief. His camisa was open in front, and the abdomen projected over the trouser-band in a soft roll of fat. Somehow that was what remained the most vividly in the Maestro's memory—the vision of that roll of baby-flesh that had suddenly filled his heart with unmanly softness.
That was the day of the "my" and "your" struggle.
"Do you see the hat?" the Maestro had asked.
"Yiss, I ssee dde hhett," staccattoed the class in answer.
"My hat," said the Maestro, pointing to his cap; "your hat," he said, pointing to the reduced version of a dilapidated nipa roof which served to coverCarnota's head. "Now, [pointing to his own], do you see my hat?"
"Yiss, I sse my hett," answered the urchin confidently.
"No, no," said the Maestro. "This is my hat, not your hat; it is my hat. Do you see my hat, my, my hat?"
"Yiss, I see my, my hhett," answered Carnota, his eyes alight with sweet obedience.
The Maestro paused and wiped his brow with his handkerchief.
"Now, let us begin again," he went on with determination in his eye. "My hat, your hat; your hat, my hat. This is my hat; this is your hat. Now, show me your hat."
"Your hat," said Carnota, pointing to his own.
"No, no, that is not my hat; that is your hat; this is my hat, that is your hat. Now, show me my hat, my hat."
"My hat, my hat!" shouted Carnota, triumphantly pointing to the Maestro's.
"Oh, Lordy," muttered the Maestro. He looked down half-angrily. Two brown eyes and an uplifted nose were turned up toward him in absolute, admiring confidence, and his annoyance flew away as by enchantment. But he could not bear to disillusion the child with further elucidation, so it was many daysbefore Carnota ceased mixing his pronouns with calm unconcern.
He forced his thoughts onward to later and less pleasant memories.
First had come the cattle-pest, which had killed all the carabaos; then the surra, which had killed all the horses; then the drought, just at palay-sowing, baking the ground so hard that the wooden plows made only derisive scratches. Now, it is true, the cholera was coming down the coast to restore the balance. But it should have come first. The palay crop had failed and there was nothing to eat.
There had been little to eat for weeks, and the children had begun to droop and wither. Every morning the Maestro cursed under his breath as he looked upon his waning audience. He could do little more than swear, for it would have taken a hundred times his salary to feed them all, and half of that went home religiously every month to a younger brother who was playing end on the Yale team. So, not being able to help them all, he had come to the determination to feed none. Which did not prevent him from smuggling little Carnota into his house every morning, to send him forth again with grains of mush sticking to his nose.
But this did not stop Carnota's head from sinkingdaily deeper between his shoulders nor the peculiar uncertainty of movements to gain and gain on him till, sometimes, when walking, he would fall suddenly without cause, as if he had stepped into a hole.
The attendance dropped and dropped, and the Maestro did not like to look at his reports. At last, one morning, Carnota himself failed to come to school. He did not come the next day, nor the next. The Maestro went to the tumble-down nipa shack by the river. He found the boy lying on a mat, on the bamboo floor. He could not move.
"Yiss, I ssee dde hhett," he murmured when the Maestro asked him how he felt.
The Maestro went to see the Post-Surgeon. But the Post-Surgeon had been in the Philippines four years. That is, his ideal of life now was to slop about his room all day in a kimona, smoking cigarette after cigarette and drinking whiskey-and-soda after whiskey-and-soda. To go out and see a sick child, especially when that sick child happened to have a brown skin, demanded an effort absolutely colossal for the corroded shreds of his moral strength. It took several days of begging, remonstrance, appeal, almost threats to galvanize the dead fibres. At last the Doctor slipped into a khaki and walked a hundred yards with the Maestro to the hut by the river.
He examined the boy with a vague, returning ghost of professional interest.
"Curvature of the spine," he said at length.
"No cure?" asked the Maestro.
"No, he'll die; it may take several years."
"Will he suffer?"
The surgeon pointed to the child. The little body was vibrating in exquisite torture and cold beads of sweat were welling up on the stoical Malay face.
That night the Maestro went to the Post Hospital and asked the steward for some morphine.
"The dose is——" the steward started to say, giving him the pellets.
"I know, I know," the Maestro broke out hastily. "I've used it often."
He did not know the dose, but he did not want to know it.
He went back to Carnota. He found him with his sharp knees pressed tight against his chin.
He gave him several pellets. He did not know what was the proper dose, but he knew that this one was surely a highly improper one, and that is all he wanted to know.
The little boy had gone to sleep with a deep, restful sigh.
And now he was there, beneath the pink-and-blue rosettes.
The man and the woman were becoming uneasy beneath the vacant-eyed scrutiny of the Maestro. Finally the father stooped, wound his arms about the coffin, and looked up questioningly into the Maestro's face.
"Yes," nodded the Maestro, "I will go with you."
The man heaved the coffin to his shoulder. The boy took the shovel, the woman the candle, and they started in a file. The Maestro followed and took the shovel from the boy.
At the cemetery the father began to dig in the black ooze, but the Maestro stopped him. He led them to a little knoll close by beneath a giant mango tree. The soil was dry there, and, taking off his jacket, the Maestro toiled till a little hole was ready.
They lowered the paper-frilled box into it, then they scraped back the earth. The father went into the jungle and came back with a cross made of two bamboo sticks. He planted the cross and the Maestro placed a few stones about it.
Then they walked back to the pueblo.
"Are you very sad?" asked the Maestro of the woman.
"Oho," she answered, "muy triste."
But she had not understood the question. She had had nine children, and eight were buried. As far back as she could remember Death had never let by a yearwithout entering her hut. She had long ceased feeling.
They came to the plaza. The old cavalry horse was still standing as before, his swollen legs spread in a wide base, his head dropped to the ground, his patient, bulging eyes red with blood. His rattling, dolorous breath, above the humming undertone of carrion-flies, was the only break in the heated silence.
The Maestro looked at the animal. His chin dropped to his chest.
He raised his head with a sharp movement and walked on.
"I have done well," he said.
It was a mistake from the first. The post was not at all for a woman, but Miss Terrill was unaware of that. She had just come to BacolodviaSan Francisco, Manila, and Ilo-Ilo, by means, successively, of a big white army transport full of other ingenuous pedagogues; a wheezy but impudent little Spanish steamer, which aggressively shoved its nose under every ripple of the inter-island seas; a languid-sailed lorcha, loaded with pigs, dogs, and brownies, and finally a dizzy banca, which, perched upon the tip-foam of a curling comber, outriggers spread out like wings, landed her high up on a golden beach—fresh, dainty, and composed like a coloured album picture. So, when out of the hat in which the Division Superintendent was thoughtfully shuffling little slips of paper representing the towns of his terra incognita, she drew the name of Barang, she took it as much of a lark. Immediately she ran to a map, found the little black dot down in the southern part of Negros, and pronounced it "cute." She seemed prone, it must besaid, to take things that way. She was a very young girl, so young that the officers of the Post raised their eyebrows and muttered under their breaths when they learned where she was going. A certain second lieutenant, Saunders by name, and very fresh from West Point, went so far in fact as to offer to arrange it so that she should stay in Bacolod, at least as long as he were there, and afterwards—any place where he might be. But she laughed sweetly at this proffer, and put it from her promptly and decisively, though her blue eyes, at the young fellow's sudden show of despair, shone a moment with a tenderness—maternal he called it afterward—that somehow left him without bitterness and full of reverence.
Here it must be explained for future understanding that Rumour, a most vigorous Dame in the Philippines, forthwith pounced upon this little incident and made off with it north and south. North the development of the tale was rapid indeed; by the time it reached Escalante it dealt with the marriage of Miss Terrill to the fat old colonel of the Post. South, progress was more modest; at Himamaylan and Cantalacan, towns nearest to Barang, it gave merely the news of the formal engagement of Miss Terrill to Lieutenant Saunders. Which freak of Dame Rumour was precious indeed, in that it led to the complications that make this story.
The affair of her assignment continued to be much of a lark during the two weeks spent in Bacolod awaiting transportation. It was still a lark when the launch came and her trunk, in the loading, fell into the surf and the hombres in charge of it kept dry by the simple expedient of standing upon it. And the long, hard trip in the launch, laden to the gunwales with supplies for a military post still further than her own town, also was a lark, although at sunset the sky drew down in a black vault beneath which the little steamer seemed very small and very lone, and a wind arose which sent her plunging beneath tons of swirling water, and later, when the sea had calmed, the Tagal pilot got lost in the blinding downpour of rain and ran her gently into a perpendicular wall from which they backed with a poignant feeling that it was only the superstructure backing thus away, that the bottom was still on the rock—a feeling which proved baseless, but which kept them tense the night long, speaking in whispers and treading the deck a-tiptoe. The world was still joyous when they crashed through a fish-corral and her chair, caught by one of the poles, whisked her instantaneously from bow to stern. But when they anchored beyond the edge of a long reef, and the sun rose glaringly upon the shore, it must be admitted that her heroic little heart sank a bit. On the other side ofthe reef the waters ended in rippling purple shallows; and then there emerged a low bank of mud—a livid yellow mud, flaccid and spongy, corroded with trickly streams that ran ink. At the upper end of this bank, flanked by four leafless leprous palms, there rose a long building, askew upon its rotting piles, with torn tin roof and shutters fallen outward. In front, very white against the gray facade, the blue sky, the yellow mud, a pole sprang up with a faded American flag wrapped dejectedly about its top. Embracing the bank, the two curved arms of a river came down in slow gurgitation of liquid ooze between screens of black-green vegetation.
"This is Himamaylan, little mother," said the young lieutenant (he had fallen rather easily into the relation imposed by her). "This is Himamaylan. Wish it were your station; you've twelve more miles overland."
Now this thoughtful preference for Himamaylan (seeing what Himamaylan was) hardly promised for her own station. But she resolutely gulped down a certain tightening of the throat. "How jolly!" she said.
Saunders looked at her rather long. "What a darling you are!" he murmured. And the tone was hardly filial.
Which caused her to hurry her preparations forlanding. A native standing to his knees in the mud, after a good deal of vocalising from the lieutenant, listlessly strolled to a decrepit banca, bottom up in the shallows, flopped it over, baled it out with a coconut shell, tied up the shaky outriggers with bejuca, and paddled leisurely, with an air of supreme indifference, to the counter of the launch. "I'll go ahead and reconnoitre," said the lieutenant, springing into it; "it's only six, and Wilson (the American teacher of the station) is probably not up yet." Miss Terrill saw him paddled to the shore, saw him land and go up the rude causeway. At each step the stone under him sank as in a jelly and his foot whisked out in a spatter of mud; at each step her heart followed the stone in its sinking movement. He disappeared into the great ruined building. She waited, it seemed a long time. The padron of the launch began a muttered discourse upon the sin of delay with an ebbing tide. The sun rose higher, poured its accusing glare upon the squalor of the scene. The hombre in the banca pulled his wide-brimmed straw hat over his eyes, curled in the bow, and went to sleep. The mud began to crawl with little black crabs. "Cheer up!" she said to herself in a crisp intonation, like the note of a bird.
The Lieutenant reappeared at the head of a dozen villainous duplicates of the man in the banca. Hepaddled up. "All right," he said. "I have cargadores. Wilson will arrange things to get you to your town. We'll land your stuff first; by that time he'll be presentable."
One by one her boxes were thrown into the banca, paddled ashore, and carried to the door of the big building, the convento of the friars before the revolution had driven them out. Then very ceremoniously, while the padron warned about further delay, Saunders handed her into the little canoe, like a princess into her gondola, out again on shore, and helped her over the first and worst part of the causeway.
"I must go now," he said. "Wilson is waiting for you at the door and that launch is beginning to thump bottom. And please, once more; won't you come back to Bacolod?"
She lifted her clear eyes to him and shook her head gently. "But you are a dear good boy," she said.
To the subtle maternal tone of this, there was no replying. He bowed low over her hand and turned back.
She started up right away. A great loneliness exhaled itself from the land. She did not look behind, but toiled stolidly toward the building.
Tied to one of the verandah posts, a native pony, short-necked, compact, muscular, was pawing the ground. She stopped and looked at it, gaining fromit the first comfort received of things since her arrival. It was carefully groomed. The bay flanks shone like silk; the mane, parted, fell fluffily on each side of the curved neck, the forelock dangling roguishly between the eyes. Beneath the polished saddle a red blanket added a touch of colour, almost of coquetry. The little animal stood there like a protest against the ambient discouragement.
But a white-garbed man was at the door. "Good-morning, Mr. Wilson," she said gaily; "what a nice horse you have there!"
"Good-morning, Miss Terrill," he answered, a gleam of approval in his pale, tired eyes; "but that's not my horse. Mine—well, it's like everything else about here"—and in a heavy gesture he passed his hand over the musty landscape.
She met the owner upstairs.
He was a young man with slender waist and broad shoulders. Leather-gaitered, buttoned to the chin in khaki, a big Colt hanging to his loose belt, he gave Miss Terrill an impression of elastic efficiency very pleasing. But still more pleasing, she thought very secretly, were his eyes, golden-brown, soft and rather grave. He was horribly reticent though. He let Wilson do the talking; leaning against the window-sill, he contented himself with short remarks dropped at long intervals like the sudden toning of a deep bell,and also with a consideration of her, serious and thorough like the pondering of a problem. It was something entirely different from that to which she was accustomed. She was not vain; but still, she had often seen herself, mirrored, as it were, in the eyes of men; and she knew that in her short khaki skirt, her long, tawny leggins, her wide-collared blouse, her soft felt hat beneath which her hair fluffed, light and golden as sun-kissed vapour, she was—well, picturesque at least. But here was a judgment that reserved itself, an admiration very much under check. His very position as he stood there, his glances downward upon her, gave him a subtle strategic superiority. It was rather irritating; and when he bowed and excused himself out of the room, her return salute was stiff with a stiffness foreign to her sweet nature. But immediately she found herself listening intently, oblivious of Mr. Wilson, listening to the steps springing down the stairs, stamping upon the flagging of the court, stopping beneath the verandah. There was a short silence, then a sudden clatter of hoofs. Unconsciously she was up and at the window—and he was gliding rapidly along the palm-lined road leading away from the sea, erect in the saddle, his waist giving flexibly to the pace of the pony.
"Oh," she ejaculated; "is he going away?"
"Yes," said Mr. Wilson; "back to his station atCantalacan. It's ten miles beyond yours. He'll arrange things for you at Barang."
Then, strangely enough, the desolation of the surrounding landscape brusquely whelmed her again. She felt very much alone with this Mr. Wilson, with his stoop of the shoulders, his weary eyes, his attitude of profound lassitude.
"I must start off for my station," she said decidedly.
Miss Terrill leaned at the window of her new home, looking out into the dark of the plaza. She had put out the lamp, the room behind her also was dark, and between these two obscurities she felt rather lone. At intervals alarmingly frequent her rallying cry, "cheer up," chirped in the heated silence; but difficult it was for the spirit to obey the command of the lips. She had gone through a great deal of late—not so much in actual hardship; she could bear that buoyantly; but little by little the oppression of the Land had heaped upon her and she felt a very little girl indeed. Something akin to self-compassion filled her being as she dwelled over the events of the past days: the sudden and thorough inefficiency of Mr. Wilson when it came to arranging for her departure; the long enervating wait for mythical carts, for carabaosthat did not come; then, after she had taken hold of things and the evasive Presidente, suddenly alacritous at the stamp of her foot, like a magician produced animals and vehicles by the dozen, the long ride to her station—the bumping and creaking of the ox-cart; the mud, the fearful bottomless mud; the miring in the rice lands, beneath the leaden sun, in the pestilential swamp; the miles paced slow as the crawl of an hour-hand while time slid by and the day died in gloomy splendour. And then the entry into the pueblo at midnight, amid the howl of dogs, the croak of frogs, the shrill concert of katydids; the dinner at the Presidente's, with this people of alien race, of dark skins, of incomprehensible tongue; the appalling lack of comfort, of cleanliness—and then the night: she would never forget it, that first night in Barang. Her cot had been placed in a big bare room. Through the torn roof she could see a lone star. There was rice stored in the corner of the room, and giant rats thundered over the loose planking, squealed and fought, while outside in the scum of the ditches the beasts of humidity shrilled in rasping clamour. Then the arising in the morning, weary to death, shrinking in fear at the thought of the first survey, in the inexorable sunlight, of the place which was to be her abode for twelve long months at least; and that first look—the wide, grass-dishevelled plaza withthe carabaos wallowing in the mud holes, the ponies dying of surra at their pickets, the leprous-walled, crumbling church across, the thousand leaning, rotting nipa shacks, the musty mountains steaming in the east.
Afterward she had had a pleasant surprise. A house had been engaged for her, the Presidente announced, by Don Francisco. She went right away to view it. It stood facing the plaza, pointed-roofed, post-elevated, between shimmering bananas, a new nipa hut, clean and strong. The ground beneath was white with powdered lime, a reassuring carbolicky odour hovered about and she was pleased by the chance for picturesque decoration offered by the rich, nut-brown nipa of the interior. But while she stood in the centre of the sala, planning, a muchacho in immaculate camisa stood before her. "Don Francisco has sent me to you; I am to be your servant," he said in the precise English of one carefully instructed. He proved a treasure, that boy. Then, pieces of furniture began to arrive one by one. She did not understand at first, but the owners, salaaming behind their sweating cargadores, explained that they were to be hers during her stay. She offered money; they refused. Don Francisco had asked them to do this; they were always glad to obey Don Francisco.
This was the third time in as many minutes that she had heard that name. When she was alone with Vincente, the new muchacho, she asked, "Who is your master?"
"You are to be my master," he answered in the tone of one who knows well his lesson.
"But who was your master; who sent you?"
"Don Francisco," he said.
"But who is Don Francisco?"
"Don Francisco; the Maestro," he answered, evidently astonished at her obtuse ignorance.
But she divined now and her cheeks flushed. It was the Maestro of Cantalacan. Wilson had introduced him as Mr. Tillman. "Don Francisco" was much better, she reflected.
She had set briskly to work at her installation. She accepted a few pieces of the proffered furniture—quaint old hand-carved things of incredibly heavy woods; she performed wonders with boxes and chintz; Isio mats enlivened the meerschaum of walls and ceiling, the few pictures and flags left of her college days were hung; red narra boards tied with golden abaca along the walls made a place for her books; a big square severe table, with her blotters, pads, ink-stands, pens, and pencils upon it, took an aspect inviting of studious hours. But when she rested and looked about her for the subtle feeling of cozinessand warmth which usually follows such toil, as it must to the birds who have built their nest, she found with consternation that it was not there—the feeling of intimacy, of home, was not there. She changed the petates, she moved the pictures, she hung orchids at the windows, arranged a panoply of native hats and spears over the door, fringed the grass-cloth portières. But it was useless. The feeling would not come. And she realised that it would never come; that all these efforts were puerilities before the great crushing assertion of the land—the grass-dishevelled plaza, the ruined church, glistening in the white sun, the palms, the steaming mountain, the brown populations; that before this tranquil, brooding, all-powerful Presence, all her little defenses of art and adornment shrivelled, dried into dust as cardboard toys in a furnace. It was like hiding behind leaves from God.
She turned to her work with an enfevered zeal. She found a tumble-down nipa shed where some twenty half-naked, half-starved, miserable little beings, herded every morning by the municipal police, gathered beneath the stick of a slovenly, dull-eyed man, with a gibberish of English—the native teacher appointed temporarily by the military government. The school supplies had not come yet; there were no charts, no books, no slates, no paper, no pencils. Thechildren squatted on the damp earth, crushed and apathetic.
"Well, I can at least love them," she said to herself.
It was easy for her to love children. She loved everything that was small—babies, kittens, puppies, birds; and flowers:—she called them baby-flowers when they were satisfyingly little. She taught the children trifles that did not amount to much; but beneath the tenderness of her presence these starved plants began to put forth blossoms. The dark eyes opened in wonder, softened in reverence. One day one of the little girls took her hand going home from school; and after that she was always followed by a dozen demure little maids that took her hand a few steps in turn. She taught the class a song, and since there was not much to do, in the dearth of what was needed, they often sang, in their low, plaintive notes, their eyes fixed upon her in mute adoration.
They called her Mathilda, and she thought it very sweet.
But still the Presence weighed upon her with its crushing, tranquil malevolence, its external signs the sun, white and ghastly, the mountains, steaming in mustiness, the fronds of palms, heavy, motionless, metallic. She felt the weight of it as of some physical thing there upon her breast; beneath it her sleepgrew torpid, her gestures languid, her eyelids drooped heavy upon the unfading blue beneath.
This day the obsession had been more poignant than ever. For in the morning she had found the schoolhouse deserted. Thecosechahad begun, and the children had all wandered off early to a big hacienda ten miles off to pick rice. The hours had dragged, long as death, empty as Infinity. And now she leaned, a little limply, at her window, between the dark behind and the dark before. "Cheer up," she chirped valiantly, but her heart would not answer.
Then, far down the road, consoling, familiar, she heard the soft pit-a-pat of hoofs. The sound neared, swelled, drummed in a crescendo that seemed to beat in her heart. Detaching itself suddenly from the shadow, as if of its tenuous substance, there appeared the vague form of a man in the saddle, pliant-waisted, broad-shouldered. A singular panic possessed her; she drew aside behind the wall and peered, her hands upon her breast. With a rattle of stone and a spark the horse stopped there in the darkness in front. The shadowy rider seemed to turn in the saddle; she felt his eyes scrutinising the darkened facade, the lightless windows. She panted. The horse champed resoundingly; her lips parted as if to speak.
Then, very distinct in the silence, she heard thedecided whirr of a quirt. The form in the saddle bent forward; the horse rose in a jump. For a second the shadow of horse and man rose and fell, then it plunged into the darkness of which it seemed a part. The drumming of hoofs sounded down the road, farther, fainter, became a mere vibration, ceased.
But she stood there listening long after sound had died. And when she moved off toward her little cot, it was very wearily, and upon it she collapsed very suddenly.
She knew what was the matter with her now. She was lonely; God, how lonely!