Caybigan Part 16

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 gra.s.s. 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 pa.s.sed 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-abas.e.m.e.nt. He lived on his harmless life:--by day the uncongenial task; the maudlin 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-compa.s.sion.

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, were _cleaning out_ barrios. This particular barrio was a miserable a.s.semblage 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 s.h.i.+mmered; 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 cus.h.i.+oned 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 spectators remained banked in immobility. Only, their eyes opened wider and their pupils gleamed.

Then I saw d.i.c.kson. He was walking toward the furnace, his right shoulder pushed forward, his body flattened apologetically, begging pa.s.sage 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 m.u.f.fled, dripping, inchoate figure was stumbling into the outer circle of light. I sprang forward; I tore off the dripping mantle, and there was d.i.c.kson, 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 calm explanation. 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, m.u.f.fling 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 pa.s.sed the Parian gate, he said: "Come on; let's go to the Metropole."

"No, you don't," I said, briskly. "You're going straight 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 d.i.c.kson 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 pa.s.sing, as it were. A reception was announced at the Malicanan.

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, b.u.t.toning 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 ma.s.sed 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 d.i.c.kson, and his face in the light showed shockingly haggard. I don't think he knew me at first. 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 G.o.d!"

"She," I repeated, stupidly; "who is _she_?"

"Mrs. Jenkinson," he gasped; "good G.o.d, 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 d.i.c.kson 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 door and 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 la.s.situde, as those of a child after crying; his mouth, a little open, let pa.s.s 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 G.o.ds had had their jest.

VIII

THE COMING OF THE MAESTRA

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 bl.u.s.tering stubbornness, and at length they had 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, pa.s.sage once a week.

"d.a.m.n!" said the Maestro, as his foot struck the sand. "d.a.m.n! 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 carca.s.s 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 cla.s.sed 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 did not rise and go home, where he could have spent a very profitable hour changing his bedraggled garments and was.h.i.+ng 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 s.h.i.+p itself would burst into view past the upper end, and stand for sh.o.r.e. And then----