"I-couldn't-help-it" air of a young dog whose inherited tendencies have
proved too strong for his acquired characteristics. The officers looked
at each other blankly.
"Well," said Roberts, "we ought to hold 'em here, sure."
"Hold them!" screeched the Commandant. "Why, blank, blankety, blank,
blank, these forsaken, evil-parented, divinity-doomed curs should drive
the measly, meanly-pedigreed carabao thieves clean off this evil earth.
Why, doom my soul----"
"Well, let's see about it," said Roberts, briskly, while his superior
choked in a befuddlement of rage.
He ran up the gallery steps to one of the six great windows which
overlooked the plaza. He peered out guardedly, then with more
confidence; his nose went out, then his head; his shoulders followed,
his whole bust, and he was standing in the opening, his whole wide area
in full view. His lower jaw hung in limp astonishment.
For what he saw was not at all what he had expected to see.
The Dios-Dios men were not surrounding the church. For some inexplicable
reason they had stopped at the ditch. From his elevated position the
Lieutenant could see them inside the trench, huddled like fish in a
basket. Their fine ardour had singularly cooled. Grovellingly they
flattened themselves at the bottom of the ditch, fighting for the
underneath position, squirming in such convulsions as are ascribed to a
certain gentleman of mediaeval legends when sprinkled with holy water.
And when Roberts searched for some possible explanation, a fresh
surprise puckered his lips in a low whistle. For, strewn over a space
extending some fifty yards on the near side of the trench, there were
six or seven bodies lying face downward, with arms outstretched toward
the church. The Dios-Dios men had not stopped at the trench; they had
passed it and had been driven back to it by some mysterious catastrophe.
Among the bodies Roberts recognised that of the big epileptic leader of
the charge, his gory standard a red spot in a bunch of cogon.
The movements in the trench were increasing in vehemence. Suddenly
Roberts knew the cause. To his ears, inattentive from the very intensity
of his visual observation, there now came a significant sound. At
regular, business-like intervals the sharp ping-ing of a Mauser carbine
split the air, dying off in a long-drawn whistle. The Lieutenant
succeeded in locating the sound. It came from a deserted hut--seemingly
from its roof--at the upper end of the ditch.
The thing was clear now. The mysterious sharpshooter had the Dios-Dios
men enfiladed. And the movements in the ditch were not all actuated by
search for shelter. They were convulsive somersaults; stiff hands
clutched at earth and grass. A little red stream began to trickle out of
the lower end of the ditch.
The Dios-Dios men were becoming demoralised. The report of a Mauser is
difficult to locate to the most experienced; to the fanatics the thing
was impalpable mystery. And the plaza was deserted. If there had been
only some human presence to rekindle their rage, they might have gone on
in their mad race. But there was nothing. The Scouts were secure in the
big stone church. The long, flat plaza was dead; the sun dripped into
craniums like molten lead, and from the nowhere hailed the weird
missiles, shattering arms, puncturing bodies, bursting open heads. One
man crawled back, two followed, ten in a bunch, and in another minute
the tall grass was all alive with sinuous movements and there was nobody
in the trench, nothing except limp heaps of what looked like cast-off
clothing.
The door of the hut marked by Roberts flew open as if by explosion and
the Maestro burst out, a smoking gun in his right hand, a revolver in
his left, another revolver and a bolo in his belt. With a piratical yell
he raced across the plaza, his long legs working smooth as well-greased
machinery, his red hair flying behind him. When midway along the trench
he leaped upon a mound left by the excavators and stretched out in bold
relief. A strange war-cry, beginning with something about some husky
wow-wow (whoever he might be), passing on to a no less interesting fact
about a whisky wee-wee, rising through a tremulous crescendo about some
sort of a yah, and culminating in a long, shrill whoop, reverberated
atrociously over the deserted battlefield. Then the gun that had waved
through these vocal convulsions dropped back to the Maestro's shoulder,
and a rapid fusilade gave a pronounced accentuation to the waving of the
grass along the line of smouldering nipa-huts.
Roberts tried to dodge away from the window, but he was too late. The
Maestro, through with his flourish, had turned and spied him. Roberts
could see the tooth-lacking mouth agape in a broad grin. The Maestro
waved his hand amiably. "Come on," said the gesture, reassuringly. "Come
on; it's all right now." A violent blush rose to the officer's face.
But he had not time for self-analysis. Along the ruins, at the farther
edge of the plaza, the Dios-Dios men were reforming. The panic-stricken
groups were being coalesced in a triple line, and between these lines a
strange being, in a long robe and incongruous helmet, was slowly passing
in weird ceremony. It was the Mad Pope himself. He was locking the lines
hand in hand. As he passed before his followers, each took his bolo
between his teeth and grasped the hand of the man to the right; and over
the clasp the illumined leader made the sign of the cross. It was
grotesque, but not laughable. The puerility of garb and ceremonial was
lost in the significance of the result. The Dios-Dios hysteria flamed
anew. It was as if a monkey had invoked the Death Angel and the Death
Angel had answered.
Roberts was leaving the window in haste when his last sweeping glance
over the plaza froze him again in attention.
It seemed to him that the red rag which signalled the position of the
leader of the first charge had moved. It seemed nearer, fully ten paces
nearer, to the ditch than when he had first espied it. And now, even as
he looked, the thing advanced sinuously and a bronze body glistened
between the bunches of grass in a rapid crawl of ten feet or more toward
the unconscious schoolmaster who, with his back to the subtle danger,
was now watching alertly ahead.
The Lieutenant's hands went to his mouth in a warning halloo.
"Hey, there," he shouted, "look out in back there. In back, in back."
But the Maestro did not understand. The word "back," which he caught,
was not to his liking.
"Oh, hell!" floated back the irreverent answer. "_I'm_ all right. Come
on, you fellows. _I'll_ hold them."
Roberts desisted. There was no time for further dialogue. The Dios-Dios
lines were beginning to move forward. And besides, at that particular
moment, the Lieutenant did not care much what happened to the amiable
pedagogue. He clattered downstairs.
The men were lined up, blinking before the flashes of Hafner's sword and
language. The doors were thrown open and the company rushed out. Almost
at the same time, from the other side of the plaza, the triple line of
hand-locked fanatics began to move forward.
It was a race for the ditch and the Maestro, and a comfortable one,
seemingly, for the Scouts, who had but half of the distance to go. But
Roberts, through with the temporary vexation caused by the Maestro's
peculiar ways, led his men at a furious pace. His sword in his left
hand, his revolver in his right, his whole big frame vibrating with the
effort, he raced ahead with an energy that seemed very unnecessary to
Hafner, who, puffing, was falling farther and farther behind. For the
Dios-Dios men were being seriously hampered in their advance. The Papa's
hand-locked formation doubtless had its advantages morally, but it had
also its disadvantages materially. The Maestro's carbine was working
busily, and soon there were dents in the Dios-Dios lines, and some of
the handclasps were strong with the tenacity not of life, but of death.
The Scouts had the race well in hand, but still Roberts tugged ahead,
snarling with the effort. Behind the Maestro he could see a tell-tale
undulation of the high grass, nearer and nearer. He was only a few yards
from the trench now. Suddenly a panther-lithe form bounded from the
ground behind the schoolmaster and a big black man with upraised arms,
terminating in a kriss, stood out in relief. Roberts's revolver spit.
The black arms whizzed down with a velocity hardly lessened by the
limpness of death. There was a dull thud; the schoolmaster rolled
slowly into the ditch, and the big black man pitched headlong down upon
him.
"By ----, too bad," muttered Roberts, and then his revolver spluttered.
The situation was not bad. The Scouts had gained the trench in good
time. Bunched together and firing by platoon, they were doing better.
The Dios-Dios line received each volley with a shivering bow, and if
this involuntary courtesy proved the firing to be still too high, it no
less showed that it was at least within whistling distance. The ardour
of the advance waned gradually; at last the lines stopped in indecision.
The more rabid fanatics were still tugging forward, the others were
holding back, and the lines vibrated between the two impulses without
advancing. It was the psychological moment.
"Time for a charge, eh?" Roberts shouted, turning to his superior.
But that gentleman was sleeping quietly, his face in the grass, and a
shivered lance-handle by his side.
"With the bayonet--charge!" bellowed Roberts, taking command.
He took a few steps in advance and found himself alone. The Scouts were
satisfied with their position; they settled a little deeper in the
trench and peppered away valiantly.
"Charge, darn you, charge!" screeched Roberts, pricking the nearest men
with his sword.
But the few minutes of oral instruction upon charging, given in the
church, proved inadequate. Three or four--those who had come in closest
contact with Roberts's persuasion--started out convulsively, took a few
steps, and suddenly flopped back into the ditch like frogs into a
puddle.
The Dios-Dios lines were stiffening now. With the Maestro's rifle quiet,
their immunity from punishment was encouraging. Back of them, upright on
a mound, the pseudo-sainted form of Papa Isio stood with arms stretched
to heaven in fervent exhortation. The more valiant began to prevail. The
lines began to move forward again.
"Oh, Lord," groaned Roberts, "if the little skunks would only charge."
And then from the depths of the trench there slowly emerged a strange,
inchoate, human thing. As it rose it segregated; one half of it fell off
in a big black, limp body. The rest continued unfolding, up and up, till
finally it stood in full view, a weird, bloody, red-haired, dishevelled
spectre. It tottered unsteadily on the talus and then a shrill,
unearthly voice quavered:
"Five, twenty-four, six X!"
There was a movement in the trench.
"Five, twenty-four, six X!" again wailed the lamentable voice.
A little group of men sprang out of the trench and charged in a V a-down
the square; the rest of the company poured out in helter-skelter
pursuit. Before this incongruous advance the Dios-Dios lines, who had
seen enough miracles for one day, broke, turned, and fled. A small body
held their ground, and the Scouts struck them with a crumpling crash.
For three minutes it was bayonet against bolo, and Roberts's revolver
turned the scales. In another minute the plaza was cleared and the last
of Papa Isio's forces were disappearing among the burned huts with
bayonets at their backs.
* * * * *
When Roberts returned with his elated soldiers he found the pueblo
occupied by a detachment sent from Bago. A stretcher was starting on a
tour of the field, but Roberts ran ahead of it to the centre of the
plaza.
His attention had been caught by a vague movement there. Through the
high grass he could see something struggling and bounding in sudden,
sharp movement.
It was the inevitable Maestro. He was on top of Hafner, who also had
come back to life, and was "kneeing" him with characteristic enthusiasm.
"Mr. Referee," screamed the gentle educator, when he had been pulled
away by Roberts, aided by a corporal's squad; "Mr. Referee, he crawled
after you blew the whistle! Put that ball back, you scalawag. Our ball!"
Then he fainted, which, considering the day's work, was about the proper
thing to do.
III
HER READING
Out over Mariveles the sun had set in sombre splendour. A velvet pall of
darkness had fallen upon the earth like a conclusion; but the waters of
the bay still glowed, glowed with a light that was not reflected, but
floated up from within--a luminous exhalation, as it were, from the
mysterious depths--a dark purplish light that should not have been,
which astonished the soul and was sinister. Someone on the veranda
mentioned Morton. The short, idle sentence split the peace of the moment
like an electric spark. And the silence that immediately engulfed it was
not as the silence that had been before; it was a silence full of
unrest, of vague spiritual heavings and stirrings, of tumult invisible,
unheard, impalpable and yet felt, poignantly felt, in some immaterial
way, as is felt at sea the surge of waters through the impenetrability
of the mists. It was such a silence as always followed the invocation of
the man; for his case was one which filled us with inward clamour and
questioning, and yet pinned us beneath the weight of some indefinable
oppression.
But Courtland began to speak, and we leaned forward, intent, knowing
that he must understand. Yet his first words were a confession of doubt,
of that same inability to pierce the depths of the thing and pass
sentence which exasperated us all vaguely.
"I don't know if I understand--yet," he began, slowly. "I've stared and
stared at it--and yet--I don't know. Sometimes I think I understand--a
little more every day--and yet----"
His voice had droned off gradually. A heavy torpor descended from the
low sky. Far out lights flared up, red, dishevelled lights that bounded
and leaped, up and down, to and fro, in frenzied dance. The Tagal
fishermen were calling the fish with their alluring flames; the soft,
insistent tapping of their paddles upon the flanks of their canoes came
to our ears like hypnotic suggestion. They began to shout, a mad medley
of yells that wavered, broke, began again and at last welded in one
long, quavering cry full of incomprehensible desolation.
And Courtland's voice bassed forth again, with unexpected steadiness.
"It isn't the fall of him that's difficult; that's easy, too easy--we
see so much of it. But the redemption--unless we go back to the old
explanation, puerile to us complicated moderns, perhaps from its very
obviousness--the old theory of purification through suffering. But you
know, there're the others, that suffered, too; and they----. And then
there is She. She is the mystery, the holy mystery. Before her she had
his soul, legible to her like a book. And the leaves wear a smear of mud
and blood. And yet what did she read? Out of these defiled pages, what
fact did she grasp as the All-Important?"
We listened, patiently waiting, waiting for the word, the solution.
"You remember him--a tall, dark, aquiline man, with something Indian in
his features, and efficiency written in every muscle-play of his
magnificent body. A strong man, you would remark at first sight, a
strong man, physically and morally. Bah!--the strength of man--a phrase,
words, bubble! He had the body, the jaw, the presence--a mere shell. The
weakness was there, anyhow, some little spot of blight within, I don't
know just what; it might have been a touch of the romantic merely--that
glowed sometimes in the liquidity of his brown eyes.
"He was one of life's fortunates, too. Belonged to a good family in the
States--New Englanders, reputable and cold and narrow, stiff with
rectitude as their own rock-ribbed coasts. Well educated, had gone to
college, had played football, et cetera. Well, he came over here with
the Volunteers. Easy to read after that. First, fervent, romantic
patriotism, then mad exasperation, then mere cold cynical brutality.
Two years of loosening of fiber in the promiscuity of camp, of reversion
to type in butchery of field. When the Volunteers returned, he did not
go with them. The tropics had him by that time, had penetrated his heart
with their pernicious charm--the charm of their languorous amorality,
the charm of power:--we whites here, as in some insane asylums, we're
all kings. He stayed.
"He went into the Constabulary, behaved rather well there, too. When I
first saw him he had just returned from an expedition and his name was
in all mouths. His command had proved faithless, and he had fought his
way back, through enemy and friend, through incredible suffering. It was
fine--but it was the shell. Inside was the spot of blight. And it began
to spread, by imperceptible degrees. You could hardly see the progress,
you know--only by taking periods far apart, and then it hit you with a
shock. Finally he was at the last step--you know the step I mean, the
last one.
"You could tell it by an exaggeration of outer form, of outer
cleanliness, by a stiffening, as it were, of the shell. The whiteness of
his suits became extraordinary; they glistened with starch; they
buttoned up to the ears. He flourished his swagger stick like a general;
at the club he bore himself with aggressive stiffness, with a febrile
hauteur that challenged the world.
"I suppose it wasn't all corrosion of moral fiber. Perhaps that
deplorable touch of romance in the man was partly responsible. You
know--love, free, untrammelled love, in the tropics, beneath the palms;
between the cynical, blase, complicated man of civilisation and the
maid, the charming, ingenuous maiden, half savage, half child--a
miserable hodge-podge vision of love, spices, bananas, bamboos, coral
reefs----
"I stumbled upon the establishment by chance. It was cholera time; I had
been detailed as inspector. It was very sordid, really. No hut beneath
the palms; two rooms in the Walled City. Disorder, untidiness, moral
lassitude there. No wonder he stiffened up outside. And she was not even
pretty. Her eyes, slightly oblique, were closely set together, which
gave her an extraordinary calculating air. While he romanced--I suppose
that he did; I hope that he did--she seemed counting, ceaselessly
counting the Mex. that might come to her out of that affair. The only
redeeming thing that I saw--redeeming, I mean, from a purely plastic
standpoint--was a beautiful, liquid-eyed child they had there--her
sister. You catch my distinction. It wasn't at all redeeming from
another point of view--that child there in the shame of their lives.
Everything else might have been pardonable--but that----
"After a while even the outer shell began to show it. His white suits
lost their impeccability; often he left the upper button open. Sometimes
he wore his khaki without leggings. He didn't shave often enough. A
vague sordidness began to creep over him like mould.
"He drank. Not steadily; but about once a week he marched into the club
with his hostile swagger (mind you, the swagger was all against himself;
nobody knew of his situation; he did not know that I knew); he sat down
resolutely at one of the tables and called for drink after drink, which
he swallowed with the same strange, decided, inflexible manner, as if he
were doing something of absolute importance, something that he must do
in spite of the world, in spite of himself. He kept that up, a frown
between his eyes as if from tremendous mental effort, hour after hour,
sometimes till the whiteness of dawn. Then he rose suddenly, clicked his
heels together, and stalked off, seemingly unaffected.
"One evening, as he came in thus, I was sitting alone on the veranda. He
gave me a casual glance, walked straight on a few steps, then, swerving
suddenly, settled in the seat next to mine. He said nothing at first,
just sat there, a black bar between his eyes, seizing glass after glass
which the muchachos, by that time well trained, ran up to him. Then he
began to speak.
"He spoke about Her! Of course, at that time I did not know of her
existence. I was bewildered; I thought he spoke of the other one, the
one in the Walled City. Then as I understood, I was shocked as by a
desecration.
"'It's four years ago, Courtland, that I told her good-by,' he said,
soberly, leaning over and placing a hand upon my knee. 'She was in the
garden, in the dew of the morning, and she was picking roses.'
"He was silent a long time. I was dumb, astounded; a sense of sacrilege
filled my being. He began again:
"'Her eyes are green, Courtland, green like the sea. And she can read
into my soul, Courtland, right into my soul!'
"Another period of silence, and then:
"'"I am yours; whenever you need me I shall come to you." That is what
she said.'
"He jerked forward over the table, his head in his hands. A horrible
spiritual discomfort crept into me. I didn't want to hear about it; I
didn't! I wanted to hush him, push my hand against that blasphemous
mouth----
"'And I left her in the garden, in the dew of the morning, among the
roses!'
"He rose stiffly, drew his hands from his face, down to his sides, as if
with great effort, squared his shoulders, snapped his heels together,
and marched off as he had come in.
"Thus I first saw her, and always after saw her, in indelible picture--a
frail young girl, of eyes with the sea-glint in them, picking roses in
the dewy morning. Roses!--thousands of them--red and white and yellow;
they are at her feet, at her sides, above her; their petals are in her
hair, their incense is about her like an adoration.
"I saw him off and on after that, but he never mentioned her again--for
which I was thankful. The disintegration was going on. Those black
periods of revolt were less frequent now. Professionally he was still
strong, had had the honour of being placed on the Katipunan's blacklist,
the honour of carrying proudly, like an iron corselet, an exterior of
cold indifference above the inward tension of every moment.
"And then came that night.
"Yes, that's the night, the night of which you all know something. But I
know more; he told me everything, that one time he talked, his lips
unsealed in a burst of hysteria.
"He awoke, that night, smothered beneath the black weight of some
indefinite discomfort. Instinctively his right hand slipped beneath his
pillow and closed upon the Mauser pistol; but when he had lived thus a
full minute, his fingers clutched about the stock, his breath convulsive
in his throat, he slowly released the weapon with a sigh that was not
relief. For it was not from the Katipunan warning that came this vague
oppression that through his sleep had wrapped him as in a shroud; it was
something deeper, more subtle and more intimate; it was interfibred with
his innermost being, and it was torture.
"He fought the haunting thing. It was a terrible night. The heat lay
upon him like a catafalque. The enfevering rumour of moat-born gnats
clung to the netting surrounding him; from the patio-hall there came the
weary cough of a muchacho, stretched in his toil-damp clothes upon the
polished floor. Outside, between the conch-shell shutters of the veranda
the horizon was luminous with the moon; a beam stole into the steaming
darkness of the room. It flashed up the mosquito bar into shimmering
vapour; blandly it began a pointing-out of details, the inexorable
details of his life's vulgarity. A nausea shook his being; he slipped to
the floor and out to the balcony.
"Beneath the moon Manila was agleam. The whole firmament was liquid with
the light; it poured down like luminous rain, slid in cascades over the
church domes, the tin roofs, the metallic palms, till the whole earth
shimmered back to the skies. In the entire city only one spot
gloomed--the old fort, mysterious and pestilential with its black oozing
walls, its fever-belting moat; but beyond it, as if in exasperation at
this stubborn nonconformity, the brightness broke out again triumphant
in the glimmering sheen of the bay.