back. He peered into the room of infamy, peered at the bed, rising black
and monumental in the farther depths, at the heaps of clothing here and
there in cynical promiscuity, at the pile of greasy cooking utensils
upon the stand, at the whole ensemble of disorder, weakness, moral
lassitude. Passionlessly the light was sweeping all this, plucking out
of the shadow one by one the detestable details. It stole toward the
right wall, fell upon a cot, and from it there emerged a white little
form that came hesitatingly to him. It was Magdalena, the child, the
sister of Maria.
"She had been with them long. But now, suddenly, her presence there, in
that atmosphere of sin, struck him with a great shock.
"'Back,' he whispered; 'back to bed, chiquita; it's time to be
sleeping.'
"But she wanted something--a lock of his hair. Maria had one; she wanted
one also.
"He remembered that she had asked this before, with childish insistence.
He had not given much attention to it. And really, in all probability,
it was mere childish whim. But now the thing staggered him, like
something monstrous. Who could tell what there was in the mind of that
child, with great wonder-eyes open to the shamelessness of his life. He
chided her harshly and sent her scampering back to her bed.
"Then, turning his back upon the room, upon all this sordid misery, he
looked out upon the waters. And a ship, a white army transport, was
coming in. Slowly it glided between the ghostlike silhouettes of vessels
at anchor; it turned ponderously; there was a splash of phosphorescence
at the bow, a running clang of chain through hawse. He did not know what
that craft held for him, ah, no! You know, don't you? He did not; but
suddenly his whole spiritual being tugged within him, sprang back the
long, solitary path of the ship, back across the moonlit bay, past
Corregidor, out into the sea, along the foamy track, back miles in
thousands to a harder, cleaner land, to a little California town
embowered in scented hills, and it threw itself at the feet of a
girl--the girl he had left among the roses, whose eyes could read into
his soul.
"The moon went out behind a cloud. He had slid to the floor and lay
there, his head upon his arm. Then--he told me that later--he heard
somebody hickup, hickup hard, metallically. After a while he discovered
that it was he. He was sobbing. And long in the enfevered darkness there
pulsed that strange, hard hickup of the man with the iron hand of woe
upon his throat.
"He must have fallen asleep at last; when he awoke again a sense of
danger weighed upon his whole body like lead. He was stretched full
length, his face downward upon his arms, and although he did not turn
his head to see, he knew that it was dark, pitch dark. It seemed to him
that a moment ago something cold and steely had touched his temple.
"He lay thus, it seemed to him a long time, motionless, while his
heart-pulse rose in crescendo till it almost suffocated him. For to his
ears, along the sound-conducting floor, there came a faint, soft rustle
of something, somebody crawling. A mad desire to rise, shout, attack,
break the silent horror of the moment, thrilled him, but fear laid its
cold, paralysing hand upon him, and he could not move.
"Suddenly the spell was broken. A click as of a knife falling from the
hand of an assassin to the floor shot the blood through his veins as by
chemical reaction. With a shout he had sprung to his feet, darted across
the room, and seized the Mauser beneath his pillow. He turned his eyes
upon the floor and in the center caught sight of a vague, crouching
form. A shot rang into his ears, vibrated in pain along each of his
nerves, and then he was leaning back against the bed-post, limp and
cold, sick with the sense of mistake, mistake hideous and irretrievable.
"He stayed there, against the bed-post, limp and cold, his eyes
straining through the darkness at the vague huddle in the centre of the
room. He knew that Maria had awakened with a scream, that she had struck
a light, that she was bending over the nameless thing, and he felt a
strange relief as her broad back hid it from view. But she returned
toward him, and put her dilated eyes, her brown face, fear-spotted, near
his own, and she whispered, hoarsely, 'Magdalena!'
"But this was only confirmation of what his whole being was crying to
him, and he was busy listening to something else, listening to the crack
of a Mauser pistol tearing through his brain, and then springing out
into the silent night, echoing, swelling, thundering in fierce crescendo
down the hushed streets, reverberated from wall to wall, rushing, a
tidal wave of sound, into every house and nook and crevice, shouting,
proclaiming, shrieking with its iron voice the story of his life, of his
degradation, till the whole city, ringing from the call, hurled it on
and on across the sea into Her ears, the heralding trumpet-call of his
dishonour, of his fall, of his degradation.
"But Maria was speaking. 'Hush,' she whispered; 'do not tell. We can
hide. Martinez will help us. To-morrow we'll bury her. It's the cholera;
the health men will believe you; nobody will look close.'
"Together they went back to the spot. Kneeling low, he gathered the
little girl up in his arms. Something fell with a steely clang to the
floor. He picked it up; it was a pair of scissors. Something eddied down
slowly from her other hand; it was a lock of his own hair. He stood
there, with the limp little body in his arms, stupid with the sudden
vision of the trap set for him, the trap of retributive Fate, its
appalling simplicity of means, its atrocity of result. But he must act.
Hurriedly seizing his old, moth-eaten, army overcoat, he began to button
it upon himself. Maria was talking again.
"'Hush,' she said; 'do not tell. We can hide. Martinez will help us.
We'll bury her to-morrow. It's the cholera. The health men will believe
you; and nobody will dare look close.'
"He stopped, with his hand upon the last brass button, his head bent to
one side, listening to the insidious murmur. And he knew that it was
true, hellishly true. The great stricken city, hypnotised with its fear,
was indifferent to everything else. The whole thing could be hidden,
buried, annihilated. Then he saw himself again as he had been earlier in
the night, standing in the moonlight of the balcony, peering into the
room, into the depths of his degradation. 'No, no, enough, enough!' he
snarled. And, seizing the little body with its possible spark of life,
he rushed out into the street.
"The dawn was breaking. Bareheaded, barefooted, he raced silently along
the endless, narrow streets. He passed long files of white-garbed
men--the cigar-makers on the way to the factories; they scattered before
him in fear. The naked muchachos were galloping their ponies to the
beach for their morning bath; they circled wide as they came upon him.
At a plaza he tried to hail a carromata, but the cochero whipped up his
horse in a frenzy of distrust. It was cholera time, and cold egoism
ruled the city. He told me of it, that one time. 'I was alone,
Courtland, alone, alone. None would near me, none would hear me. They
fled, they fled. I was alone, alone with my crime in my arms, with my
story in my arms, the story of my life, of my degradation; alone,
Courtland, with my temptation, my _temptation_, Courtland----' A vacuum
formed about him as he raced on, cutting his feet upon the stones,
panting with the physical effort and the spiritual horror, on and on
through narrow streets long as death. He came to a quay, a silent, dark
place in the shadow of the city wall, and there his temptation slowed
him up. Maria was right. It was cholera time; the great amoral city was
indifferent to everything else. The little body with its possible spark
of life--this infinitesimal possibility which demanded of him such
stupendous self-immolation--could be dropped quietly into the river, to
stream out there into the unfathomable secret of the bay. And She would
never know. She would never know!
"She! He saw her as he had left her, in the garden, in the dewy morning.
Her eyes were steadily upon him. 'Enough! Enough!' he cried, with a
growl, as that of a wild beast.
"He passed along a crooked bridge. At the end a big Metropolitan
policeman stepped to him with a question, but he rushed past with a
vague muttering. The policeman hesitated a moment, then followed; and
behind the patter of the bare feet the heavy boots echoed, pounding in
patient pursuit. At last he stood beneath the pale, sputtering light of
the hospital porch, striking feverishly at the great doors. They opened
before him and he entered, the policeman at his heels. A man took his
burden quickly as he sank on the bench, and disappeared through a small
door at the end of the hall. A gong clanged twice in quick succession,
then once more, and as if in answer two white-jacketed men came down the
stairs, passed across the hall, and vanished into the room where the
first man had gone. A silence fell over the place. The big clock against
the staircase ticked resoundingly. The policeman leaned back against the
wall and examined the man huddled there upon the bench with curious
glance.
"After a time long as eternity, one of the white-jacketed men came out
into the hall and stood in front of Morton. Morton looked up at him in a
great question, but the man did not seem to see it.
"'Er, er,' he drawled, as if embarrassed. Then suddenly, 'Who shot her?'
"'I did,' answered Morton.
"'Er, er--with what?'
"'Mauser--pistol--thirty-eight.'
"'Yes, yes,' acquiesced the man. 'And how old did you say she was?'
"'For Christ's sake,' broke out Morton, in sudden cry; 'how is she; is
she dead; is there any hope?'
"'Why, yes; of course, she is dead,' answered the man, as if shocked
that there should be any doubt about it. Then he turned to the
policeman, as if saying, 'I've done my part; the rest belongs to you.'
"But Morton had risen, stiffened with the vision of what there was left
for him to do.
"'I'm Morton,' he said to the policeman; 'second-class Inspector, Luzon
Constabulary. I did the shooting. It was a mistake. I'm going to my room
to dress; then I'll report to my chief; and after that I'll surrender
myself to the Metropolitan Police. You can follow if you wish.'
"The policeman hesitated a moment, subjugated by the man's manner. 'It's
all right,' he said; 'you can go; I'll telephone to headquarters.'
"And as Morton went out he saw the policeman step to the telephone-box
at the end of the hall. And he knew that with the puerile, nasal voice
of the wire the heralding had begun.
"Outside, the sun was already pouring its bitterness upon
the gleaming city, and the streets were fermenting with feverish
humanity--white-garbed men, hurrying to the factories, bright-camisaed
women going to the market with baskets upon their heads, naked-busted
cargadores with gleaming muscles. Morton plunged ahead through the
throng, which broke before him with sullen acquiescence to the right of
the strong. The exaltation of the night had given place to a strange
stupor. His head wabbled on his shoulders, empty as a sleighbell, and a
great weariness was in his limbs. Slowly he retraced the long course of
the night through the indifferent crowds. He met only one white man that
he knew, in a narrow, disreputable alley. The man stopped him,
astonished.
"'What are you doing in a place like this?' he asked. 'You forget you're
on the Katipunan. You're liable to get hurt.'
"'Hurt?' Morton laughed in his face and left him standing there
bewildered. At last he entered the patio of his house. Everything was as
usual. The cocheros were washing down their carromatas preparatory to
going out; the muchachos were galloping back, their ponies' flanks
gleaming with salt water. No one gave him a glance as he went upstairs
to his room.
"He entered it without a tremor and looked stupidly about him. The place
reeked with the sordid disorder of every morning; of the sudden horror
of the night there was only one sign--a blanket had been thrown
carelessly over a certain spot in the centre of the room. He turned to
his clothes-chest and began to dress. He worked slowly, losing time on
unimportant details. It took him a long time to choose the white suit
that he would wear amid the dozen that he spread on the bed, and then he
was still longer putting in the buttons. When he was dressed he noticed
that he had to shave, and called for his boy. The boy did not come, and
then he saw that several familiar objects were missing from the room. He
opened Maria's drawer; it was empty. She had gone, and probably taken
the boy with her. He lit the coal-oil stove upon the cooking-stand,
heated water, and shaved. Finally he was ready. He went downstairs,
jumped into a carromata that was just rattling out of the court, and
drove to the Intendencia.
"The Chief let him into his inner office immediately. Looking down upon
his superior seated at his desk, Morton told the night's story in dry,
monotonous manner, as a story told already a hundred times, and he
noticed, as he talked, that the Chief knew already all about it, but was
too polite to interrupt. When he had done, the Chief spoke.
"'Yes,' he said; 'it's too bad, too bad. But you must brace up, take it
like a man. We all live differently here than we would at home, and
things like that are liable to happen. Yes, it's too bad. You must brace
up.'
"He stopped, then went on again. 'It's too bad, too bad. I
suppose--er--that you are going to surrender yourself to the
Metropolitan. Mere matter of form, of course----'
"'Yes,' said Morton, wearily. He turned to go. The Chief was speaking
again.
"'By the way,' he was saying, his eyes close together in a perplexed
frown; 'somebody has been here for you this morning, several times, yes,
several times. I--you----'
"But Morton, after standing politely a moment without hearing, had gone
out, leaving the Chief frowning perplexedly at his desk. He went through
the corridor, into the outer office, and then----
"I was there. That part he did not tell me. I came in behind him (I was
following him with I don't know what notion of comfort). I saw him stop
suddenly. A woman stood before him.
"It was She. I knew her right away, the pale, sweet girl, the girl of
the roses. She was standing before him; and her eyes, the eyes with the
sea-glint in them, were plunging into his soul. He did not shrink; he
stood there before her, his eyes in hers, his shoulders thrown back, his
arms hanging limp down his sides, with palms turned outward in a gesture
of utter surrender. Long, gravely she read the soul laid bare before
her. Suddenly she started back, one, two steps, heavy, falling steps; as
at the same higher command he also backed, one, two steps, heavy,
falling steps. His head dropped to his chest, his eyes closed. I
panted.
"With an imperceptible movement she glided forward again. His eyes
opened. She laid her right hand upon his shoulder.
"'You have suffered,' she said.
* * * * *
"And there you are!"
The darkness had deepened; Courtland was invisible; but we could picture
the gesture--a wide sweep of the arm outward, ending in a discouraged
droop. "I've explained nothing, pointed out nothing, merely retold it to
you as I repeat and repeat it to myself, merely to have at which to
stare and stare. And it always ends in this: I see her again, always; I
see her glide to him, note the sweet gravity of her gesture, the
tremulous profundity of her glance. I hear that phrase, that holy,
incomprehensible phrase. And I wonder, I wonder, that's all; and an awe
seizes me, bends me down low, as if before something big, terrible, and
infinitely sacred."
IV
THE STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPH OF ISIDRO DE LOS MAESTROS
I--FACE TO FACE WITH THE FOE
Returning to his own town, after a morning spent in "working up" the
attendance of one of his far and recalcitrant barrio-schools, the
Maestro of Balangilang was swaying with relaxed muscle and half-closed
eyes to the allegretto trot of his little native pony, when he pulled up
with a start, wide awake and all his senses on the alert. Through his
somnolence, at first in a low hum, but fast rising in a fiendish
crescendo, there had come a buzzing sound, much like that of one of the
sawmills of his California forests, and now, as he sat in the saddle,
erect and tense, the thing ripped the air in ragged tear, shrieked
vibrating into his ear, and finished its course along his spine in
delicious irritation.
"Oh, where am I?" murmured the Maestro, blinking; but between blinks he
caught the flashing green of the palay fields and knew that he was far
from the sawmills of the Golden State. So he raised his nose to heaven,
and there, afloat above him in the serene blue, was the explanation. It
was a kite, a great locust-shaped kite, darting and swooping in the hot
monsoon, and from it, dropping plumb, came the abominable clamour.
"Aha!" exclaimed the Maestro, pointing accusingly at the thin line
vaguely visible against the skyline in a diagonal running from the kite
above him to a point ahead in the road. "Aha! there's something at the
end of that; there's Attendance at the end of that!"
With which significant remark he leaned forward in the saddle, bringing
his switch down with a whizz behind him. The pony gave three rabbit
leaps and then settled down to his drumming little trot. As they
advanced, the line overhead dropped gradually. Finally the Maestro had
to swerve the horse aside to save his helmet. He pulled up to a walk,
and, a few yards further, came to the spot where string met earth in the
expected Attendance.
The Attendance was sitting on the ground, his legs spread before him in
an angle of forty-five degrees, each foot arched in a secure grip of a
bunch of cogon grass. These legs were bare as far up as they went, and,
in fact, no trace of clothing was reached until the eye met the lower
fringe of an indescribable undershirt modestly veiling the upper half
of a rotund little paunch; an indescribable undershirt, truly, for
observation could not reach the thing itself, but only the dirt
incrusting it so that it hung together, rigid as a knight's iron
corselet, in spite of monstrous tears and rents. Between the teeth of
the Attendance was a long, thick cheroot, wound about with hemp fiber,
at which he pulled with rounded mouth. Hitched around his right wrist
was the kite string, and between his legs a stick spindled with an extra
hundred yards. At intervals he hauled hand-over-hand upon the taut line,
and then the landscape vibrated to the buzz-saw song which had so
compellingly recalled the Maestro to his eternal pursuit.
As the shadow of the horse fell upon him, the Attendance brought his
eyes down from their heavenly contemplation, and fixed them upon the
rider. A tremor of dismay, mastered as soon as born, flitted over him;
then, silently, with careful suppression of all signs of haste, he
reached for a big stone with his little yellow paw, then for a stick
lying farther off. Using the stone as a hammer, he drove the stick into
the ground with deliberate stroke, wound the string around it with
tender solicitude, and then, everything being secure, just as the
Maestro was beginning his usual embarrassing question:
"Why are you not at school, eh?"
He drew up his feet beneath him, straightened up like a jack-in-the-box,
took a hop-skip-jump, and, with a flourish of golden heels, flopped head
first into the roadside ditch's rank luxuriance.
"The little devil!" exclaimed the disconcerted Maestro. He dismounted
and, leading his horse, walked up to the side of the ditch. It was full
of the water of the last baguio. From the edge of the cane-field on the
other side there cascaded down the bank a mad vegetation; it carpeted
the sides and arched itself above in a vault. Within this natural
harbour a carabao was soaking blissfully. Only its head emerged, flat
with the water, the great horns wreathed incongruously with the floating
lilies, the thick nostrils exhaling ecstasy in shuddering riplets.
Filled with a vague sense of the ridiculous, the Maestro peered into the
recess. "The little devil!" he murmured: "He's somewhere in here; but
how am I to get him, I'd like to know? Do you see him, eh, Mathusalem?"
he asked of the stolid beast.
Whether in answer to this challenge or to some other irritant, the
animal slowly opened one eye and ponderously let it fall shut again in
what, to the heated imagination of the Maestro, seemed a patronising
wink. Its head slid quietly along the water; puffs of ooze rose from
below and spread on the surface. Then, in the silence, there rose a
significant sound--a soft, repeated snapping of the tongue:
"Cluck, cluck."
"Aha!" shouted the Maestro, triumphantly, to his invisible audience. "I
know where you are, you scamp; right behind the carabao; come out of
there, _pronto, dale-dale_!"
But his enthusiasm was of short duration. To the commanding tongue-click
the carabao had stopped dead-still and a silence heavy with defiance met
the too-soon exultant cries. An insect in the foliage began a creaking
call, and then all the creatures of humidity hidden there among this
fermenting vegetation joined in mocking chorus.
The Maestro felt a vague blush welling up from the innermost recesses of
his being.
"I'm going to get that kid," he muttered, darkly, "if I have to wait
till--the coming of Common Sense to the Manila office! By gum, he's the
Struggle for Attendance personified!"
He sat down on the bank and waited. This did not prove interesting. The
animals of the ditch creaked on; the carabao bubbled up the water with
his deep content; above, the abandoned kite went through strange
acrobatics and wailed as if in pain. The Maestro dipped his hand into
the water; it was lukewarm. "No hope of a freeze out," he murmured,
pensively.
Behind, the pony began to pull at the reins.
"Yes, little horse, I'm tired, too. Well," he said, apologetically, "I
hate to get energetic, but there are circumstances which----"
The end of his sentence was lost, for he had whisked out the big Colt,
dissuader of ladrones, that hung on his belt, and was firing. The six
shots went off like a bunch of firecrackers, but far from at random, for
a regular circle boiled up around the dozing carabao. The disturbed
animal snorted, and again a discreet "cluck-cluck" rose in the sudden,
astounded silence.
"This," said the Maestro, as he calmly introduced fresh cartridges into
the chambers of his smoking weapon, "is what might be called an
application of Western solutions to Eastern difficulties."
Again he brought his revolver down, but he raised it without shooting
and replaced it in its holster. From beneath the carabao's rotund belly,
below the surface, an indistinct form shot out; cleaving the water like
a polliwog, it glided for the bank, and then a black, round head emerged
at the feet of the Maestro.
"All right, bub; we'll go to school now," said the latter, nodding to
the dripping figure as it rose before him.
He lifted the sullen brownie and straddled him forward of the saddle,
then proceeded to mount himself, when the Capture began to display
marked agitation. He squirmed and twisted, turned his head back and up,
and finally a grunt escaped him.
"El velador."
"The kite, to be sure; we mustn't forget the kite," acquiesced the
Maestro, graciously. He pulled up the anchoring stick and laboriously,
beneath the hostilely critical eye of the Capture, he hauled in the line
till the screeching, resisting flying-machine was brought to earth. Then
he vaulted into the saddle.
The double weight was a little too much for the pony; so it was at a
dignified walk that the Maestro, his naked, dripping, muddy and still
defiant prisoner a-straddle in front of him, the captured kite passed
over his left arm like a knightly shield, made his triumphal entry into
the pueblo.
II--HEROISM AND REVERSES