With somnambulant rigidity he placed the stick in the viscous stuff and
slowly rotated it once, as if tentatively; then once more,
determinedly; then again, with a sort of rage. The heavy fluid followed
the stick, turned on itself faster and faster. A little whirlpool formed
in the center. Burke's eyes fixed themselves upon it, and silently the
little whirlpool sucked down all that was strong in him.
The stick scraped along the sides of the bucket; the liquid circled
swiftly. In a minute, in the depression at the center, a black spot
formed. The stick turned faster. The black spot grew; finally it was a
little round ball that sank to the bottom. The stick whirled around
madly. The little ball enlarged. From all sides the like molecules
rushed to it, rounding it out as a snowball that is rolled downhill. At
last it was like a small cannon-ball. Burke bared his arms, plunged them
into the bucket, drew out the black, pitchy solid and threw it
overboard.
He rushed back, and his hollowed hand scooped up a few drops of the
now-white liquid and slapped it to his lips. The taste drove him mad,
and, dropping down on hands and knees like a dog, he put his lips to the
side of the bucket and drew in long gulpfuls.
A little later the natives were all gathered at the stern, looking with
wonder upon the strange actions of the Americano.
He was squatting on deck, the bucket between his knees. At close
intervals he raised it to his lips and poured the awful contents down
his throat. Then he hugged the bucket, sobbing softly like a child being
consoled after suffering, and between his laughs and his tears he
gurgled to himself an endless story, full of tearful self-compassion and
sobbing, endearing terms, long and soft and meaningless as the croon of
a lonely babe.
Toward night he fell into a heavy stupor and lay there on his back, his
face to the moonlight, and the tears drying on his cheeks.
In the morning, when the doctor's launch churned out of the river, it
had in tow the boat of the _Bonita_ filled with the people of the
lorcha. They had been caught by a patrol boat at midnight just as they
were on the point of landing on the Luneta.
The launch pulled up against the lorcha, and Huntington sprang aboard.
Burke rose from the deck and waited for him. He was hollow and drooping,
as if the bony frame had been removed from his body, and his eyes were
dead.
A look told the doctor what had happened.
"Yes," said Burke, corroborating the surgeon's unexpressed thought.
Huntington paced the deck.
"Well," he said, finally, "you did well to stand it that long. Next time
it will be longer."
Burke did not answer.
"We have to begin again."
"Begin again," echoed Burke, mechanically.
"You'll do it, old man," said Huntington, confidently.
"My God, Huntington," said Burke, in a whisper; "my God, Huntington, I
killed Tionko; I threw him to the sharks, and now, look at me!"
When the launch had left, Burke crouched down in a corner against the
bulwarks, and there he sat the morning long, his eyes glued stupidly to
the deck.
At noon he suddenly got up, walked firmly to the mainmast, and ran up
the yellow flag.
When the boat came he went down the ladder and sat himself in the
sternsheets. The man in charge looked at him inquiringly.
"Pull away," he said, shortly; "I've got it."
VI
SOME BENEVOLENT ASSIMILATION
That by teaching the Filipinos the American branch of the English
language it was expected to transfuse into them the customs, ideas, and
ideals of the speakers of that tongue, the Maestro vaguely knew. But
that this method would meet with the vigorous and somewhat eccentric
success that it did in Senorita Constancia de la Rama, the Visayan young
lady whom he had trained to take charge of his girls' school, he had not
dreamed. So, taken unaware by the news, he flopped down on a chair with
a low whistle that finished off into something like a groan as the
situation presented itself to him in its full beauty. And then, taken by
that perverse desire which, in time of catastrophe, impels us to
rehearse all of the elements that go to make our woe particularly
unbearable, he began to question the urchin who had brought the note
from Mauro Ledesma, one of the native assistant teachers of the boys'
school.
"Senor Ledesma gave you that note, Isidro?"
"Yes, Senor Pablo, the little Filipino maestro gave it to me," answered
Isidro, careful in his discrimination of masters.
"Where was he; in the house?"
"Oh, yes, Senor Pablo, he was in the house--he was altogether inside of
the house!"
The Maestro eyed the boy with sudden suspicion. He thought that he had
detected a joyous note in the statement of the native teacher's
whereabouts. But Isidro's return glance was liquid with innocence.
"And he called you?" went on the Maestro.
"Oh, no, Senor Pablo, he did not call me! Ambrosio, his muchacho, called
me! Senor Ledesma, he stayed inside!"
Again the Maestro started, for Isidro's sentence formation seemed
suspiciously appreciative. But the little face he searched was wooden.
"He called you from the door?"
"From the window, Senor Pablo. The door, it was locked. He called this
way--" (here Isidro described with his right arm a furious moulinet).
"He said, 'sh-sh-sh-sh-sh,' and then he moved his arm this way--" (again
the moulinet), "and then he stopped his arm and moved his finger this
way--" (here Isidro held up his hand before his face and moved the index
finger several times toward his nose in a gesture full of mysterious
significance).
"And then you went in?"
"Yes, Senor Pablo. They opened the door, oh, just a little, like that--"
(Isidro placed his hands palm to palm with an interstice between them
just wide enough to allow the wiggling through of a very lean serpent),
"and I went in and they shut the door again and put the bed up against
it."
"Well, well; and Maestro Ledesma, he was inside?"
"Oh, yes, Senor Pablo, he was inside. He was writing this letter. And I
think Senor Ledesma is very sick, Senor Pablo, because when he was
writing he was all the time saying, 'Madre de Dios' and
'Jesus-Maria-Joseph!' and making noises like this."
And Isidro convulsed himself in an effort that resulted in a vague
imitation of the wail of a carabao calf.
"And he gave you the letter when he had finished?"
"Yes, Senor Pablo, that is the letter," said Isidro, pointing to the
note on the table which had been the Maestro's before-breakfast
thunderbolt. "He said, 'run and give this letter to Maestro Pablo'; and
so I went, but I did not go out by the door."
"You didn't?"
"No, Senor Pablo. Maestro Ledesma, he said I must not go out by the
door. So they tied a rope around me, and I went out by the window, in
back, and I ran here, and I did not stop to play cibay on the way, Senor
Pablo."
But Isidro's virtue was destined to go unrewarded. The Maestro was deep
in a re-reading of the disastrous missive:
MUCH SENOR MINE AND REVERED TEACHER AND ADVISER IN MY TIMES OF
CALAMITY
I beseech you, my venerated Teacher and in many ways Ancestor to
come to my succor in this my most deplorable state, and pull away
from me the blackness of Despair that is at the all-around of me.
I am a prisoner in my own house. In fear and trembling I dare not
sleep, I dare not eat, and I cannot leave my habitation to go to
the school and perform my sacred duties of teaching the ignorant
and unhappy youth of my sore-tried country the blessings and
deliverance of the great country under the rustling shadows of the
stars and spangles which you have come so many miles across the
wetness of the sea to pull the black veil of ignorance from our
eyes.
Your Maestra, the Senorita Constancia de la Rama y Lacson, is
camped in my sugar fields, in front of my house, and she will not
decamp.
With loud threats of vengeance and audacious accusation she
declares that she will marry me.
But I do not want to marry her, most excellent sir, I do not want
to marry your Maestra, the Senorita Constancia de la Rama y Lacson!
O sir, my revered Master, I am all alone, my ancestral father and
mother being for a few weeks at our other hacienda, and I implore
you to save me from this my desperate state. Come to me, oh please,
and drive the she-wolf from my door, and you shall ever receive a
gentle rain of unspeakable gratitude from
The Sore Heart of
Your humble Pupil
And Beseecher
MAURO LEDESMA Y GOLES.
P.S. Viva America in Philippines! Viva Philippines in America! M.
L. y G.
"Go to school, Isidro," said the Maestro, when he was through, in a
voice so weak that the boy looked up quickly, wondering whether everyone
was ill that fine, fragrant morning. "Tell Senor Abada to take charge
till I come."
The Maestro felt the necessity of some deep, careful thinking. For
certainly, of all the difficulties which, in his two years' career, he
had alertly fought and conquered, none had ever confronted him of nature
so delicate.
II
It's always when you think that you have at last mastered the problem of
this life and evolved a system that promises smooth going the rest of
the way that the skies tumble down upon you.
Thus it was with the Maestro. Just when he had brought the school system
of his pueblo to the point where, he fondly dreamed, he could sit back
and watch it run along the nickel-plated tracks that he had so carefully
laid, there came the washout and the promise of wreck.
The blow was a hard one, and for a while, very much in contradiction to
his custom, the Maestro buried himself in thought of past achievements
and his heart softened toward himself in a great burst of
self-compassion.
He thought of the fight, the long, bitter, patient fight, he had had to
find a Maestra and get his girls' school started. The hunt for a
Maestra, what an Iliad, and what an Odyssey! First the careful canvas of
the pueblo, the horror of the chosen at the thought of degrading
themselves to the point of teaching in a public school, the rebuffs of
parents, the tearful indignation of mothers; then, the pueblo proving
impossible, the long rides into the surrounding country, to far
haciendas, in search of the longed-for Being! Once he had crossed the
swollen Ilog, and had been nearly drowned with his horse, to find the
fair one of whom he had heard glowing reports--she was very well
educated, si Senor, had been to collegio in Manila for four years, yes,
four years; and she could play the piano, ah, divinely, and she could
sew and weave jusi, just like the mother of God--to find this marvel
deaf, deaf as a post!
And then, suddenly, he had met Her!
His being still thrilled at the memory. He had met her, Constancia de la
Rama, at a baile. She was dancing the escupiton, and right away he saw
that she was not as the others. The grace of her balancing waist, of the
airy arm-gestures was not rounded and timid as that of her sisters--her
grace was angular. Her black eyes did not fix a hypothetical point
between her shilena-shod little feet; they looked boldly at those who
addressed her. She did not squirm and giggle at compliments, but
accepted them freely and boisterously. And the Maestro had the
irritating sense of having met her somewhere, sometime, before.
He danced with her. In honour of the Americano, rigidon, escupiton,
dreamy waltz had been abolished in favour of a Sousa march played in
rag-time. They had danced the two-step together, and with stupor he had
found himself led. It was she who determined the length of the glide,
the way they should turn, how the cape of chairs should be doubled. And
so they had slid along the whole floor in three steps, had whirled like
tops, and his final desperate attempt to take command had resulted in a
woeful lurch and tangle.
And as she stalked in her long, loose stride toward the dressing-room to
readjust her saya, somewhat in distress from the Maestro's last effort,
it had suddenly flashed upon him where he had seen her before. He had
seen her, not in the Philippines, but in the United States, not as an
individual, but as a type. He had seen her type in the co-educational
colleges of his own country. She was a co-ed, that's what she was!
When she came out again, he asked her to be his Maestra.
"Forty pesos a month," she said, dreamily. "And you would teach me
American?"
"You would have to study English and teach it at the school."
"I will begin Monday," she said.
She had not even asked the consent of her parents. At the time, how
pleased he had been at this refreshing independence, and yet, in the
light of later events, how ominous it really was!
It was a time of joy. She had attacked her new task with alert energy.
From the first the Girl's School had become the envy of the maestros of
the whole province. He could see her yet, leading her stolid little
brownies in song.
"Chi-rrrries rrri-pa! Chi-rrries rrri-pa! Woo weel buy my chi-rrries
rrri-pa!" she tremoloed, in piercing falsetto, beating up a small
typhoon with her baton of sugar-cane; "chee-rrries rrri-pa--go on! sing!
all too-gidderrr! louderr! sing, I say you!--chee-rrries rrri-pa,
chee-rrries rri-pa----!"
And then, charging a little girl, her right arm and index finger
stiffened out like a lance:
"Hao menny ligs has ddee cao?" she screeched.
"Dee cao has too-a, too-a legs," stammered the little brown maiden,
annihilated by the sudden attack.
"Ah, 'sus! Hao menny ligs?" she screeched higher, presenting her lance
farther down the line.
"Ddee cao hes _trrree_ legs!"
"Hao menny ligs? Hao menny ligs? Dee cao hes trree ligs? Count!
Count! Wan, too-a, trrrree, four! Dee cao hes _four_ ligs. Wow!
'Sus-Maria-Joseph!"
From the first she had taken an ardent liking for all American
institutions. The liberty of women especially, as she gleaned it from
her readings and from sundry discreet questions put to the Maestro,
enchanted her.
"Senor Maestro, in America, the young ladies, they go out in the street,
all alone?"
"Well, yes; it is considered all right for them to do so, in the West,
at least."
"And they go out all alone?" she repeated, pensively, in the awed tone
that we are taught to use in a cathedral or pantheon.
And, a few days later:
"Senor Maestro, in America, the young girls, they go out with young men,
all alone?"
"Well, yes; that is--yes; it's considered all right for young people to
walk together."
"And they go out, in the evening, when the moon is shining, and walk
together?"
"Well, yes, some do. You see, it's very different in America from the
Philippines. You see, in America, the young men and women are more like
brothers and sisters."
"Oh, they do not marry, then?"
So that the Maestro's feelings, while watching this Americanisation,
were somewhat mixed; especially so when the town council came to him in
horror-stricken deputation and advised him of the fact that his Maestra
was scandalising the pueblo by walking along the river banks with a
young man in the evenings. The Maestra was no dreamy theorist. After
that the Maestro was more careful in his inoculation of American virus.
"No, sir," said the Maestro, to himself, rising from his chair and
stretching, his self-examination finished; "no, sir; since that night
the shocked council called on me I've been good. I've been almighty
careful not to put new ideas into her blooming young head. I've been the
acme of prudence. I've----"
And suddenly he tumbled back into his chair, and his heart sank slowly
down into his heels. For, he remembered, only a few days ago, in the
Teachers' class, the subject of leap-year had come up, and his
exposition had been--not exclusively astronomical. No, he must admit it,
with that deplorable desire to astonish that possesses most of us, he
had--well, his account of certain custom had been somewhat coloured, and
more emphatic than the custom itself----
"Thunder!" ejaculated the Maestro, a new cold wave showering him. He
rushed to the calendar tacked to the wall and turned the pages swiftly.
He stood before the date, petrified.
It was the twenty-ninth of February.
III
The Maestro seized a cap upon the table, plumped it upon his head, and
hop-skipped-jumped down the stairs. "Action, action," his whole being
cried. He glanced into the girls' schoolhouse as he passed. The Second
Maestra was sitting apathetically in a chair, her baby at her breast,
and the little girls, tight up against each other on their high benches,
their hands folded upon their bright patadyons, looked like some little
strawberry-hued birds that he had seen once in the window of an animal
store, a thousand on one perch. The silence, the inaction of the place
hurt him to the core, and the remark that suddenly ripped the somnolent
atmosphere was so electric that the Maestra sprang to her feet.
"Do you see dde hhett?" she said, lamely, pointing to a pear tree on the
chart.
But she might have saved herself the trouble. The head from which had
come the remark had disappeared from the door. The Maestro was already
fifty yards away, eating up the distance with long, nervous strides. He
enfiladed a lane, between fields of high sugar cane, and finally came
to the little plaza where throned the Ledesma nipa-mansion. The doors,
the shutters were closed tight, as if to shut out the pestilence, and
there was no sound, no movement, no sign of life. The Maestro looked
about him carefully, then began to walk along the edge of the open
space, peering along the vistas between the rows of cane. Soon he came
upon the Maestra.
The first glance told him the magnitude of the task ahead; for the
little recess in the canes had all the signs of cool and determined
occupation. A red-and-white patate was spread upon the ground. On one of
the corners were carefully heaped a few of the Senorita's worldly
goods--a camphor-wood chest, the size of a doll's trunk; a pina camisa,
tied up in a bandana handkerchief; and another handkerchief bulging and
running out with a few handfuls of palay. Off the mat, on a little fire
of twigs, the breakfast rice was bubbling in a big black pot.
The Maestra was seated in the centre of the mat, her limbs drawn up
beneath her bright patadyon in a certain kittenish grace. She was in
morning neglige and her loose hair fell down over her shoulders in a
glistening black cascade. As the Maestro approached her from behind, he
heard a rustling of paper, and, looking down over her head, he saw that
she was reading. The Maestro blushed, not at his indiscretion, but at
sight of big black lines announcing the name of the publication. The
Maestra was reading the _Hearth Companion_. With remorse, the Maestro
remembered how once, in the heat of his proselytism, he had recommended
to all his Filipino teachers to subscribe to American periodicals. It
was a bitter backward path that his mind was treading as he went further
into this affair, tracing back to his well-meant efforts so many
unexpected results.
"Good-morning, Miss de la Rama," he said, gravely.
But she read on for several lines, then, seemingly having come to a
satisfactory ending of an exciting crisis, she laid the paper down
carefully and, looking up with a sweet smile, "Gooda morrneen, Senor
Pablo," she answered.
And in her tone, her smile, there was no fear of disapproval, but rather
that bubbling satisfaction which hardly can wait to be congratulated.
"Why are you not at school?" asked the Maestro, severely.
"Ah, de school, de school, yes, de school was very nice," she sighed,
with the tenderness one uses to speak of the sweet, gone past. But her
interest, plainly, was elsewhere.
"To-day is leapa-year day," she went on, her voice now vibrant with
decision; "and I am going to get married, Senor Maestro; I am to get
married like an American girl; just like an American girl!" she
repeated, in glowing exultation.
"Oh!" said the Maestro, with lying fervour, "somebody has asked your
hand, Senorita? Let me congratulate you. And who is the lucky fellow?"
"Asked my hand?" cried the Maestra, wonderingly. "No. I said like an
American girl. Nobody has asked me the hand. I will marry like an
American girl. This is leapa-year day. Just like an American girl!"
"But, gadzooks!" exclaimed the Maestro, at once frightened and horrified
by this strange insistence, "American girls don't marry like that.
Leap-year, that's just fiction, a legend, a joke. I told you about
leap-year the other day; it's just a little joke--yes, that's it, a
little joke!"
But the Maestra was proof against American bluff.
"American girls, they all, all marry on leapa-year," she said, severely.
"You say so the other day, and all the American books say so. Here is a
paper," she said, patting the _Hearth Companion_. "There are in it ten
stories about American girls, and they all marry on leapa-year day; all,
_todas_ ask a gentleman to marry on leapa-year day. It is not a joke."
"But," hinted the Maestro, "maybe Senor Ledesma does not want to marry."
"That does not matter at all," said the Maestra, crisply. "If we will be
Americans, we must adopt the American costumbres. There is a story in
this paper--it does not matter at all; Senor Ledesma is very bashful,
but this is leapa-year day."
Just then the rice rose in a foaming surge and began to trickle down the
black rotundity of the pot. The Maestra sprang up with agile grace, and
with a few dexterous sweeps of her little feet scattered the fire of
twigs. "Will you have some breakfast?" she asked the Maestro, sweetly.
But during this movement the Maestro's brain had been working swiftly,
and he had decided upon a change of base.
"Your assistant, Felicia, is becoming a very able teacher," he remarked,
nonchalantly.
"Yes, she is a very good teacher," agreed the Maestra; but there was no
emphasis on her adjective.
"This morning," went on the Maestro, "she was teaching the children. She
said, 'Do you see the hat?' and she pointed to the pear tree."
"'Sus-Maria-Joseph!" exclaimed the Maestra; "she said that? But it is
barbarous! The children, they will unlearn all that I learned them! It
is--what you call?--it is impossible!"
"Yes," went on the Maestro, seeing that he was on the right track, and
using his imagination a bit; "and she told them, 'I has two hats.'"
"'I has? I has?' she said 'I has'? Que barbaridad! Senor Pablo, I
will----"
And, dropping her bowl of rice, she started running toward the school,
while behind her back the Maestro executed a little jig. His undignified
joy, however, lasted but a few seconds. The Maestra came to an abrupt
stop, looked down at her garments, and came back slowly.
"I cannot go to school in these clothes," she said, sorrowfully.
"No," admitted the Maestro; "but can you not put on your others?"
The Maestra looked embarrassed.
"Senor Maestro," she confided, "you know my mother; she is very aged,
you know, and she does not know American like me, and she dislikes very
much American customs----" She hesitated.
"Well?" said the Maestro, not understanding.
"She hates very much American customs, and so she hates the leapa-year
custom; and this morning, this morning she told me not to come back to
her house, and all my clothes are in the house."
There was a long silence. "Gosh all hemlock," said the Maestro, at
length, and then there was another silence.
The Maestra broke it. "Senor Maestro," she said, softly, "do you think,
maybe, perhaps, you could go and ask my mother for the clothes?"
"Good golly!" remarked the Maestro. "Good golly!" he repeated, wiping
his brow with his handkerchief. But he started off.
He returned a half hour later, wilted and perspiring. The old Senora de
la Rama had some tenacious Chinese blood in her veins, and the struggle
had been an unpleasant one. But the Maestro had won. Across his right
arm, held gingerly away from him, there shimmered jusis and pinas. He
passed the objects to the Maestra with averted eyes and left her in her
glade.
Some ten minutes later, as the Maestro was leading his boys in their
daily calisthenics, a sudden weird note came floating mournfully through
the water-logged atmosphere. The Maestro stood still, with attentive
ear, and the cry cut itself into unmistakable syllables: "Chee-rrries
rrri-pa; chee-rrries rrri-pa!" It came from the girls' schoolhouse.
"One-two; one-two!" said the Maestro, and the next exercise was so
vigorous that before it was finished the urchins were breathless and
drooping.
IV
Crushed into a limp, discouraged mass in the depths of his cane chair,
the Maestro grasped his head with both hands and thought. Thought with
the Maestro was the sign of deep distress. Usually, he just acted.