emotion. Life to him, evidently, was full of such facts as my presence
there, facts to which one must adapt one's self with the least possible
fuss. He seemed, in fact, in perpetual process of readjustment. He'd sit
there quietly, sipping his green poison, till diabolically I'd mention
some name of literary fame. It was like pressing a button--the effect
was so instantaneously sure. First would come a few detached sentences,
like a modulation. Then insensibly he had slid into the main theme, and
it was--what shall I call it?--exquisite, there's no other word for it.
There was such depth to the thing, such subtlety of dissection, such a
wealth of sudden, baring illuminations--and all that cloaked, softened
in a haze of gentle scepticism that left nothing of dogmatic asperities.
I compared it with the snorting, imperial utterances of my German
Professor at college. It was French, that's what it was, in its breadth,
its charity, its continual attenuation and inter-correction, its horror
of the dictatorial, the pedantic. But don't think that he animated
himself in this. No, he kept his immovable--I came near saying "silent,"
and really, even while he spoke, he gave an impression of silence--his
immovable, detached calm. All this, it came as from another man. It
_was_ another man, the past man. He was not creating now; he was merely
re-reading the creations of the past man, objectively, too, with a
certain mild astonishment at the performance.
"You must have studied deeply," I said, one night, as I sat, still
dazzled, long after he had spoken his last word.
He looked at me hazily. "I have my Harvard Ph.D.," he said,
absent-mindedly. "I lectured afterward."
"Then, for God's sake," I blurted out, tortured by the vision of that
life calmly ruining itself; "for God's sake, what are you doing here?"
His eyes turned absolutely inside out. From their interior
contemplation they flashed outward. He was looking at me; for the first
time I had that feeling completely--that he was looking at me, a hard,
profound, startled stare.
Then, before I could make a movement, a gesture of protest, he had risen
to his feet. "Good-night," he said, brusquely, and he had shuffled out
of the room.
For three days he did not appear. I had hurt him, insulted him. I waited
for him, with a desire for reparation. Yet when he finally came I saw
that I was mistaken. There was no resentment, absolutely none, in his
manner as he shuffled up to the table and sat down. But before even the
usual green poison had been set before him he had drawn from his breast
pocket a square piece of cardboard and had thrown it to me.
I looked at it stupidly, at first without comprehension. Then the whole
thing flashed upon me in an understanding so sudden, so complete, so
profound, that it simply dazed me, left me there inert between two
extraordinary and conflicting desires to laugh and weep--laugh,
extravagantly, madly; weep, with the same abandon, thoroughly, humidly,
sentimentally.
It was an answer to my question. And it was a picture. A picture of
himself--I recognised the fine, white forehead, the sensitive mouth,
the wide, pure eyes. But on the cranium there was hair, hair, do you
hear? Not a little of it, not a mere trifle, but hair, an abundance of
it, a magnificent leonine mane, a wealth of it, waving and rolling,
curling over the ears, setting off the whole person in distinction.
There was hair on his head; there were brows over his eyes, dark brows
that must have contrasted finely with the wide, blue orbs. There it was,
the answer. He had had hair; he was bald. This was the whole of his
ridiculous tragedy. He had had hair, do you understand?--and now he had
none.
There I had it, complete; but he evidently did not think so. Or rather
he didn't bother about me at all. A powerful impulse to unburden himself
possessed him now; all the accumulated wonder and pain at Fate's wanton
outrage poured out of him, hurling away like so much chaff the rigid dam
of restraint held against it so long. He talked now, at first in broken
phrases, then more freely as he went on, in a smooth current, hopeless,
fatalistic, but tinged with a strange self-compassion. And yet there was
the old detachment. He seemed analysing someone else, telling the
pitiful adventure of some other man, as if he could not believe it had
occurred to himself, as if his credulity did not suffice before the
wonder and cruelty of the thing. A mild astonishment pervaded him.
It had begun with a little gray spot on the crown, a very little spot.
That was several years ago. He counted, and I was astonished: he must be
very young yet. He didn't pay much attention to it. He was happy, then,
he explained, and it took much to bother him. He had just accepted a
post in the English department of a Western University. It was a lovely
place, by the sea. There were hills behind, all velvety gray and gold.
His house was covered with climbing roses, absolutely covered, embowered
in them like a nest. His associations were pleasant; he loved his work.
His lectures were attracting some attention. It was lovely. He was
happy. And then there was----
He stopped and was silent quite a while; his eyes, hazy with
retrospection, took on tones of marvellous softness. And when he began
again I had the impression that he had left out something.
Well, after a while that little patch of gray hair began falling out,
and finally it was a neat round tonsure on the top of the head. Then,
down by his right ear, another spot began to gray. He watched it with
some concern. After a while, just as before, the gray hair fell out, and
he had two little bald places. It began to make some difference, really.
The first little tonsure was at least symmetrical, could be called
interesting. But that incongruous spot above his right ear--no words
could soften that. It was at least strange, singular.
People thought it so; at least he imagined that they did. Sometimes a
co-ed in his class would break out in a sudden giggle. That hurt his
work. He studied much over his lectures; but as to the form, he was wont
to extemporise a great deal. And one can't extemporise while a co-ed
giggles. Besides, he was in the grasp of a perverse doom. A third gray
spot had appeared, above the neck. He knew that three bald spots would
be clear ridicule. He began to haunt barber shops; oils, restorers, all
sorts of extravagant shampoos did no good. Soon three bald spots shone
white, like famine in the remaining luxuriance of his hair.
There was no mistaking it now. At first, at the Faculty Club, they had
slapped him on the back and joked. Now they were discreetly and
ominously silent. The very word hair, when dropped by some giddy
confrere, fell into something like a vacuum of sombre consternation. In
the lecture room he often lost the thread of his thought, remained long
pained minutes in speechless befuddlement. It was becoming intolerable.
Then came the crowning disaster. In the blindness of his desperation he
was induced by a magazine advertisement to try some new and wondrous
hair-remedy. The result was fatal. The stuff turned in spots the colour
of his hair from brown to rusty red. In spots, mind you; so that now he
was piebald--red, brown, gray, and white. The morning that, before a
glass, he faced the hideous fact, he nearly cut his throat. And he was
never able to get to his lecture. He tried three times; three times he
stalked firmly along the walk, his hat pulled deep about his shame; he
circled the Hall a dozen times. He could not enter, simply could not.
Happily, it was near the summer vacation, and he had no trouble
obtaining leave for the rest of the term. He fled the college town. He
wandered through the big city nearby, aimless, alone, tortured. A good
deal of his time was spent upon the water-front. It's always windy
there, and men pull their hats down about their ears. Ships began to
exercise on him a strange fascination. He dreamed of islands, desert
islands, lonely, unpeopled islands. One day, hardly aware of it, he
walked the plank of a little brigantine--the _Tropic Bird_, some such
name--and begged the captain to take him. The captain did, as a green
hand. They sailed off.
He was still full of gratitude toward that captain. It seemed that he
never could get used to seamen's work. "I couldn't climb spars," he
explained; "I'd get dizzy. I tried and tried; I couldn't." The captain
made a cabin-boy of him. Hence his eternal gratitude. "He was a
gentleman, a thorough gentleman, with all his roughness. When he saw
that I couldn't climb spars, he made me a cabin boy. I swabbed the
floor, waited at meals, washed dishes, and helped the cook. That
captain, sir, was a gentleman!"
Really, he was absolutely broken. The insidious disease was continuing
its damnable work. From Honolulu they picked up a charter for the
Philippines. When they arrived in Manila, he was absolutely bald, bald
as I saw him now. "No hair, no brows, no lashes; bald, ludicrous,
ignoble, unclean!" He raised one finger; the boy ran to him; he sipped
the green liquor.
But he did not stop there. He began it again, the lamentable tale, with
new details, with inexorable precision. He was a long time on a
description of his departed hair. A wealth of adjectives, subtle and
splendid, came to his lips without effort. He found new, caressing
words, as a mother speaking of her dead babe. And one got no impression
of vanity from it, either. It was something past now, extraneous, so
irrevocably detached from him that he could speak of it without egotism.
He dwelled again upon his happiness--the Western College, the silvery
hills, the rose-covered cottage. "And then there was----"
Again he stopped, and again, when he resumed, I had the impression of
something vital left out. It was this, I think, that kept me at it; for
every night, now, I heard it, the odious story, with an augmentation of
details, a progressive firmness of construction. He'd begin with his
gray spot and run the whole gamut of his pilous degradation. I grew
infinitely weary of it, but there was the secret, the secret still held
from me. It was exasperation at this continuous evasion, I think,
coupled with invincible lassitude at the old tale, that led me, one
night, madly to exclaim:
"Yes, yes, Dickson; but the girl, the girl; tell me about the girl now!"
By his sudden start, by his affrighted stare, I knew that I had hit it,
absolutely hit it. Oh, no, I don't take much credit for that. _Cherchez
la femme_; divested of the cynicism placed upon it by its makers, this
precept is fundamental in the game of human analysis.
There was a She--yes, there was. A young girl (he's far from old
himself, remember, in spite of his pate); an angel. He loved her; she
loved him. She had a precious gift of imagination. He had hoped, under
his critical guidance, to see it bloom into something--a talent, a
genius, perhaps. But now----
"Man, man!" I almost screamed; "you fool, you imbecile; why don't you go
back, go back to her? What the deuce is it, this more or less vegetation
upon your head, when you have that, that of all things precious, when
you have Love, Love, man!"
I was furious with him. I talked in the same vein, very extravagantly,
no doubt. I gesticulated; I shouted. He listened quietly, a considering
frown over his browless eyes.
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 grass. 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 passed 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-abasement. 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-compassion.
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 assemblage 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 shimmered; 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 cushioned 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 Dickson. He was walking toward the furnace, his right
shoulder pushed forward, his body flattened apologetically, begging
passage 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 muffled, dripping, inchoate figure was
stumbling into the outer circle of light. I sprang forward; I tore off
the dripping mantle, and there was Dickson, 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,
muffling 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 passed 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 Dickson 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 passing, 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, buttoning 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 massed
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 Dickson, 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 God!"
"She," I repeated, stupidly; "who is _she_?"
"Mrs. Jenkinson," he gasped; "good God, 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 Dickson 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 lassitude, as those of a child after crying; his
mouth, a little open, let pass 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 gods 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 blustering
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, passage
once a week.
"Damn!" said the Maestro, as his foot struck the sand. "Damn! a deuce of
a bridegroom I make, I do!"