dark of the plaza. She had put out the lamp, the room behind her also
was dark, and between these two obscurities she felt rather lone. At
intervals alarmingly frequent her rallying cry, "cheer up," chirped in
the heated silence; but difficult it was for the spirit to obey the
command of the lips. She had gone through a great deal of late--not so
much in actual hardship; she could bear that buoyantly; but little by
little the oppression of the Land had heaped upon her and she felt a
very little girl indeed. Something akin to self-compassion filled her
being as she dwelled over the events of the past days: the sudden and
thorough inefficiency of Mr. Wilson when it came to arranging for her
departure; the long enervating wait for mythical carts, for carabaos
that did not come; then, after she had taken hold of things and the
evasive Presidente, suddenly alacritous at the stamp of her foot, like a
magician produced animals and vehicles by the dozen, the long ride to
her station--the bumping and creaking of the ox-cart; the mud, the
fearful bottomless mud; the miring in the rice lands, beneath the leaden
sun, in the pestilential swamp; the miles paced slow as the crawl of an
hour-hand while time slid by and the day died in gloomy splendour. And
then the entry into the pueblo at midnight, amid the howl of dogs, the
croak of frogs, the shrill concert of katydids; the dinner at the
Presidente's, with this people of alien race, of dark skins, of
incomprehensible tongue; the appalling lack of comfort, of
cleanliness--and then the night: she would never forget it, that first
night in Barang. Her cot had been placed in a big bare room. Through the
torn roof she could see a lone star. There was rice stored in the corner
of the room, and giant rats thundered over the loose planking, squealed
and fought, while outside in the scum of the ditches the beasts of
humidity shrilled in rasping clamour. Then the arising in the morning,
weary to death, shrinking in fear at the thought of the first survey, in
the inexorable sunlight, of the place which was to be her abode for
twelve long months at least; and that first look--the wide,
grass-dishevelled plaza with the carabaos wallowing in the mud holes,
the ponies dying of surra at their pickets, the leprous-walled,
crumbling church across, the thousand leaning, rotting nipa shacks, the
musty mountains steaming in the east.
Afterward she had had a pleasant surprise. A house had been engaged for
her, the Presidente announced, by Don Francisco. She went right away to
view it. It stood facing the plaza, pointed-roofed, post-elevated,
between shimmering bananas, a new nipa hut, clean and strong. The ground
beneath was white with powdered lime, a reassuring carbolicky odour
hovered about and she was pleased by the chance for picturesque
decoration offered by the rich, nut-brown nipa of the interior. But
while she stood in the centre of the sala, planning, a muchacho in
immaculate camisa stood before her. "Don Francisco has sent me to you; I
am to be your servant," he said in the precise English of one carefully
instructed. He proved a treasure, that boy. Then, pieces of furniture
began to arrive one by one. She did not understand at first, but the
owners, salaaming behind their sweating cargadores, explained that they
were to be hers during her stay. She offered money; they refused. Don
Francisco had asked them to do this; they were always glad to obey Don
Francisco.
This was the third time in as many minutes that she had heard that name.
When she was alone with Vincente, the new muchacho, she asked, "Who is
your master?"
"You are to be my master," he answered in the tone of one who knows well
his lesson.
"But who was your master; who sent you?"
"Don Francisco," he said.
"But who is Don Francisco?"
"Don Francisco; the Maestro," he answered, evidently astonished at her
obtuse ignorance.
But she divined now and her cheeks flushed. It was the Maestro of
Cantalacan. Wilson had introduced him as Mr. Tillman. "Don Francisco"
was much better, she reflected.
She had set briskly to work at her installation. She accepted a few
pieces of the proffered furniture--quaint old hand-carved things of
incredibly heavy woods; she performed wonders with boxes and chintz;
Isio mats enlivened the meerschaum of walls and ceiling, the few
pictures and flags left of her college days were hung; red narra boards
tied with golden abaca along the walls made a place for her books; a big
square severe table, with her blotters, pads, ink-stands, pens, and
pencils upon it, took an aspect inviting of studious hours. But when she
rested and looked about her for the subtle feeling of coziness and
warmth which usually follows such toil, as it must to the birds who have
built their nest, she found with consternation that it was not
there--the feeling of intimacy, of home, was not there. She changed the
petates, she moved the pictures, she hung orchids at the windows,
arranged a panoply of native hats and spears over the door, fringed the
grass-cloth portieres. But it was useless. The feeling would not come.
And she realised that it would never come; that all these efforts were
puerilities before the great crushing assertion of the land--the
grass-dishevelled plaza, the ruined church, glistening in the white sun,
the palms, the steaming mountain, the brown populations; that before
this tranquil, brooding, all-powerful Presence, all her little defenses
of art and adornment shrivelled, dried into dust as cardboard toys in a
furnace. It was like hiding behind leaves from God.
She turned to her work with an enfevered zeal. She found a tumble-down
nipa shed where some twenty half-naked, half-starved, miserable little
beings, herded every morning by the municipal police, gathered beneath
the stick of a slovenly, dull-eyed man, with a gibberish of English--the
native teacher appointed temporarily by the military government. The
school supplies had not come yet; there were no charts, no books, no
slates, no paper, no pencils. The children squatted on the damp earth,
crushed and apathetic.
"Well, I can at least love them," she said to herself.
It was easy for her to love children. She loved everything that was
small--babies, kittens, puppies, birds; and flowers:--she called them
baby-flowers when they were satisfyingly little. She taught the children
trifles that did not amount to much; but beneath the tenderness of her
presence these starved plants began to put forth blossoms. The dark eyes
opened in wonder, softened in reverence. One day one of the little girls
took her hand going home from school; and after that she was always
followed by a dozen demure little maids that took her hand a few steps
in turn. She taught the class a song, and since there was not much to
do, in the dearth of what was needed, they often sang, in their low,
plaintive notes, their eyes fixed upon her in mute adoration.
They called her Mathilda, and she thought it very sweet.
But still the Presence weighed upon her with its crushing, tranquil
malevolence, its external signs the sun, white and ghastly, the
mountains, steaming in mustiness, the fronds of palms, heavy,
motionless, metallic. She felt the weight of it as of some physical
thing there upon her breast; beneath it her sleep grew torpid, her
gestures languid, her eyelids drooped heavy upon the unfading blue
beneath.
This day the obsession had been more poignant than ever. For in the
morning she had found the schoolhouse deserted. The _cosecha_ had begun,
and the children had all wandered off early to a big hacienda ten miles
off to pick rice. The hours had dragged, long as death, empty as
Infinity. And now she leaned, a little limply, at her window, between
the dark behind and the dark before. "Cheer up," she chirped valiantly,
but her heart would not answer.
Then, far down the road, consoling, familiar, she heard the soft
pit-a-pat of hoofs. The sound neared, swelled, drummed in a crescendo
that seemed to beat in her heart. Detaching itself suddenly from the
shadow, as if of its tenuous substance, there appeared the vague form of
a man in the saddle, pliant-waisted, broad-shouldered. A singular panic
possessed her; she drew aside behind the wall and peered, her hands upon
her breast. With a rattle of stone and a spark the horse stopped there
in the darkness in front. The shadowy rider seemed to turn in the
saddle; she felt his eyes scrutinising the darkened facade, the
lightless windows. She panted. The horse champed resoundingly; her lips
parted as if to speak.
Then, very distinct in the silence, she heard the decided whirr of a
quirt. The form in the saddle bent forward; the horse rose in a jump.
For a second the shadow of horse and man rose and fell, then it plunged
into the darkness of which it seemed a part. The drumming of hoofs
sounded down the road, farther, fainter, became a mere vibration,
ceased.
But she stood there listening long after sound had died. And when she
moved off toward her little cot, it was very wearily, and upon it she
collapsed very suddenly.
She knew what was the matter with her now. She was lonely; God, how
lonely!
III
And thus as a shadow, flitting, mysterious, almost uncorporeal, she was
to know him for a long time. It might be during the day, at school; her
eyes, straying out of the open door, saw him cross the plaza to the
rapid pace of his bay pony, erect beneath the leaden downpour of heat,
his sombrero firm down upon his eyes, his waist giving pliantly to the
swing of the saddle. He slid off with what seemed to her singular speed,
like a being unreal, elusive, legendary; he was across the plaza ere her
eyes were fairly fixed upon him, was disappearing along the palm-lined
road into the wilderness, into the bosom of the mountain, seeming to
await him, dark, brooding, inscrutable. And when the red dot of the
saddle-blanket had lost itself into the venomous green of the distance,
she would turn, a little listlessly, to her class.
"Come, children, we will sing," she would say.
And they sang, in their low, weird voices, their plaintive modification
of some old home song. "How sadly they sing," she murmured; "how sad it
all is."
Or it would be at night when, standing at her darkened window, she heard
the sound of hoofs reverberated in her heart, and he passed, a mere
shadow, immediately swallowed in the gloom. Sometimes she remained at
the window, peering into the darkness; at other times she withdrew in
unreasoning timidity into the farther depths of the sala, and stood
there, panting, till the hoof-beats had sunk into silence. For a while,
with a temerity that seemed to her immense, she left her lamp lighted
behind her; but when finally he did come, at the sight of the luminous
circle upon the road he circled wide into the night. She could divine
him there, in the profundity of gloom; it seemed to her that he had
dismounted, that he stood long, looking toward her. She trembled with
excitement, keenly aware of her conspicuousness in the light. Then the
horse rustled softly through the high cogon, struck the road again
below the house, galloped off in sudden clatter.
These brusque apparitions left her very lonely.
One day, though, she caught him. Her watch had run down and as she
crossed the plaza to the schoolhouse, she was aware by the position of
the sun that she was much ahead of the correct time. There was little
about her lone home, however, to call her back; so she pushed on, a
little pale at the thought of the long day ahead. Then as she was almost
at the door, she started. A bay pony was before her, stamping but
obedient to the long reins dropped Western fashion to the ground. Its
flanks shone like silk, the long mane fell on both sides of the short
curved neck, the forelock dangled roguishly over the eyes. A red blanket
flamed beneath the saddle.
For a minute she stood still, startled like an elf, her breath coming
swift between her parted lips, poised in panicky indecision. Then with a
lithe resolute movement she stepped within.
He was standing in the centre of the room, examining with critical eye
the torn roof, the sagging walls, the earthen floor. When he had become
aware of her presence he merely took off his hat in silent greeting that
held subtle homage. His eyes passed gravely over her. He should have
been pleased indeed with the tremulous colour of her cheek, the
radiance of her glance. She wore a simple dress of blue linen with a
sailor-blouse whose wide turned-down collar left a triangle of
palpitating whiteness below the throat; she was hatless, and her hair
lay upon her head with incredible lightness, like a golden vapour. A
curl of it fell over her eyes, and she drew it back slowly in a graceful
movement of her arm, bare to the elbow. But even as she gazed up at him,
the suspicion of tenderness in his eye went out abruptly; a stubborn
reservation lowered over them like a curtain.
"You are early," he said.
"Yes," she answered, and the word came like a sigh. She sat down, a
little wearily, upon the only chair. "Yes," she repeated; "it's going to
be a long day."
He scanned her with rapid, questioning concern; but immediately there
returned the rigid reserve that baffled her.
"I must go," he said decidedly. "I've a new barrio school up there in
the bosque."
That was all. He strode across the room to the door, gathered up the
reins, mounted and was off, leaving her alone in the big empty shed.
After a while she looked up. Far toward the hills a little red spot was
disappearing.
The following day the municipal treasurer came to her and told her what
she should have known before--that the taxes had been collected, and
that there were some thousand pesos disponible for the pueblo school. So
she saw, with an interest that made the days sweeter, the roof
rethatched, the walls bolstered, a floor of bamboo being laid, and the
Chino carpenter slowly evolving with his rough tools a dozen rude
benches. A few days later an oldish little mild-eyed man presented
himself to her. He told her that he had been one of Don Francisco's
assistants, and was now to be hers.
This new proof of lofty and patronising care exasperated her. She sent
the man back with a message declaring that she needed no assistant.
Two weeks later he was again before her with a note. With a vague
feeling of disappointment she saw that it was typewritten. It said:
"The Provincial Superintendent has transferred Abada from my town to
yours. I cannot and you must not disregard the order."
Her cheeks flamed a little when she reflected that the two weeks passed
between the two offers were just time enough for the exchange of
correspondence between Cantalacan and Bacolod.
But she soon found Abada invaluable. He had evidently been subjected to
a rigid training; naturally he took upon himself all the smaller
troublesome details of her work. Also he knew his own people thoroughly
and was precious in lifting for her the uniform veil of stolidity. And
he had ingenuity. He propounded a plan by which the children came washed
to school; he interested the parents in the clothing of their offspring,
so that now the room rustled with starch. The rivalry of the town
factions he diverted adroitly into a race for the favour of the Maestra.
After a while, though, she noticed that Abada's brilliant suggestions
came always on Monday mornings; also that on Sundays the little mild
man, a stick in hand, wended his way across the plaza and then down the
road leading to Cantalacan. This vexed her, and the next propositions of
her assistant were ignominiously rejected. That morning she mapped out
her own course. She planted vines that with tropical vigour forthwith
began to climb the bare walls. At the windows she hung wonderful
orchids. She draped two American flags in flaming panoply behind her
desk, improvised of dry goods boxes. The supplies had come from Bacolod
(very strangely, in ox-carts belonging to the municipality of
Cantalacan). The maps upon the walls, the blackboards and charts upon
their tripods, the shelves of books gave to the place an air of study
and quiet. Thanks to Abada's constant visits to parents, his free use
(she did not know that) of Don Francisco's name, the attendance was
rising by leaps and bounds; the schoolhouse was full of gentle brown
goblins. Her soul was sweet with the feeling of being loved.
And yet she could not shake the old tyranny. An emptiness was within
her; an emptiness it was, and yet it weighed like lead. Above, about
her, the alien, incomprehensible Land flamed, fierce, inimical. She
dreamed of grassy meadows beneath apple trees; through the flowering
branches voices passed, voices of her own kin and race, sympathetic and
intimate.
One day she had an idea that filled her with wild joy. She would give a
dinner and invite Mr. Wilson and Mr. Tillman.
The invitations were sent and accepted. On Saturday she went to the
market. She passed amid the squatting women like a humming bird,
flitting hither and thither, stopping a moment to sip here or there,
then whirring off again with her store. And when she returned, her tawny
parasol tilted back upon her shoulder in an attitude a little weary, her
two boys behind her bore baskets filled with wonderful and coloured
things. She overhauled her stores and set to work immediately. A man she
sent down to the sea to fish for her a lapo-lapo. And all day she
measured and mixed and beat and prepared for the morrow. She was up with
the sun the next day, and all morning she flitted about, humming like a
bee building its honey-home, a white apron pinned to her dress, her
face flushed, her hands floury. At noon Wilson came in. She greeted him
joyously, and then leaving him with her latest magazine, whirred off
again to some mysterious final crisis in the kitchen.
At one o'clock a tao came with a note. Mr. Tillman was very sorry, but
something unexpected and imperative had called him away. He would not be
present.
Her hands dropped to her sides; a great disappointment filled her soul.
She forgot it partly in the performance of her duties as hostess. Abada
took the place set for the missing one. Wilson lost his eternal
discouragement and livened in a way that made her glad. Late in the
afternoon he left.
"Lordie, what a little wife she'll make," he murmured to himself, riding
in the gloaming. "And that fool Saunders, what's the matter with him,
anyway, leaving her down there so long!"
From which it would appear that Dame Rumour had not found it imperative
to correct her first erroneous report.
As for Miss Terrill, her brave "cheer up" checked her just as she was on
the point of idiotically weeping over the ruins of a splendid chocolate
cake.
IV
The rains began. Seated at her window she would hear a roaring tattoo in
the grove of abaca palms to the south. The noise neared, rose,
thundered. Long, lithe coconuts began an inexplicable bending to and
fro, their tops circling in trembling descent almost to earth, then
swinging back to the spring of the bow-tense trunks in a movement
exaggerated and violent like that of some stage tempest. Out of the
grove, beaten, trampled down, there advanced into the open a black wall
of rain, perpendicular from earth to sky. Ahead of it, dust, twigs,
rubbish suddenly ascended to heaven in rotary spirals; trees were flayed
of their leaves, roofs blew up like gigantic bats. Then her own house,
strongly built, shook as with earthquake; the thatch of the roof sprang
vertical, like hair that stiffens with fear, and between the interstices
she saw the muddy sky stream by. A powder of debris, of dry rot, snowed
down upon the table, the books, the chairs; little lizards, unperched,
struck the floor with a squeak like that of a mechanical doll, remained
as dead for long minutes, then scampered across the room and up the
walls again; great black spiders, centipedes, scorpions fell; sometimes
a large rat. Then the nipa clicked back to position as a box is shut; a
breathless silence, a heavy immobility petrified the world. There came
three or four detached, resounding raps upon the roof, and suddenly a
furious, roaring beating as of stones coming down, great stones, chuted
in thousands, in millions--and the church, the plaza, the mountain, the
whole Land disappeared in a yellow swirl of waters. It rained thus for
hours, for days, for weeks. The leaden vault of the sky seemed
irreparably cracked, letting down the liquid hoardings of ages. It
rained, in drops big like eggs, falling so swiftly that they welded sky
to earth as with iron bars; it rained, heavily, monotonously,
mournfully. The first wild, triumphant burst over, the elements seemed
to have settled down to their task with a quiet, brooding patience, an
immense persistence of unalterable purpose. It seemed that it would rain
thus for years, for ages, for inconceivable aeons. The world was rain,
the future was rain; she lived in a chaos of water. The whole earth
softened, dissolved; it rolled through eternity, a silent, viscous ball
of ooze spattering the stars. Inside her hut a musty leprosy crept over
things; her clothes rotted in her trunk, mushrooms sprang overnight upon
her books; her very soul, it seemed to her, disintegrated before this
malevolent persistence of elemental purpose. A black mournfulness was
over her like a veil.
She yet saw him sometimes. Out of the obscure chaos he emerged, a vague
shadow; behind the vitrious sheet of waters he passed, wrapped in a
great cape, erect, immovable upon the horse, struggling up to its knees
in mud, the heavy flaps of his sombrero down over his face, leaving to
view but the hatchet-carved chin. She knew now where he had been that
Sunday. A discharged negro soldier had been terrorising a little barrio
to the south. The Maestro had ridden there and going directly to the
bully, had disarmed him and ordered him out of the district.
And now, up in the hills, but daily nearer to the coast towns, a band of
tulisanes were committing depredations. Barrios were burned;
_principales_ suspected of giving information to the authorities were
tortured. And it was said that a negro renegade was the leader of the
band.
He was present to her in ways other than these shadowy apparitions. One
day men had placed upon her nipa roof a sheeting of zinc; she found
later that the material came from the ruined convento of Cantalacan. She
felt about her a fostering care, immense, enveloping like the Rains,
mysterious, impalpable like them. But it was impersonal, far, cold--like
the Justice of God. It left her very lonely.
One morning at sun-up he rode into the pueblo at the head of a dozen
men. By their uniforms, their rusty Remingtons, she knew them as the
municipal police of Cantalacan. For a week there had been a respite of
the rains and the roads were fairly firm; but the outfit came in
mud-crusted to the eyes, the horses staggering and dripping foam. They
clattered rapidly past the house and stopped before the Casa Popular.
The Maestro dismounted, but she noticed that before he allowed the
others to do so, he sent a man ahead to the outskirts of the pueblo on
the side opposite to that by which they had come; she could see him,
sharply delineated against the rising sun, scanning the horizon. The
Maestro sprang up the bamboo steps of the municipal house; his voice
rang sharp and incisive. There was a running to and fro of muchachos,
and man after man, the town police assembled. She had noted before their
slovenliness, but now, as they mingled with the men of Cantalacan, this
appeared emphasised. There was something brisk and efficient about
everything that came from Cantalacan, it seemed. The Maestro reappeared
and mounted. He placed half of his men in the van, the other half in the
rear, the Barang contingent being framed between, and putting himself at
the head started out of the pueblo by the road opposite to that by which
he had come in. She saw him for a while, pliant in the saddle, leaning
forward, pressing the pace, the rest of the troop pell-mell after him,
rising and falling one after the other, their broad hats flapping.
Suddenly he seemed to go through the crust of the earth; man after man
disappeared after him; the last laggard dropped out of sight. They were
crossing the river. They reappeared, toiling slowly up the farther bank,
bunched for a moment, then vanished between the palms.
Toward evening she saw them return. He was not riding in front. But
between the horses, formed in hollow square, something limp swung from
side to side--a litter borne by four men.
V
What followed came back to her afterward with strange blending always of
vague unreality and glaring vividness.
Very calmly she went down to the Casa Popular, before which the
calvacade was stopping. On the ground she saw the litter with its lithe
form silhouetted beneath the blanket. "He is dead," she said to herself
with weird certainty. All about her, men were talking excitedly; she did
not hear a word, and yet, later, all that they said came back to her,
complete to every inflection.
The Maestro had received secret information of an attack planned by
Carr, the negro renegade, upon Barang; hence the move of the morning.
The two parties had met upon the road; both had taken to the ditch and
had peppered away at each other for a while. Then the Maestro, who had
kept on his horse to hold his men better in hand, had been struck by a
chance bullet; the pony, zipped by the same fire, had thrown him. But
as, seizing the opportunity, Carr charged forward with a yell of
triumph, the prostrate man, raising himself on his elbow with a last
effort, had shot him through the head with his revolver. This sudden
reverse had scattered the outlaws.
She did not hear this; it came back to her later. She stood very still;
and her heart, with each solemn beat, said, "He is dead."
A desire came to her to see him once more. She moved to the litter. She
lowered the blanket. Upon the very white forehead the black hair was
matted; matted with the toil done for her, in her defense. She separated
the curls between her fingers, smoothing them in long caressing
movements. And then she saw stirring between the pale lips the suspicion
of a breath.