Part 7

And all this time, while he laid about him with instinctive parry and thrust, his eyes were riveted on an indistinct form in the shadow behind, a form from which came a running sound of encouragement, suggestion, command. Suddenly he sprang back, then to one side, then forward--and he had passed the four struggling men. He took two running steps forward, then his body left the deck and shot through the air. With a thud it struck the man in the shadow and crushed him down. Like a cat, Burke was on his feet again. He picked up the body by the waist, held it off at arm's length, brought it back close to him long enough to see Tionko's face in a grin of horror, then his arms distended like great springs and Tionko shot over the bulwarks.

He turned to the others, but they had slunk away in the darkness, and he knew that, the Chino gone, there was no more to fear.

He peered out into the water, and the phosphorescence showed him an indistinct form swimming slowly away. Then it turned back, splashing painfully, and a cracked falsetto voice whined in beggar-like modulations.

"Senor, for the love of Christ, let me on!"

Burke hesitated, and suddenly the thing was settled for him. From the right a phosphorescent flash cut the water in a streak. Swift and luminous as a rocket it came, straight toward the splashing form; it struck it, and then the spot burst out in a great bubble of light, in which Burke caught a flash of the Chino, his arms raised to heaven, his mouth distended in abominable fear. There was a hoarse croak, a gurgle, and then the phosphorescence sank slowly and went out in the depths below. A gentle ripple undulated over the darkened surface of the water and broke softly against the flanks of the lorcha.

Burke, dizzied, walked forward. The limp, scattered sleepers were still there as before, but in one corner a man was choking in his breathing, and near the anchor another was vibrating in his sleep in one long, continuous shudder.

* * * * *

There came another period of suspense. One day passed, two days passed, with no cases. The third day came, and Burke's Demon was clutching him.

He had found in the hold some rude native varnish, redolent of crude alcohol, and had brought it up to polish the crude furniture of his hospital; and now he dared not come near it. The bucket stood by the hatch, and Burke was pacing to and fro along the deck like a wild beast. Each time he passed the bucket the pungent odour stung his face, filling his mind with the memory of one of his worst periods of degradation and his whole physical being with a madness to wallow back into it.

He fought hard. He knew that he must throw that bucket overboard, so he forced his thoughts upon the act.

"I'll walk twenty times the length of the deck with my mind on that," he muttered to himself.

So, concentrating his brain upon the necessary deed, he began pacing up and down. At the twentieth turn he walked toward the bucket and stopped suddenly, livid as death, his eyes fixed stupidly upon his hands.

In his right hand he held a stick, a little, pliable bamboo stick.

He tried to remember picking it up; he could not. The act had been not of the will, of the will that was fighting for mastery; it had been forced by that other Power, that Power which possessed his nerves, his bones, his flesh, the Power he was seeking to kill.

"I will begin again," he muttered.

At the tenth turn he stopped short, and a cold sweat welled up upon his body. He had another stick in his hand.

And then, slowly, haltingly, but irresistibly, he approached the bucket. 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!"