Part 8

"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.

In truth, the situation was not a rosy one. The Maestra was still unshaken in her marital determination; and in symbol of that state of mind she was having built a little palm hut on the spot where she had camped in Ledesma's cane fields. Three taos, impressed by her from her father's dependents, were working night and day; the four corner posts, the bamboo-strip floor, the nipa roof, were already up, and only the thatch walls remained to be put on. From behind the closed shutters of his father's mansion, Ledesma saw the fort arise above his sugar-canes, and he cowered in dark corners, studying a Civil Service pamphlet with vague projects of escaping to Manila to study typewriting and enter a government office. Also, he had sent an urgent note to his father, off in one of their other haciendas, bidding him to come back quick to protect him. The absence of Ledesma from the boys' school was bad enough, but much worse was the realisation that the truce arranged with the Maestra was fast becoming impossible. When the Maestro had bearded Senorita Constancia's mother and had returned triumphant with the objects that were to enable the young lady to make decent appearance at school, he had forgotten that, in the Philippines, clothes are of the kind that must be washed often; so that, when two days later he had to repeat the performance, and saw before him a future filled with the same monotonous prospect, his ardour had undergone several degrees' cooling. This very morning the struggle to obtain a few shreds of presentable clothing from the irate mother had been so violent, and the subsequent walk across the plaza with the hard-won bundle, beneath the appreciative eyes of the whole town, had been so self-conscious that the Maestro had sworn that it was the end of _that_. A better solution, a final solution, must be quickly found.

Out of his bitter reflections the Maestro was suddenly startled by a drumming of hoofs and a shout outside. He went to the window, and a white man in khaki, cork-helmeted, was pulling up his horse before the steps.

"Huston!" shouted the Maestro, in delighted tones. He hop-skipped across the room, dashed down the stairs, and whacked the newcomer, just dismounting, a tremendous slap on the back. "You old son-of-a-gun," he drawled, tenderly, seizing his hand and moving it up and down like a pump-handle.

The man's eyes gleamed, and a flush of pleasure came to his tanned cheeks. "Here, here, old man," he said, deprecatingly, "you don't seem alive to the--er--dignity of my profession."

"Sky-pilot, eh?" shouted the Maestro. "Gospel-sharp; stuck up about it, eh? Darn-if-I-care; you're still a good fellow. Golly, but I'm glad to see you," he cried, nearly knocking him down with a dig in the short ribs. "Gee, but I'm glad to see you----" and he shook him till his teeth rattled. "How long're you going to stay?"

"Three days," answered Huston; "want to start a mission here."

Tolio, the Maestro's muchacho, was unsaddling the pony. The two friends climbed the steps into the house. Unbuckling his belt, the missionary threw his long Colt's upon the table and dropped into a chair, and then they began to talk. It was a strange performance. The words swept out of their mouths in an uninterrupted, turgid, furious stream; they shouted, stammered, giggled; they laughed like artillery thunder, gesticulated like windmills, a hectic flush upon their cheeks, their brains awhirl, mad with the madness that seizes the man of lone stations when at last he can communicate his thoughts, pour out what has been dammed in so long, free himself of the stagnant burden of never-expressed feeling, emotion, inspiration, theories.

But after a half-hour of this, the Maestro began to subside. Huston still talked, told of the cholera in Manapla, the mud between Bago and Jinagaran, the palay famine in Oriental Negros, the anti-fraile mob in Silay, the embezzlement of the Provincial Treasurer. But the Maestro was silent, his eyes upon his feet.

"What the deuce are you thinking about?" at last exclaimed the missionary, suddenly very much aware of his loquacity.

"By Jove, I've got it," said the Maestro, rising to his feet like an automaton, his eyes fixed as if he saw written in space the solution of some sore world-problem. He took three great strides across the room, wheeled, and stopped before the missionary. "Yes, sir, I've got it," he repeated, enthusiasm beginning to thrill in his voice.

"For goodness' sake," asked the missionary, "got what?"

"I've got--well, something for you to do," answered the Maestro, enigmatically; "yes, sir, I've a job for you, Huston."

He sat down at the table and scribbled two notes. "Tolio," he called. The boy appeared at the door. "Take this," ordered the Maestro, giving the boy the first note, "to Maestro Ledesma. Tell him to come right away. Tell him to come around by the river so that the Maestra cannot see him."

"Si, Senor," said the faithful servant.

"And after Maestro Ledesma has entered the house here, not before, mind you, Tolio, you go to Senorita Constancia and give her this note," went on the Maestro, giving the boy the second slip of paper.

"Si, Senor," said the boy, carefully taking one note in his left hand and the other in the right.

The two friends were again left alone, but the spell had been broken and they did not renew their outpourings. The Maestro was the prey of a fixed idea. He paced back and forth like a lion in his cage, full of the fever of resolve. At intervals he punched his left palm with his right fist, then varied the performance by punching his right palm with his left fist; incoherent exclamations growled in his throat: "He's got to, that's all; things are going to smash; I'll make him; it's the only way!"

Huston looked on curiously. He had been scrub on the football team when the Maestro had been captain and star; and the relation had left indelible marks upon him in an unreasoning, instinctive respect, a subtle sense of inferiority which no achievement in after-life would ever enable him to overcome. Now, however, this sense of fealty was being rudely put to proof. A horrible suspicion was setting his heart a-pound.

The shrinking appearance of Ledesma at the door broke the painful silence. He was a slim, limp young man, with pomaded hair, clad in a white suit generously sprinkled with cologne water, and, in spite of the cigarette held delicately between his fingers, was evidently ill at ease.

And little chance he had to recover from his emotion. "Ah, Ledesma," said the Maestro, frigidly. "I want to talk to you, my boy, and seriously, too. Come into my room."

And, placing a heavy hand upon the young fellow's shoulder, he steered him into an interior chamber, closing the door behind them.

To Huston, left alone, there came sounds of a furious altercation--that is, furious from one party; for from one weak voice there seemed to come only mild expostulation, faint denials, pathetic pleas, negatived by the cold, incisive tones of the Maestro. Little by little, however, the begging voice rose, grew rebellious, squealed, trembled with an indignation that seemed almost righteous. The Maestro began to thunder. "You've got to; you've got to," he shouted. "I'll make you do it!" "No, no, I won't," answered the other voice, settling down to hopeless, stubborn denial; "I won't, I won't!"

The door opened and the Maestro dashed out. He gave a wild look around the room, and his eyes lit upon the missionary's revolver upon the table. He pounced upon it, snapped it open, and the cartridges fell out. After a rapid examination, to make sure that the cylinder was empty, the Maestro snapped the weapon shut again and bounded back into the interior room, closing the door after him. Then his voice became icy and menacing. There was a sharp click; the protesting voice weakened into a faint wail, and there was silence.

"Huston," shouted the Maestro, "let me know when Senorita Constancia comes in."

But at the sound of the sweet name there was a scuffle inside. The door burst open, and Ledesma dived head first across the threshold; but a long muscular arm went out after him, grabbed him by the trousers, and jerked him back inside.

Again the Maestro's voice rose in a few crisp sentences, and there was no answer to them, only a faint snivelling, which diminished gradually. The door reopened slowly, and the Maestro and Ledesma came in together, arm in arm--that is, the Maestro's arm was twined flexibly but inexorably about Ledesma's limp member. Ferocious triumph beamed upon the face of the gentle pedagogue; Ledesma was wilted, tear-stained, and despairing. At the same moment, radiant, smiling, alert as a kitten, Senorita Constancia appeared at the outer door. She wore a long-train blue-silk skirt, a cream-coloured camisa through whose shimmering, puffing sleeves her arms glowed like frosted gold; over her bare shoulders a jusi panuelo was lightly laid, the two ends meeting upon her breast in a golden brooch. She swept gracefully through the room, her bracelets clinking on her wrists, toward Huston, whom she had met before, shook hands with him Anglo-Saxon style, bowed to the Maestro, calmly ignored Ledesma, and whirred down into the depths of a cane chair.

"Huston," said the Maestro, gravely, "I want you to marry these two people."

But the missionary, so far petrified with wonder, suddenly rebelled. "Look here, Paul," he burst out, "what kind of a thing are you getting me into? To me it looks--well, at least irregular, very irregular. To tell the truth, old fellow, your actions seem to me--er--well, singular, very singular. I--you----"

"You just leave this thing to me," interrupted the Maestro, with an authoritative nod toward the poor churchman, whose protesting attitude was fast oozing away in the subtle sense of inferiority still sticking to him from the days when the Maestro was gridiron captain and star and he a humble "scrub"; "you just leave that to me. Go ahead with the ceremony; that's all you have to do!"

But, with the courage of the meek, Huston fought on. "I at least must know," he said, firmly, "whether these two people consent to this--er--union." He turned to the Maestra. "Do you want to marry this young man?" he asked, pointing to the snivelling Ledesma.

"Oh, yes," answered the Maestra, suavely, "he must marry me."

"And you," went on Huston, turning to Ledesma, "do you wish to take this maid to wife?"

Ledesma opened his mouth like a carp, then shut it again. He looked fearfully toward the Maestro. The Maestro glared significantly. Ledesma's hands began to wring each other; beads of perspiration appeared about his lips. "I--I----" he stammered.

"Look a-here," thundered the Maestro, impatiently; "what the deuce is the need of all this fuss? He's got to marry her, that's all. He's got to marry her, do you understand?" he repeated, a vision of his ruined schools aflame in his mind; "it's the kind of marriage that's _got_ to be, catch on?"

It is the misfortune of us humans that our speech is, after all, but a poor instrument for the expression of our thoughts. The same words, the same phrases, are capable of diverse interpretation. For instance, to the Maestro, the kind of marriage that _has_ to be was merely the marriage that would settle the crisis of his schools. For the missionary there was only one species of marriage that has to be--not at all that in the Maestro's mind.

"Oh," said the missionary; "oh, _that's_ the way it is, is it?" He turned to Ledesma and, pointing to him a long finger trembling with righteous indignation, "Stand up and be married, young man," he said, icily.

As Ledesma was already on his feet, the command was hardly necessary; but it dashed out of that youth's heart the last spark of hope that had flamed up at the missionary's intervention. Taking Senorita Constancia's arm, the Maestro led her to the groom.

"Take her hand," said the missionary, sternly.

Tremblingly the groom obeyed, and was bound for better or for worse.

It cannot be said that the ceremony was followed by the usual joyous whirr of congratulations. The bride calmly turned her back upon the groom and engaged Huston in a lively conversation. The Maestro, suddenly turned craven, went out into the kitchen on the pretext of seeking refreshments, and meanwhile Ledesma quietly but hurriedly slunk out of the house. The Maestra, from the window, saw him running along the street, but she only laughed. She alone was at ease. The Maestro, returning with a bottle of Spanish wine and a plate of bananas, seemed to have lost all his assurance; the missionary's virtuous indignation was fast leaving him, in spite of his efforts, and doubt again was disturbing his spirit. There was something ominous in the air.

Nor was this presentiment to prove a false one. Perhaps half an hour later, as the Maestra was saying good-by, Isidro pattered in with a note to the Maestro. It was from Ledesma.

SENOR MAESTRO, TYRANT AND DARKEST DESPOT:--When you will receive this note I will be gone and out of the reach of your most unjust, tyrannic and unholy arm. I am embarking at the present time upon a banca, I will take a lorcha at the dismouthing of the Ilog River to Ilo-Ilo and from that charming city I will go to Manila to study typewriting and thus enable me to enter the Administration of the Government of this my sore-tried and much in the past tyrannized and devastated country which will rise like the phenix bird from its cinders, blooming afresh from the long-sleeping volcano when it awakes and lights up the world with the blessings of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity which to my ignorant countrymen I will teach like the swallow which none die without God on High knowing it feed his little young one that do not know how to flie above the dark ignorance at the all-around of them. It gives me great pleasure, oh, sir, to proclamate to you that the unholy union in which you like the blackest czar of despotic Russia forced upon my palpitating heart is null. My father who has returned from his hacienda tells me that according to the law I cannot marry without his permission until I am twenty-five. I am only twenty and my father--Oh, sir, how sweetly paternal is a father--will not permit me to marry Senorita Constancia de la Rama y Lacson, so my so-called marriage is a void.

Hoping sir, that Remorse will soon cause your heart to weep I am

No longer your pupil and assistant-maestro MAURO LEDESMA Y GOLES.

"Thunder!" exclaimed the Maestro, suddenly again belligerent. "Let's get after him!"

But the Maestra had picked up the letter and was reading it.

"Oh," she said, when she had finished; "oh, that is very nice. Now I can--what you call?--ah, divorce; I can divorce--just like an American girl!"

And thus it is that the Girls' School of Balangilang is still the envy of the maestros for leagues around.

VII

A JEST OF THE GODS

It was rather a disreputable place, and really we were there by chance, a dance upon the British warship anchored near Cavite and the breakdown of the returning launch leaving us upon the stone quay of the Binondo _estero_ at a shameful hour. The time spent bobbing upon the waters while with fervent ejaculations the engineer experimented with the frivolous gasoline engine had been ecstatically cool. Now the city exhaled upon us her feverish breath, in a short time the sun would pour down its blistering rays, and we could not bear thought of room and bed. So we sat around the big narra table at Timke's, clinking with straws the ice in our glasses.

There was a scuffle in an obscure corner of the room; then, carried by muchachos, there passed beneath the light a limp, dangling corpse. They were not over-careful, the muchachos. Two were at the legs, two at the arms, so that the head hung down, lamentable, with mouth open. They crossed the room and vanished through a door into the rear apartment; and our last glimpse was of the opalescent reflection of a lamp upon a cranium astonishingly bald.

"Old man Dickson," somebody said, significantly; "paralysed, as usual."

"That man," said Courtland, with a vague gesture toward the door just slammed; "that man is the victim of a most atrocious and absurd tragedy."

And he told it to us thus:

* * * * *

I first knew him through his newspaper work. Every morning he shuffled gently into my office and asked if there was anything new. He did this with a want of assurance strange in a reporter, and yet not at all with humility; but rather in a dreamy, detached manner, as if he really did not care if there was anything new, and would probably not remember it if there were; as if the thing of importance, after all, were the internal problem upon which he was pondering, pondering with a discreet intensity that left his arms to hang in uncouth limpness, his feet to drag, his head to sink sideways toward his right shoulder, his whole body to appear as if abandoned, utterly abandoned, of the spiritual being--to hang, loose, limp, ungoverned, like a scarcrow which lives, gesticulates, postures only with the caprices of the wind. His whole body, I said; I should except the eyes. They were magnificent eyes, large, limpid, serenely blue. They were not abandoned; they were fixed. But it was not at anything outside. It was at something within. As you sought them you became aware of that. You were not seen--you were not of importance. The sun, the sky, men, women, were not seen--they were not of importance. These eyes were looking inside. As you examined them, you realised that it was the back of them that was turned toward you, the reflective back wall of them, and that their working, searching, penetrating part was turned inward, poring there in the shifting gloom at--I don't know what vision.