Rowland Thomas

“ Once Fagan shot a deer, and they delayed for days, drying the meat over pungent wood-smoke. But as their muscles hardened to the Trail, they insensibly made greater progress, in spite of their dallying.
Two weeks brought them to the land of the Unknown, had they but known it. The mountains were higher and wilder, the cloud-caps more frequent. Often the forest on some huge hill, towering black above the Trail, was thin and pointed at the top, as if it had been torn, and there, unseen of them, was a village perched high on the trunks of trees, whence keen-eyed men watched their progress. ”

“ She was glorious, this slim, soft brown thing with the dusky hair and the straight, slender neck, and—"I'se little, but I ain't afraid." Ages of civilization dropped from the man as he gazed, and with a graceless pity he compared the pale fettered women he had known with this free, wild, perfect thing whose feeling was her life. She was talking with her tongue and eyes and hands, and Fagan answered a few words and laughed, and she laughed, too, a sound as natural and sweet as the ripple of a stream, and then her great eyes lighted with earnestness as she went on. ”

“ Hazlitt looked at her in mingled amusement and vexation. In all his wonderful day of discovery, this talkative, commonplace woman had been the sole jarring note. But Doña Ceferina, oblivious to his emotions, sat in the cool twilight of the big room and poised her cup, like some hybrid goddess of justice about to render a decision.
"Beyond doubt, it is a mistake," said Doña Ceferina. "Don Raymundo's family is one of the oldest in Spain, but it has never married with royalty. There are few princes in Spain not of the royal blood; it is not like Russia." ”

“ And she gathered up the pictured blossoms, and pressed them very softly. Misao, looking as fluffy and gentle and bewildered as a kitten, let the samisen fall with a crash, and Okimi came back to her.
"Okimi, dear," said Misao timidly, "do you know what love is?"
"Love?" echoed Okimi. "Why, love is—" She went over to the window. "Look, Misao San, the iris will surely blossom soon. Here is a bud. Love is—and see, the so-strong little pine-tree has sent out three—four—six sharp new needles!" She patted him gently. "Love—why, love is everything." ”

“ Hazlitt flushed. "I know it seems presumptuous," he said. "People will call me a climber. And yet— We have no aristocracy in my country, no recognized aristocracy, as perhaps you know. But of such families as we have, mine is not the worst. For five generations—"
"I care little about families," said Don Raymundo coolly.
The tone was courteous, but the words stung Hazlitt. "I am not a rich man," he said, "but I have enough. I was afraid at first that it was the hacienda I cared for, not the wealth of it, but the power and romance of the life here. ”

“ The people of the mimic dramas you have watched are no puppets of my imagination; there is no bit of tragedy or of comedy written here, however dingy, that some man or woman has not lived. Whether you accept that old heathen man's hypothesis of Little Gods or not, you have looked on at Games which were played by Some One, or by blind Fate. The East you have seen is the real East, stripped of its glamour and its color, a land where nothing is sacred, where there are indeed no Ten Commandments—no Commander, it seems sometimes—a land of uncertainty and empty Fatalism. ”

“ A flash of anger swept over Hazlitt at this man whose mere approach took all the witchery from life. He pressed Dolores' hand before he released it. "She shall be happy," he muttered defiantly, to Don Raymundo and the world. "She shall be happy always."
"There seems to be a great deal of unnecessary time in the world," Don Raymundo observed with his perverse triviality. He and Hazlitt had run across each other in the sala after their siesta, and now they were sitting with their long chairs drawn up before a window, waiting for the end of the day. ”

“ Okimi looked at the swelling iris, and the pure, delicate cherry-blossoms on the silk, and Buddh, sitting cross-legged above his dough-cakes.
"Yes," said Okimi, "you can see it everywhere."
"Can you feel it?"
The breeze came creeping in, sweet with the scents of the green world, and stirred Okimi's sleeve.
"Yes," she answered, "everywhere you feel it."
"And hear it?" asked Misao, wondering.
A cock crowed bravely in the yard, and there came a burst of distant, childish laughter.
"And hear it everywhere," said Okimi, and she began to hum: "White is all the cherry-garden." ”

“ We give our all, and it is wasted because men—"
"Not all men," I said. "Not all men are like Okimi's warrior sweetheart."
"They are all alike," cried the priestess of Lal vehemently. "In their hearts they are all alike, lighter than air, unstabler than water, more fickle than nectar-seeking butterflies. They love our beauty, and when that is gone— Look you," she cried. "This is the tragedy of a woman, to be beautiful, to be loved, and to grow old. ”

“ Even now the freighter Sarstoon had turned her stubby nose Mindoro-ward at Schrofft's suggestion. In ten days she would be lying off Bagalayag, waiting for the cargo he had promised her, and even when one has no fever, ten days are little time in which to fell and trim a hundred cubic meters of a wood so dense that it eats an axe like granulated metal, and float it down the miles of oozing mud they call the Rio Bagalayag, and load it before the northeast monsoon—already threatening in the clouds—comes to lash the open roadstead into a fury of spume and breaking rollers. ”

“ Hazlitt smiled down into her puzzled eyes. Decidedly they were matter-of-fact, these women of the hacienda. "It is good," he assured her, with the calm philosophy of his thirty years behind him. "Of course it's good." Still she looked up at him, forgetting her shyness, and a gust of protectiveness and elder-brotherly affection for this tender, budding woman-thing took hold of him. "It's good," he urged, "and you will always be happy in it."
Back in the dimness Doña Ceferina was sipping her third cup of chocolate, while Raymundo smoked with half shut eyes and smiled inscrutably. ”

“ The most fascinating of all the playthings he had discovered in his brief life was something he was pleased to call love. He played at that with his usual wholeheartedness, till a score of girls up and down the valley were ever watching for the lithe figure on the wild black horse, and more than a score of men were breathing threats of vengeance. Whereat the Captain laughed boyishly, and invited the discontented to step out and settle it once for all with pistol or rifle or knife or spear or bolo or bare hands. ”

“ And Don Augusto looked at us as if we were dogs—I wanted to give him my bayonet—and he smiled and said: 'I thank you so much, Teniente mio, for sparing me another of the comedies. It is better for every one. Adiós, Señor.'
"Oh, I told you that teniente of mine was a devil! He got up and shook the hand of Don Augusto, and he smiled and said: 'Adiós, Señor Don Augusto de los Reyes. We shall not meet again for some time, I think. I am getting very tired of it myself. But I will give you a trustworthy escort. José!'
"Adiós, Señor Don Augusto." ”

“ Richard Roe sat across his table irresistibly reminiscent of some wandering, roué god, who needed but a whiff of Olympian air to refreshen his eternal youth. Sun and wind and work had erased the signs of dissipated strength, sleep had rubbed out the aging lines of work, and now he sat in the sala of the Tin-Roofed House lean, brown, and hard, with his rumpled yellow hair and trace of yellow beard, and sparkling eyes half smiling at Life and Fate—not defiantly or deprecatingly, but with the faint amusement one may find in the vagaries of equals one knows well. ”

“ Over his cup, Don Raymundo's tiny Mephistophelian moustache lifted slightly in the mocking smile which was his extremest expression of emotion, and Hazlitt rushed to the righting of his false lead.
"Of course I did not mean that Don Raymundo was a prince in name," he explained, "but in fact, you know."
Doña Ceferina raised her cup and sipped her chocolate resignedly, but Hazlitt did not heed her.
"The startling, the wonderful thing to an American like me is that he is not only a prince in power, but a prince of another age. ”

“ A flash of jealousy crossed the mother's broad, good-natured face. "Yes," she said, "she is beautiful. But after all she is only a mestiza, almost a Filipina like the rest of us. And she will grow old."
Then, having halted a moment, they tramped on along their path like phantoms risen on the lifeless beach, for the youngest was but a memory of what the eldest had been a little time before, and the eldest was only a prophecy of what the youngest soon would be. ”

“ For a long time she lay quite still. So long that the frightened, curious monkey crept out to look about him. He stretched out his claw-like hand and plucked inquiringly at the gay bundle on the floor. Okimi did not stir, and he drew back his lips in a nervous grin. He made a little rush and grinned back inquiringly at the bundle, another and another, and took heart. The flame attracted him, and he scrambled to the dresser and stood face to face with Buddh. He jumped back with his grin of frightened surprise, but Buddh did not even deign to look at him. ”

“ And up in the sala of the great house on the hill, the mistress of the hacienda stared at Hazlitt over her cup. She was a beautiful woman, but under the Caucasian mold of her features another face was beginning to show dimly, the face of a race whose very heat and strength of life fuses all lines down to mere shapelessness of flesh. A part of Doña Ceferina had been overtaken by the unrelenting advance of middle age. ”

“ True love is the one eternal thing in our mortal lives. It is greater than we are ourselves, and it is never wasted—"
Suddenly the flames, in their silver sockets, sucked upward once and then were gone, and we were left in inky darkness, the priestess of Lal and I, cowering close together like two frightened children, while ghostly garments rustled all about us, and ghostly voices whispered, and we saw what Okimi learned. ”

“ Hazlitt moved restlessly, and Don Raymundo continued: "Observe the sequence. The wealth of dreams is traditionally Oriental, and the Philippines lie in the Orient. So the boy, lying there beneath the broken roof of the gaunt stone house, and being sadly in need of an income, dreams of a journey over sunny seas to a region where Spaniards dwell in palaces and gain untold gold, living like little gods together on broad acres where cane rustles and coffee-blossoms gleam and the hemp sends up its never-dying stalk. ”

“ In Doña Ceferina's placidly romantic bosom, he guessed, had grown a vision of a young prince come out of the West to rescue her imprisoned princess from this tropical Castle of Indolence. A vision had come to him, too, a vision which made him lean back and forget his cards. Six months ago a beach-comber, gilded and respectable, of course, but still a beach-comber, an adventurer, without a country; and now, perhaps, a man whom many a petty prince might envy. Fancy ruling undisputed with Señorita Dolores over the quiet domain of the "Hacienda without a Name!" Jove, what a queen she'd make. ”

“ A man was required only to have his rifle in good condition, and be on hand to use it. The regiment spent weary days, dragging about like a slow snake under the burning sun, soaking and shivering in the mists of evening, till men began to sicken. But not Fagan. His melodious bellow would ring triumphant along the lines each night, "I'se been wo'okin' on the ra'alroad," and cheer the drooping men, till the voices of the company wits were demanding, "Who's dat ar white man got a ra'alroad?" ”

“ Doña Ceferina laughed from her place behind the cups. "He speaks as seriously as if he made a vow to Our Lady. It's only a ball, you know, Hazleet. Give the men their chocolate, Dolorcita." She raised her cup and sipped happily. "After all," she said, in a tone of deep content, "there are few things in life more delightful than one's chocolate and cigarette."
Don Raymundo was gazing from his window off into the distance, where the gathering shadows were blending forest and cane-field.
"Chocolate is very good," he said thoughtfully. ”

“ GOD'S LITTLE DEVILS
I was back in that ancient temple of Tzin Piaôu. My old heathen priest, half reclining on his hollowed slab of stone, was looking at me with a spark of laughter in his keen old eyes.
"Have you seen for yourself?" he asked.
I nodded.
"And how," he asked me, "do you like to look at the Games of the Little Gods?"
"I think," said I angrily, "that they are Little Devils. That black man was a man. ”

“ And when they returned, Don Enrique would come riding at the head of the long line, grave and composed as ever, while the huntsmen were loaded down with a beautiful great buck or a boar, killed by a single thrust of which any matador in Madrid need not have been ashamed. Then, after the huge hunt breakfast, would come the welcome torpor of the siesta, and in the evening a mighty game, malilla or monte or billiards, for Don Enrique played as he worked and rode, with a carelessness of consequences not at all pleasant to a man with a decent regard for his purse. ”

“ What I want is to make her happy. We can grow old together."
Don Raymundo smiled, and for once his smile was patient instead of mocking. "You are like that young man of mine now," he said gently. "You remind me very much of him. When you are older, you will judge less harshly. And aren't you overlooking something? Is it my happiness that counts, or yours, or even Dolores', though it's hard that she should suffer for the mistake her father made." He drew himself up in his chair and looked at Hazlitt with a new light in his eyes. ”

“ Decidedly, the talkative woman on the beach had shown some discrimination in placing Señorita Dolores on the pinnacle of beauty. Suddenly Hazlitt became aware that Doña Ceferina's tale was told, and that her talk had taken a more personal turn.
"Dolores gazed down on her little world as it went to sleep."
"It's so good to have one from our own world to talk to again," she said enthusiastically. "One gets lonely here, with only natives for neighbors. I tremble to think what my existence would have been, after I came back from school, if Don Raymundo had not been here to rescue me." ”