James Hopper

“ Straight for the spot where I stood, señor; straight as your compass needle points to the north, the prao steered from afar, and not a palm's breadth either way did it turn as it foamed toward me. And when, heeling over like a wounded bird, it grounded in the shallows, and ten men jumped out into the water to carry him ashore, he motioned them off, sprang himself into the waves waist-deep, and impatiently, as a horse paws, he forced his way toward me. Then a fear entered my heart and I fled, fled back into the woods, to my hut, and threw myself upon the floor panting, panting and dreaming. ”

“ One man crawled back, two followed, ten in a bunch, and in another minute the tall grass was all alive with sinuous movements and there was nobody in the trench, nothing except limp heaps of what looked like cast-off clothing.
The door of the hut marked by Roberts flew open as if by explosion and the Maestro burst out, a smoking gun in his right hand, a revolver in his left, another revolver and a bolo in his belt. With a piratical yell he raced across the plaza, his long legs working smooth as well-greased machinery, his red hair flying behind him. ”

“ A big fly buzzed near and the woman wafted it away. A little fly struck the candle and boiled to death in the molten tallow. From a hole in the church wall a big gee-kaw lizard uttered his hoarse, spasmodic cry three times, then stopped, smothered by the heat. Ten feet away a carabao plumped into a mud hole with a cool, squashy sound. A heavy silence fell upon the plaza, punctuated only by the raucous breathing of a big American cavalry-horse, dying of the surra by the cuartel.
The door of the schoolhouse opened, and the Maestro came out. ”

“ The little hut in the bamboos by the river sagged, drooped, rotted; till there was left nothing but the four big corner-posts of narra standing upright, with between them a little mound upon which the grass grew high, a little mound like a grave, the grave of our love. I grew old with the waiting, the longing; my heart was all alone, all alone; and when he landed again, in the green dawn, one day, he did not know the woman squatting on the beach, so near that one of his soldiers pushed her away with his foot to let him pass. ”

“ Beneath the leaves the stars shone upon our love, and when the breeze ceased, so quiet was it, señor, that we could hear the gentle dripping of the tuba in the buckets, above us in the sky. And we would stay thus many hours of the night, señor, my arms about her, her soft body against mine, and it was only later that I remembered that all the caresses came from me.
"Señor, I was so happy, that I forgot to hate. The day after my marriage I let Herrera lead into the pueblo. The next day he was not in line, nor ever after. Señor, the man who forgets to hate is a fool. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He would kill the smile.
He climbed down the bamboo ladder and, beneath the floor, went directly to the big net, hanging from post to post. From one of the flaccid folds he drew an object. In three leaps he was up again, and in the faint light of his little tin lamp, for a while he acted like a child with a doll. He crouched down, the thing upon his knee, spoke to it with tender accent, stroked it with long, gentle caress. But it was not a doll; it was a gun, a dainty Mauser carbine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Señor, the man who forgets to hate is a fool.
"All about me there was a rippling of evil laughter, and winkings and signs and tappings of fingers on foreheads. And I was blind.
"One afternoon, late, as I was coming back to my hut, my empty buckets swinging on the pole, my eyes fixed upon the little nipa-roof already showing through the trees, and hunger of love in my heart, I tripped against a liana across the path. There was a whirr of pliable bamboo and something sharp whistled through the air and struck me there, behind the knee, with the sound of the butcher's cleaver cutting meat. ”

“ The fish-corral still made inscrutable the mystery behind, and he could see only the smoke, now a sooty black, rising in heavy volutes to the green sky.
He slid down and paced the sand, trying to calm himself. But the smoke, ever more voluminous and threatening, allowed him no peace. He ran back farther up the shore to a coconut palm and tried to climb the lithe, slippery trunk. The notches cut by the monkey-like tuba-men were too far apart; the silvery bark was like a greased pole. Twice he went up some twenty feet, only to slip, fighting and clawing, clear back to the ground again. ”

“ 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 Señorita Constancia de la Rama y Lacson, is camped in my sugar fields, in front of my house, and she will not decamp. ”

“ Hanging from the central rafter was a lamp, smouldering in yellow spark and sooty smoke; and against the harsh downpour of clear sunlight outside this little, soiled flame gave to the whole crew of contorted bodies an aspect of death, of carnage, of decay. The Sergeant caught himself sniffing the air. "Let's get out of this," he said.
They climbed down the rude stairs again, and instinct, more than Pedro's guidance, took the Sergeant to the right, some fifty yards into the bush—and there it was, the trench:—parallel to the trail, broad, deep, and all littered with signs of recent occupancy. ”

“ She redressed the wound, placed fresh bandages about the shoulder; but the fever did not abate. All day she fought it, handicapped by her poverty of means. And then as the sun had set in black-and-blood-portent and the night fell like a great velvet cloak from the sky, Fear crept into the little hut; and all night as she sat there by the cot, it was at her elbow, spectral, dilated-eyed, and cold. ”

“ The Maestra broke it. "Señor 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 Señora 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 piñas. ”

“ His arm went around her waist; but, señor, she only looked that her dress would not touch the water. And I knew within me that when he had forsaken me for her, love had lost.
"I did not die, señor, although I thought I would as I sat there long after he had gone, sat there through the biting of the midday sun till the poisoned breath of the night blew into my face. I went back to my hut and lived. I lived as others; I married, I bore children. These children have borne children; their children have borne children. I lived, but I did not love. ”

“ 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 Lieutenant pondered a moment in silent malevolence.
"Yes," he said, "pretty fair for signal-practice. But what about the real thing, eh? Why don't they get at each other? I don't see them scrimmage, do you?"
A cloud obscured the radiance of the Maestro's visage.
"Well," he said, ruefully, "we're in the Philippines. My team can run signals, but you can't expect them to play. And," he added, in sudden consolation, "your Scouts can drill, but they won't fight."
The situation had become tense beyond words, and the Maestro gracefully evoluted. ”

“ Every morning the Maestro cursed under his breath as he looked upon his waning audience. He could do little more than swear, for it would have taken a hundred times his salary to feed them all, and half of that went home religiously every month to a younger brother who was playing end on the Yale team. So, not being able to help them all, he had come to the determination to feed none. Which did not prevent him from smuggling little Carnota into his house every morning, to send him forth again with grains of mush sticking to his nose. ”

“ She had just come to Bacolod via San Francisco, Manila, and Ilo-Ilo, by means, successively, of a big white army transport full of other ingenuous pedagogues; a wheezy but impudent little Spanish steamer, which aggressively shoved its nose under every ripple of the inter-island seas; a languid-sailed lorcha, loaded with pigs, dogs, and brownies, and finally a dizzy banca, which, perched upon the tip-foam of a curling comber, outriggers spread out like wings, landed her high up on a golden beach—fresh, dainty, and composed like a coloured album picture. ”

“ Out of Ilo-Ilo we had contrary winds at first; all night the lorcha—an old grandmother of a craft, full of dry-rot spots as big as woodpeckers' nests—flapped heavily about on impotent tacks, and when the sun rose we found ourselves on the same spot from which we had watched its setting. Toward ten o'clock, however, the monsoon veered, and wing-and-wing the old boat, creaking in every joint as if she had the dengue, grunted her way over flashing combers with a speed that seemed almost indecent. ”

“ They came in a file down the road, between the palm trees, in the glowing tropic light, swinging along with smooth, resistless progress. They seemed to glide; the bamboo poles, balanced on their shoulders, slid as if on invisible tracks laid above the ground, and the tuba buckets at the ends were steady as if floating in the air. Soon they were near. The play of their great thigh muscles became visible. They turned the corner of the plaza with a new burst of speed, and then they passed us in magnificent action. Down their naked heels came in turn, pounding the ground ”

“ I knew her right away, the pale, sweet girl, the girl of the roses. She was standing before him; and her eyes, the eyes with the sea-glint in them, were plunging into his soul. He did not shrink; he stood there before her, his eyes in hers, his shoulders thrown back, his arms hanging limp down his sides, with palms turned outward in a gesture of utter surrender. Long, gravely she read the soul laid bare before her. Suddenly she started back, one, two steps, heavy, falling steps; as at the same higher command he also backed, one, two steps, heavy, falling steps. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From the shifting shreds of sky the sun fell upon the sands in heavy gold spots. To the east, through the lithe, silver trunks, the vivid green of the rice fields flashed; to the west a tawny thread of beach banked up the rippling tide.
In the darkness of the recess a frail hut of nipa leaves and bamboo slowly shaped itself as I advanced, and suddenly a shrill voice, rasping as the violin note of the tyro, pierced the peace of the place. In the doorway, at the head of the cane ladder, old Marietta was gesticulating. ”

“ THE FAILURE OUT of the deadly stupor that encased him as a leaden coffin, Burke started with a gurgling cry. He thought that somebody was driving a red-hot poker into his eyeballs. He found only that the flaming globe of the rising sun had just emerged over the lorcha's bow bulwarks and was burrowing his face with its feverish rays. He rolled clumsily down the sloping deck to a spot where a flap of dirty sail gave shade and there he lay weakly on his back, motionless. ”