Caybigan Part 4

"Time for a charge, eh?" Roberts shouted, turning to his superior.

But that gentleman was sleeping quietly, his face in the gra.s.s, and a shivered lance-handle by his side.

"With the bayonet--charge!" bellowed Roberts, taking command.

He took a few steps in advance and found himself alone. The Scouts were satisfied with their position; they settled a little deeper in the trench and peppered away valiantly.

"Charge, darn you, charge!" screeched Roberts, p.r.i.c.king the nearest men with his sword.

But the few minutes of oral instruction upon charging, given in the church, proved inadequate. Three or four--those who had come in closest contact with Roberts's persuasion--started out convulsively, took a few steps, and suddenly flopped back into the ditch like frogs into a puddle.

The Dios-Dios lines were stiffening now. With the Maestro's rifle quiet, their immunity from punishment was encouraging. Back of them, upright on a mound, the pseudo-sainted form of Papa Isio stood with arms stretched to heaven in fervent exhortation. The more valiant began to prevail. The lines began to move forward again.

"Oh, Lord," groaned Roberts, "if the little skunks would only charge."

And then from the depths of the trench there slowly emerged a strange, inchoate, human thing. As it rose it segregated; one half of it fell off in a big black, limp body. The rest continued unfolding, up and up, till finally it stood in full view, a weird, b.l.o.o.d.y, red-haired, dishevelled spectre. It tottered unsteadily on the talus and then a shrill, unearthly voice quavered:

"Five, twenty-four, six X!"

There was a movement in the trench.

"Five, twenty-four, six X!" again wailed the lamentable voice.

A little group of men sprang out of the trench and charged in a V a-down the square; the rest of the company poured out in helter-skelter pursuit. Before this incongruous advance the Dios-Dios lines, who had seen enough miracles for one day, broke, turned, and fled. A small body held their ground, and the Scouts struck them with a crumpling crash.

For three minutes it was bayonet against bolo, and Roberts's revolver turned the scales. In another minute the plaza was cleared and the last of Papa Isio's forces were disappearing among the burned huts with bayonets at their backs.

When Roberts returned with his elated soldiers he found the pueblo occupied by a detachment sent from Bago. A stretcher was starting on a tour of the field, but Roberts ran ahead of it to the centre of the plaza.

His attention had been caught by a vague movement there. Through the high gra.s.s he could see something struggling and bounding in sudden, sharp movement.

It was the inevitable Maestro. He was on top of Hafner, who also had come back to life, and was "kneeing" him with characteristic enthusiasm.

"Mr. Referee," screamed the gentle educator, when he had been pulled away by Roberts, aided by a corporal's squad; "Mr. Referee, he crawled after you blew the whistle! Put that ball back, you scalawag. Our ball!"

Then he fainted, which, considering the day's work, was about the proper thing to do.

III

HER READING

Out over Mariveles the sun had set in sombre splendour. A velvet pall of darkness had fallen upon the earth like a conclusion; but the waters of the bay still glowed, glowed with a light that was not reflected, but floated up from within--a luminous exhalation, as it were, from the mysterious depths--a dark purplish light that should not have been, which astonished the soul and was sinister. Someone on the veranda mentioned Morton. The short, idle sentence split the peace of the moment like an electric spark. And the silence that immediately engulfed it was not as the silence that had been before; it was a silence full of unrest, of vague spiritual heavings and stirrings, of tumult invisible, unheard, impalpable and yet felt, poignantly felt, in some immaterial way, as is felt at sea the surge of waters through the impenetrability of the mists. It was such a silence as always followed the invocation of the man; for his case was one which filled us with inward clamour and questioning, and yet pinned us beneath the weight of some indefinable oppression.

But Courtland began to speak, and we leaned forward, intent, knowing that he must understand. Yet his first words were a confession of doubt, of that same inability to pierce the depths of the thing and pa.s.s sentence which exasperated us all vaguely.

"I don't know if I understand--yet," he began, slowly. "I've stared and stared at it--and yet--I don't know. Sometimes I think I understand--a little more every day--and yet----"

His voice had droned off gradually. A heavy torpor descended from the low sky. Far out lights flared up, red, dishevelled lights that bounded and leaped, up and down, to and fro, in frenzied dance. The Tagal fishermen were calling the fish with their alluring flames; the soft, insistent tapping of their paddles upon the flanks of their canoes came to our ears like hypnotic suggestion. They began to shout, a mad medley of yells that wavered, broke, began again and at last welded in one long, quavering cry full of incomprehensible desolation.

And Courtland's voice ba.s.sed forth again, with unexpected steadiness.

"It isn't the fall of him that's difficult; that's easy, too easy--we see so much of it. But the redemption--unless we go back to the old explanation, puerile to us complicated moderns, perhaps from its very obviousness--the old theory of purification through suffering. But you know, there're the others, that suffered, too; and they----. And then there is She. She is the mystery, the holy mystery. Before her she had his soul, legible to her like a book. And the leaves wear a smear of mud and blood. And yet what did she read? Out of these defiled pages, what fact did she grasp as the All-Important?"

We listened, patiently waiting, waiting for the word, the solution.

"You remember him--a tall, dark, aquiline man, with something Indian in his features, and efficiency written in every muscle-play of his magnificent body. A strong man, you would remark at first sight, a strong man, physically and morally. Bah!--the strength of man--a phrase, words, bubble! He had the body, the jaw, the presence--a mere sh.e.l.l. The weakness was there, anyhow, some little spot of blight within, I don't know just what; it might have been a touch of the romantic merely--that glowed sometimes in the liquidity of his brown eyes.

"He was one of life's fortunates, too. Belonged to a good family in the States--New Englanders, reputable and cold and narrow, stiff with rect.i.tude as their own rock-ribbed coasts. Well educated, had gone to college, had played football, et cetera. Well, he came over here with the Volunteers. Easy to read after that. First, fervent, romantic patriotism, then mad exasperation, then mere cold cynical brutality.

Two years of loosening of fiber in the promiscuity of camp, of reversion to type in butchery of field. When the Volunteers returned, he did not go with them. The tropics had him by that time, had penetrated his heart with their pernicious charm--the charm of their languorous amorality, the charm of power:--we whites here, as in some insane asylums, we're all kings. He stayed.

"He went into the Constabulary, behaved rather well there, too. When I first saw him he had just returned from an expedition and his name was in all mouths. His command had proved faithless, and he had fought his way back, through enemy and friend, through incredible suffering. It was fine--but it was the sh.e.l.l. Inside was the spot of blight. And it began to spread, by imperceptible degrees. You could hardly see the progress, you know--only by taking periods far apart, and then it hit you with a shock. Finally he was at the last step--you know the step I mean, the last one.

"You could tell it by an exaggeration of outer form, of outer cleanliness, by a stiffening, as it were, of the sh.e.l.l. The whiteness of his suits became extraordinary; they glistened with starch; they b.u.t.toned up to the ears. He flourished his swagger stick like a general; at the club he bore himself with aggressive stiffness, with a febrile hauteur that challenged the world.

"I suppose it wasn't all corrosion of moral fiber. Perhaps that deplorable touch of romance in the man was partly responsible. You know--love, free, untrammelled love, in the tropics, beneath the palms; between the cynical, blase, complicated man of civilisation and the maid, the charming, ingenuous maiden, half savage, half child--a miserable hodge-podge vision of love, spices, bananas, bamboos, coral reefs----

"I stumbled upon the establishment by chance. It was cholera time; I had been detailed as inspector. It was very sordid, really. No hut beneath the palms; two rooms in the Walled City. Disorder, untidiness, moral la.s.situde there. No wonder he stiffened up outside. And she was not even pretty. Her eyes, slightly oblique, were closely set together, which gave her an extraordinary calculating air. While he romanced--I suppose that he did; I hope that he did--she seemed counting, ceaselessly counting the Mex. that might come to her out of that affair. The only redeeming thing that I saw--redeeming, I mean, from a purely plastic standpoint--was a beautiful, liquid-eyed child they had there--her sister. You catch my distinction. It wasn't at all redeeming from another point of view--that child there in the shame of their lives.

Everything else might have been pardonable--but that----

"After a while even the outer sh.e.l.l began to show it. His white suits lost their impeccability; often he left the upper b.u.t.ton open. Sometimes he wore his khaki without leggings. He didn't shave often enough. A vague sordidness began to creep over him like mould.

"He drank. Not steadily; but about once a week he marched into the club with his hostile swagger (mind you, the swagger was all against himself; n.o.body knew of his situation; he did not know that I knew); he sat down resolutely at one of the tables and called for drink after drink, which he swallowed with the same strange, decided, inflexible manner, as if he were doing something of absolute importance, something that he must do in spite of the world, in spite of himself. He kept that up, a frown between his eyes as if from tremendous mental effort, hour after hour, sometimes till the whiteness of dawn. Then he rose suddenly, clicked his heels together, and stalked off, seemingly unaffected.

"One evening, as he came in thus, I was sitting alone on the veranda. He gave me a casual glance, walked straight on a few steps, then, swerving suddenly, settled in the seat next to mine. He said nothing at first, just sat there, a black bar between his eyes, seizing gla.s.s after gla.s.s which the muchachos, by that time well trained, ran up to him. Then he began to speak.

"He spoke about Her! Of course, at that time I did not know of her existence. I was bewildered; I thought he spoke of the other one, the one in the Walled City. Then as I understood, I was shocked as by a desecration.

"'It's four years ago, Courtland, that I told her good-by,' he said, soberly, leaning over and placing a hand upon my knee. 'She was in the garden, in the dew of the morning, and she was picking roses.'

"He was silent a long time. I was dumb, astounded; a sense of sacrilege filled my being. He began again:

"'Her eyes are green, Courtland, green like the sea. And she can read into my soul, Courtland, right into my soul!'

"Another period of silence, and then:

"'"I am yours; whenever you need me I shall come to you." That is what she said.'

"He jerked forward over the table, his head in his hands. A horrible spiritual discomfort crept into me. I didn't want to hear about it; I didn't! I wanted to hush him, push my hand against that blasphemous mouth----

"'And I left her in the garden, in the dew of the morning, among the roses!'

"He rose stiffly, drew his hands from his face, down to his sides, as if with great effort, squared his shoulders, snapped his heels together, and marched off as he had come in.

"Thus I first saw her, and always after saw her, in indelible picture--a frail young girl, of eyes with the sea-glint in them, picking roses in the dewy morning. Roses!--thousands of them--red and white and yellow; they are at her feet, at her sides, above her; their petals are in her hair, their incense is about her like an adoration.