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 Señor, 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.
"Señor 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:
"Señor 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.