Caybigan

by James Hopper

THE CONFLUENCE

It was a mistake from the first. The post was not at all for a woman, but Miss Terrill was unaware of that. 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. So, when out of the hat in which the Division Superintendent was thoughtfully shuffling little slips of paper representing the towns of his terra incognita, she drew the name of Barang, she took it as much of a lark. Immediately she ran to a map, found the little black dot down in the southern part of Negros, and pronounced it "cute." She seemed prone, it must be said, to take things that way. She was a very young girl, so young that the officers of the Post raised their eyebrows and muttered under their breaths when they learned where she was going. A certain second lieutenant, Saunders by name, and very fresh from West Point, went so far in fact as to offer to arrange it so that she should stay in Bacolod, at least as long as he were there, and afterwards—any place where he might be. But she laughed sweetly at this proffer, and put it from her promptly and decisively, though her blue eyes, at the young fellow's sudden show of despair, shone a moment with a tenderness—maternal he called it afterward—that somehow left him without bitterness and full of reverence.

Here it must be explained for future understanding that Rumour, a most vigorous Dame in the Philippines, forthwith pounced upon this little incident and made off with it north and south. North the development of the tale was rapid indeed; by the time it reached Escalante it dealt with the marriage of Miss Terrill to the fat old colonel of the Post. South, progress was more modest; at Himamaylan and Cantalacan, towns nearest to Barang, it gave merely the news of the formal engagement of Miss Terrill to Lieutenant Saunders. Which freak of Dame Rumour was precious indeed, in that it led to the complications that make this story.

The affair of her assignment continued to be much of a lark during the two weeks spent in Bacolod awaiting transportation. It was still a lark when the launch came and her trunk, in the loading, fell into the surf and the hombres in charge of it kept dry by the simple expedient of standing upon it. And the long, hard trip in the launch, laden to the gunwales with supplies for a military post still further than her own town, also was a lark, although at sunset the sky drew down in a black vault beneath which the little steamer seemed very small and very lone, and a wind arose which sent her plunging beneath tons of swirling water, and later, when the sea had calmed, the Tagal pilot got lost in the blinding downpour of rain and ran her gently into a perpendicular wall from which they backed with a poignant feeling that it was only the superstructure backing thus away, that the bottom was still on the rock—a feeling which proved baseless, but which kept them tense the night long, speaking in whispers and treading the deck a-tiptoe. The world was still joyous when they crashed through a fish-corral and her chair, caught by one of the poles, whisked her instantaneously from bow to stern. But when they anchored beyond the edge of a long reef, and the sun rose glaringly upon the shore, it must be admitted that her heroic little heart sank a bit. On the other side of the reef the waters ended in rippling purple shallows; and then there emerged a low bank of mud—a livid yellow mud, flaccid and spongy, corroded with trickly streams that ran ink. At the upper end of this bank, flanked by four leafless leprous palms, there rose a long building, askew upon its rotting piles, with torn tin roof and shutters fallen outward. In front, very white against the gray facade, the blue sky, the yellow mud, a pole sprang up with a faded American flag wrapped dejectedly about its top. Embracing the bank, the two curved arms of a river came down in slow gurgitation of liquid ooze between screens of black-green vegetation.

"This is Himamaylan, little mother," said the young lieutenant (he had fallen rather easily into the relation imposed by her). "This is Himamaylan. Wish it were your station; you've twelve more miles overland."

Now this thoughtful preference for Himamaylan (seeing what Himamaylan was) hardly promised for her own station. But she resolutely gulped down a certain tightening of the throat. "How jolly!" she said.

Saunders looked at her rather long. "What a darling you are!" he murmured. And the tone was hardly filial.

Which caused her to hurry her preparations for landing. A native standing to his knees in the mud, after a good deal of vocalising from the lieutenant, listlessly strolled to a decrepit banca, bottom up in the shallows, flopped it over, baled it out with a coconut shell, tied up the shaky outriggers with bejuca, and paddled leisurely, with an air of supreme indifference, to the counter of the launch. "I'll go ahead and reconnoitre," said the lieutenant, springing into it; "it's only six, and Wilson (the American teacher of the station) is probably not up yet." Miss Terrill saw him paddled to the shore, saw him land and go up the rude causeway. At each step the stone under him sank as in a jelly and his foot whisked out in a spatter of mud; at each step her heart followed the stone in its sinking movement. He disappeared into the great ruined building. She waited, it seemed a long time. The padron of the launch began a muttered discourse upon the sin of delay with an ebbing tide. The sun rose higher, poured its accusing glare upon the squalor of the scene. The hombre in the banca pulled his wide-brimmed straw hat over his eyes, curled in the bow, and went to sleep. The mud began to crawl with little black crabs. "Cheer up!" she said to herself in a crisp intonation, like the note of a bird.

The Lieutenant reappeared at the head of a dozen villainous duplicates of the man in the banca. He paddled up. "All right," he said. "I have cargadores. Wilson will arrange things to get you to your town. We'll land your stuff first; by that time he'll be presentable."

One by one her boxes were thrown into the banca, paddled ashore, and carried to the door of the big building, the convento of the friars before the revolution had driven them out. Then very ceremoniously, while the padron warned about further delay, Saunders handed her into the little canoe, like a princess into her gondola, out again on shore, and helped her over the first and worst part of the causeway.

"I must go now," he said. "Wilson is waiting for you at the door and that launch is beginning to thump bottom. And please, once more; won't you come back to Bacolod?"

She lifted her clear eyes to him and shook her head gently. "But you are a dear good boy," she said.

To the subtle maternal tone of this, there was no replying. He bowed low over her hand and turned back.

She started up right away. A great loneliness exhaled itself from the land. She did not look behind, but toiled stolidly toward the building.

Tied to one of the verandah posts, a native pony, short-necked, compact, muscular, was pawing the ground. She stopped and looked at it, gaining from it the first comfort received of things since her arrival. It was carefully groomed. The bay flanks shone like silk; the mane, parted, fell fluffily on each side of the curved neck, the forelock dangling roguishly between the eyes. Beneath the polished saddle a red blanket added a touch of colour, almost of coquetry. The little animal stood there like a protest against the ambient discouragement.

But a white-garbed man was at the door. "Good-morning, Mr. Wilson," she said gaily; "what a nice horse you have there!"

"Good-morning, Miss Terrill," he answered, a gleam of approval in his pale, tired eyes; "but that's not my horse. Mine—well, it's like everything else about here"—and in a heavy gesture he passed his hand over the musty landscape.

She met the owner upstairs.

He was a young man with slender waist and broad shoulders. Leather-gaitered, buttoned to the chin in khaki, a big Colt hanging to his loose belt, he gave Miss Terrill an impression of elastic efficiency very pleasing. But still more pleasing, she thought very secretly, were his eyes, golden-brown, soft and rather grave. He was horribly reticent though. He let Wilson do the talking; leaning against the window-sill, he contented himself with short remarks dropped at long intervals like the sudden toning of a deep bell, and also with a consideration of her, serious and thorough like the pondering of a problem. It was something entirely different from that to which she was accustomed. She was not vain; but still, she had often seen herself, mirrored, as it were, in the eyes of men; and she knew that in her short khaki skirt, her long, tawny leggins, her wide-collared blouse, her soft felt hat beneath which her hair fluffed, light and golden as sun-kissed vapour, she was—well, picturesque at least. But here was a judgment that reserved itself, an admiration very much under check. His very position as he stood there, his glances downward upon her, gave him a subtle strategic superiority. It was rather irritating; and when he bowed and excused himself out of the room, her return salute was stiff with a stiffness foreign to her sweet nature. But immediately she found herself listening intently, oblivious of Mr. Wilson, listening to the steps springing down the stairs, stamping upon the flagging of the court, stopping beneath the verandah. There was a short silence, then a sudden clatter of hoofs. Unconsciously she was up and at the window—and he was gliding rapidly along the palm-lined road leading away from the sea, erect in the saddle, his waist giving flexibly to the pace of the pony.

"Oh," she ejaculated; "is he going away?"

"Yes," said Mr. Wilson; "back to his station at Cantalacan. It's ten miles beyond yours. He'll arrange things for you at Barang."

Then, strangely enough, the desolation of the surrounding landscape brusquely whelmed her again. She felt very much alone with this Mr. Wilson, with his stoop of the shoulders, his weary eyes, his attitude of profound lassitude.

"I must start off for my station," she said decidedly.