V
What followed came back to her afterward with strange blending always of vague unreality and glaring vividness.
Very calmly she went down to the Casa Popular, before which the calvacade was stopping. On the ground she saw the litter with its lithe form silhouetted beneath the blanket. "He is dead," she said to herself with weird certainty. All about her, men were talking excitedly; she did not hear a word, and yet, later, all that they said came back to her, complete to every inflection.
The Maestro had received secret information of an attack planned by Carr, the negro renegade, upon Barang; hence the move of the morning. The two parties had met upon the road; both had taken to the ditch and had peppered away at each other for a while. Then the Maestro, who had kept on his horse to hold his men better in hand, had been struck by a chance bullet; the pony, zipped by the same fire, had thrown him. But as, seizing the opportunity, Carr charged forward with a yell of triumph, the prostrate man, raising himself on his elbow with a last effort, had shot him through the head with his revolver. This sudden reverse had scattered the outlaws.
She did not hear this; it came back to her later. She stood very still; and her heart, with each solemn beat, said, "He is dead."
A desire came to her to see him once more. She moved to the litter. She lowered the blanket. Upon the very white forehead the black hair was matted; matted with the toil done for her, in her defense. She separated the curls between her fingers, smoothing them in long caressing movements. And then she saw stirring between the pale lips the suspicion of a breath.
Instantly the dreamy lethargy that enshrouded her dropped like a cloak; and she was a-thrill with a fierce desire for action. "To my home, quick, quick!" she cried to the men. They took up the litter and started toward the house. But they were inconceivably slow. They jostled him. She pushed one of the carriers aside and herself took a pole. Finally he lay upon her little cot.
She tore open the khaki blouse with its spot of rust above the heart. The blue shirt beneath was soggy and dripping. With her scissors she cut off both garments, then washed the bared flesh. But there was something which would not wash off—a little bluish spot from which, constantly reforming, red lines radiated like the cracks of a broken pane.
He opened his eyes just then; they glared wild for a moment, settled upon her, softened, then with a sharp intake of breath he was unconscious again. She noticed that his right shoulder had a strange, caved-in appearance. She felt the joint lightly. The shoulder was dislocated.
Her lips tightened. That first must be set, for from it he suffered. She had heard of it as something very difficult. She was a girl, weak, lone, ignorant, and yet it must be done.
She called Vincente and together they tried to draw the arm back into its socket. It was sickening work. At every effort the strong shoulder muscles contracted in reflex resistance, and they were helpless as babes.
She desisted and thought, with an exasperated concentration of all her faculties. A snatch of chance knowledge came back to her. In her trunk she had a little medicine chest given to her by loving friends when she had started on her long voyage. She had laughed at the time; she pounced upon it now like a wild animal upon food. She looked into it in anguished questioning. Yes, there it was—a phial labeled chloroform.
She sent Vincente out for Benito. He was a mañangete, and very strong. He came, stood upon his immense bare feet before her, his straw hat in his hand, and she looked with thankfulness upon the bull-like neck, at the arms, bulging in ridges beneath the camisa. Once she had cared for his sick baby-girl, and now he adored her.
They moved the cot against three of the roof-sustaining posts and fastened it tight to them. They strapped the unconscious man to the cot.
The crucial moment came now. Right here she might murder him with criminal ignorance. She accepted the hazard.
She uncorked the little bottle, spilled some of its contents upon a wad of cotton, and applied this to the pinched nostrils. He struggled; his left arm tugged at the strap holding it till the muscles were tense to breaking. She persisted—and suddenly his effort collapsed; with a shuddering sigh his whole body relaxed liquidly.
She made use of Benito now. At her command he took between his iron fingers the wounded man's wrist. She placed her soft hands upon the tao's corded arms. He tugged; she directed. From her tapering fingers there flowed into the stolid muscle of the machine-man a subtle fluid of tender intelligence. In the commonness of their work they became as one: he the body, she the soul. The chloroform had had its effect; the shoulder muscle loosened, elastic, to the steady pull. The arm lengthened, almost dismeasurably. She panted. Beneath the suggestion of her fingers Benito gave a sudden sharp movement up and to the left. There was a resounding click—and then Benito, Vincente, the man in the cot, the whole room floated slowly upward, leaving her in a lone black hole.
But from this weakness she emerged to the urgent call of what there was yet to do. She wrapped tape about both shoulders to keep the set member in place. Then she turned to the wound.
She saw with relief that the stagnant red lake which had covered it at first had not returned. But there was still the little blue hole with its radiation as of cracked glass. She fingered it lightly. In there was a bullet, and it must be gotten out.
Pale, with eyes closed, she gently inserted her little finger into the warm flesh. It was as if she were digging into her own heart. After a while she felt a hard, rough-edged object. She gasped in a strange mingling of physical horror and spiritual ecstasy. The bullet had sunk a bare inch.
She looked through the chest, but there was nothing for the necessary extraction. She tried the scissors; they slipped and revolved about the leaden slug without seizing it. She wrapped twine thick about the blades. This time they caught. There was a momentary resistance; she tugged firmly, it seemed at the very core of her being. Slowly at first, then faster, the distorted bit of lead slid through the flesh, then popped out and rolled upon the floor. A little ruby foam came to the surface of the wound.
The whole world floated away gently, except a Voice, a thundering, all-filling Voice; "Señora, Señora," it crashed and reverberated through the infinity of Time and Space. It fell gradually into a call, gentle but insistent, that she must obey; and she opened her eyes upon the face of Vincente, yellow with fear; and it was he that was calling "Señora, Señora."
She sprang to her feet at the command of her purpose. From the torn wound, little red drops were arising like bubbles one by one—the drops of his life. She dressed the wound carefully. A great weariness fell about her like a pall; she sat down at the head of the bed. Something soft and delicious entered her soul.
She remained there till dawn, a sweet content singing at her heart. The oppression of Things that had crushed her for so many months had lifted; her being distended in ecstatic repose. He slept, still in the torpor of exhaustion, calm like a statue; she watched him, watched the white forehead with the black curls damp upon it, the eyes, closed in the shadow of the long lashes; watched this helplessness with a gentle feeling of maternal possession. His features were relaxed in lassitude; the corners of the mouth drew down slightly, in an expression a little tremulous, as that of a child who has cried and is not yet quite consoled. A great tenderness dissolved her being.
Toward morning, however, his cheeks flushed dull red and he began to toss restlessly upon the narrow couch. She placed her hand upon his forehead and found it burning. 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.
He tossed and tossed in convulsive starts till the cane bed creaked and cried. He muttered incessantly, words without end, rapid as the tick of a telegraphic receiver. At times she could understand.
"The silence!" he would say; "the silence!"
He stopped a moment, his brows frowned, then the words came again, slow, as in painful mental analysis. "Their ways are different," he said; "their language incomprehensible. It is silence—God, what silence!"
He rose to a sitting posture and listened long, intently. "Nothing," he said, falling back, discouraged; "silence," he whispered.
Then, "And the mountain, the musty mountain, how it weighs!"
He was quiet for a long while. Then he spoke one word.
"Lone"—and the word drawled like a plaint.
A great wonder possessed her. So he also had felt what she had felt, had suffered what she had suffered. Through the armour of efficiency, of alertness, had penetrated the oppression of the Land. He, the strong, the vigorous, the self-reliant, had suffered as she, the weak, lonely girl. She passed her hand softly over his hot forehead; she bent down in an impulse to kiss. But he was talking again, one sentence repeated in swinging sing-song.
"Saunders, Saunders, may he make her happy; Saunders, Saunders, may he make her happy." He fell into a rhythmic beat, like the marching cadence of a drum. "Saunders, Saunders, may he make her happy," he repeated, over and over again, in ceaseless sequence.
She drew back, afraid. Saunders—that was the young lieutenant at Bacolod. But who was the mysterious "Her" that out of the mechanical rise and fall of the sentence rose distinct in an emphasis of wistful tenderness—a sense of profanation whelmed her; she should not listen to that.
She left the room and went below to rouse Vincente. But he was in the death-like stupor that is the sleep of the native. She could not wake him, make him understand what she wanted—that he should watch over his master. She had to go back, and as she re-entered the room he was still murmuring, but with slowing cadence, like a clock that runs down: "Saunders, Saunders, may he make her happy."
When finally the thing had died upon his lips, he was quiet a long time, and she remained there, listening to the beat of her own heart. The dawn was entering cracks and windows in grayish humid flow. She shivered a little; a great discouragement dissolved her strength. She moved to the window and looked out upon the misty landscape. After a while the sun appeared, a red ball of fire on the top cone of Canlaon. It rose, freed itself of the enveloping net of vapour, shone down, white, clear, inexorable; the mountain slopes began to steam.
A movement behind her made her turn.
He had risen and was sitting upright, his free arm raised high toward heaven, and in impassioned accents he was declaiming:
"Star of my Life," he cried; "Star of my Life, cold in the black sky, far, ah, how far! Star of my Life, in spite of all, in spite of thee, thou art my Star, my Star!"
He sank back as if broken with the effort. She placed her hand upon his brow and beneath it she felt the heat slowly recede; soon he was sleeping peacefully like a child.
"Star of my Life!" she murmured wonderingly.