She rocked herself slowly to and fro, her face in her hands. Outside, the heavy torpor was suddenly torn by a shriek in the upper layers of air. A few great drops pattered resoundingly upon the nipa roof, then heat and silence reigned again, with the torment of the woman's soul.
Curiously I looked upon the old crone. She sat there rocking gently from side to side, her lips bubbling in meaningless mutters. Then her yellow paw crept down her arid bosom, fumbled beneath her camisa, and reappeared with something in it that flashed gold. She pressed it to her withered lips—and I saw that it was a locket—pressed it to her withered lips with a singular intensity of passion; pressed it there again and again—and that sudden flash of something long gone, of a spark, dying, perhaps, but which in that ruined body should have been long dead, moved me with uneasiness, as if I were watching, and a party to, a sacrilege.
But she dropped her hands upon her lap in a gesture of infinite hopelessness and she began to speak, to speak in a queer sing-song, a monotonous chant, like some religious recital of her Malay ancestors suddenly coming back to her through the ages.
"Ah, he was beautiful, señor; he was beautiful, he was beautiful, he was beautiful! He was tall and straight like the coco tree; his hair curled like the waves upon the sand, and his eyes were deep and soft like the pools of the Cabancalan. He came to me from over the seas, señor; from far-away Spain. I was standing on the beach, right over there. There were many boat-loads of soldiers landing, and he was on the foremost prao. It came straight to me, foaming with eagerness, its wings spread out like those of a butterfly, flying over the waves, and he stood at the bow. His cap was in his hand; the wind blew his hair of gold into a halo like that of the Christ of the Santa Iglesia; the sun beat down upon his white suit and he glistened like a god. 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.
"I was not ugly, then, señor; ah, no, I was not ugly; age and sorrow had not yet knotted me like the roots of the banyan. I was Queen then, señor; the Queen of Beauty among my own people. At the procession it was I that stood on a pedestal, clad in gold and silk, the picture of the Mother of God. At the bailes it was I that the young men sought, and it was for me, señor, that Juan Perez had a knife plunged between his shoulders, one dark night, long ago. It was long ago, señor; it was long ago.
"I was beautiful, señor, and I knew my beauty. I was proud, proud of my dark eyes, of my golden shoulders, of the hair that fell about me like a garment to the ground when I unrolled it in the sun, after the bath at the spring. I was loved, señor; I was desired; my fame was all over Negros and had no boundaries but the sea; but I, I loved no one; I railed and scoffed at all; I loved no one, till he came.
"Then, señor, railing and scoffing died upon my lips; all things hard and mean died within me, and I felt my heart open, bloom, till it seemed my breast would not hold it. Ah, those were happy days, señor; days of beauty. Then the sky was blue, the sun was golden, the breeze was soft—it was long ago, señor; it was long ago. He was my sun, and the warmth and the beauty of him entered my heart till it burst into bloom like the purple moon-flower. We were of different race, but he taught me. He taught me, ah, many things, but what are they, señor, what is anything, compared to love? And he taught me to love. In the evenings, after sundown, we roamed the groves together, in the pale moonshine, and the sea shimmered and the trees whispered, and in my ear was the music of his voice, on my hand the caress of his hand—ah, señor, señor, why do these things stay with us; why, when they pass, do they not leave us, and not stay and stay and stay and torment and torture, hooked to our hearts with double barbs—señor, you who know so many things, can you tell me that?
"Listen, señor! Over there, where the river goes into the sea and the bamboos grow almost into the sky, he built a little nipa house. And it was ours, ours, all our own; and it was there that we lived. Lived, you understand; it is true that some of his time was passed elsewhere; he had the cuartel and his soldiers, but it was here that he lived, for it was here that he loved. Señor, in that little house by the side of the sea, it was there that happiness dwelled, happiness such as there never had been, such as there never will be. Señor, I was beautiful then—now I am old and dried; I chew betel; I drink tuba; I spit. But this is not all the work of years. I might have grown old as the corn grows old—golden-ripe, but now, you see, I do not care. He taught me, then he left me, and my heart fell back like a rock, aye, and lower than he had found it.
"For, of course, he left me, señor. I have learned since it is the way—you whites, you always leave. He went back to his Spain. He was to return in a year. The year passed and he did not come back. Then another and another. It was many years before he returned. 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. He came not alone, señor. With him was a white woman, his wife, with eagle nose and proud bearing and skin like the flesh of the coconut. He did not allow his soldiers to carry her, but went in himself, all booted, to the hips in the surf. 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.