It cannot be said that the ceremony was followed by the usual joyous whirr of congratulations. The bride calmly turned her back upon the groom and engaged Huston in a lively conversation. The Maestro, suddenly turned craven, went out into the kitchen on the pretext of seeking refreshments, and meanwhile Ledesma quietly but hurriedly slunk out of the house. The Maestra, from the window, saw him running along the street, but she only laughed. She alone was at ease. The Maestro, returning with a bottle of Spanish wine and a plate of bananas, seemed to have lost all his assurance; the missionary's virtuous indignation was fast leaving him, in spite of his efforts, and doubt again was disturbing his spirit. There was something ominous in the air.
Nor was this presentiment to prove a false one. Perhaps half an hour later, as the Maestra was saying good-by, Isidro pattered in with a note to the Maestro. It was from Ledesma.
Señor Maestro, Tyrant and Darkest Despot:—When you will receive this note I will be gone and out of the reach of your most unjust, tyrannic and unholy arm. I am embarking at the present time upon a banca, I will take a lorcha at the dismouthing of the Ilog River to Ilo-Ilo and from that charming city I will go to Manila to study typewriting and thus enable me to enter the Administration of the Government of this my sore-tried and much in the past tyrannized and devastated country which will rise like the phenix bird from its cinders, blooming afresh from the long-sleeping volcano when it awakes and lights up the world with the blessings of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity which to my ignorant countrymen I will teach like the swallow which none die without God on High knowing it feed his little young one that do not know how to flie above the dark ignorance at the all-around of them. It gives me great pleasure, oh, sir, to proclamate to you that the unholy union in which you like the blackest czar of despotic Russia forced upon my palpitating heart is null. My father who has returned from his hacienda tells me that according to the law I cannot marry without his permission until I am twenty-five. I am only twenty and my father—Oh, sir, how sweetly paternal is a father—will not permit me to marry Señorita Constancia de la Rama y Lacson, so my so-called marriage is a void.
Hoping sir, that Remorse will soon cause your heart to weep I am
No longer your pupil and assistant-maestro
Mauro Ledesma y Goles.
"Thunder!" exclaimed the Maestro, suddenly again belligerent. "Let's get after him!"
But the Maestra had picked up the letter and was reading it.
"Oh," she said, when she had finished; "oh, that is very nice. Now I can—what you call?—ah, divorce; I can divorce—just like an American girl!"
And thus it is that the Girls' School of Balangilang is still the envy of the maestros for leagues around.