On this particular morning, he stood for a while staring at the jagged post which was at once a cenotaph to his departed days and an altar prepared for the sacrifice of days to come. Without counting, McGennis knew that his latest notch rounded out a tale of three hundred and sixty-five. The possibilities of that one post were not exhausted yet, and his house held a dozen other posts, virgin still, and smooth. And even if he should endure to notch all the posts in all the houses of Sicaba and all the fringing palms along the beach, and all the trees in the primeval forest round about, it would result in—what?
McGennis had met a man once, down in Bacolot, who made a practice of getting as drunk as possible once each month, once and no more. It gave one something definite to look forward and back to, and hope for and regret, he had explained without embarrassment, and that was an achievement for a white man in the tropics. McGennis, staring glumly at the record of his featureless year, felt that perhaps that man was as reasonable as any other.
Then, impulsively, he stooped again and the knife-blade flashed with mimic fierceness as he hacked at his post. When he rose there were fourteen new notches in it. He had mortgaged a fortnight of his new year. There was no sense in it, very likely, but it was done, and irrevocable, and therefore comforting in a way. He stood back, and the first smile of the day curled his lips. The fool part of him amused the rest, and he turned to the sala and breakfast with some cheerfulness.
He was making his last few conscientious pecks at that meal, when the Municipal Secretary, exalted and short-winded personage, climbed his stairs puffingly and stood blinking in the door. McGennis set his cup down and uttered the sound which trustful Sicaba interpreted as the outburst of uncontrollable joy.
"Well, Secretario!" he cried, in his atrocious and unfaltering Spanish. "You're just in time for chocolate. Milicio!" he shouted to his cook.
The Secretary raised a pudgy hand in deprecation, the dignity of an official mission being on him. "It iss dhe lattair, Mr. Magheenis," he announced, holding out a crumpled official envelope. "Dhe Supervisor Provincial sends it wiv a man to running."
Smiling the contented smile of a fat man whose exertion is over, the Secretary sank into a chair and fanned himself with his hat. "Sena muy importante," he explained more familiarly. "The courier cost two pesos. I brought it over at once."
"A letter by courier and two pesos!" McGennis cried, knowing that surprise was expected. "We're getting up in the world. Excuse me if I read it, Secretario?"
"With pleasure," the Secretary murmured, but McGennis did not hear him. He heard nothing, saw nothing, but those surprising words in the crabbed writing of his chief, which changed life in a flash and settled that tormenting question once for all.
Twice he read the letter through greedily, before he dropped it to stare out through the open window. A kaleidoscopic change had overtaken Botany and Geology. The corner of the weedy plaza on which his house fronted now lay fresh and clean under the early sunshine and the salty breeze. Beyond it rose a grove of cocoa-palms, with brown-thatched houses nestled in their shade, and between the tall columns of the tree-trunks shot the crisp sparkle of the blue Visayan Sea. All at once, even Sicaba was exuberant with life, youthful in beauty, friendly. Half noting the change, McGennis raced along beside his thronging thoughts.