"It is still love," said the priestess of Lal softly, "and sweeter than all else in life."
In the dimness behind me, I thought I heard the echo of a chuckle of cynical laughter, but I did not heed it. "Yes," I said, "any love that's true is sweeter than all else—"
"Sweeter than life itself," murmured the priestess of Lal, and started, half afraid. For louder, more unmistakable, sounded that mocking chuckle.
But I did not heed it. Her words had stirred old memories in me, and once again I was wandering in the sun-flooded length and breadth of a Valley of Sunshine and Shadow intermingled.
Far up in the northern end of Luzon the cloud-hung cordillera divides to east and west before it sinks abruptly in the sea, enclosing the great central valley of the Cagayan. A dim, far-off region it has always been, of which the good folk of Manila spoke with vague words, as old men on the hills of Spain used to speak of Ultramar, that unknown somewhere into which their sons were forever disappearing. And even the people of the valley did not know it. At Aparri, on the coast, where in the old days bales of tobacco were piled like houses along the sandy streets while the shipping season lasted, the busy laborers would tell you that it all came from "up there," with a wide vague sweep of the hand toward the south. You took a canoe and went southward for days between gray forests where the parrots screamed and monkeys climbed lazily down the creepers to scoop up water in their tiny hands, and you found Tuguegarao, the little city, sleeping on the bluffs, perched high and safe above the river; and men still told you of the wonders to be seen "up there." And then, after lazy days and days, poling upward past endless fields of corn and tobacco, you came to Ilagan, and the clerks in the offices of the Compañia General spoke to you of great plantations to be seen "up there." But at Ilagan most men wearied of the journey, and gave up their quest before they had gone half way.
They should have persisted, for the real "up there" is the wonderful place they dreamed of, a land of magnificent spaces, of great stretches of plain and rolling hills. In every little valley is a forest where deer and wild boars and buffalo hide. And all the reaches of the river and the clear tributary mountain streams, the pinaucanauanes, are covered with clouds of ducks. And everywhere is tobacco—in the fields and in the houses, and in the big, flat-bottomed boats, the barangayanes, on the river. There is a stretch of country where it seems the rich, deep, warm soil never tires of growing things—tobacco and corn and flowers and canes and grasses and bamboo—and men have called it "La Flor de la Isabela," the flower of the land of good Queen Ysabel. It is a very quiet region, but there is a charm in the broad fields, and the hot, sunny air, and the wild hunts over plain and hill, and the expeditions now and then in search of gold in the distant, purple mountains where the wild men live. The valley grows upon one till one forgets the hills of Spain and the people one knew, and even the nearer delights of Manila, and stays on "up there" till one passes from the world which already has, and is, forgotten.
Sometimes they emerged for a moment, even came down to "el Capital" for the Christmas festivities,—lean, bronzed, bearded men who wandered silent through the gay crowds. How should they speak when they knew nothing of all the gossip of Manila,—the ball his Excellency was giving, and Don Fulano's promotion, and the match between that young Diego de Tal and the General's daughter? But let two of them meet in a café, over the tiny glasses of cognac, and they could talk readily enough, though always in that quiet, self-retained way which men of the open have.
"Brr-r-gh, it's chilly here; it would not be like this in the valley!"—"No, they will be planting now. And the river must be rising; the young daredevils will be having great sport shooting the rapids at Alcala. Remember the whirlpool on the west bank?"—"Do I? Have you heard that Don Enrique will hold a great fiesta on Shrove Tuesday?"—"Well, he can afford it, with this crop. Don Enrique has covered more thousands this year than you have hairs on your chin, hombre."
Always the valley and the river and tobacco, and Don Enrique. For Don Enrique was their lord. The Company back in Barcelona and Madrid might own everything—the lean, silent, white men, and the brown, toiling thousands in the fields, and the boats on the river, and the great white fortresses of warehouses—but in the valley Don Enrique was Company and King. For him they toiled and died forgotten, from him they thankfully received their meagre wage, and when an order came signed in his heavy hand, "Valdez y de las Vegas," all men hurried to do his will. Any one would be proud to serve such a man. There was a Valdez with every great captain that ever sailed, and a Vegas keeps his hat on with the highest yet. And since this is a commercial age, and mere family renown can count for little in the balance against hard cash, each year brought Don Enrique one hundred thousand pesos, five hundred thousand pesetas, eight hundred thousand reales! Mira, amigo, you could buy your bread and sausage with that, eh? and have something left for a bit of a present for the wife?
And then he was no make-believe ruler, this Don Enrique. He knew the valley, every day's journey of it, from lonely Cordón lying in the threatening shadows of the pass, to the latest change in the bar outside Aparri; knew the capacity of each warehouse to the last bale; knew the shifting channel of the river, and could foretell the treacherous floods. And he knew what each subordinate of his was doing. No one knew when to expect a visit from him, and there were few who did not dread being called to ride with him. Yet he would dismount at the end of a long day in the saddle with as much calm grace as though he were merely returning from a canter round the town.