Anting-Anting Stories by Sargent Kayme (read full novel .TXT) 📕

“Queer country, isn’t it?” said the visitor.

“Yes,” said the General. “A body never knows what may happen to him. Probably those women we see down there are slaves. Seeing them made me think of a funny thing I heard of today, which happened to one of my men a little while ago.

“A young officer hired a native man for a servant. One day the fellow came to the Lieutenant in a great state of mind, begging the officer to help him. It seemed he had a sweetheart who was a Visayan slave girl owned by a Moro. The man who owned the girl was going to leave the city and take all his property, including this slave girl, with him. Pedro—that was the officer’s boy—wanted ‘the great American Señor’ to say she should not go. Some of the natives seem to have the most wonderful confidence in the power of the Americans to do anything and everything.

“The officer told his boy he had no power to prevent the man’s moving and taking his property with him; but he happened to ask how much the girl was worth. How much do you think the fellow said? Fifteen dollars! And he went on to explain that this was an unusually high price, he knew, but that this girl was young and handsome and clever at work. Of course he thought so, for he was in love with her.

“Well, I suppose the Lieutenant was flush, or felt generous, or perhaps something had happened to put him in an unusually serene frame of mind. He handed over fifteen dollars, and told Pedro to go and buy the girl and marry her; which he did, and has been the happiest man alive ever since. He is really grateful, too, and there isn’t another officer in the service that is waited on as Lieutenant Day is. The funniest part of it all is, though, that he just found out a day or two ago, that in his gratitude Pedro had stolen one of his master’s photographs to give to the Visayan girl he had married, so that she could see what their benefactor looked like, and she has been going out with it every day to an altar, or shrine, or something of that sort in the wall of an old fort here, where the native women go to worship, to pray to the saint there to shower all kinds of blessings on the American Señor who brought all this happiness to her and her husband.

“The boys have guyed Day so much about it, since they found it out, that he swears he will discharge the man, and have him hauled up for stealing the picture into the bargain. If he does, the woman will be likely to think that there is something the matter with the saint, I reckon, or that her prayers havn’t found favour.”

For once the wicker walls of a bamboo house had a merit all their own. At least that was what a certain young woman thought, when she could not help hearing this conversation in the room in which she had shut herself for the afternoon.

That night at dinner Miss Grace Allenthorne, was so radiant that even her father noticed it.

“What have you been doing, Grace?” he said. “What’s the reason you feel so well, tonight? I havn’t seen you look so fine for a month.”

“Oh, nothing, father,” said the girl. “I don’t know of any special reason. I think that you just imagine it.”

Which was, of course, a very wrong thing for her to say; for she knew perfectly well what the reason was.

While they were still at table a messenger came post haste for General Allenthorne, with word that he was wanted at once at headquarters. He was absent nearly all night.

In the morning it was known that an outpost in the northern part of the island had been surprised and almost captured. The enemy was still in force about the place and threatening it. A loyal native had crept through the lines to bring word and ask for help. A relief force had been made up and sent at once. Lieutenant Day was among those who volunteered to go, and had gone.

Ten days of horrible anxiety followed. Then word came that the relief party had reached the post in time. The forces surrounding the place had been scattered, and the post was safe. There had been a sharp fight, though, and among those who had been badly wounded was Lieutenant Day.

Of course he got well. No man could help it, with four such nurses as Mrs. Allenthorne and Mrs. Allenthorne’s daughter Grace, and Pedro and Pedro’s Visayan wife Anita.

Just what Grace told her mother, which led that worthy person to become responsible for the young officer’s recovery, no one ever knew except the two women themselves, but in addition to being a motherly-hearted woman, Mrs. Allenthorne was a soldier’s daughter as well as a soldier’s wife, so perhaps it was not necessary to explain so many things to her as it would have been to some people.

Nobody ever knew—or at least never told—what explanation the young woman made to the Lieutenant, when he came back to consciousness and found her helping to care for him. Perhaps she did not explain. Possibly the explanations made themselves, or else none were needed.

At any rate, the young man got well, and since then he has been known to say—although this was in the strictest confidence to a very particular person—that he should always regard the Visayan woman’s prayers before “Our Lady of Pilar” with the profoundest gratitude, because the greatest blessing of his whole life had come to him through this woman’s praying for him outside the walls of the old fort.