Dead Stars

Chapter 3

"Down there," he had continued, his voice somewhat indistinct, "the road is too broad, too trodden by feet, too barren of mystery."

"Down there" beyond the ancient tamarinds lay the road, upturned to the stars. In the darkness the fireflies glimmered, while an errant breeze strayed in from somewhere, bringing elusive, faraway sounds as of voices in a dream.

"Mystery—" she answers lightly, "that is so brief—"

"Not in some," quickly. "Not in you."

"You have known me a few weeks; so the mystery."

"I could study you all my life and still not find it."

"So long?"

"I should like to."

Those six weeks were now so swift-seeming in the memory, yet had they been so deep in the living, so charged with compelling power and sweetness. Because neither the past nor future had relevance or meaning, he lived only the present, day by day, lived it intensely, with such a willful shutting out of fact as astounded him in his calmer moments.

Just before Holy Week, Don Julian invited the Judge's and his family to spend Sunday afternoon at Tanda where he had a coconut plantation and a house on the beach. Carmen also came along with her four energetic children. She and Doña Adela spent most of the time indoors directing the preparation of the merienda and discussing the likable absurdities of their husbands—how Carmen's Vicente was so absorbed in his farms that he would not even take time off to accompany her not this visit to her father; how Doña Adela's Dionisio was the most absentminded of men, sometimes going out without his collar, or with unmatched socks.

after the merienda, Don Julian sauntered off with the judge to show him what a thriving young coconut looked like—"plenty of leaves, close set, rich green"—while the children, convoyed by Julia Salas, found unending entertainment in the rippling sand left by the ebbing tide. They were far down, walking at the edge of the water, indistinctly outlined against the gray of the out-curving beach.

Alfredo left his perch on the bamboo ladder of the house and followed. Here were her footsteps, narrow, arched. He laughed at himself for his black canvas footwear which he removed forthwith and tossed high up on dry sand.

When he came up, she flushed, then smiled with frank pleasure.

"I hope you are enjoying this," he said with a questioning inflection.

"Very much. It looks like home to me, except that we do not have such a lovely beach."

There was a breeze from the water. It blew her hair away from her forehead, and whipped the tucked-up skirt around her straight, slender figure. In the picture was something from eager freedom as of wings poised in flight. The girl had grace, distinction. Her face was notably pretty; yet she had a tantalizing charm, all the more compelling because it was an inner quality, an achievements the spirit. The lure was there, of naturalness, of an alert vitality of mind and body, of a thoughtful, sunny temper, and of a piquant perverseness which is save to charm.

"The afternoon has seemed ver my short, hasn't it?" Then, "This, I think, is the last time—we can visit."

"The last? Why?"

"Oh, you will be too busy perhaps."

He noted an evasive quality in the answer. "Do I seem especially industrious to you?"

"If you are, you never look it."

"Not perspiring or breathless, as a busy man ought to be."

"But—"

"Always unhurried, too unhurried, and calm." She smiled to herself.

"I wish that were true," he said after a meditative pause.

She waited.

"A man is happier if he is, as you say, calm and placid."

"Like a carabao in a mud pool," She retorted perversely.

"Who? I?"

"Oh, no!"

"You said I am calm and placid."

"That is what I think."

"I used to think so too. Shows how little we know ourselves."

It was strange to him that he could be wooing thus: with one tone and look and convert phrase.

"I should like to see your hometown."

"There is nothing to see—little crooked streets, yunut roofs with ferns growing on them, and sometimes squashes.

That was the background. It made her seem less detached, less unrelated, yet withal more distant, as if that background claimed he and excluded him.

"Nothing? There is you."

"Oh, me? But I am here."

"I will not go, of course, until you are there."

"Will you come? You will find it dull. There isn't even one in America!"

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Do you think Alfredo will face several consequences for behaving as he did?

What does this imply about the characters of Alfredo and Julia?

What does this information suggest about Julia's social class?

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