Terry: A Tale of the Hill PeopleThomson, Charles Goff
General
Terry: A Tale of the Hill People
Thomson, Charles Goff
Love stories; Philippines -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
This car is yours throughout the stay of your--will not the
word "family" soon properly cover all three of them?
Please use it freely. I have another entirely suited for my
present needs.
I am very happy to-night, happy in your safe return and in
the achievement you have wrought in the name of the
Government it is my unmerited privilege to head. And this
happiness will be the greater for knowing that you are
driving through this glorious evening by the side of her who
came so far to join her life with yours.
MASON.
After Terry had read the note aloud Deane added her pleas to his that
Susan and Ellis should share the car with them. But they would have
none of it. When Susan wavered, Ellis became emphatic.
So the two rode through the tropic night alone, that night and during
the glorious evenings that followed for a week. They came to know
every village along the ribboned roads, each grove of tall palms, each
stretch of beach where smooth highways ran along the coast. She loved
the island empire.
They talked as such do talk. The third night, as they rolled through
the moonlight down the San Ramon road, he found courage to broach the
one subject he had hesitated to mention.
"The Governor wants me to stay a year," he faltered. "A year up in the
Hills."
She had expected it, was ready. She looked full up at him, and in the
soft light her lovely face shone with a strange beauty that humbled
him.
"Dick, 'and thy people shall be my people.'"
* * * * *
They planned their house in the Hills, bought and stored picturesque
odds and ends of furniture and fittings; brasses, embroideries,
carved teak: and he outlined their honeymoon, which was to be a
three-months' ramble through Japan, the magic lover's land. They
arranged no exact itinerary, just a wandering through Miajima, Kyoto,
Nikko,--a score of out of the way places.
The mornings he spent with the enthusiastic Governor, planning,
discussing. Two tons of supplies went out to the Major the fourth day.
"I put in an assortment of presents for him to give to the Hillmen,"
the Governor told him. "And plenty of matches--you say they went wild
over those he packed up. They will be rich!"
"Governor, the Hillmen are the richest people I have ever seen."
The Governor was puzzled: "How?"
"They have everything they want. Land for the clearing, a spear,
cotton growing wild on trees for such clothes as they wear, meat in
the forest, bamboo to cut for shelter against wind and rain, upland
rice springing up from barely scratched soils. No social striving, no
politics, no taxes. All their wants are satisfied--was Croesus as
rich?"
"Then you do not believe in civilizing them--it means introducing new
wants--some of which they never will satisfy!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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