“Oh!” he exclaimed. “How did you happen to come?”
“To follow after those gone before.”
“I see,” he said. “Relatives, I suppose? Hope you found them well?”
“No,” I replied, carrying on the humor, “dying.”
He jingled his coins, and asked, “Anything to be done for them?”
“Nothing.”
“What’s the complaint?”
“Civilization in the abstract, repeating rifles and rapid-firing guns
in the concrete.”
“Eh!” he ejaculated.
Then the lowest and sweetest of voices said, “Won’t you tell us what
you mean?”
Was it my irritation that the man before me, rather than the
subtler-passioned people I knew so well, was the dominant type of the
moment, or was it the sympathy your voice stirred within me, which made
me speak? In a moment I was sketching broadly the inhumanity of this
thing we call Christian civilization, which, more grasping than the
Inquisition, has overrun the world, tearing the lands from their
owners, and, not content with this spoliation, demands of its victims
that they shall give up the customs of many centuries’ evolution, and
conform to habits, governments, and religions which their very
instincts make impossible; and because they cannot change, but break
out, these believers in the golden rule shoot them down. I protested at
the mockery of calling civilized a world held at peace by constant
slaughter, or of styling the national Jack Ketches of humanity
Christian nations! I protested against the right of one man to hold
another barbaric because he will not welcome his master, greet with joy
the bands of steel we call railroads, and crush his nature within the
walls of vast factories, to make himself the threefold slave of
society, government, and employer. And finally, I gloried in the fact
that though the white races had found a weapon against the black and
yellow ones which enabled them to overrun and subjugate, yet nature had
provided nature’s people with the defense of climate,—a death-line to
the whites; and behind that line the colored races are unconquerable in
the sense of conquest being extinction. I knew the other side, that
altruistic tenet of political economy defined in brief as “the greatest
good of the greatest number,” and in my mind held the even balance of
the historian between the two; but to this utilitarian, modern,
self-satisfied American I had to urge the rights of races thousands of
years our senior, and far in advance of us in the knowledge and
amenities that make life worth the most.
You both were silent till I ended; but I had best left unspoken what
your companion could not understand, for when I finished he inquired,
“What mountains did you say you came from?” And when I told him, he
added laughingly, “You must have some pretty good stump speaking in
your elections.”
“We are very grateful for your explanation,” you thanked me gently.
“Never been in America?” he surmised; and except for you I should have
told him that I was his countryman, it would have been so adequate a
retort to his inference. But your voice and manner had made me so
ashamed of my earlier mood that I merely answered, “Yes.”
“Humph!” he grunted in surprise; and as if to prove his incorrigibility
he continued, “Thought your ideas were too back-number for that.”
I could not help laughing, and the moment my laugh became articulate
yours too overflowed your lips, as a spring breaks past its edges and
falls rippling over pebbles.
That laugh, so well remembered, revealed your presence to me. My heart
beat quickly and my head whirled dizzily, and in my bewilderment I took
a step backward, quite forgetting the embrasure, till a stone gave way
and I felt that I was falling. Then my consciousness went from me, and
when thought came surging backward I lay a moment quiet, thinking it
must have been a dream.
“He’s coming round all right,” I heard, and at the sound I opened my
eyes. You were leaning over me with the moonlight shining on your face,
and I caught my breath, you were so beautiful.
“You’ve given us a scare,” continued the man, on whose knee my head was
resting. “You want to keep your wits about you better. Pretty poor
business tumbling off walls, but that’s what comes of having ruins. You
won’t be quite so cocky in the future about your run-out races.”
I felt his laughter justified, but hardly heeded it, my thoughts were
so engaged. You were wetting my forehead with brandy, and I lay there
too happy to speak.
“Now let me raise you a bit higher,” the man offered kindly, “so you
can get your addled senses back.” He lifted me, and I groaned at the
sudden terrible pain that shot up my leg.
“Hello!” he cried, laying me gently down. “Something wrong, after all?
What is it?”
“My leg,” I moaned.
“Here, Maizie, hold his head, while I appoint an investigating
committee,” he ordered, and in another moment I felt your arms about
me, and in my joy at your touch I almost forgot my torture.
“Well, you’ve broken one of your walking-sticks,” the man informed me,
after a gentler touching of it than I thought possible to his nature.
“Now, Maizie, if you’ll sit and hold his head, I’ll get a litter. You
won’t mind staying here alone, will you?”
“It is my wish,” you acceded calmly.
“O. K.,” he said, rising, and even in his kindness he could not help
but seize the opportunity to glorify his country. “If this had happened
in New York, Mr. Altai, we’d have had an ambulance here five minutes
ago! Civilization isn’t all bad, I tell you, as you’d find out if you’d
give it a chance.”
The moment he was gone I tried to speak, and murmured “Maizie;” but you
let me get no further, saying “Hush,” and putting your hand softly over
my lips. I suppose you thought me merely repeating the name he had
called you, while I loved your touch too deeply to resist the hand I
longed to kiss. Now I am glad I did not speak, for if I had it would
have robbed me of my last sweet moment with you.
Long before I thought it possible, and far too soon, indeed, despite my
suffering, we heard men approaching. When the torch-bearers came
climbing over the rocks, my first desire was to see how much of your
beauty was owing to the moonlight, and my heart leaped with exultation
to find that you were beautiful even in the livid glare of the torches.
“Now, Mr. Altai,” your companion remarked, “where shall we take you?”
and I gave him the name of the hotel. A moment later, as they lifted
me, I again fainted, but not till I had kissed your hand. You snatched
it away, and did not hear my weakly whispered “Good-night, Maizie.”