While Julie was dealing, in a splendid glow, with the affairs of the
universe, her own mundane concerns, she was uneasily aware, were
urgently in need of attention. She retired one night to her room,
with the jungle closing up about it, and the jungle's wild creatures
rustling but a few feet away, to do some deep worldly thinking. From
her trunk she took the book in which she fitfully kept accounts, and
calculated furiously for some time, going over the inexorable figures.
Suddenly she dropped the pencil, and sank back in her chair, staring
somberly into the night. Its blackness swept up to the grated bars
of the windows, and peered in at the solitary, harassed figure in
the cell.
Not one dollar of the hundreds she owed Mrs. Morris had been
paid back. That very first, sacred responsibility her new life had
assumed! In Manila, money had unconsciously spent itself. Then, there
had been the expenses of the trip South. But bitterest fact of all,
the splendid wardrobe, the cause of all this trouble, had bit by bit,
impalpably and detestably, as if under an evil incantation, been giving
way. Dresses cracked explosively, at the touch, and silk stockings,
however prayerfully drawn on, disintegrated into an elemental snarl
of thread. What the elements did not demolish, the cockroaches,
nearly as big as mice and scrambling deftly all over the room,
voraciously devoured.
Julie sat and burned with dishonor over her affairs. She felt as abased
as if she had become the actual chattel of her far-away creditor. She
would have resorted to any expediency to keep this bondage from being
made public. The Dreschells had an unconscionable pride. Mr. Dreschell
had brought up his family on the theory that borrowing money was
only a shade less reprehensible than stealing it. This obligation
was the Debt of England to Julie's soul. With her small salary, how,
she pondered, was it to be worked out?
She had in her trunk one month's salary. Every bit should go to
the woman whose peon she had become. In forgetting her own further
necessity to exist, she was acting with characteristic feminine
recklessness. There being no post-office at Guindulman, Julie rolled
up the bills neatly, put them in an envelope, and addressed it to
Mrs. Morris. Thereupon her mental processes took quite a leap. She
arose with a shade even of self-satisfaction. It was splendid to be
an independent integer of the world--to handle your own destiny--to
say nothing of your own money--unafraid.
Into the midst of these cogitations came the Calcedos' muchacho,
to announce a young man.
"What young man?" Julie demanded particularly.
"El Teserero!" the muchacho declared.
Julie dropped back flatly in her seat. Since the uncomfortable and
startling moments on the boat, she had contrived never to meet the
Treasurer alone. She knew how dissatisfied with this he had been,
and that in the midst of his activities planned to supersede the
Governor in power, he had been lying in wait for his opportunity. She
could see no way out of the encounter, and fortified herself for it
as she ascended the stairs to the sala.
The Treasurer held her hand an instant and regarded her closely with
his odd light eyes. The surprisingly sun-burnt face wore a look that
sobered her. She indicated a chair.
Mr. Purcell demurred. "Let's go out on the balcony," he suggested,
regarding with disapproval the publicity of their surroundings.
"Oh, I think I should rather remain here," she replied lightly.
"You don't object to going out there with the others," he reproached.
"There are several of them," Julie explained.
"How about Calmiden, and--others," he probed with jealous meaning.
Julie started slightly. How had he managed to be so well informed
concerning her movements?
"Why do you avoid me?" he demanded. "Do you think all these men are
your friends? Wait and find out. Now, I am serious. I care for you
truly, as I told you on the boat. I asked you to marry me; and I mean
it still--in spite of your evasions."
"Please don't!" Julie begged. "You couldn't possibly have meant
it--after those few hours."
She recalled her refusal--so adroit and impersonal, in which her
altruistic aspirations and her inviolate determination not to marry
had been calculated to carry conviction. She had wanted to regard
the matter as settled, yet here he was more determinedly possessive
than ever.
"You did not dream that I had given up?" he demanded.
"I beg of you to do so! I refuse utterly!"
"Don't say anything you'll be sorry for later," he broke in. "Things
are all your way now, but wait till they turn--till you find out
none of those fellows mean anything, and the bottom falls out of your
air-castle. Then you won't say that."
Julie stared at him in resentful amazement. "Mr. Purcell," she
exclaimed, "I don't understand this conversation. You don't at all
love me. You have merely set your will upon me, and are trying to
frighten me. Please never reopen this subject." She rose. "It is,
so far as I am concerned, definitely and completely closed."
"You'll regret that!" he exclaimed agitatedly.
"Have you threatened me enough?" Julie was frantically angry now.
She was aghast at the purpose that gathered in his face as he replied:
"I do not wish to threaten you, but I have not given up."
He descended the staircase, leaving Julie with her breast heaving.
That wretched voyage! Had men gone mad in this queer land, that they
would ask a girl to marry them on a day's acquaintance, and to this
staggering casualness add the brigand intention to seize her if she
refused? According to this doggedly unpleasant young man, he had put
a mortgage upon her that he meant at some time to exact. How many
more people were to advance claims on her life?
To rid her mind of this uncomfortable visitor she turned, on going
downstairs, in the direction of Miss Hope's room. The cheerful light
shed through the partly open door drew her forward. As she climbed
the three steps that lifted the room from the ground, she caught a
glimpse of Mr. Brentwood's white starched back. She started to retreat,
but the young man, turning quickly at the sound of her footsteps,
caught sight of her.
"Why are you always out when I come to see you?" he reproached, smiling
with his white teeth through his carefully brushed mustache. "I tried
to call on you to-night."
"I wasn't out," Julie moodily replied, remembering how much she had
wished to be. "I was upstairs."
Mr. Brentwood directed upon Miss Hope a peculiar look. "Come in!" he
hospitably insisted. "I can still see you."
Julie's evil star beckoned her on. Miss Hope offered no remark as
she took a chair. Mr. Brentwood, promptly facing around to Julie,
proceeded to direct toward her the fullest extent of his charms,
and succeeded for once in being truly entertaining. Julie, eager to
forget her experience with Purcell, dropped gladly into a sprightly
discourse, and both of them forgot utterly the rigid figure of the
vestal virgin, which opposite them began to steam with wrath.
After they had laughed together for some time, Mr. Brentwood bade
Julie a lingering good-night, calling back a careless adieu to the
shape in the background.
Julie turned to Miss Hope, but stopped short before the spectacle of
that lady who, having come out of the shadows, was positively trembling
with inconjectural passion. Her indefinite features seemed to melt
into a boiling lava, which strangely her face appeared to be. Her blue
eyes vehemently shot flames. Julie watched, with interested daring,
the forthcoming eruption.
"Miss Dreschell," cried Miss Hope, bursting with wrath, "you will
seek quarters elsewhere. Do you suppose it is entertaining for me to
sit here all evening while you monopolize my friends! Mr. Brentwood
was my friend, Miss Dreschell,"--in rising crescendo--"until you
came. My room and the Calcedos' sala have other purposes than the
accommodation of the crowd of young men with which you seem to find
it necessary to surround yourself. Moreover, natives of the better
class have a sense of propriety, and it is not edifying to them to
watch your friends--and their caresses."
Julie stared incredulously. Then a realization of what Miss Hope
must mean flashed through her. Evidently she had seen in the dusk
under her window the wind-up of a gay tender little adventure with
Terry O'Brien before he returned to command his mountain fastness
at Tarlac. It was never, Julie knew, to come to anything, and had
involved only a shadowy caress.
"But the Calcedos haven't said anything of the kind!" Julie objected
with rising anger.
"They will say so. They have some cousins coming to visit them,"
Miss Hope declared, pointing positively in the direction of the
door. She closed it sharply on Julie's outraged back, leaving the
girl to grope her way through the dark. Julie got to the entrance,
and stood there staring indignantly into the night.
It was a charming night, all the worlds of the universe spinning
gayly up above her through the light of myriads of suns. It must
be really a very small concern to Uranus or to Neptune, where a
hundred years are as one, whether the atom called Miss Hope or the
atom called Purcell were angry or not. As for the atom called Julie
dancing headlong through space--was it even remotely possible that
somewhere, some place, any one atom tremendously counted? Was there
a law that held over those great worlds and their activities? And
must one conform to it? But how, with mystery on every side, were
you to find the law? Had she, because Purcell was not so pleasing
as the others, been intolerant of him? She had not been angry at the
sentimental intimations of the others. She had, in fact, poetically
enjoyed them. And Miss Hope--although she was, according to Julie,
terribly old, might she not still cling through a thousand yearning
desires to the magic garment of youth?
Julie was not sure concerning all these speculations. A strange
consciousness seemed to be speaking through her, a consciousness
that saw things from all angles, but which only occasionally broke
into utterance.
The approach of a tall, familiar figure put a stop to this metaphysical
trend of thought.
"I came once before," Calmiden announced; "but I heard you in there
with Miss Hope, so I decided to come back later. Come take a walk as
far as the steps of the convento."
"It's getting late," Julie demurred.
"What does it matter? Look at the night!"
Julie regarded it, and capitulated. They strolled up the road that led
to the upper part of the village. Street lights were sparse and dim
in Guindulman. The avenue was almost closed overhead by the prodigal
foliage of mango trees, and blackened with the soft, thick darkness
of the tropics; yet to-night it was meteorically lighted by myriads
of fire-flies shimmering in the branches.
Julie threw up her head in wonder at the transfiguration. Everything
had become unreal. The avenue was like a road in fairy-land. The
convento, white as driven snow in the moonlight, rose from its high
tier of steps above them, like an ancient temple.
To the left was the Major's ogre-like retreat. Mike, routed from his
roost in the trees by this intolerable illumination, was snarling
and lashing through the branches like an imp of darkness.
This little gargoyle had been deliberately installed in this tree
commanding the entrance to his office by the Major, and Hell itself
could not have been more ferociously guarded by Cerberus. Men could
come and men could go; but to the whole female race Mike stuck out his
whiskered jaw in challenge. He might be swinging by his tail, ever
so happy and carefree, in the branches, but let a daughter of Eve,
however secretly, steal up to the portal of the omnipotent Major,
and he was down upon her with a thud, wildly rending her garments.
"Wild little beast!" Julie disapprovingly declared, moving out
of range of his chain. The monkey, like some monster of elf-land,
thrust his grotesque little head out of a nimbus of fire-flies. He
scratched them out of his eyes, and securing them cunningly in his
wicked little paws, bolted them with rapt relish.
"Horrible!" Julie cried. "And they were lighting up the world!"
"He's rather handy to have round, though," Calmiden hardily
declared. "You see I am Quartermaster, and people want to bother one
with such a multitude of senseless things."
They mounted the terraced steps, which in a sheer drop fell from the
walls of the convento. "Look!" Julie pointed high above them. On the
aerial gallery of the convento, a black cassock loomed stark against
the night, a solitary brooding figure staring at the stars. Once it
bent intently to regard the two young persons.
"Poor fellow!" Calmiden exclaimed.
"Why?" At sight of the priest a cloud had come over Julie's mood.
"He's so solitary, by race and vocation. He's only half white, and
only half a man. He might as well be a magus up there in his tower,
for all the participation he has in human living. Wouldn't you be
lonely if the gates of your soul's territory were closed against
you, if you were forbidden to love--ever? He has fire in his eyes,
our padre. He wasn't made to tend altars on high mountains."
"It's my firm conviction," Julie declared, "that he tends very
assiduously the fires of the insurrection. He hates us; he hates all
white men."
"Because we are what but for a little slip of fate he might have
been. The tragedy, the wickedness of these racial Lucifers flung down
to a lower world!"
"Do you know," Julie said soberly, looking up at the Priest's tower,
"I fancy the padre doesn't like me. These people don't understand our
women--the woman who walks through the world alone. To them she is an
object of suspicion; to their mind her liberty signifies licence. For
instance, to-night I oughtn't to be here--and he's looking down on me."
"What does it matter what they think? So far as I am concerned they
don't exist. I am just serving my time,"--he closed his lips tightly;
"counting the moments till I can get out and go home."
A brooding distant look came into the girl's eyes.
"To pass in and pass out? What good can that do? One should put the
plow into the soil and not abandon it."
"I should think you'd want to get clear of the uncleanliness of this
territory of Baal. I've seen enough raw, bestial nature over here to
make my soul revolt. The standards civilization has fought for go by
the board here. One must be forever on the lookout in the heart of
half savage society to keep from relapsing."
"Just you wait till my boys grow up. Then there'll come a change."
"Good God! You don't purpose staying over here till then?"
The girl looked steadily into the night. "If I did the right thing
I'd stay. My little brown men lifted into the citizenship of the
world!" she murmured.
"Come down from your perch in the skies. What a dreamer you are--and
what a life to fling carelessly away! It belongs to somebody or other."
"Nobody gives up anything anymore," Julie went on. "The renunciation
that built up the world is going out of it. Upon whose shoulders,
if not upon ours, is the foundation of the New World to rest? Isabel
called me Atlas, and I have been so happy holding up my little end."
"It is terrible to speak of spending the years of your life
here. You don't at all know what you are talking about. You don't know
orientals. Wait till you see China, a half dead amoeba sprawling over
the earth. You will be overwhelmed by the spectacle of humanity getting
nowhere at all--just crawling along the surface of the globe, like
worms. Some day you will wrest yourself out from these sunken millions
in fearful prayer to get back to your own kind. Oh, don't you feel
the darkness, the despair of it? There will never be any renaissance
of the East--for to have a renaissance you must have a soul."
"But we are trying to make the start here--that the fire may travel."
"Among these inconsequential little swaggerers? Even China, with
her art and her senile one-man kind of learning, has them beaten
miles. My soul is sick of the whole debased East, I tell you; and I
despise this beastly hot-house of an archipelago that spawns existence
in such hideous profusion. I am no colonist, no pioneer, ever. I am
just a soldier, to restore order and pass on."
"And you don't care at all about the great struggle, that is
commencing, everywhere over here? Ah, I can feel it," she cried,
"--the powers of Light against the powers of Darkness!"
Calmiden regarded her with profound feeling. "You are terribly young
to be here alone."
"And already I have made two enemies," she said with a change of
mood. "The very first of my life!" she reflected ruefully.
He knitted his brows. "I don't like to think of your having enemies
in this country."
"They sprang up like a simoon in the desert. I was angry for a bit, but
I can't nurse a real good hatred in my soul for five minutes. It just
peters out, and of course that puts me at a frightful disadvantage."
A swift change came over the young man's face, an inflexible sheath
changing it into a mask of steel. "I can stay angry forever," he
said, frowning into the night. "I don't mean that I have merely a
bad temper. My mind simply will not expurgate an affront. I love and
I hate for good," he declared with concentrated passion.
Julie drew away a little.
"Oh, but why dwell on such things, you and I?" he went on. "All
this would not have come out if you had not stirred to the bottom,
where the truth dwells. I may be violent underneath, and hard with
those who injure me, but there are any number of things to which I am
inflexibly true. I am as inexorable one way as the other. I despise
weakness of all kinds, and it is weak to let people hurt you. I don't
care what anybody says, if you let a person hurt you lie will despise
you into the bargain. It's too bad, but I can't be changed--and I'm
glad somehow that I made a clean breast of it to you."
"You frighten me a little by the order that is all through you. Even
your sins appear to have unity, whereas I keep house topsy-turvily in
my innermost being. I have nothing filed there. I don't know what will
flash out at any moment. I am camping in the universe--and having for
the present a tremendous time. Some policeman will come along some
time and take me in because I haven't built a house in creation. But
just now there is adventure, and the glory of being alive under the
tents of Kedar."
She smiled up at the moon. "I wonder where I am heading?" she
exclaimed. Her glance dropped, she stopped talking, and her face lit
up softly; her attention claimed by something she seemed to see off
in dusky space. Calmiden watched her for some moments where she stood
on the step of the old convent with the moonlight flowing over her
like a timeless river.
"What are you seeing off there?" he asked.
"Faces! Faces--startling ones that I saw in Manila--made by the New
World. I often think and wonder about them--about one, more often!"
"A man's!" Calmiden echoed blankly.
"A god's--with the heart of all the world beating in his breast."
"And you think about him!" he exclaimed in gloomy dissatisfaction.
The girl roused herself. "It was only the encounter of an instant,"
she mused wistfully. "It would be very foolish to think of just one
moment out of one's life, would it not?"
She turned suddenly, for the thought had surged over her again that she
had not in any way heard from Manila since she had left it behind--that
in the busy, brilliant lives into which she had fluttered for an
instant she was not even a recollection. Apparently in these strenuous
times it was every man to his own road! She had chosen her road--but
she had never ceased to remember those beautiful days and nights.
"Good night," she told the young man. "I must go now."
Before she went to bed, she put out her light and, wrapped in the thick
darkness, stared out on the swaying groves. Far down the avenues her
gaze pierced, as if some message were stirring toward her from off
there. Soon she was asleep, close to the evil, perfumed earth.
As Julie went pondering along the golden dust-powdered road, she
was confronted at the convent steps by Anna Anastasia, the Priest's
mother, who accosted her with the freedom of manner that was part of
her efflorescent personality.
Once long ago Anna Anastasia had been pretty enough to ensnare the
attention of a rich young Spanish official. The Priest was the issue
of their irregular alliance, and against its consequences his soul
perpetually rebelled. This light, fluid creature had inexorably fixed
his fate. The desires of her soft little body had made him what he
must unchangeably remain. Far from being a Magdalene, however, Anna
Anastasia, as the mother of the Priest, occupied in this elastic
human community a position of almost religious eminence.
Nodding sociably at the girl, she said in Spanish: "I've been told
you seek accommodations."
Julie looked harassed. Had she not been everywhere unsuccessfully over
this crowded town and finally been advised amazingly by the Governor
to marry the Teserero in order to put an end to her troubles?
"It's maddening," she replied, pushing her damp blond hair from her
brow, "but there seems to be none to be had!"
The Señora smiled archly. "Quite true; there are none. It seems a shame
that so young and so charming a señorita should be distressed. I am
lonely!" she exclaimed. "It is not,"--she shrugged her shoulders--"the
pleasantest living in the world with Raoul. If he could become more
human--if he would find something to take his black thoughts off
himself, and off me! Would you believe it, Señorita, he keeps me a
close prisoner--me who am but thirty-eight? Many women marry, and have
lovers still, very suitably, at my age. Always he makes life hell by
demanding, 'Why did you do it?' Why indeed! It would be well for him
to see that it is not easy to resist. His father was a cavalier. You
can see it in Raoul, who is so tall and strong and beautiful, as you
are. Raoul is of a higher race.
"Come to live with me in the convento, and I will give you every
comfort. Things must be made easier for me, Señorita; truly they
must. I should love Raoul to go through purgatory--to learn that
outside his breviary there is a heaven and a hell."
Julie stood turning color under a mixture of violent emotions. This
impossible and monstrously unconcerned woman actually expected
an answer to her unthinkable proposal. But even in the midst of
suffocating emotions, Julie remembered that she must be careful of
giving offense to so powerful a person. "It is inconceivable!" she
exclaimed, drawing away.
"But why, Señorita? You like men. There are always many around
you. It was so too with me. Make Raoul eat the dust!" Her face set
into passionate lines of hatred.
Julie stared dumbfounded at the woman who claimed her as a sister
spirit. "This is horrible," she breathed.
"My son says you are beautiful, but that you are evil. The other
señorita, he says, is too old for sin. You see that he is very harsh."
Julie was trembling now. "Señora," she said, "it is too much." She
hurried back to her jungle room, clenching her hands, and letting
the angry tears flow.
That afternoon, Maria Tectos, the Old Maid of Guindulman, one of the
most noteworthy personages of the village, not only as the possessor
of considerable wealth but as the acknowledged leader among the women,
hailed Julie as the girl trudged by. She offered Julie a room in her
large house, which was the best and most unique mansion in the town.
It was distinctly a compliment, Julie understood, to be invited to
join this exclusive household. The Old Maid had been to a school
in Manila; moreover, with her ultra-modern, tremendous, iron-gray
pompadour shaking always like a tower with her laughter, she would be
a jolly companion. She believed, so she was always averring to Julie,
in the complete freedom of her sex; and she was constantly stirring the
women up to one thing or another; but this feministic progressiveness
unfortunately carried along with it the conservatism of old age. The
exactions the Old Maid imposed would leave Julie none of that liberty
the Old Maid extolled. Julie could see her young men friends only
under the Old Maid's eye; and it became clear that everything would
be done to discourage altogether their foolish visits. The Old Maid
pointed out her own successful single, elderly state as a contrast
to that of her companions.
After the sinister proposition of the morning, and the accompanying
insinuations, the Old Maid's invitation seemed a real elucidation of
her problem. The view of her entertained by Anna Anastasia and the
priest was peculiar to their own dark minds. The others knew that
she had come here to give all she could. But it was troublesome that
their appreciation of conventions so disproportionately exceeded
their realization of ethics. These people whose Atlas she had come
to be, might not at all understand her living alone, as she had been
thinking of doing, in a little house which she had discovered she could
rent. Perhaps, after all, since she had made this her particular task,
and was getting really to have quite a hold on some of the people,
she had better accept the Old Maid's stringent proffer. So with a
strange feeling that this decision would be ultimately critical,
she told the Old Maid that she would come.
When she returned from school at five o'clock, Calmiden stood waiting
outside the closed Headquarters.
"You're late," he exclaimed, coming toward her. "I've been waiting
some time."
Julie regarded him gravely. "I'm tired," she said. "Finding a roof
for one's head is harder than I thought it was. You know that Miss
Hope has made the Calcedos put me out. I've been everywhere, and had
the strangest things said to me--" She paused gloomily. "But I've
succeeded at last."
"Where are you going?" he demanded quickly.
"To Maria Tectos. She has offered to take me in. She is very powerful,
and I shall be very comfortable, but--"
"What?"
"She has made stipulations. She does not approve of my seeing men
alone, or walking out with them."
"Well, you told her you wouldn't go to her, of course."
"I told her I would."
Calmiden stopped short with a forcible exclamation. "Why, she
will never let us see each other! I say, you are not going to let
that happen? Do you want to give up life completely, sit up alone
night after night in the dusk among the palms in this desolate bit
of jungle? You don't know what it is, I tell you--this dark alien
land. Every atom of it makes you feel your abandonment. This country's
not for women anyway. It's for armed marching men. I can't think how
you dropped into it. How did you?"
Julie started. "I think--somebody said something to me once on a
roof top."
"Well, I am talking to you now from the ground floor. Life is short
enough anyway, and you propose to cut off all its possibilities by
burying yourself in the wilderness even more effectually than you
have done already. Why it's insulting the high gods who made you the
lovely being you are. Maria Tectos--and all the natives be dashed
when they try to dictate your mode of living!"
Julie stood looking soberly down into the dust of the sun-burnt
road. The life of a hermit on the island of Nahal! Could one even
for the most inexorable principles endure it?
"It's beginning to get awfully hard!" She sighed. "Sometimes I long
so to go back to Manila--I really had no idea of being so completely
put out of the world. I thought I should work very hard, and win my
certificate to title among the Builders. There appeared to be very
little real work left for me in Manila--and it didn't seem fair to
play safe over courses already won. But I really didn't expect to be
so cut adrift."
She straightened up, and smiled.