Calmiden pressed closer. "We couldn't walk in the dusk, ever any
more, Julie, among the mango trees, with the fire-flies all about us,
or sit on the wharf and watch the little boats."
Julie's gaze dropped again in heavy thought. Calmiden was looking at
her closely.
"What lovely hair you have! Oh! do be kind to yourself, and to all
the rest of us."
She lifted her head. "Why, anyway, should it make any difference in
the long run what I do about it?" she demanded of the universe.
"Then you won't go?" Calmiden exclaimed joyously.
Still Julie hesitated. But the instincts of youth and the joy of
living had won the struggle in her breast.
"No," she agreed.
When Julie went to the mess that evening, she found the Major scowling
heavily at the table cloth. He announced at last: "I've just received
an order from the Department which revokes commissary privileges
for civilians. This will of course deprive them of the privilege of
Army messes. I seldom make any comment upon my orders, but right
now this appears to be particularly unfortunate. We are a remote
and inaccessible unit of society, facing the roughest conditions;
and now some of us are about to be completely cut loose. Supplies
will have to be procured in Solano, from Shylocks who exact excessive
prices. They must be requisitioned at once, but until they arrive,
I shall, on my own responsibility, keep this mess open."
He looked at Julie as he spoke. From the first, he had made her
his special charge. The girl was aghast. For the purchase of large
supplies she had no money, having despatched it all to her creditor
across the ocean. She left the room heavily, and groped her way down
the road. There were no fire-flies to light the world to-night.
Suddenly some one stepped out from among the trees and softly spoke
her name. He made a quick sign for silence, and she suppressed the
incredulous cry that had sprung to her lips.
It was Adams, dropped down from the skies; for how else, with Dao on
the other side of the island, could he have gotten here?
"My hour came, and I bolted!" he said. "I've ridden without sleep
two days through a wilderness. The ogre wouldn't let me have a leave;
but I persuaded him to give me a three-day hunting pass to go after
deer in the mountains. Don't know how I ever got through; and if the
Major should find it out--or any of them--I'd be court-martialled and
chucked. There seems to be a path in this grove, which we can follow to
get out of the way of observation. I came, of course, to talk to you."
The path ran not far from the Old Maid's house, into the copse. It
brought them upon the deserted end of an estate, where a small house
could be seen deeply sheltered in the trees.
"That's a nice place--sort of a wild garden."
They settled themselves upon a log. The moon coming out from behind
clouds broke only fitfully into these woodland depths. All around them
was the soft still dusk, and a mysterious pensiveness in the night.
"I had to come," Adams declared. "I wanted to see human beings,
I wanted to talk to you. There's an appetite of the spirit that has
to be satisfied. I haven't had any dinner, nor what you might call
any lunch, but I don't care. I've run amuck to get here. I couldn't
stand living with the lower man any longer. Doc's gone, and there
were just the ogre and myself!" He rested his elbows on his knees,
and dropped his head heavily in his hands. "The men are sick and going
down. The falling white man drops till there is nothing white about
him but his skin! I won't be that. I won't go down with the rest! Oh,
I've a right to live!
"I fled over the mountains, I would have gone through blood for this
instant's reunion with the decencies of my kind. To-night with my
hat pulled over my eyes, I walked into the post when it was getting
dark. I left my horse outside the village, and as I passed every house,
I looked into it like a ghost. What a jolly little group! The Major
was in his window, his iron old face turned to the hills, planning,
I'll bet, red-hot campaigns that would put his honor at rest. Good,
decent old fellow, dressed in his stiff white. You ought to see how
we go to dinner in Dao--or rather, you shouldn't.
"There was old Bent, sewing on a button by the light of a lamp,
and Dwight, a few feet away, reading a paper in a hammock, with Mike
sitting on his head. Calmiden was out on the back gallery, with his
feet wound round his tilted chair, staring at the sunset or the island,
or something over there.
"Three of the fellows all together. I used to make the fourth. We
used to play cards, and read our letters out loud.
"Little Mrs. Smith, farther on, was bending over a photograph in the
dusk--that one of Marlborough taken in Cuba, I suppose. It made me
wish I'd had a romance.
"You are about the only girl I ever thought about. But think how
long it will be before I see you again! And then there are all these
men here--"
Time passed unnoticed by the two sitting on the log amid the silvery
lights and shadows, reviewing the experiences of youth and confiding
to each other its ideals. Those hours were printed forever on Julie's
memory. Long afterwards she could recall Adams as he had sat with the
moonlight playing about the shadow of his figure and his pondering
gaze bent upon the encroaching darkness, and the way he had said,
throwing out his arms, "Every time I stretch out my hand--it seems
to come up against an invisible wall!"
"Who's that?" he exclaimed suddenly.
A man in white was coming out of the house. He opened the gate in
front of them.
Julie hesitated. She had identified the secret residence.
"It is the house of Nemecia Victoria," she replied.
"The village Thaïs! That was an American. No native is so tall."
He rose soberly. "I must go back and sit on the lid of my little
hell. I'm all right now. I went wild, and have done a mad thing,
but it has set me right."
They strolled along close to the fence that cut the woods off from
the public road. They stopped at the dilapidated gate. He took her
hands in his. "Dear, little, unforgettable friend of a few hours! We
have both to stick to our outposts now, but these times can't last
forever. Till better days then, and don't let me pass out of your
thoughts! Good-by!" He bent down and kissed her on the cheek.
Then he struck off at once into the darkness of the thicket. Julie
watched motionlessly at the gate till the shadowy form disappeared. She
had been groping around in darkness for a hand, and suddenly, out
of another's extremity, one had come to meet her own. Adams and she
had both deeply become involved in a great struggle. They had both,
the girl subconsciously felt, been elected to the destiny of the
East. Between them there was a cemented bond. By himself "holding out,"
he had helped her across the ditch.
A sound close at hand caused her to look around quickly. The figure
of a man in white was turning down a side street, not a few yards
away. Julie recognized it as the same figure that she and Adams had
seen emerge from Nemecia Victoria's house.