A desperate situation now confronted Julie. For two weeks she had been
exhausting her ingenuity trying to keep her household going. The wages
of Gregorio, the cook, were unpaid, and trifling with the pocket of a
desperado is never wise--for it was patent from his physiognomy that
Gregorio was an insurrecto, or about to become one. All of Julie's
affairs had been in suspense pending the arrival of her month's
salary. Then word had come that the boat carrying mail between Manila
and Solano had been wrecked and the teachers' checks lost. Cablegrams
sent to the chaotic Department in Manila evoked no response. Miss Hope,
the itinerant Croesus, did not seem embarrassed by the catastrophe;
duplicates would undoubtedly be sent in time. But Julie could not
wait another minute.
James brought hope into Julie's despair, however, by informing her
that Miss Hope had told him that the Treasurer was prepared to advance
officially temporary loans to straitened teachers. This was salvation
through the gate of purgatory; for Julie desperately hated to approach
Purcell in a capacity that would permit him to assume the aspect of
bestowing a favor upon her.
But her affairs had come to such a pass that there was no alternative
to be considered. She owed pressing debts around the town, to say
nothing of those in Solano; and they all hurt her prestige as a
teacher. She knew that she would have to go to him.
The evening after the burial of Adams, Calmiden appeared, to bid
Julie good-by before leaving the next morning to take the field. The
troops, with the exception of a small detachment for the protection
of the post, had been ordered out to punish the lawless elements
of the islands. Adams's death had uprooted the Major's last inner
reluctance. He was at last going to take the responsibility of acting.
Calmiden sat down on the steps and looked about him at the miserable
little house.
"It's horrible to think of your living here alone. There are three
of us together there across the plaza. I thought of course that some
one of those women would take you in. Aren't you afraid?"
"Perhaps--sometimes," the girl said slowly. "I have the musical clock,
though."
Julie stirred uncomfortably. "It sings when the night is long and
lonely--after the golden wine-bibbers, with their careless voices,
have passed on; it sings through that dead stop of the night when
people die on earth. Then I am afraid, until I hear--well, do you
ever hear strange things? Did you ever sit up and listen, and hear
the powers of the invisible universe sweep by? Some denizen down
deep in me responds to all this, and makes out it knows what is going
on. Otherwise it would be horrible!"
His face grew grave. "You should never have come here to undergo
such things! Ah, what do you think you are making of life amid such
hardships?"
"I don't know," Julie downcastly replied. "How can any one know
until the sum is finally cast up? I am still trying to cast up the
sum of Jack Adams's life, and make it come out right. The memory of
our brief poignant talks, with the moan of isolated forests in them,
comes back to me--" The girl's voice broke.
Calmiden glanced at her quickly. "You think a good deal about him,
don't you?" Then he added, as if to get away from the thought, "Poor
Jack! However did he come to do it? He seems to have lost his head
over there. The Major knows what happened, but he never says a word."
Julie leaned forward earnestly. "Do you think that Jack
understands--that it was worth while; that what he did over there
all counted in the project--in the whole big scheme? For you see,
he used to say we were grist for the mill--he and I; and I never
understood that. It seems sort of disquieting to recall it."
"Oh, can't you see that, even if the revolution, or evolution, you
talk about did come over here, you are too slight a fabric for such
a thing? You don't belong in it."
"You mean I'm not strong? My aunt said that, too," she pondered
sorrowfully.
"And if you were strong? Adams was strong, and he lost his life. If
you play for big stakes over here, sometime you've got to lose."
Julie sat very still. At last she drew a letter from her dress,
and held it before her in the dim light.
"This is such a strange letter," she murmured. "And it's so odd that
it came just at the time Adams was killed. It's from that beautiful
woman whom I told you they call the Empress of the East--and who,
when I left Manila of my own free will, said I was mad to throw away
my life. She is the only one I met there who has written to me. One
individual counts for so little there--you understand. Well, I did
not completely drop out of her mind, anyway! Listen to what she says:
"'Dear Atlas: The Green God has told me to write to you. I don't know
why--since he never gives reasons, nor answers questions. What has
happened to you? Has the earth begun to tremble and slip from those
white young shoulders? Or why does the Green God fear for the Shining
Apostle to the East, and direct me to recall myself to you and cause
you to bear in mind that there is always--Isabel?'"
Calmiden snatched the letter agitatedly. "Who is this Eastern
Witch? What on earth does she mean? What has her horrible God to do
with you? Promise me that you will never answer that letter, or go
near her again!"
"Indeed, I shall probably never see her again, since my destiny lies
down in jungles, and hers in the beautiful places of the world."
Calmiden dropped the letter, and regarded Julie with emotion. "And
so this was your choice? Indomitable little being, with the luminous
faith! Do you know that this island which I hated so with my whole
soul--where the days were but blank heat waves and the nights a
horrible hush--has become paradise since you walked into it?"
His tone took on a poignant wistfulness. "But your eyes seem to take
you always out of my reach.... Ah, do you, after all, belong to the
Green God?--you who say you have thrown in your lot with the East!"
Before Julie could reply, Brentwood came up the steps, and announced
that the Major wanted Calmiden at once. Calmiden went away with him,
throwing back of him a long glance.
The next day, Julie, gathering together the courage of necessity,
went to see the Treasurer about the projected loan to the teachers.
Her heart beat violently as she climbed the stone flights of the
Ayuntamiento, in the left wing of which the civil government offices
were located. Purcell was in the Treasury, seated at his desk. As
Julie appeared before him, a strange alteration flashed through his
light eyes; a swift omen, gone before it could be captured.
"Good morning!" he said, politely rising. "Is there anything I can
do for you?"
There was a preparedness in his attitude that cast the girl down more
than ever. That it should be to him that things had finally led! She
shrank from him almost visibly, and longed unutterably for retreat;
but consciousness of her disastrous concerns pressed like a red-hot
weight on her brain.
Purcell, never removing his eyes from her downcast face, waited. If
Julie by some chance had glanced up at that moment!--but that abysmal
ignorance concerning human nature which her uncle had deplored blinded
her to the subtleties in which she was about to become enmeshed.
She lifted her eyes with a terrible effort, and Purcell immediately
dropped his.
"Miss Hope says that you are advancing money out of the Treasury to
the teachers, till their salaries arrive."
Purcell made a sudden movement, but did not speak.
"I have come on that errand. When my money comes I will repay you
promptly."
Still studying the flushed, downcast face of the girl, Purcell
reached out his arm to the safe and began to move the knob of the
combination. "How much do you wish?" he asked in a low voice.
As little as was humanly possible to get along on, was Julie's
thought. It was torture to stand here and have money doled out to
her by this man. She hesitated and finally murmured, "Thirty dollars!"
He glanced up quickly from the safe, almost in disappointment, she
thought. He brought out a great roll of bills which he held before
the girl's eyes while he slowly counted out the sum she had asked for.
Julie took the money with a quivering word of gratitude. After all,
there was no such thing as hatred in the world!
Purcell, with an abrupt gesture, turned away.
Julie went home with the wherewithal to make the world turn a little
longer. Gregorio was paid, and thus enriched, lit out for the hills to
the solar plexis of the insurrection, where by virtue of his brigand
appearance he belonged.
The troops returned after a vigorous quest of the insurrectos, whom
they had been able to engage but once. Owing to the impenetrable
character of the country, the insurgents had managed everywhere to
hide themselves from conflict. Balked and baffled by the unabashed
desperados sitting unattainably upon their horrible hills, the
Major was in a furious frame of mind. With his limited facilities,
he seemed powerless to cope with the situation; and unless something
should intervene in his behalf, it seemed that these people, who,
as Delphine had expressed it "greatly enjoyed to insurrect," would
go on warring forever, through savage lust of the thing.
One morning shortly after the Major's return, Julie, on her way to
school, became aware of some deep agitation that was shaking the
village. From hut to hut, some tremendous portent had flashed as
if by racial telepathy, till every soul in the village was aware of
it. Julie, looking up at their windows where they were foregathered,
brown secret beings with terror in their gestures, was unable to get
any clew to the mystery.
Upon reaching the school house, she was handed a letter which she
read with much astonishment. It was from the Old Maid, and requested,
in the name of the mothers of the children, that school be suspended
that afternoon. Moreover, the Old Maid besought Julie with all the
fervor of the Spanish language to come to her house at two o'clock,
for an "asunto muy importante."
Julie learned a little later, to her further mystification, that the
girls' school would likewise be dismissed at twelve, for the day.
Returning home at the noon hour, Julie found the little houses on
stilts looking strangely deserted. Apprehension seized her. Had the
women too decamped for the hills?
Promptly at two o'clock, she walked down the hill to the Old Maid's
mansion, and found in that formidable vestal's extensive grounds
all the women of Guindulman, as well as those from the neighboring
districts, as far even as Loboc. Every dusky sister of them was in a
high state of consternation. As if that were not astounding enough,
they had attached indissolubly to their persons very nearly all the
children in the world--and these were shrieking in panic. As Julie
quickly recognized, the barren and the unwedded had appropriated as
their share the orphaned and deserted; and the orphaned and deserted
were howling in apparent rebellion at belonging to anybody at all. Even
the Old Maid had one wriggling little goddess of the dust--whom she
ordinarily smacked soundly for poaching on her premises--touchingly
tucked under her arm.
Delphine alone had been able to elude these theatrical adoptions,
and skipped satirically free among the leaves. The moment, however,
that he glimpsed his teacher, he ran up to her and stuck his head
docilely under her arm like a young ox under the yoke.
The women were all chattering hysterically. Suddenly the Old Maid
burst out oratorically to Julie. "Dios! What are we to do?"
"But what is happening?" Julie demanded.
"You have not heard? Christus!" She flung up her arms to heaven,
while a piercing wail broke like a dirge through the mango trees,
"Los Macabebes! Los Macabebes!"
Then Julie understood the meaning of the panic of weeping. From
the North was coming a band of those unique and redoubtable little
fighters, the Macabebe Scouts, of whose name every other tribe in the
Archipelago stood in awe. The Macabebes, for centuries the friends of
the white man and the enemies of all other tribes. There was no forest
retreat they could not ferret out and no danger that they feared.
In these far islands, they were a terrible legend. The people feared
them like the devil out of hell.
The women continued to sob, and to repeat, panic-stricken their
dreadful monotone, "Los Macabebes! Los Macabebes!"
The Old Maid commanded silence, and whirled upon Julie. "You must
think of a way to help us, you who have gone to school and have seen
the earth. All our men will be butchered. There will be no sons,
husbands or fathers left. The Macabebes are monsters out of hell. They
eat babies, and suck the blood of the dying. They will make ashes
of this island. There will not be one man left. Dios!"--she flung
herself down on her knees, and the others dropped with her, beating
their breasts--"if God made your brain better than ours, save us!"
"What can I do?" demanded Julie passionately. "I have no power
over such things? Has not the Comandante held out to your men every
opportunity to embrace order and peace, and have they not scorned them
all? Have they not preferred rather to listen to the one malcontent
who delights to sow discord between the two races to which he belongs?"
After this fearful piece of daring, she swept on:
"Hasn't the Comandante promised you peace and protection and a good
government for all? And do not your men continue to remain in the
hills from which the Macabebes, for whom he sent, will dislodge them
at last?"
"Come!" commanded the Old Maid. "Gather your children about you,
and go down on your knees to the Comandante, and don't rise till he
promises to order back those devils from the North. You, Maestra,
will lead us and speak for us!"
Julie glanced about her impotently. This desperately misguided swarm
of women had put themselves into her hands. She was terribly sorry
for them, for after all they were only women who, uninformed as to
the motives of the men in the hills, had through weary months held
their families together. A thought struck her. Her face lighted with
some inner vision. She halted the female mob. Was it possible to make
simple creatures like these revolutionary? The women looked at her,
and waited.
"It is useless to go to the Comandante empty-handed," she declared. "He
is angry over the death of his lieutenant. And many times your
men have promised to lay down their arms, only to break every time
their promise. On this island no crops are growing, no towns are
flourishing. Those of you who have property have had it seized by
outlaws, and those of you who are poor must continue to support alone
your children, and to endure your anxiety as well as the tax levied
by Andegas upon every soul of you. It has all grown worse and worse
until you can not bear it any longer.
"The new government does not extort; it protects the poorest among
you. It will give you liberty, schools, the right to accumulate
property without fearing any man. It seeks to make you a happy people,
and the most enlightened in the East.
"Make your choice between the two, you women. Deliver to the men your
ultimatum--that you have decided in favor of government instead of
anarchy. What! Cannot the women who, deserted and unprotected, have
borne the brunt of the war, take a stand alone? Each one of you has
power over one man who must himself already be weary of hardship and
separation. Rouse yourselves to act, for in this way and in this way
only can the Macabebes be kept away! Stop the war, the outlawry, and
the destruction of a beautiful island. Give your word to the Major--the
sworn word of the women of Nahal--that if he will countermand his order
for the Macabebes, the men will come in and deliver up their arms."
Into the silence that surrounded her she continued to exhort. "You,
Marianna Tectos!" addressing the Old Maid, "are rich and powerful. Many
men will listen to you, especially if you say that your purse will be
closed against them if they do not go over to the new government. You,
even, Nemecia Victoria who have power over many men, we ask you to
help. And Señora Pandilig, tell your nephews you will disinherit them
and give your money to the government if they do not come around. Oh,
you all have your lever, if you are courageous enough to apply it. Do
you agree?"
The women stood in thoughtful silence.
"We must defy our men for the government!" Señora Pandilig exclaimed.
"To save them from the Macabebes!" Nemecia Victoria reminded. The
dreaded name thrown into their thoughts with this argument by one of
their own number had deep effect. They stirred and moved under the sun,
and thought. An unaccustomed feat!
Julie glancing over the crowd, reading the faces in this moment of
stress, held that each brown woman was weighing just how much power
she could personally, in an issue like this, exert.
Comments ran down the lines: "The men will be angry!"
"They will be worse than angry, Mother of Jesus, when the Macabebes
tear out their hearts."
"What are we to do, Constancia?"
"What do you think, Celesta?"
"Ah, it is beyond us."
"And if we don't dare!"
Thus rippled their breathless fears and uncertainties. A concourse of
brown women facing a crucial decision which they could not absolutely
consummate, until the Old Maid hurdled them across with a leap. With
a daring excitement that for an instant lifted her above her world,
she cried, "We will tell the Comandante that we, the women of Nahal,
will undertake to bring in the men. We will go before him now!"
The procession started to surge forward, growing, as it drew near
Headquarters, more emotional at every step. Against this collective
femininity, Mike was powerless. It passed him in an oblivious white
heat, in an unassailable mood.
Calmiden, whose office was in the entresuelo, stuck his crest against
the grated bars of the window and stared in stupefaction.
Julie, bareheaded in the sun, her face reflecting unnameable emotions
towered aloft in the heart of the avalanche.
"Dear, dear! What's happening?" Calmiden demanded.
"Women! Oceans of 'em, overturning history! We want to see the Major."
"For heaven's sake, don't overturn anything here! He won't have
it. Tell them to go home, and you stay and talk to me, you exalted
green-eyed person."
"Calmiden!" roared the incensed Major from the upper regions. Clearly
he had perceived the onslaught from his window, to which the worsted
Mike had valiantly climbed for assistance. "What do you mean by
letting all those women past the door?"
Calmiden looked at Julie in comic despair. "Does he expect me to
wrestle individually with the feminine population of the island? What
are you all up to anyhow?"
"Tell them," yelled the Major, "that I refuse absolutely to see them."
But the dogged remnant who had not yet succeeded in getting inside the
building merely continued to push. Masses of agitated women driving up
the stairs and sweeping along with them in their advance a wondering
lieutenant, an indignant sergeant-major, two native clerks and an
interpreter! A flood of women inundating the furniture and bearing
down on one solitary figure that still withstood them. The Major, in
impregnable dignity, sat fast in his chair in rigid military fashion
while the excited Mike, picking up everything he could find, fired it
upon the advance. Women fundamentally annoyed the Major, and to have
all the women in the world surrounding him in an unescapable embrace
was too dreadful to sustain. He sat like Pharaoh in the midst of the
visitation of the plagues, sputtering under his breath.
The routed office force stood helpless, while the room rang with the
classic wail of "Los Macabebes! Los Macabebes!"
The Major addressed them. "Tell them," he said to the interpreter,
"that for two years I have exhausted every peaceful means to get
the men of this island to return to their homes. They take the
oath of allegiance only to gain access to the town and commit fresh
atrocities. This is one of the last islands to continue in a state
of outlawry and disorder. The Macabebes shall come!"
Calmiden and the Sergeant-Major exchanged unofficial glances of pure
delight. A hush of sheer fright closed the women's throats.
"You killed my Lieutenant," the Major accused. "Your men strangled him
in the night when he was defenselessly sleeping. You have bad leaders
who inoculate you with their passions. There have been wicked deeds
and murders. These things must end."
The women wept in terrible despair, helplessly wringing their brown
hands. Brown supplicating hands groping up out of the dark!
Julie, carried along by the throng, tried to speak. The Major was
right. Yet if Adams had lost his life, he had given it--to the
East. There could be no price set on blood so shed. The vision rose
before her of lonely Dao, and Adams guarding its destiny. She wriggled
forward through the women.
"Major," she said, "these women have come to offer you a proposal
of peace. If you will agree to delay the coming of the Macabebes,
they will promise to bring in their men."
The Major stared at her incredulously. "The women! What have they to
do with the insurrection?"
"As things stand now, a great deal. There are only women left in
the villages now--without food. The burden of such an existence has
become too much for them to endure. They will no longer furnish funds
for Andegas. Maria Tectos and Nemecia Victoria are rich women; so are
the Señoras Calextas and Pandilig. The women are the backbone of the
community, and they give you their sacred promise. They are weary of
war, and wish to embrace the Government of the United States."
The Major strode over to the window and turned his back on them. The
women stared tremulously at him--but Julie motioned them back. He
turned at last, frowning thoughtfully.
"Maria Tectos!" he said abruptly to the Old Maid, "Will you take the
oath of allegiance? And you, Nemecia? And the rest of you?"
"But I am a woman!"
"You are undertaking to make peace like a man!"
"And I swear before the High God?"
"That you will henceforth be a faithful adherent of the Government
of the United States. Put up your hands."
Maria and Nemecia Victoria lifted trembling brown arms. Dumbly the
concourse followed their example. Julie alone understood the valor
of those uplifted arms. All these women were imperiling their souls
before the Padre for this terrible oath. But the Major had agreed to
hold back the Macabebes, and for that they could perform this miracle.
Calmiden watched Julie closely, as they went out together.
"You put them up to this. What was the use?"
"If they do bring peace--"
"Utopian dreamer! It will be the first time it has happened that way."
"But I know these people a little. Maria will leave no stone
unturned. She did not need that perfectly valueless oath that the
Major imposed upon her to scare her into the truth."
"How can you be so interested in them?"
"This is my destiny," she said.
"Your destiny!" He looked soberly at her.
There with the tropical sunlight beating down upon them, they seemed
suddenly to face their deeper selves.