From his upper state chambers, the Major was beckoning to Julie
with as much excitement as that statuesque personality was capable
of manifesting.
"Come up a minute," he called. "I have great news for you!"
As Julie entered the room he greeted her with a smile that thawed
every line of his stony visage.
"The insurgents will surrender in Guindulman next Thursday," he told
her. "They will deliver up their arms, to a man, and will take the
oath of allegiance! This might be called the 'Peace of Women,' don't
you think so? They have carried the thing through. If it hadn't been
for you, young lady, those Macabebes would be down here right now. You
belong to work like this. The Island of Nahal ought to canonize you!"
Julie had never been so acutely stirred. After all, a part of the
Great Adventure was coming true!
The natives of Nahal entered into a state of inordinate rejoicing. On
the evening before the memorable Thursday they gave a ball of towering
magnificence. It was true that at the ending of the war almost every
one was bankrupt, but nothing so spectacular had ever happened in
Nahal. It would be in the Manila papers--it would be in the papers
of America that the redoubtable Nahalites, of their own free and
enlightened will, had come to peace.
Julie went to the ball with Calmiden, notwithstanding the fact that
Purcell, in a formal note, had claimed the privilege of escorting
her. Julie had been cruelly bewildered and apprehensive of the
consequences of her refusal, because the Treasurer was now the actual
head of civil affairs.
It was indeed a magnificent ball, but the Americans felt considerable
discomfiture upon finding their hosts still wearing arms, when they
had come unarmed.
And a breach occurred between Julie and Calmiden, because Julie
accepted the Insurgent General's invitation to dance. From Calmiden's
point of view the request was the next thing to an insult; but since
this was the culmination of the coup d'état which she herself had
instigated, the fear of jeopardizing it in the slightest degree had
her caught fast. Not until the next day were the insurgents to give
up their arms, and in case Andegas became incensed, a little thing
like a dance might overthrow the whole course of destiny. It was
perfectly possible for Andegas to stick a knife in her back, as a
signal for a general slaughter. Moreover there was something in the
perilous uncertainty of the moment that exhilarated her. She had
bent her soul upon a great adventure, and she thrilled to the dim
things it foreshadowed--things that swam before her stirred vision
like the pageant of the worlds in the night sky which she glimpsed
through the galleries.
When they left the ball, the Americans departing en masse for mutual
protection, Calmiden gave very clear expression to his displeasure.
"I can't understand you--the things you do. What came over you to
consent to dance with that half-breed? Imagine their getting up a
ball and coming bristling to the teeth with weapons, just to tease
us! That ought to be enough for you forever! What makes you act as
if you belonged to this hideous game?"
"I do," Julie under the fever of the night recklessly replied. "I
understood this particular thing, and I was going to see it through!"
"Even against my wishes? To dance with Malay cut-throats--you a star!"
"I would have danced with the devil under the same conditions."
"Julie, talk sense. However am I to understand you? Chasing chimeras
that will bring you nowhere--whereas you and I are all that count. Give
up these terrible notions. You don't know what you are about--what,
my God, all this may lead you to!"
They parted at Julie's door with a feeling of estrangement, like the
prick of pain.
The next day Calmiden left for Solano, to secure some supplies for
the garrison. He went on a boat which had come into Nahal harbor the
night before, bringing mail.
At school, Julie, who had not yet received her mail, learned that
salary checks had arrived for both James and Miss Hope. At noon she
hurried home, fluttering with anticipation and relief. The thirty
dollars was nearly all gone. At the thought of Purcell, she shivered.
With trembling fingers she opened her letters. One was from
Mrs. Calixter. She thrust it aside to hunt further for the check; but
her money had, inconceivably, not come. The disaster of the wrecked
boat had been rectified for everybody but her; all the others now
had their checks. What sinister design was back of this? Soon her
desperate situation would become known, and against such publicity
her pride forcibly rebelled.
She was facing a critical state of affairs. Although certain varieties
of food were cheap in the village, her resources would soon be unequal
to purchasing even these. She had been doing her own cooking--very
badly indeed; and suffering from it, as well as from a too rigid
economy of diet.
Moreover the school, which was the center of her life, was subtly, as
under an evil enchantment, disintegrating. Every day disclosed more
and more empty benches, the youthful occupants of which, in Julie's
dreams, were to have been shining pillars of the future. The girl's
efforts to locate the cause of the disaffection came up against a
dead wall. The secret psychology of the East confronted her. In vain,
after facing those deserted benches that struck like a blow at the very
roots of her spirit, had she appealed to the parents. The women were
silently sympathetic, the men were non-committal; but none reached
out a hand to her.
She guessed only too well whose power alone was great enough to deflect
the boys from their upward course. The souls of their parents were
throttled by their leader, at whose heels they would have gone to
the devil.
The priest had learned who had instigated peace--Maria Tectos having
hung in the terrible limbo of excommunication till full confession
had been forthcoming. His spiritual subjects had begun to show the
disquieting effects of revolutionary new thought, and he hastened to
stretch out inexorable arms over his dominion. A spiritual czar, whose
whole power in life lay in his compelling hold on the souls of men, he
did not intend that any of his chattels should escape their bonds. He
had an overweening sense of possession, but little real interest in his
creatures. Above everything conceivable, he hated the Americans. Since
he had laid his special curse upon Julie's establishment and had not
interfered with Miss Hope's school, it was perfectly clear upon whom
his ill-will was concentrated. With the vital structure of her work
shaking about her, she was in the worst possible straits.
Her money, or rather Purcell's, had come to an end. She was facing
starvation. There was no one whom she could bring herself to approach
for help. She summoned her last forces of resistance. Calmiden must
certainly be back within a few days, and the money from Manila could
not diabolically hold away much longer.
She picked up Mrs. Calixter's letter. It was full of explanations of
divers sorts, and threw light in multiple directions--belated light.
She and her husband had been to India on an extended official visit
with the Governor-General. She had meant to write sooner to Julie,
but on a trip like that, Julie would understand, a great many things
had been wiped out of mind.
"Barry McChord, whom you remember, I know, and who still holds himself
as your friend, told me on my return of his fruitless efforts to find
out what had become of you--and a very strange mix-up it was. I was
gone--and your Department gave your location as Solano. But when
Barry wrote there he received the answer, after an unconscionable
time, that there was no such person on duty there. The Department,
upon being again questioned, hazarded the theory that you might
have died or gone home--although it admitted that of such events it
should have a record. At any rate you were given up for lost. What
chaos inconceivable! And that red-headed schemer--who I suspect was to
blame for all this--is still away on a long rest in Japan! I believe
that wretch has been deliberately miscarrying you on his lists so that
upon investigation he could point to his magnanimity in assigning you
to the superior station of Solano. If you would, brave little Julie,
insist upon going to the dangers of Nahal, he may have argued, whatever
happened to you should not be set down to his account. If you wandered
off any place else, it was not his fault. But how you have received
your salary I can't think unless he has made it his own concern."
And was that why, Julie wondered, she was left in these straits;
and would be--until the red-headed man came back?
She read on:
"A little army woman whose husband is on leave here from your very spot
cleared up the mystery. She told Barry how much alive you were--ending
revolutions, and transforming the Malay race; and being proposed to
by the entire bachelor officer personnel of the battalion--one of
whom you were most certainly going to accept.
"Barry told me he could understand how you had forgotten your earlier
friends. I believe he is going to China, and perhaps he will not come
back. Each time he goes, he says he may not come back."
Julie put the letter down weakly. Ah, she was not at all successful,
as Mrs. Smith had said. Her school was almost gone--and to-day she
had had scarcely anything to eat.
When it was quite dark, she took a walk, staring into the palely lit
jungle as she passed. Overhead one brilliant constellation blazed. It
seemed to hang over a distant city far to the north, beyond these
troubled southern seas. She put out her arms to its light.