Julie moved quickly, to hide any appearance of having heard what had
so extraordinarily transpired. That flash of words and glances had
disturbed every cell of her mind. She was still quivering when Isabel
spoke at her elbow.
"Julie, I never saw any one who let herself be so eaten up by
things. You are as white as a ghost. Is it," she turned to look more
closely at Julie, "the head again?"
Julie looked back at her, troubled. "Oh, yes," she said, "it aches
all the time."
"And have you done nothing about it?"
The girl looked embarrassed. "The doctors might want to open me up,
to find out what is the matter. Besides, they charge what Father Hull
calls American prices."
"Better keep away from them," Isabel agreed, turning away.
Barry's guests, with their tea-cups in their hands, sauntered through
the rooms, examining his collections. The object of greatest interest
was a bright red chair gleaming like coals of fire, with in-set
golden dragons.
"The throne of the East!" Ellis explained. "Red lacquer, glazed all
over with poison, and as ancient as Solomon. Emperors have sat in
it, and the devil himself; and because of it execution grounds have
run red."
Observing Isabel staring intently at the chair, Commissioner Caples
playfully remarked: "Indeed and you'd look very pretty in it, my
dear--with a tower of jewels on your head and a fringe of pearls
hanging down over your eyes, so that nobody could have an inkling of
what you were about. We'd have another splendid Dowager."
The guests drifted out to the various engagements evening always
brought. Sir John went to his room to read his letters.
Barry beckoned to Julie. "There is something I want to show you!" All
afternoon there had been in his manner the intimation of showing his
things especially to her.
She followed him into a room, where he pointed out a large
framed picture of the Wall of China going over the mountains into
Manchuria. Instantly there sprang before her mind the vision of it
climbing in the evening light the steep foot-hills, up to the dark
tops of the mountains, where its splendid watch towers rose like a
crown against the sky.
"It's a segment of the human mind, in stone!" she breathed.
He pointed to a gate tower set high upon the Wall. "The Gate of the
World looking out upon Asia! It is far beyond there that Sun Yat
Sen is shortly to march afoot, secretly, on his mission--to shake
an empire. I'd give my soul to go! For what other life could offer
a thing like that?"
He turned on a light, and abruptly pulled out some camphor
chests. Opening them up, he tossed out their contents. Julie dropped
down on her knees and watched the rare fabrics flow forth: lustrous
brocades, and cobweb tissues, sparkling with jeweled lights. He
unlocked carved and scented ivory boxes, and chains of amethysts like
drops of wine trembled out in a thin stream; then came sapphires like
blue winking eyes of the night, and a little sack of pearls that took
Julie's breath wholly away.
"Am I in Ali Baba's treasure cave?" she exclaimed.
He smiled. "I have seen Ali Baba's treasure cave, in Ceylon. There
is a certain shop there which has been kept by generations of a
family. Indian princes go to Ali Sherif for their jewels. Lots of
these things I got there for prices unheard of in Europe. When I
passed through last, Ali Sherif was celebrating his son's marriage. I
fell to praising some of the jewels of the native prince, and,
stirred by the mood of the day, Ali invited me to go with him into
the underground vaults of his house. There on the floors of those
cellars were fabulous hills that blazed up under his torch into every
incredible kind of gleaming sun--all garnered and stored away there
by generations of jewel-smiths."
Julie picked up and held admiringly in her hand a dazzling medallion
of white jade with a single hieroglyphic carved upon it.
"That's supposed to be a whale of a charm!" Barry explained, observing
her fascination. "Belonged to the Imperial family. I got it at the same
time I got the chair. Caples always insists that nothing short of a
crime on my part could have brought either of them into my possession;
but fleeing princes will part with anything for a chance at life."
He drew a thin chain from one of the boxes, passed it through the
hole that was pierced in the piece of jade, and slipped it around her
neck. "There you have a charm from the Lama's Temple in Lhassa. And
there isn't a charm in Asia to beat its power. There's scarcely a
Mongolian that won't bow down to it. I'll have a catch fixed for it,
and send it to you."
Julie, seated among these riches, smiled up at him, to find his whole
being concentrated upon her in an intense look that lifted her out
of herself into a new personality so thrillingly comprehensive that
it seemed in touch with a world of vivid inspirations. Bonds seemed
momentarily to be cut behind her; she felt herself slipping on wings
into high areas. All about her, agitating her soul to its depths,
was this great wordless offering.
Chad and Isabel had not left. Chad, who had a poetic passion for
oriental art, had become absorbed in some rare vases which Barry
had recently received from China. Isabel, between moments of fitful
contemplation of the red chair, stirred restlessly about, contriving
in her movements to reconnoiter along the gallery into the adjoining
room. Turning her eyes back warily upon the preoccupied Chad, she
every now and then leaned around the wall between the two doors,
and obtained glimpses of what was taking place between Barry and
Julie. Her dark head, listening acutely, was stealthily thrust forward
and withdrawn like the head of some tropical serpent.
Chad uttered some remark, and she slipped quickly back. He glanced up,
and his gaze became transfixed with amazed repugnance. After all, the
creatures of the East were black-hearted bats, he thought. Rosalie
had been sufficiently disillusioning, but here was Isabel--who had
always stood to his mind as a racial justification--looking like the
root of all evil.
"Come here!" she persuaded.
He put down the vase and followed her, but the stealth in her
movements irritated him; and when she whispered tensely for him to look
through the door toward which she was drawing him, he was inclined
to rebel. But what he saw appeared wholly to chain his attention. He
stared in silence for a moment at the two figures beyond, then veered
back with a suppressed curse.
Isabel was breathing hard. "You know about those chests!" she
exclaimed. "They are a fancy of his. He has been filling them a long
time--for a woman--the woman! We did not want any woman to come,
did we, and overturn his existence?"
He scowled. "What do you mean?"
"I mean his destiny--his work," she cried passionately. "You know
what I mean. Nobody must get in his way!"
"You don't think that Barry--and that cobweb of a girl!" Then he
muttered fiercely. "Barry shan't throw himself away too!"
"And she's wrapped up in another man. She was about to be married to
him down South, but they quarreled."
"Barry's career has no place in it for any woman--least of all for
her." Chad seemed to be arguing with himself, or the universe. "Why
should this moonlit wraith come along and attempt to throw everything
into an eclipse? What would he amount to after she got into his
soul?" He appealed to Isabel: "Isn't there any way to get her out of
his path?"
Isabel's features set into a mask. "She's in the way!" she repeated
vehemently. She glanced at Chad sharply to fathom how deep his
meaning went.
"Resurrect the other man!" he hazarded desperately. "Barry shan't
be caught in this undertow! I've prayed like a Parsee that he would
keep out!"
At that moment Barry and Julie appeared in the doorway. The two gazed
at them, wondering.
"I'm going to drive Miss Dreschell home!" Chad suddenly announced. "She
never takes the trouble to talk to me, so I, am going to seize this
chance."
As they drove together through the twilight, it became clear to Julie
that Chad had set himself to some psychological investigation. She
was aware that in floating into his circle of life, she had aroused
in him some inexplicable distrust.
What he managed to evolve after a bit was that in order that Barry
should meet the peculiar hazards of his career, it was expedient for
him to remain single-hearted. Ellis Wilbur, Julie recalled, amid her
contending emotions, had said exactly the same thing. Was everybody
in the East a self-appointed guardian over Barry's emotions? It gave
her a feeling of being floated persistently away from his existence.
No, Barry must not be carried under by the current of stressful
emotions, as Chad painfully intimated he himself had been. He contrived
to make clear that what he chiefly resented in Julie was a certain
disturbingly inefficacious flame of being, which he took occasion to
compare to a light-house open to the winds of the seas.
He did not deny, now that she was under observation, the starry quality
of her substance, but he regarded it as nothing more than an accident
of soul. Nothing ever would come from it, and Barry, he pointed out,
would be led astray by it, would follow in its futile trail, a blind
lopped-off scrap of the sun.
"After a while," he continued, with the same extraordinary frankness,
"after you've dipped a finger in the pie, you will go right back to
the doing of endlessly inconsequential things and Barry, perhaps you
know, is committed to going on." Julie understood that he referred
to Barry's secret activities outside the islands.
She regarded him gloomily. "I think you are perfectly right in assuming
that nothing I shall ever do will bear fruit. Once I tried to pull
the fire down out of the skies to light a few little clods of earth,
but the creatures only thought it was to burn them up."
"I think you will find that you pulled down that fire to make a halo
for your own head. For all your hallowed way, you came into the East
hunting tremendous things for yourself."
Julie colored angrily. "I've seen for a long time that you don't like
me, but I find no justification for an insult!"
Chad's tone changed. "I am not trying to do that. It isn't that I
dislike you--but that I wish you hadn't happened." A tense earnestness
broke out on his harassed face. "How can I make you understand about
Barry! What is it that fills the atmosphere here? What do you feel
in the air?"
"Belief--burning belief in the work," Julie dejectedly replied.
"Yes, but mixed up with it, as there is mixed up in every high impulse
in man, you find the darker strain. Read the mood of this place,
and in it you will find expectation--human expectation, everywhere
high. Look at Isabel, for its greatest extravagance!"
"Yes," Julie agreed, "she looks and talks as if she lived in the
greatest expectation of an extraordinary climax for herself."
"And that's what in differing degrees they all expect. The high, clear
strain is working for the cause, and working hard, but the dark strain
is using this place as a training ground for personal power. Take
those people you met the other night at Isabel's: Holborne--he's a
prime fighter, but do you think he'll not desert the field when some
other background offers to set Holborne off to better advantage? And
Leah Chamberlain--what but a play-ground of the passions is this to
her? And to Ellis Wilbur, what but a rough struggle that she won't
engage in, for fear of getting hurt? I could name you a lot of
others to illustrate how this priceless and incorporeal endeavor,
this Republic of the Sun--which is a movement to take hold of the
heart of the East, and not a South African or Klondike gold-fields
rush serves solely for the aggrandizement of human personalities."
He paused, and looked at her keenly. "So when you see one simple,
splendid exception, you've just got to hang on to it by your
teeth! Outside of Father Hull, there is just one person in this whole
Archipelago who has sought nothing, absolutely nothing for himself. He
has never had a ruling prince's job, though the Government has often
to go and get him when it's in a pinch. Though he's the best known man
in the Islands, he's never dreamed of making himself into a political
power-- He's just the 'Mayor of Manila'--a wholly make-believe title,
since there's no such thing; but I know of no personality that by
scattering itself freely has come into such an accruement of power.
"That's what sets him apart. That's what through all contingencies
will cause him to survive--because neither fate nor God can get along
without an agency like that."
To hide her emotion Julie looked out into the dusk. Again Nahal,
with all its eternal futility, arose like a bar to the universe. In
vain she tried to push the vision off her horizon: there, she knew,
it would stand always as the total of her spirit's achievement.
Chad went on, but with less assurance now. "I have heard that there
is--that there might be another factor in this thing. Perhaps it
could happily be made the determining one. I refer to--the other
man. Couldn't he be hurried along? This is absolutely his moment. I
offer you my assistance in every way, to make it clear to him that
this is the time to step in."
Julie threw him a sharply amazed glance. "Why should Isabel have
repeated that? How can you talk about things you don't understand? I
needn't answer you, of course, but I will. The man you speak of
is never coming back. Nobody but Isabel would have dreamed of such
a thing."
"Then why sit in this dark thrall and wait for him?"
Julie drew away in fresh surprise. "Could it occur to you that this
probing might become painful?" She put her hands to her head. "But it's
because I don't blame you greatly that I reply at all." She lifted her
head, and looked at him with a great earnestness. "You found out that
I was--waiting; but you didn't know for what. I'll tell you now,"
she almost sobbed. "I wanted to be released from the dark, brutal
spell of failure--I wanted to recapture a last territory of my soul."
After he had left Julie at her gate, Chad drove to Isabel's
house. Isabel was one of Chad's best friends. Beautiful and seductive
as an houri, she was surrounded in both his mind and Barry's with
the romance and tragedy of an unappeased Kundry soul. Her fallen
ambitions among her father's race touched them. They were haunted
by the cruel fact that the East alone offered a destiny; and though
she was their antagonist, they courted and admired her. Her wild
aspirations they had credited to her natural mental opulence, and
her environment. Recent events, however, were tending to shake some
of their comfortable convictions.
The houses of the East are open, and there are no bells. Dicky-Dicky,
the dwarf, whose duty it was to stand on guard at the stair case, was
nowhere about when Chad arrived. He climbed the stairs and, completely
at home, sat down on the railing of the gallery, and looked at the
river, the view of which from this point was always enchanting.
A light burned in the sala, but the rest of the house appeared to be
in darkness. Isabel, no doubt, had not reached home. He would wait
for her.
Voices from somewhere back of him floated indistinctly at first across
his thoughts. Then, as the sounds became clearer, and arresting in
their significance, his attention focused. In his long sojourn in the
islands he had picked up the use of the Tagalog dialect. He heard an
exclamation, and recognized the voice as Isabel's.
"And so this pilgrimage of spells and charms, and working upon lives,
goes on, Witch of Arayat!"
Chad pricked up his ears instantly. The Witch of Arayat had been
a fantastic legend when he at first came to the islands. From the
obscurity of the years, Isabel had evidently raised to life her
spell-casting mother.
"The march is long," a fainter voice replied. "First I sought the
Covenant in the Golden Ark on the Sacred Mountain. Now I seek it all
over the earth. Why have you sent for me?"
"When one greatly needs, one sends for one's mother."
"I gave you all when I left."
"I sent for you to work a spell for me! I want Paradise, my Mother. But
my hands can not reach it. So I have sent for you to help me."
Isabel was capable of reverting to the superstition of her blood! To
win her aspirations, whatever they might be, she had resurrected the
Charm-Woman. They were all like that. Rosalie had told him that in
order to win his love she had steadily taken magic potions.
The voices died down for a moment. Chad sat wondering. He fancied he
saw a tremor in the curtains that screened Isabel's apartment. Two
words of the droning syllables back flared audible again.
"A medicine!"
Chad stirred uneasily. He did not wish to hear about any more
potions. Just then from the spot where he had seen the curtains
tremble, Dicky-Dicky the dwarf emerged hurriedly and passed without
seeing him.
"He's been listening!" Chad concluded. Eavesdropping was a common
oriental pastime; but the appearance of the dwarf indicated that
he had understood something in that interview beyond that Chad had
not. What mischief were Isabel and her mother up to? Some new political
scheming, perhaps.
Suddenly Isabel, her face like a spot of darkness against the lighted
room, appeared. Chad rose startled, as if some black whirlwind were
approaching him. Here was the passion of the Levant that he always
veiled--that dreadful ravening primeval force that assailed and
overthrew his ideals. Of course, innately, he had always expected
Isabel to be like this. He knew instinctively that she was a volcano
around which they had sat in false peace.
Something had shaken terribly Isabel's exotic universe. Some secret
word had come perhaps of the bursting of the bubble--hers and
Orcullu's. Whatever this emotion was, it broke from deeper sources
than he could divine. It took him several moments to open his mouth
in the face of it.
"I stopped to tell you that I have talked with the girl, and I fear
that there is no use trying to get that other man back."
He paused, finding it difficult to refer to the sensibilities of his
own race. They appeared to lift like inconsequential bubbles before
this inconceivable mood.
But that fierceness continued to make demand upon him. "It's too bad,"
he added. "The affair turns out to be merely a tryst with her own
soul. But--" He tried to get Barry's name out, and failed. What he
wanted to do was to reassure their mutual fears concerning Barry,
and to declare confidently that Barry would keep clear of the
complication. Instead, he found himself edging toward the stairs
while that gathering dreadfulness followed him.
He descended without looking behind him, but he could see through
the back of his head Isabel's image, while ahead of him Rosalie's
rice-powdered face seemed to wave across his path; and in that moment
he thanked God that he had never begotten children of the East.