Mabel Wood Martin

“ She held up a small bundle, and murmured something to Mariana and Clarino, who were behind Julie. She had said something to the natives that put her goods in an adventurous light, and they bent interestedly over her basket. While she flung monosyllables at them, she looked keenly at Julie.
Something that flashed out of her glances startled Julie; a glimpse of a myriad of human things leaped out of this herb-vendor’s face as out of a well—darknesses, cruelties, sublimities, and a kind of burning thirst, as if this old thing were a traveler on the deserts of the universe hunting for a spring. ”

“ The boat drifted off into the shadows, but that brown image remained, graven on the brains of those who saw it.
“That was Barry!” Julie said half under her breath. She stared around at this strange galaxy of people, whose background of the East gave them a touch of fantasy. These days of the Empire, or creation—when a fragment of the East was shaking under a stupendous renovation! And back of it, these dauntless men and women who were stirringly pledged to the resurrection! A new world must take shape under their will, a world of the best ideals. ”

“ In a silence that weighed like lead, Julie and Barry rode home. Julie broke it at last. “He should not have gone!” Then to the dusk she murmured absently and fragmentarily: “The things I do—ye shall do also!”
“What are you saying, Julie?”
“One Person solved the mystery, you see.”
He stared at her blankly. Then she roused herself. “It’s unnecessary—this dying,” she broke out.
“In this instance criminal. A filthy disease to conquer so great a human force!” Barry declared with bitter passion. “If death didn’t break one’s heart, it would make one insane with anger. ”

“ When I found that I was not thonged by crucified feet to an inexorable world, that the world was only a snowdrop on the face of the eternal, a mood of the universe; and that I was greater than all of it, could shape it with my will, touch the widest reaches with my thought—that of all creation, God and my kind alone could will—then the light of Paul broke!
“The light of Paul, Julie! A golden light, beating on the soul, revealing its far country, the kingdoms of the unseen whose invisible marvels can be brought to our own threshold. ”

“ All the time, I’m in insurrection inside. I seem to have slipped some vital moorings—and to be adrift.”
“But you wouldn’t yield now, after struggling so long?” Julie pleaded. “Oh! I’m so sorry for you!”
He clutched his face in his hands, and looked out through the foliage across the sea. “What is life, anyway? There must be more of existence than what we manage to find. Sometimes I can feel whispers of it. Do you think I’m mad, or just soul-sick of my kind of a world? You see I’m only a poor devil in purgatory, trying—and not succeeding—to fight my way out.” ”

“ There was an exhilaration in the air, an elixir working upon an ancient life. An intoxication came over Julie as she watched and listened to the music. The faces melted into a phantasmagoria, a marching host dedicated to the East and sweeping on to shape its mighty fate. Visions and dreams pulsated to the music—strains of India, Malaysia, of far Mongolia woven into its throbbing war-like tones. There must be some place in the march for her! Some time in the Experiment that place would unfold and give her a part in the big things these men’s brows portended. ”

“ Isn’t nature brutal, to turn out millions and millions of creatures to subsist on dead mountains and sand. And, lifting like excrescences out of that land, the mud huts of the living mingle with the mud tombs of the dead. Gophers in mud banks, living and dead. Nowhere else does one ache so for man. And the intolerable sensations one experiences at first over this monstrous dirt-like cheapness of human life!”
“All our lives,” Julie reflected, “we have looked upon ourselves as a little less than God; but over here we are just rats crawling in and out of the universe!” ”

“ This aperture would serve her particularly well just now, since she could not bring herself to appear in this fashion at the front door.
She waded through the lush growth along the old stone walls, wormed herself through Chiquito’s egress, and hurried across the grounds toward the house.
The garden had commenced to take on the covertly wild look of a thing that no longer acknowledges a master. All its lovely blooms had, with the waywardness of tropical foliage, betaken themselves to the tops of walls or trees. The snowy cadena shone timidly in silvery filagree high against Julie’s old window. ”

“ Never had she seen human existence in quite so grotesque and satirical a setting. This was not a picture of the usual native, contentedly at sea in the universe, nor of the gophers in their sad mud embankments, nor yet the settled evil of Chinatown, but of a crooked, grimacing sort of corner where the indigestibles of an Eastern city found haven. Human grotesqueries! The ordinary panorama of the native’s futile life was disheartening enough, but this blur of savage hobgoblins jeering at the sun, seizing like Macbeth’s witches on the prey of the Alley was terrifying. ”

“ 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 [88] 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. ”

“ Will you allow him to insult you to the world, you who brought about peace for Nahal? He seeks to ruin you, as he sought to torture me. Let me go for us both,” she whispered tensely, “to-night, to the hammock in the gallery—and when he sleeps—give two quick blows, one for you and the other for me!”
“Alas, Nemecia, the calaboose is dark and cold. In your little cell of stone by yourself forever, you would never see the sun. You love the sun, Nemecia. You love the praise of your pretty face. No one would ever listen to the music of your ear hoops again. ”

“ What does it matter whom else they say you are waiting for! Never, to the end of time, will I believe the soul of you stands waiting for another man! In all these days, when my heart has been going out to you, you’ve had this will-o’-the-wisp in your brain. It can’t be anything more—just a screen down the path, hiding for a little while the light.”
“Who,” Julie asked, turning white in amazement, “told you that?”
“Chad and Isabel—my friends who do not see your fairy light. They want me to let you pass on—as though I wouldn’t go on following after you across all the tracks of the universe!” ”

“ I am sorry for all of us who sought fortune in the East. We are a pitiable lot, Señor. Drive around the Escolta any night, and you will see us in our several unhappy stages of decay. Some of us were not big enough for our task. Oh, I, too, would have given anything to have succeeded!”
“But what is to become of you?” he cried, in genuine solicitude. “You are ill. You have no money and without money one cannot live one instant in this terrible land. Reverse your mad decision, and stay here. You shall have nothing to fear from me.”
Julie shook her head speechlessly. ”

“ Julie stared at him wistfully, and suddenly the tears rushed to her eyes—tears of awe, envy, and humility. He was in the toils of great undertakings, sweeping on to sacred achievements, while her sole contribution was Nahal—Nahal of dismal failure and miscarried efforts. What was the thing that he had, and that she would never have, that brought him fulfillment—the thing that his friends wished to conserve and to keep her out of?
“I like to think,” she said at last, hiding her emotion, “that you will be invulnerable to everything that can happen in the East.” ”

“ It was just now attracting the eye of all the East, and picturesque people coursed in and out of it like a strange spice. Almost all of this throng found refuge in the Oriente. Not foreigners alone made lively this resort. There was the City’s own strange population; and exiles from the bosque were there seeking nepenthe for their souls in the dancing and [164] music of its plaza, in its life and love. No old colonial of to-day can pass the still gates of this closed pavilion of pleasure without a pang for the vivid era of the past.
But this glittering khan Julie would be forced to pass by. ”

“ Ellis Wilbur, nodding to Julie from under a vivid red plume, had her carriage brought up alongside of Barry’s trap. A member of the Assembly came along, and Barry got out and fell into deep discussion with him on the walk.
“I’m triste to-night!” Ellis said. “The tragedy of the East has begun to fasten on me. It’s time to go! Do you know, as I watch the shadows fall like slow tears over those old walls, I think what a city to be unhappy in! A city of the East, the weight of ancient evil in its stones. The dusk drops over it like a blackness of the heart, an infinite hopelessness. ”

“ Julie passed across the city, coursing through its dusky streets, in a mood of subtle excitement. Everywhere she was met by the Change! Not a change that assailed the physical senses, but one that transcended them: a subtle, widespread intimation that quivered on some inner receptivity. Not the altered streets, the new buildings, the material renovation, gave it forth so much as the peculiar quickening of the atmosphere through which the soul of these people seemed to suspire. How can one trace the leaven in the bread or follow through the far filaments of thought a psychic metamorphosis? ”

“ By her blank outer aspect the girl knew that she was withdrawn into some mammoth struggle. It seemed to vibrate about her in excitations of the atmosphere, as if an atom sought to stir all space. “She is trying to save him,” Julie thought.
There should of course be a way to do it. Death was a mistake that had crept into creation. That was shown by the fact that never yet in all the eons had man accepted it naturally. Life itself, in its sundering battles, had perhaps evolved this malevolence, which darkened the whole universe. ”

“ The dwarf, who had watched her acutely as he conducted her up the stairs, disappeared. The pensiveness and [275] inertia of the tropical afternoon had fallen like a sad mood over the exotic world. Julie looked about her and sighed. She felt a desire to get out of this ageless Asian splendor down into the sun of the street. To-day the teak wood called up visions of distant sweating bodies. The shining dark floors stretched like black waters beneath the feet; the heavy golden curtains stirred as under Indian magic; and the ivory Buddhas dozed in a changeless Nirvana. ”

“ They told Julie that the cholera suddenly, like smoldering fire fanned to flames, had broken out from end to end of the city. Always in cycles of time the Plague had come to sweep them to destruction but never before as now. Terrible was the will of God over his little men. The Americans were taking it too, they said. There were not doctors enough to cope with the pest; certainly—when honest men were stricken—none were to spare for this rogues’ nest. The Americana who was so singularly situated—ought, they thought, to be looking out for herself. ”

“ This planet did not hold China, full of black blots; it had nothing to do with the terrible Pavilion with leprous beggars leaning out of it. Julie did not know what this land was or where, but it was full of the accumulated and expurgated glories of the East.
However Barry might succeed or fail, if his projects collapsed at his feet or if he won heroically, he alone was wonderful, splendid, inspired; the Excelsior man struggling upward with the banner of humanity. He burned upon Julie’s dreams as everything bright and fine. ”

“ Julie set out after breakfast to examine the niche that had been made for her in the city.
Tondo, at the other side of Manila, was very ancient and wholly native. It was as flat and sun-bleached as a desert, and had for its horizon on one side the sea, prognosticative of typhoons; on the other a wall of high hills where the winds blew against heaven. On beyond was holy Arayat, lifting its solitary head into space, and holding, it was said, the Ark buried in its crypt forever beyond the reach of man. The people of Tondo lived in the very frankness, of being. ”

“ Julie, looking across into the flashing face, concluded that she had never seen anybody who intimated so many human possibilities—unless it were the young host of this occasion. Isabel fascinated her, and made her feel as if some queer Sybil of the Eastern bazaars were summoning her down secret streets.
“You will like Manila very much,” said Isabel, drawing nearer to Julie as Mrs. Calixter turned to speak to some one else. “Perhaps you will find what you are seeking—they all seek, whatever they say. But there is always the joy of the day. You Americans are forever trying to steal to-morrow. ”

“ In one of the smaller naves, there was a small statue of Christ, terribly sweating blood.
Julie tiptoed across the bare stone flags. A couple of women were kneeling in the silence, and one or two tragically old men, slowly and painfully with wrinkled hands telling their beads. The women were with child; the old men, their own concern done, prayed for the world.
To the right of the altar, she heard a soft murmur of sounds, where in a side chapel a priest in a black cassock stood by a font administering the baptismal service to a tiny brown baby in a very long pink satin robe. ”

“ At times, she too dropped into their mood of apathy and capitulation, but roused always to fight. She pressed into the struggle her every faculty, conjured from passionate depths forces that had never before seen light. Away back in Nahal, she had cast her soul into the beginnings of this struggle, and it seemed as if the old fervor had come to life and was being put to its crucial test.
Along with the Plague, she fought the Hunger. The fire of the old desire burned often in wild spurts. Sometimes she would pace the sand, crying and clenching her hands, hour after hour. ”

“ This is a strange language to you, and these are not revelations for a laughing world, but for those who are going out in darkness—for men stricken in agony on the battlefield, for all who like you are in the throes of terror [292] and destruction. These truths are the springs outside your reach across the thirsty desert.
“When you come at last upon the light, the grave-clothes the mind has worn so long drop away; the false garment man has spread across the face of things dissolves, and you find that you are not in the world for a day, but that you are in the universe forever. ”

“ With that paper on the table her connection with the Builders in the East had snapped like a cobweb to a star. The Great Experiment had thrust her out. Henceforth hers was a separate lot, a mere grubbing for existence. Julie laid her head down on the table and wept inspired youth’s disillusioned tears. The fragrance of the golden jessamine floated up across the seas from that far, relinquished kingdom of the soul. A poor, desolate and bewildered spirit mourned outside the gates of its shining memories. ”

“ Ah, when your most inspired efforts have failed, when your life seems to toss beyond your control, do you think you will find coherence in anything?”
Mrs. Ashby’s clear eyes penetrated through her. “There is coherence in the solar system, and in all the system beyond; comets, after a thousand years reappear upon a calculated day. There is everywhere coherence, my child, because there is everywhere law.”
“But what good does this law and order do me if I can’t find it? Down here on this tiresome planet a being called Julie is doomed to struggle and battle and hope, and gets nowhere at all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It frightens me. Are we all going down under some avalanche? Some of us have no place else to go. I don’t understand—but that’s my eternal, foolish cry. I’ve blistered my soul praying about everything. I thought you would understand. Oh! You must, for I have come to you for light. You are not blind, you are not floundering; you are safe and sure. What is it that makes your life so strong?”
“Tell me,” Mrs. Ashby said, bending toward her, “what you prayed for.”
“For Barry’s safety through the world!” Julie replied simply. ”

“ It was inevitable that one who had so completely held her life in her own hands should herself have destroyed that life. Leah would never consent to live or die except on her own terms.
Julie glanced up from where she stood frozenly considering Leah’s fate, to behold Barry coming in her direction. His invincibly lifted head quickened her. Every human thing about him sent a thrill through her deadened senses—the desert face full of visions, the ardor of life that was in him. ”

“ There are shadows lifting on the horizon at this moment that may portend untold calamity. But I am perfectly positive that victory—far along the road, perhaps—is ahead.
“As for my sending you away,” he exclaimed swiftly, “one does not, for all the causes that animate the earth, send persons like you away. How could I—a being all star-dust and light?” He looked in admiration upon her shining youth.
“I am a Pleiad!” Julie explained. “Don’t ask me where the other six are. There was no time for the human things—and a Pleiad was easy, just a puff of light.” ”

“ I chose Manila for many reasons—some of them hardly definable. There was something from the first that spoke out to me from it, that whispered from every one of its old stones—an atmosphere of profound human struggle, as if for centuries the place had been battling with forces that go back into the dark borderland of human genesis. The human spirit at its darkest, lowest ebb. It seems to me that is the curse that we have come to lift—the curse of the whole East. ”

“ Calixter has been telling you things about the women. She doesn’t understand—her generation can’t—that they’ve got the chance, and the second chance, over here. They can do a lot and get away with it—and no hair-lines drawn. But they have freedom of choice—they can make or break themselves. A few, of course, are clear outside—like Isabel, who has nobody to account to and to whom not even the roughest rules apply. She is one of the laws here herself. Don’t try to measure her by rule of thumb, she hasn’t any measure; Isabel has more freedom of will than it is safe to think about. ”

“ She too dreams of the Victorious East.”
Julie regarded this magnificence of mood with wonder. All manner of men, it was said, had loved Isabel; and in some peculiar way their lives had seemed to be bound up in her colorful personality—as if her sphinx-like spirit had devoured and assimilated their souls. Her mood was always an extravagant expectation of more than could be reasonably aspired to by any one person.
“Ah, what do you know about men?” Isabel suddenly exclaimed. “To hear you is like listening to the forgotten primer of one’s childhood. ”

“ A native band, led by a remarkable negro musician, played haunting music of the sorrows and loves of the earth. The drone of the waves lashing upon the rocks mingled with the melody. The sun setting behind an island over in the sea, fantastically enkindled the city, making it appear with its gleaming domes like some citadel of the unbeliever reclaimed in this Crusaders’ light. Julie had never seen such deep and powerful colors. They stunned her mind, yet engendered in her a strange exhilaration, a subtle invitation to plunge behind those shadowy walls and follow their secret. ”

“ 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 amœba 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. ”

“ Julie lifted herself up with a dizzy lurch and plunged out of the botica. A strange being in her form walked the streets, which had become a phantasmagoria of horror. Black shapes of doom seemed haunting the avenues of life—she, the blackest shape of all, groping through under-hells for light. She belonged now to the East forever and forever. It had set its stamp of hopelessness upon her. She moved along staring with desperation and repugnance at this dark race with whose fate she had become allied. ”

“ I wanted to stir them to struggle and revolt. I wanted them to find a new vision. Those,” he said, turning back to her, “are still my hopes!”
“I’ve never seen China,” Julie said, after a pause. “I have always wanted to.”
“It will be the most staggering fact of the future. One scarcely dares speculate upon it, it is so incalculably vast and undecipherable. Think of the potentialities of three times our soul muster. Conceive of the disaster to the world if by any accident in a generation or two this human force arrayed itself on the wrong side! ”

“ The Resurrection was stirring through the worn kingdoms of men, and the blood of the Builders coursed beneath it all like the rivers of life!
Every moment Julie thrilled deeply to what she saw. The Builders were beginning to fulfil. Here in this single corner the stagnant spirit of the East was awaking to life. Wars might be fought in the future, and races degraded and aggrandized, but the spreading influences of this endeavor would reach far into the future of men. ”