Julie looked at him curiously. In a flash she recalled the conversation with Chad Messenger.
“What do you think is going to happen?” she asked.
“The shaking out of the old countries of the freedom of man; the bringing down of a few wills, and the placing on top of the whole will. A change in the destiny of man!”
“Well, if as much of a change can be realized as has been already realized here in so short a time, I am ready to believe in anything! Look hard at your city, and wonder at the magic that has transformed a dirty, insanitary Malay city to—well, almost an oriental City Beautiful.”
Barry’s face clouded. “It shall be the cleanest in the world when we get through, but many a dark enemy lurks in our path. Look at those stagnant moats, infested with pythons and myrmidons of death—and at the drainage system! When will they attune their oriental ears to the truths of sanitation? And the cholera-infected food they smuggle in from the provinces! No, all is not well; and yet, help me Heaven, they believe back home that we’ve finished—that these people should now lead themselves!”
“But you are here to drive the unclean spirits out.” Julie smiled absently to herself. “I think so often of what you told me that first night, about your coming upon this city which was to inspire your whole life.”
“It’s true I never saw China really as she is to be until I saw her in this new light. You see, I wasn’t always an American. I guess that’s why all this impressed me so. You people over there take your heritage too much for granted. I was born in Ireland—a racked, wretched country, like those of the East—and of very poor people. My father and his father’s father, as far back as you can think, had been at the eternally losing game of trying to make a living on this earth off another man’s land.
“It came over me when I was a lad”—Barry frowned out at the land-scape—“that there was no hope whatever for me. My mother—who was of good family, and had married beneath her, as they say—taught me out of books, and stirred the urge in me. She was a wistful woman and homesick for the world. So she wanted me to go out and get the best luck of the gods. Mother and Father both died—” He stopped, and seemed to have forgotten his narrative in his thoughts until Julie said quietly:
“Please go on!”
“Then my Uncle James came along and took me by the shoulder, and said: ‘Let’s go find our own country, Lad!’