The Luneta proved to be an elliptical drive, picturesquely verging upon the sea. The winds and the water at this hour contrived to make it the single cool spot in the city.
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. The light shivered into shadows; the falling night dropped enchantment over the city.
Carriages swept by with the races of the earth in them; quiet-faced Englishmen staring pensively out to sea as if to discern in the distance a certain blessed island that lay over there; Spaniards with brooding, Moor-like faces, adventuring still in the East after their country had withdrawn forever out of the New World; close-cropped, investigatory Germans, eager traders all over the East; native families of the better class, dressed stiffly in European costume—a concession to the new age—and riding proudly behind American horses; Chinese women in jade and brocade, beside their funereally garbed husbands; East Indians, Japanese, Anamese, Koreans, Armenians—and faces that belonged to no race or clime, intermediates of the white, dark and yellow peoples, circling round the edges of this phantasmagoria like will-o’-the-wisps. And last, there were feverishly alive Americans, with an inexpressible urgency in their attitude—soldiers of the empire, here to make their fortunes and the fortune of the land.
It was a little frightening, this hodge-podge of stranger peoples met at a single point out of the world. Julie noticed how few American women there were. The land was still too tumultuous for their advent. She faced nervously the curiosity of so many men.
Every face was counted in Manila, Mrs. Calixter told her.
A great many carriages stopped to visit with Mrs. Calixter. Julie saw one passing, which of all the procession claimed her attention. A tall young man with a tawny head from which he had swept his hat rode in it—his face turned to the sea winds.
Julie looked, and wondered. Who could he be? In this cavalcade that vivid personality of power and strength blazed indelibly apart. When he turned his face, a recollection of a child’s highest dreams flashed through her sensibilities in a single word—Excelsior! She could not have explained how his youthful stirring face had recalled that supreme childish fervor.
“Who is he?” she asked. It was so clear that he was somebody of note in this world.
Mrs. Calixter followed her gaze. “A Prince of the East,” she said whimsically. “An Irish-American Haroun-al-Raschid, naïvely engaged in the recrudescence of the East. We call him The Mayor of Manila. He believes that it shall transcend all other cities of the earth; he pours himself and his substance out over it. We are going to his home to-night. He gives entertainments famous all over the Archipelago—and is a bachelor.”
“Barry McChord is one of the most striking of all the empire-builders,” added Mr. Calixter. “He is determined to make this colony a gospel of conviction to the East. We are the beacon, he believes, which has come to light the darkness. We are to fire the dead ancient nations into immortal life, and make the East one sublimated republic. You can understand how a young and Quixotic man with such tremendous ideas does remarkable things. He has a hand literally in everything—in education, public health, illumination, public gardens, schemes for first-class hotels to replace Eastern inns, the development of the university, hospitals and theaters. Manila is the theater in which he is staging his Far Eastern drama. When his play of sublimated Eastern civilization is ready, he will summon all Asia to attend.”