The Department was very brief about what it had to say. It gave no specific reason, nor did it go deeply into explanations. It merely announced that after the end of the current month her services would no longer be required. It took not more than a line to intimate that the failure of her efforts in the Southern Islands was responsible for this decision. If she desired transportation to the States—the Department was beautifully benevolent about this—it would arrange it at an expense to her of one hundred and twenty-five dollars gold.
All such savings as she had made had gone at once to Mrs. Morris. She had no money, so what did transportation to the States or to the moon mean to her? When she had embarked for these Islands she had assumed the complete responsibility of herself. But to be pushed out without a hearing at court—or a cent to depend upon! The red-haired man had bided his time. Miss Hope who was now in Manila had furnished him with the weapons of retaliation for that scene in his office long ago.
The East was trying hard to cast her out—and she had asked only to struggle along and fumble for the end of the rainbow. But never, never, could one be secure here. In the East, one was like a nation trembling always on the verge of war, quivering before a catastrophe that would surely fall. But she would not leave it—till things had happened. She would not be driven out before her time. She was not beaten yet. She was not beaten yet. She would not beg, nor starve, nor explain. If Nahal had done nothing else, it had stiffened her pride. The Señor had several times spoken of how useful she would be in his office in the morning to attend to the English aspects of his practice. She could have employment from him for the whole day.
If they had not spoken of Nahal, if they had not employed that particularly fatal word failure concerning the work of her heart, she might have risen to give them battle. But the Department had touched vitally and cruelly the quick of her soul’s pride. Nahal—the single sacred endeavor she had to her account in the New World—had betrayed her finally and openly. Barry, the colossus, stood with his feet on two soils; Shell held in his grasp a savage empire; and Chad, and multitudes of others, struggled to shape the new existence; but she, stripped of her pretensions was blowing like a scarecrow to the winds of the East. Not for worlds would she have had Chad know that his intuitions concerning her, his resentment of her in his universe, had been justified. Nobody should ever know this final humiliation—that she had been weighed in the scales and found wanting.
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.
“My island!” The girl wept after its vanishing outline.
But Julie knew that, though she might bid Nahal farewell forever, it would still remain an abiding obstacle of soul—a dark enigma lying heavily across her life.
The Señor was completely satisfied with the new arrangement whereby she gave her whole time to his service. He was the only person with whom she was wholly candid concerning her break with the Educational Department.
Barry, she found hard to satisfy with explanations on this score. She confessed to him that for a long time she had owed a large debt which had ridden her back like a nightmare, that expenses were too high to save anything on her salary and that the Señor’s emolument was in excess of anything that she could expect elsewhere. He looked at her hard but said nothing. His silence troubled Julie at night. She knew that he was disturbed that she should have abandoned even her small part of the Cause, which in these days was in urgent need of the whole strength of its adherents.
His own business affairs she knew were disintegrating. People said he had been losing money for some time. But he stuck to what now commenced to appear as a losing cause. Julie thought miserably of the time when he would cease to appear in the character of a prince of the East. He was grappling now with tremendous forces at home and abroad. The agitation for independence for the Islands surmounted for the moment every other national concern. The natives awaited almost hourly its promulgation.