If the Islands should now become independent before they were prepared, almost anything might come to pass. There was a leaven in men’s thoughts, Barry had said, that was bound to turn things frightfully about. Humanity was urging on to the pass where it would accept the most portentous challenges of fate: the old structure of its existence, handed down through the ages, would no longer answer for the framework of men’s lives. Dissatisfied with the ancient edifice, it would overthrow the world, and rear a new. “A new heaven and a new earth, my dear, for these blind human bats is on the way,” Barry was wont to declare. Barry’s enthusiastic fancy was fired by this magnificent mood, which he claimed to discern all over the earth. There would be an explosion, of course, to blow away a lot of mediæval rot—and there would be loss of life: to get the message of the stars, one had to bleed. They could have his life—oh, yes, a dozen of them. He had flung away a dozen impossible lives with an indifferent Olympian wave.
Which all went to prove to Julie’s mind that Isabel’s speculations might not prove so startling, after all. Well, if through the instrument of Isabel’s uncertain hands, his dream could be saved, nobody at all must stand in the way—certainly not a mere Julie with her knotted web of life. But how was one to make sure of the vivid, veiled Isabel?
At dawn, Julie rose, and dressed feverishly. She summoned a carromata, and set out in an agitation of anxieties for Santa Ana. Mrs. Ashby had told her to seek her out when she was in trouble. Everybody was in trouble now; not one in these stressful times knew where to turn; Julie herself, least of all. Mrs. Ashby had managed to convey to her the intimation of a certain exceptional strength, which she now felt a desire to draw upon for extrication from her difficulties.
The Ashbys inhabited—that being a term for the state of life which they shared under the same roof with a community of other people—a large Spanish house not far from the river. The surrounding fields, enriched by the stream, looked in the distance like the work of an impressionistic artist rather than of an orderly nature. The house stood alone, sunk in the lush depths of the rice fields, where workers picturesquely clad in red in a seemingly jocose attempt to terrorize the birds, were cutting the young rice to the music of a rough guitar plied by a recumbent artist under a huge umbrella. The house itself, painted green, jutted out of the surroundings, of a piece with them.
The institution was called the Free School of Practical Arts—the words “free” and “arts” making a direct appeal to the native, whose graceful inclination of mind construes freedom as leisure, and Art as a casual expression of leisure.
The principal instruction was concerned with the habits of civilized living and thinking. The male aspirants were taught to design furniture and join it, to care properly for the universally abused domestic animals, to farm, to tailor their own garments, to construct simple nipa houses, and to practice sanitation. The girls and women were taught to manipulate the native stove to better and more varied methods of cooking, to do sewing, and to make fine embroidery—from which industry, as well as from the bureau of domestic employment in connection with which house servants were trained, was derived some revenue. The care and feeding of infants, whose mortality in these parts was startling, had also an important place in their instruction.
As Julie entered, she was struck by the happy and trustful atmosphere of the place. Mr. Ashby’s spectacled eyes lifted to her from the planing of some boards. A flock of keen, merry-eyed boys, let loose from concentration, burst argumentatively into English about the work in hand. Just at the present moment back in the city, her own former pupils, Julie well knew, were attempting to explain to Clarino—who had sat up till midnight to discover it—the difference between the reflexive and the passive verb forms.
Mr. Ashby led her on till they discovered Mrs. Ashby engaged, with that air of glowing serenity, which had at the first caught Julie’s eyes, in her own peculiar bright activities.
Mrs. Ashby looked at her soberly. Something in the girl’s appearance held her thoughtful attention.
“I have come to see you—as you asked me to do,” Julie told her.