When the pain of her isolation struck too deep, she would steal back behind the broken walls to the oblivion that inevitably lay there. Here where the worms were being trodden out, one was forced to forget one’s own despair. Gradually she forgot everything but the desire to find somewhere a power to conquer the Plague. In its struggle, the girl’s soul seemed to be reaching out toward something which, though she could in no-wise define it, began to appear accessible.
One night, with the old sense of futility and wretched helplessness, she was standing over the body of one of the poor creatures who was taking too long to die. Through the tremendous stretches of space above her great bolts of lightning intermittently flashed. Power! Everywhere, great and invincible power. She wondered passionately what a man must think or feel in his soul to touch the source of it.
The man’s body before her commenced to take on its final repose. His eyes lay open to the sky. Julie, bending over him stared in sudden awe; for from under the dirt and grime of that abandoned thug, a mystery was emerging. Suddenly the Veil pulled apart; down there in the dust—the Common Soul! The Soul that was through all things. She and the worm and God—in one unbreakable bond!
CHAPTER XXV
Supplies were becoming very hard to procure. Indeed, Julie had for some time felt urged to go and seek assistance from the outside world. Not the Plague alone, but starvation threatened what was left of these people for whom she had been struggling. The time had come when she must somehow face the outside world.
But how without rational clothing could she undertake such an errand? It was forced upon her that she must first of all present herself to the Reredos, and get her clothes. She remembered now, too, that she had left a little money in the pocket of a dress,—not much, but it loomed tremendously to her eyes. It was probably safe, since she had hidden the key to her trunk among the cadena de amor trailing the window-sill, where no muchacho would have dreamed of searching.
Looking herself desperately over, in the darkness, with full appreciation of her fantastic appearance, Julie found it an almost insuperable business to thrust herself beyond the walls. Quite impossible, on the other hand, was it to remain here longer. Gathering her courage, and consoling herself with the thought that nobody in the city longer remembered her, or was concerned about her, she set forth, her head covered by an old scarf against the terrors of the journey.
She was not really too tall to pass for a native woman, nor, in this light, too white to be taken for a mestiza,—and Eurasians in native costume were not uncommon; but there was in her movement a rhythm that would have revealed her at once as an outsider to the curious observer. Fortunately, few such were abroad; and by selecting a round-about way through unfrequented streets, she contrived to pass unmarked through the dusk, though every nerve was a-quiver when at last she crossed the bridge near the isolated estate of the Reredos.
Approaching the huge iron gates, she saw that in no part of the house within her vision was a light to be seen. She knew that there was in the rear wall a breach, which the children had enlarged, by much chipping and hacking, to enable Chiquito’s increasing dimensions to pass through. This aperture would serve her particularly well just now, since she could not bring herself to appear in this fashion at the front door.