CHAPTER XII
From his upper state chambers, the Major was beckoning to Julie with as much excitement as that statuesque personality was capable of manifesting.
“Come up a minute,” he called. “I have great news for you!”
As Julie entered the room he greeted her with a smile that thawed every line of his stony visage.
“The insurgents will surrender in Guindulman next Thursday,” he told her. “They will deliver up their arms, to a man, and will take the oath of allegiance! This might be called the ‘Peace of Women,’ don’t you think so? They have carried the thing through. If it hadn’t been for you, young lady, those Macabebes would be down here right now. You belong to work like this. The Island of Nahal ought to canonize you!”
Julie had never been so acutely stirred. After all, a part of the Great Adventure was coming true!
The natives of Nahal entered into a state of inordinate rejoicing. On the evening before the memorable Thursday they gave a ball of towering magnificence. It was true that at the ending of the war almost every one was bankrupt, but nothing so spectacular had ever happened in Nahal. It would be in the Manila papers—it would be in the papers of America that the redoubtable Nahalites, of their own free and enlightened will, had come to peace.
Julie went to the ball with Calmiden, notwithstanding the fact that Purcell, in a formal note, had claimed the privilege of escorting her. Julie had been cruelly bewildered and apprehensive of the consequences of her refusal, because the Treasurer was now the actual head of civil affairs.
It was indeed a magnificent ball, but the Americans felt considerable discomfiture upon finding their hosts still wearing arms, when they had come unarmed.
And a breach occurred between Julie and Calmiden, because Julie accepted the Insurgent General’s invitation to dance. From Calmiden’s point of view the request was the next thing to an insult; but since this was the culmination of the coup d’état which she herself had instigated, the fear of jeopardizing it in the slightest degree had her caught fast. Not until the next day were the insurgents to give up their arms, and in case Andegas became incensed, a little thing like a dance might overthrow the whole course of destiny. It was perfectly possible for Andegas to stick a knife in her back, as a signal for a general slaughter. Moreover there was something in the perilous uncertainty of the moment that exhilarated her. She had bent her soul upon a great adventure, and she thrilled to the dim things it foreshadowed—things that swam before her stirred vision like the pageant of the worlds in the night sky which she glimpsed through the galleries.