The cemetery, as she entered it, was very still. Nobody ever appeared to visit it, yet Adams’s grave had a fresh look that startled Julie. It was as if he had not completely given up his hold on life; as if he were vaguely in part still present. Somewhere down there she might reach the heart of a friend—a friend who had passed through the limits of human tragedy.
It was the kiss he had given her that had really put her disaster in motion; but it rose at this moment before her as the cementing seal of a friendship of high deeds.
For a long time Julie sat over the grave, insensible to everything but this sad communion. The sun, merciless creator, flung upon the world the compulsion of his quickening rays, ruthlessly enforcing the fiat of life. All the burning force of existence seemed to be beating down upon her bared head like an intolerable weight; but she heeded it not. To be human, and to be the plaything of unassailable forces; to aspire, and to be defeated; to reach up like Prometheus for the fire of Heaven, only to be dashed to pieces on the ground! In a paroxysm, Julie flung her head down upon the grave. There was nothing in the universe to answer anything!
When she lifted herself up a queer numbness had attacked her limbs. Forked lightning seemed to be piercing her brain. Holding to her head, as if there were a rift in it, she staggered out of the cemetery. She was in the acutest pain. But beneath it, conquering each convulsion was the indomitable resolve to leave Nahal. To-day she should go out of this island forever!
From the wharf a row boat was to take her to the steamer out in the bay. The vessel was to leave at two o’clock, the siesta hour. The Major, with Mike scuffling along behind on a chain like an imp, escorted her to the wharf. Almost blinded she got down the hill.
The Major seemed to be much moved, and unable to find words that would put his feeling into expression. “It will be a long time hence perhaps before you will reap any reward for what you’ve done,” he said. “I myself am under an undying obligation to you, and while my appreciation is not much—” he stopped, and studied her face. “Go home, my child,” he urged. “Don’t let the East crucify you!”
Julie shook the hand of the fine old soldier, and walked down the wharf. There, a brand new camisa on his back, and the smallest conceivable bundle in his hand, was Delphine.
“I go with you,” he announced in a transport of determination. “My oncle—he give me away, with the new shirt.”
Even Balthazar was not missing! With his halter around his neck, he was hanging investigatorily over the wharf by what appeared to be the nub of his tail.
Delphine thrust into Julie’s hand a crumpled sheet of paper written over in very bad Spanish, and signed unmistakably by Pedro Bebong. In this document he ceded over the body and soul of one Delphine.