The children of the East—bartered, sold, drowned by guardians who were unable to cope with existence! Julie’s heart had often ached over the valuelessness of their poor little lives. It was for all these poor crushed creatures that she had come overseas to offer her life.
But she was having much too desperate a time making her own way through this new world to become responsible for another creature. Besides, she had had one wormwood lesson in adoption. She gently shook her head.
The boy began to cry wildly, in an abandonment of despair. The tears ran down the quaint little corsair face. The poor little starched camisa, which had stuck out stiffly like armor in which to encounter the world, fell limp under the rain. Even the little bare feet had their appeal. They were willing to trudge the world over to find a future.
The Fiscal came down to the wharf on business. Delphine appealed his case to him, crying and clinging to his coat. The Fiscal said that the note transferring Delphine was perfectly genuine and authentic; that the boy’s aunt and uncle found great difficulty in feeding their own brood, and that if the boy did not go with the Maestra, he would be apprenticed to a Chinaman who kept a tin-shop.
Into that den of filth and idolatry would go everything that Julie had planted in the best of her boys. Did Delphine, frantically pleading, dancing about in his grotesque little camisa, and weeping terribly all over his droll face, dream anywhere in him of saving any of those things?
Julie stood silent. Balthazar, emerging from under the side of the wharf, scrambled towards her, and gave angry pecks at her shoe.
“The boy is dissatisfied with Nahal,” the Fiscal said. “Now that the yeast is in him, he wishes to rise. I was that way once; but a man, as you know, Maestra, cannot push through a wall. Take him, if you can. Do not leave his soul to die.”
Julie gazed at the boy clutching now at her skirts. As she gazed down into his face, the revelation came to her. Down there before her, electing to follow her wherever she went, the new generation knelt. Whatever the past and the East stood for, the new generation had cast the ballot for her and the light. Defeat was turned into victory—a victory that would grow and become universal. In the face pleading up at her, she saw the curtain of darkness rent.
“Come, Delphine!” she said.
From the deck she watched the island recede, beautiful and paradisiac as it had first looked. The scent of its golden flowers drifted out upon the water. Quiet, green, and sun-touched, the island drifted off like a dream.