A perfect white night came in which Adam felt that the oasis and its environment presented a soul-quieting scene. What incredible paradox that he must go to nature for the strength to save himself from himself! To the nature that made him a savage—that urged in him the strife of the wolf! The moon, half full, shone overhead in a cloudless blue sky where great white stars twinkled. No wind stirred. The palms drooped, sad and graceful, strangely quiet. They were meant for wind. The shadows they cast were of nameless shapes. A wavering dark line of horizon wandered away to be lost in the wilderness. So still, so tranquil, so sweet the night! There were only two sounds—the melancholy notes of a night hawk, and the low, faint moan from the desert. The desert to Adam seemed a vast river, flowing slowly, down the levels of the earth to distant gates. Its moan was one of immutable power and motive. By this soft, low, strange moan the world seemed to be dominated. A spirit was out there in the gloom—a spirit from the illimitable, star-studded infinite above. And it was this spirit that came, at rare intervals, and whispered to Adam’s consciousness. Madman or knave, he was being conquered.
“I would never hide!” Ruth Virey had said in passionate scorn.
She was like her mother, wonderful as steel in her will. Yet these women seemed all heart. They transcended men in love, in sacrifice, in that living flame of soul, turbulent and unquenchable as the fire of the sun.
“I’ll hide no more!” burst from Adam, and the whisper startled him, like those soundless whispers in the shadows.
He could live no longer a life in hiding. He must stand, in his own consciousness, if only for a moment, free to look any man in the face, free to be worthy to love Ruth Virey, free as the eagle of his spirit. He would no longer hide from man, from punishment. Love of that purple-eyed girl had been a stinging, quickening spur. But it was only instrumental in the overthrow of fear. Some other power, not physical, not love, but cold, pure, passionless, spiritual, had been drawing him like a wavering compass needle to its pole.
Was it the faith Genie’s dying mother had placed in God? Was it a godlike something in him which conflicted with nature? Was it the strange progress of life, inscrutable and inflexible, that dragged men down or lifted them up, made them base or made them great?
The darkness of his mind, the blackness of the abyss of his soul, seemed about to be illumined. But the truth held aloof. Yet could he not see what constituted greatness in any man? What was it to be great? The beasts of the desert and the birds recognized it—strength—speed—ferocity—tenacity of life. The Indians worshiped greatness so that they looked up and prayed to their gods. They worshiped stature, and power and skill of hand, and fleetness of foot, and above all—endurance. More, they endowed their great chieftains with wisdom. But above all—to endure pain, heat, shock, all of the desert hardships, all of the agonies of life—to endure—that was their symbol of greatness.
Adam asked no other for himself or for any man. To endure and to surmount the ills of life! Any man could be great. He had his choice. To realize at last—to face the inevitable fight in any walk of life—to work and to endure—to slave and to suffer in silence—to stand like a savage the bloody bruises and broken bones—to bite the tongue and hold back the gasp—to plod on down the trails or the roads or the streets and to be true to an ideal—to endure the stings and blows of misfortune—to bear up under loss—to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief—to be victor over anger—to smile when tears were close—to resist disease and evil men and base instincts—to hate hate and to love love—to go on when it would seem good to die—to seek ever the glory and the dream—to look up with unquenchable faith in something evermore about to be—that was what any man could do and so be great!
* * * * *
At midnight Adam paced under the palms. All seemed dim, gray, cool, spectral, rustling, whispering. The old familiar sounds were there, only rendered different by his mood. Midnight was haunting. Somehow the desert with its mustering shadows, dark and vast and strange, resembled his soul and his destiny and the mystery of himself. How sweet the loneliness and solitude of the oasis! There under the palms he could walk and be himself, with only the eye of nature and of spirit on him in this final hour of his extremity.