Part 2 (1/2)

”Oh!” he exclaimed. ”How did you happen to come?”

”To follow after those gone before.”

”I see,” he said. ”Relatives, I suppose? Hope you found them well?”

”No,” I replied, carrying on the humor, ”dying.”

He jingled his coins, and asked, ”Anything to be done for them?”

”Nothing.”

”What's the complaint?”

”Civilization in the abstract, repeating rifles and rapid-firing guns in the concrete.”

”Eh!” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

Then the lowest and sweetest of voices said, ”Won't you tell us what you mean?”

Was it my irritation that the man before me, rather than the subtler-pa.s.sioned people I knew so well, was the dominant type of the moment, or was it the sympathy your voice stirred within me, which made me speak? In a moment I was sketching broadly the inhumanity of this thing we call Christian civilization, which, more grasping than the Inquisition, has overrun the world, tearing the lands from their owners, and, not content with this spoliation, demands of its victims that they shall give up the customs of many centuries' evolution, and conform to habits, governments, and religions which their very instincts make impossible; and because they cannot change, but break out, these believers in the golden rule shoot them down. I protested at the mockery of calling civilized a world held at peace by constant slaughter, or of styling the national Jack Ketches of humanity Christian nations! I protested against the right of one man to hold another barbaric because he will not welcome his master, greet with joy the bands of steel we call railroads, and crush his nature within the walls of vast factories, to make himself the threefold slave of society, government, and employer. And finally, I gloried in the fact that though the white races had found a weapon against the black and yellow ones which enabled them to overrun and subjugate, yet nature had provided nature's people with the defense of climate,--a death-line to the whites; and behind that line the colored races are unconquerable in the sense of conquest being extinction. I knew the other side, that altruistic tenet of political economy defined in brief as ”the greatest good of the greatest number,” and in my mind held the even balance of the historian between the two; but to this utilitarian, modern, self-satisfied American I had to urge the rights of races thousands of years our senior, and far in advance of us in the knowledge and amenities that make life worth the most.

You both were silent till I ended; but I had best left unspoken what your companion could not understand, for when I finished he inquired, ”What mountains did you say you came from?” And when I told him, he added laughingly, ”You must have some pretty good stump speaking in your elections.”

”We are very grateful for your explanation,” you thanked me gently.

”Never been in America?” he surmised; and except for you I should have told him that I was his countryman, it would have been so adequate a retort to his inference. But your voice and manner had made me so ashamed of my earlier mood that I merely answered, ”Yes.”

”Humph!” he grunted in surprise; and as if to prove his incorrigibility he continued, ”Thought your ideas were too back-number for that.”

I could not help laughing, and the moment my laugh became articulate yours too overflowed your lips, as a spring breaks past its edges and falls rippling over pebbles.

That laugh, so well remembered, revealed your presence to me. My heart beat quickly and my head whirled dizzily, and in my bewilderment I took a step backward, quite forgetting the embrasure, till a stone gave way and I felt that I was falling. Then my consciousness went from me, and when thought came surging backward I lay a moment quiet, thinking it must have been a dream.

”He's coming round all right,” I heard, and at the sound I opened my eyes. You were leaning over me with the moonlight s.h.i.+ning on your face, and I caught my breath, you were so beautiful.

”You've given us a scare,” continued the man, on whose knee my head was resting. ”You want to keep your wits about you better. Pretty poor business tumbling off walls, but that's what comes of having ruins. You won't be quite so c.o.c.ky in the future about your run-out races.”

I felt his laughter justified, but hardly heeded it, my thoughts were so engaged. You were wetting my forehead with brandy, and I lay there too happy to speak.

”Now let me raise you a bit higher,” the man offered kindly, ”so you can get your addled senses back.” He lifted me, and I groaned at the sudden terrible pain that shot up my leg.

”h.e.l.lo!” he cried, laying me gently down. ”Something wrong, after all?

What is it?”

”My leg,” I moaned.

”Here, Maizie, hold his head, while I appoint an investigating committee,” he ordered, and in another moment I felt your arms about me, and in my joy at your touch I almost forgot my torture.

”Well, you've broken one of your walking-sticks,” the man informed me, after a gentler touching of it than I thought possible to his nature.

”Now, Maizie, if you'll sit and hold his head, I'll get a litter. You won't mind staying here alone, will you?”