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diff --git a/31898.txt b/31898.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f600aba --- /dev/null +++ b/31898.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4971 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Bright Shawl, by Joseph Hergesheimer + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Bright Shawl + +Author: Joseph Hergesheimer + +Release Date: April 6, 2010 [EBook #31898] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRIGHT SHAWL *** + + + + +Produced by Katherine Ward and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + + + + + THE + BRIGHT SHAWL + + JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER + + + NEW YORK + ALFRED.A.KNOPF + 1922 + + + COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY + ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. + + Published, October, 1922 + + Second Printing, October, 1922 + + + Set up and electrotyped by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y. + Paper furnished by W. F. Etherington & Co., New York, N. Y. + Printed and bound by the Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass. + + MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + For + Hamilton and Phoebe Gilkyson junior + in their fine drawing-room + at Mont Clare + + + + + The Works Of Joseph Hergesheimer + + Novels + + The Lay Anthony [1914] + Mountain Blood [1915] + The Three Black Pennys [1917] + Java Head [1918] + Linda Condon [1919] + Cytherea [1922] + The Bright Shawl [1922] + + Shorter Stories + + Wild Oranges [1918] + Tubal Cain [1918] + The Dark Fleece [1918] + The Happy End [1919] + + Travel + + San Cristobal de la Habana [1920] + + + New York: Alfred A. Knopf + + + + +THE BRIGHT SHAWL + + +When Howard Gage had gone, his mother's brother sat with his head +bowed in frowning thought. The frown, however, was one of perplexity +rather than disapproval: he was wholly unable to comprehend the +younger man's attitude toward his experiences in the late war. The +truth was, Charles Abbott acknowledged, that he understood nothing, +nothing at all, about the present young. Indeed, if it hadn't been for +the thoroughly absurd, the witless, things they constantly did, +dispensing with their actual years he would have considered them the +present aged. They were so--well, so gloomy. + +Yet, in view of the gaiety of the current parties, the amounts of gin +consumed, it wasn't precisely gloom that enveloped them. Charles +Abbott searched his mind for a definition, for light on a subject dark +to a degree beyond any mere figure of speech. Yes, darkness +particularly described Howard. The satirical bitterness of his +references to the "glorious victory in France" was actually a little +unbalanced. The impression Abbott had received was of bestiality +choked in mud. His nephew was amazingly clear, vivid and logical, in +his memories and opinions; they couldn't, as he stated them in a kind +of frozen fury, be easily controverted. + +What, above everything else, appeared to dominate Howard Gage was a +passion for reality, for truth--all the unequivocal facts--in +opposition to a conventional or idealized statement. Particularly, he +regarded the slightest sentiment with a suspicion that reached hatred. +Abbott's thoughts centered about the word idealized; there, he told +himself, a ray of perception might be cast into Howard's obscurity; +since the most evident fact of all was that he cherished no ideals, no +sustaining vision of an ultimate dignity behind men's lives. + +The boy, for example, was without patriotism; or, at least, he hadn't +a trace of the emotional loyalty that had fired the youth of Abbott's +day. There was nothing sacrificial in Howard Gage's conception of life +and duty, no allegiance outside his immediate need. Selfish, Charles +Abbott decided. What upset him was the other's coldness: damn it, a +young man had no business to be so literal! Youth was a time for +generous transforming passions, for heroics. The qualities of absolute +justice and consistency should come only with increasing age--the +inconsiderable compensations for the other ability to be rapt in +uncritical enthusiasms. + +Charles Abbott sighed and raised his head. He was sitting in the +formal narrow reception room of his city house. The street outside was +narrow, too; it ran for only a square, an old thoroughfare with old +brick houses, once no more than a service alley for the larger +dwellings back of which it ran. Now, perfectly retaining its quietude, +it had acquired a new dignity of residence: because of its favorable, +its exclusive, situation, it was occupied by young married people of +highly desirable connections. Abbott, well past sixty and single, was +the only person there of his age and condition. + +October was advanced and, though it was hardly past four in the +afternoon, the golden sunlight falling the length of the street was +already darkling with the faded day. A warm glow enveloped the brick +facades and the window panes of aged, faintly iridescent glass; there +was a remote sound of automobile horns, the illusive murmur of a city +never, at its loudest, loud; and, through the walls, the notes of a +piano, charming and melancholy. + +After a little he could distinguish the air--it was Liszt's +Spanish Rhapsody. The accent of its measure, the jota, was at once +perceptible and immaterial; and overwhelmingly, through its magic +of suggestion, a blinding vision of his own youth--so different from +Howard's--swept over Charles Abbott. It was exactly as though, again +twenty-three, he were standing in the incandescent sunlight of Havana; +in, to be precise, the Parque Isabel. This happened so suddenly, so +surprisingly, that it oppressed his heart; he breathed with a +sharpness which resembled a gasp; the actuality around him was +blurred as though his eyes were slightly dazzled. + +The playing continued intermittently, while its power to stir him grew +in an overwhelming volume. He had had no idea that he was still +capable of such profound feeling, such emotion spun, apparently, from +the tunes only potent with the young. He was confused--even, alone, +embarrassed--at the tightness of his throat, and made a decided effort +to regain a reasonable mind. He turned again to the consideration of +Howard Gage, of his lack of ideals; and, still in the flood of the +re-created past, he saw, in the difference between Howard and the boy +in Havana, what, for himself anyhow, was the trouble with the +present. + +Yes, his premonition had been right--the youth of today were without +the high and romantic causes the service of which had so brightly +colored his own early years. Not patriotism alone but love had +suffered; and friendship, he was certain, had all but disappeared; +such friendship as had bound him to Andres Escobar. Andres! Charles +Abbott hadn't thought of him consciously for months. Now, with the +refrain of the piano, the jota, running through his thoughts, Andres +was as real as he had been forty years ago. + +It was forty years almost to the month since they had gone to the +public ball, the danzon, in the Tacon Theatre. That, however, was at +the close of the period which had recurred to him like a flare in the +dusk of the past. After the danzon the blaze of his sheer fervency had +been reduced, cooled, to maturity. But not, even in the peculiarly +brutal circumstances of his transition, sharply; only now Charles +Abbott definitely realized that he had left in Cuba, lost there, the +illusions which were synonymous with his young intensity. + +After that nothing much had absorbed him, very little had happened. In +comparison with the spectacular brilliancy of his beginning, the +remainder of life had seemed level if not actually drab. Certainly the +land to which he had returned was dull against the vivid south, the +tropics. But he couldn't go back to Havana, he had felt, even after +the Spanish Government was expelled, any more than he could find in +the Plaza de Armas his own earlier self. The whole desirable affair +had been one--the figures of his loves and detestations, the paseos +and glorietas and parques of the city, now, he had heard, so changed, +formed a unity destroyed by the missing of any single element. + +He wasn't, though, specially considering himself, but rather the +sustaining beliefs that so clearly marked the divergence between +Howard's day and his own. This discovery, he felt, was of deep +importance, it explained so much that was apparently inexplicable. +Charles Abbott asserted silently, dogmatically, that a failure of +spirit had occurred ... there was no longer such supreme honor as +Andres Escobar's. The dance measure in the Spanish Rhapsody grew +louder and more insistent, and through it he heard the castanets of +La Clavel, he saw the superb flame of her body in the brutal +magnificence of the fringed manton like Andalusia incarnate. + + * * * * * + +He had a vision of the shawl itself, and, once more, seemed to feel +the smooth dragging heaviness of its embroidery. The burning square of +its colors unfolded before him, the incredible magentas, the night +blues and oranges and emerald and vermilion, worked into broad peonies +and roses wreathed in leaves. And suddenly he felt again that, not +only prefiguring Spain, it was symbolical of the youth, the time, that +had gone. Thus the past appeared to him, wrapped bright and precious +in the shawl of memory. + +No woman that Howard Gage might dream of could have worn La Clavel's +manton; it would have consumed her like a breath of fire, leaving a +white ash hardly more than distinguishable from the present living +actuality. Women cast up a prodigious amount of smoke now, a most +noisy crackling, but Charles Abbott doubted the blaze within them. +Water had been thrown on it. Their grace, too, the dancing about +which they made such a stir,--not to compare it with La Clavel's but +with no better than Pilar's--was hardly more than a rapid clumsy +posturing. Where was the young man now who could dance for two hours +without stopping on a spot scarcely bigger than the rim of his silk +hat? + +Where, indeed, was the silk hat! + +Even men's clothes had suffered in the common decline: black satin and +gold, nicely cut trousers, the propriety of pumps, had all vanished. +Charles Abbott recalled distinctly the care with which he had +assembled the clothing to be taken to Cuba, the formal dress of +evening, with a plum-colored cape, and informal linens for the +tropical days. The shirt-maker had filled his box with the finest +procurable cambrics and tallest stocks. Trivialities, yet they +indicated what had once been breeding; but now, incredibly, that was +regarded as trivial. + +The Spanish Rhapsody had ceased, and the sun was all but withdrawn +from the street; twilight was gathering, particularly in Charles +Abbott's reception room. The gilded eagle of the old American clock on +the over-mantel seemed almost to flutter its carved wings, the fragile +rose mahogany spinet held what light there was, but the pair of small +brocaded sofas had lost their severe definition. Charles Abbott's +emotion, as well, subsided, its place taken by a concentrated effort +to put together the details of a scene which had assumed, in his +perplexity about Howard, a present significance. + +He heard, with a momentarily diverted attention, the closing of the +front door beyond, women's voices on the pavement and the changing +gears of a motor: Mrs. Vauxn and her daughter were going out early for +dinner. They lived together--the girl had married into the navy--and +it was the former who played the piano. The street, after their +departure, was silent again. How different it was from the clamorous +gaiety of Havana. + +Not actual sickness, Charles Abbott proceeded, but the delicacy of his +lungs, following scarlet fever, had taken him south. A banking +associate of his father's, recommending Cuba, had, at the same time, +pointedly qualified his suggestion; and this secondary consideration +had determined Charles on Havana. The banker had added that Cuba was +the most healthful place he knew for anyone with no political +attachments. There political activity, more than an indiscretion, was +fatal. What did he mean? Charles Abbott had asked; and the other had +replied with a single ominous word, Spain. + +There was, it was brought out, a growing and potent, but secretive, +spirit of rebellion against the Government, to which Seville was +retaliating with the utmost open violence. This was spread not so much +through the people, the country, at large, as it was concentrated in the +cities, in Santiago de Cuba and Havana; and there it was practically +limited to the younger members of aristocratic families. Every week +boys--they were no more for all their sounding pronunciamientos--were +being murdered in the fosses of Cabanas fortress. Women of the +greatest delicacy, suspected of sympathy with nationalistic ideals, +were thrown into the filthy pens of town prostitutes. Everywhere a +limitless system of espionage was combating the gathering of circles, +tertulias, for the planning of a Cuba liberated from a bloody and +intolerable tyranny. + +Were these men, Charles pressed his query, really as young as himself? +Younger, some of them, by five and six years. And they were shot by a +file of soldiers' muskets? Eight students at the university had been +executed at once for a disproved charge that they had scrawled an +insulting phrase on the glass door of the tomb of a Cuban Volunteer. +At this the elder Abbott had looked so dubious that Charles hastily +abandoned his questioning. Enough of that sort of thing had been +shown; already his mother was unalterably opposed to Cuba; and there +he intended at any price to go. But those tragedies and reprisals, the +champion of his determination insisted, were limited, as he had begun +by saying, to the politically involved. No more engaging or safer city +than Havana existed for the delight of young travelling Americans with +an equal amount of money and good sense. He had proceeded to indicate +the temperate pleasures of Havana; but, then, Charles Abbott had no +ear for sensuous enjoyment. His mind was filled by the other vision of +heroic youth dying for the ideal of liberty. + +He had never before given Cuba, under Spanish rule, a thought; but at +a chance sentence it dominated him completely; all his being had been +tinder for the spark of its romantic spirit. This, naturally, he had +carefully concealed from his parents, for, during the days that +immediately followed, Cuba as a possibility was continuously argued. +Soon his father, basing his decision on Charles' gravity of character, +was in favor of the change; and in the end his mother, at whose +prescience he wondered, was overborne. + +Well, he was for Havana! His cabin on the Morro Castle was secured, +that notable trunkful of personal effects packed; and his father, +greatly to Charles' surprise, outside all women's knowledge, gave him +a small derringer with a handle of mother-of-pearl. He was, now, the +elder told him, almost a man; and, while it was inconceivable that he +would have a use for the pistol, he must accustom himself to such +responsibility. He wouldn't need it; but if he did, there, with its +greased cartridges in their short ugly chambers, it was. "Never shoot +in a passion," the excellent advice went on; "only a cool hand is +steady, and remember that it hasn't much range." It was for desperate +necessity at a very short distance. + +With the derringer lying newly in his grasp, his eyes steadily on his +father's slightly anxious gaze, Charles asseverated that he would +faithfully attend every instruction. At the identical moment of this +commitment he pictured himself firing into the braided tunic of a +beastly Spanish officer and supporting a youthful Cuban patriot, dying +pallidly of wounds, in his free arm. The Morro Castle hadn't left its +New York dock before he had determined just what part he would take +in the liberation of Cuba--he'd lead a hopeless demonstration in the +center of Havana, at the hour when the city was its brightest and the +band playing most gaily; his voice, sharp like a shot, so soon to be +stilled in death, would stop the insolence of music. + + * * * * * + +This was not a tableau of self-glorification or irresponsible youth, +he proceeded; it was more significant than a spirit of adventure. His +determination rested on the abstraction of liberty for an oppressed +people; he saw Cuba as a place which, after great travail, would +become the haunt of perfect peace. That, Charles felt, was not only a +possibility but inevitable; he saw the forces of life drawn up in such +a manner--the good on one side facing the bad on the other. There was +no mingling of the ranks, no grey; simply, conveniently, black and +white. And, in the end, the white would completely triumph; it would +be victorious for the reason that heaven must reign over hell. God was +supreme. + +Charles wasn't at all religious, he came of a blood which delegated to +its women the rites and responsibilities of the church; but there was +no question in his mind, no doubt, of the Protestant theological map; +augustness lay concretely behind the sky; hell was no mere mediaeval +fantasy. He might ignore this in daily practice, yet it held him +within its potent if invisible barriers. Charles Abbott believed it. +The supremacy of God, suspended above the wickedness of Spain, would +descend and crush it. + +Ranged, therefore, squarely on the side of the angels, mentally he +swept forward in confidence, sustained by the glitter of their +invincible pinions. The spending of his life, he thought, was a +necessary part of the consummation; somehow without that his +vision lost radiance. A great price would be required, but the +result--eternal happiness on that island to which he was taking +linen suits in winter! Charles had a subconscious conception of the +heroic doctrine of the destruction of the body for the soul's +salvation. + +The Morro Castle, entering a wind like the slashing of a stupendous +dull grey sword, slowly and uncomfortably steamed along her course. +Most of the passengers at once were seasick, and either retired or +collapsed in a leaden row under the lee of the deck cabins. But this +indisposition didn't touch Charles, and it pleased his sense of +dignity. He appeared, erect and capable, at breakfast, and through the +morning promenaded the unsteady deck. He attended the gambling in the +smoking saloon, and listened gravely to the fragmentary hymns +attempted on Sunday. + +These human activities were all definitely outside him; charged with a +higher purpose, he watched them comprehendingly, his lips bearing the +shadow of a saddened smile; essentially he was alone, isolated. Or at +least he was at the beginning of the four days' journey--he kept +colliding with the rotund figure of a man wrapped to the eyes in a +heavy cloak until, finally, from progressing in opposite directions, +they fell into step together. To Charles' delight, the other was a +Cuban, Domingo Escobar, who lived in Havana, on the Prado. + +Charles Abbott learned this from the flourishing card given in return +for his own. Escobar he found to be a man with a pleasant and +considerate disposition; indeed, he maintained a scrupulous courtesy +toward Charles far transcending any he would have had, from a man so +much older, at home. Domingo Escobar, it developed, had a grown son, +Vincente, twenty-eight years old; a boy perhaps Charles' own age--no, +Andres would be two, three, years younger; and Narcisa. The latter, +his daughter, Escobar, unashamed, described as a budding white rose. + +Charles wasn't interested in that, his thoughts were definitely turned +from girls, however flower-like; but he was engaged by Vincente and +Andres. He asked a great many questions about them, all tending to +discover, if possible, the activity of their patriotism. This, though, +was a subject which Domingo Escobar resolutely ignored. + +Once, when Charles put a direct query with relation to Spain in Cuba, +the older man, abruptly replying at a tangent, ignored his question. +It would be necessary to ask Andres Escobar himself. That he would +have an opportunity to do this was assured, for Andres' parent, who +knew the Abbotts' banking friend intimately, had told Charles with +flattering sincerity how welcome he would be at the Escobar dwelling +on the Prado. + +The Prado, it began to be clear, of all the possible places of +residence in Havana, was the best; the Escobars went to Paris when +they willed; and, altogether, Charles told himself, he had made a very +fortunate beginning. He picked up, from various sources on the +steamer, useful tags of knowledge about his destination: + +The Inglaterra, to which he had been directed, was a capital hotel, +but outside the walls. Still, the Calle del Prado, the Paseo there, +were quite gay; and before them was the sweep of the Parque Isabel, +where the band played. At the Hotel St. Louis, next door, many of the +Spanish officers had their rooms, but at the hour of dinner they +gathered in the Cafe Dominica. The Noble Havana was celebrated for its +camarones--shrimps, Charles learned--and the Tuileries, at the +juncture of Consulado and San Rafael Streets, had a salon upstairs +especially for women. Most of his dinners, however, he would get at +the Restaurant Francais, excellently kept by Francois Garcon on Cuba +Street, number seventy-two. + +There he would encounter the majority of his young fellow countrymen +in Havana; the Cafe El Louvre would serve for sherbets after the +theatre, and the Aguila de Oro.... The Plaza de Toros, of course, he +would frequent: it was on Belascoin Street near the sea. The afternoon +fights only were fashionable; the bulls killed in the morning were no +more than toro del aguadiente. And the cockpit was at the Valla de +Gallo. + +There were other suggestions as well, put mostly in the form of ribald +inquiry; but toward them Charles Abbott persisted in an attitude of +uncommunicative disdain. His mind, his whole determination, had been +singularly purified; he had a sensation of remoteness from the flesh; +his purpose killed earthly desire. He thought of himself now as +dedicated to that: Charles reviewed the comfortable amount of his +letter of credit, his personal qualifications, the derringer mounted +in mother-of-pearl, in the light of one end. It annoyed him that he +couldn't, at once, plunge into this with Domingo Escobar; but, +whenever he approached that ordinarily responsive gentleman with +anything political, he grew morose and silent, or else, more maddening +still, deliberately put Charles' interest aside. The derringer, +however, brought out an unexpected and gratifying stir. + +Escobar had stopped in Charles' cabin, and the latter, with a studied +air of the casual, displayed the weapon on his berth. "You must throw +it away," Escobar exclaimed dramatically; "at once, now, through the +porthole." + +"I can't do that," Charles explained; "it was a gift from my father; +besides, I'm old enough for such things." + +"A gift from your father, perhaps," the other echoed; "but did he tell +you, I wonder, how you were going to get it into Cuba? Did he explain +what the Spanish officials would do if they found you with a pistol? +Dama de Caridad, do you suppose Cuba is New York! The best you could +hope for would be deportation. Into the sea with it." + +But this Charles Abbott refused to do, though he would, he agreed, +conceal it beyond the ingenuity of Spain; and Escobar left him in a +muttering anger. Charles felt decidedly encouraged: a palpable degree +of excitement, of tense anticipation, had been granted him. + + * * * * * + +Yet his first actual breath of the tropics, of Cuba, was very +different, charged and surcharged with magical peace: the steamer was +enveloped in an evening of ineffable lovely blueness. The sun faded +from the world of water and left an ultramarine undulating flood with +depths of clear black, the sky was a tender gauze of color which, as +night approached, was sewn with a glimmer that became curiously +apparent, seemingly nearby, stars. The air that brushed Charles' +cheek was slow and warm; its warmth was fuller, heavier with potency, +than any summer he had known. Accelerating his imagination it +dissipated his energies; he lounged supine in his chair, long past +midnight, lulled by the slight rise and fall of the sea, gathered up +benignly into the beauty above him. + +Later he had to stir himself into the energy of packing, for the +Morro Castle was docking early in the morning. He closed his bag +thoughtfully, the derringer on a shelf. Escobar had spoken about it, +warning him, again; and it was apparent that no obvious place of +concealment would be sufficient. At last he hit on an excellent +expedient--he would suspend it inside the leg of a trouser. He fell +asleep, still saturated with the placid blue immensity without, and +woke sharply, while it was still dark. But it was past four, and +he rose and dressed. The deck was empty, deserted, and the light in +the pilot house showed a solitary intent countenance under a glazed +visor. There was, of course, no sign of Cuba. + +A wind freshened, it blew steadily with no change of temperature, like +none of the winds with which he was familiar. It appeared to blow the +night away, astern. The caged light grew dull, there were rifts in +the darkness, gleams over the tranquil sea, and the morning opened +like a flower sparkling in dew. The limitless reach of the water +flashed in silver planes; miniature rainbows cascaded in the spray at +the steamer's bow; a flight of sailing fish skittered by the side. Far +ahead there was a faint silhouette, like the print of a tenuous +green-grey cloud, on the sea. It grew darker, bolder; and Charles +Abbott realized that it was an island. + +Cuba came rapidly nearer; he could see now that it wasn't pale; its +foliage was heavy, glossy, almost sombre. The Morro Castle bore to the +left, but he was unable to make out an opening, a possible city, on +the coast. The water regained its intense blue, at once transparent, +clear, and dyed with pigment. The other travellers were all on deck: +Charles moved toward Domingo Escobar, but he eluded him. Undoubtedly +Escobar had the conjunction of the derringer and the Spanish customs +in mind. A general uneasiness permeated the small throng; they +conversed with a forced triviality, or, sunk in thought, said +nothing. + +Then, with the sudden drama of a crash of brass, of an abruptly +lifting curtain, they swung into Havana harbor. Charles was +simultaneously amazed at a great many things--the narrowness of the +entrance, the crowded ships in what was no more than a rift of the +sea, a long pink fortress above him at the left, and the city, Havana +itself, immediately before him. His utmost desire was satisfied by +that first glimpse. Why, he cried mentally, hadn't he been told that +it was a city of white marble? That was the impression it gave him--a +miraculous whiteness, a dream city, crowning the shining blue tide. + +Every house was hung with balconies on long shuttered windows, and +everywhere were parks and palms, tall palms with smooth pewter-like +trunks and short palms profusely leaved. Here, then, white and green, +was the place of his dedication; he was a little dashed at its size +and vigor and brilliancy. + +The steamer was scarcely moving when the customs officials came on +board; and, as the drift ceased, a swarm of boats like scows with +awnings aft clustered about them. Hotel runners clambered up the +sides, and in an instant there was a pandemonium of Spanish and +disjointed English. A man whose cap bore the sign Hotel Telegrafo +clutched Charles Abbott's arm, but he sharply drew away, repeating the +single word, "Inglaterra!" The porter of that hotel soon discovered +him, and, with a fixed reassuring smile, got together all the baggage +for his guests. + +Charles, instructed by Domingo Escobar, ignored the demand for +passports, and proceeded to the boat indicated as the Inglaterra's. It +was piled with luggage, practically awash; yet the boatmen urged it +ashore, to the custom house, in a mad racing with the whole churning +flotilla. The rigor of the landing examination, Charles thought +impatiently, had been ridiculously exaggerated; but, stepping into a +hack, two men in finely striped linen, carrying canes with green +tassels, peremptorily stopped him. Charles was unable to grasp the +intent of their rapid Spanish, when one ran his hands dexterously over +his body. He explored the pockets, tapped Charles' back, and then drew +aside. When, at last, he was seated in the hack, the position of the +derringer was awkward, and carefully he shifted it. + +An intimate view of Havana increased rather than diminished its +evident charms. The heat, Charles found, though extreme, was less +oppressive than the dazzling light; the sun blazing on white walls, on +walls of primrose and cobalt, in the wide verdant openings, positively +blinded him. He passed narrow streets over which awnings were hung +from house to house, statues, fountains, a broad way with files of +unfamiliar trees, and stopped with a clatter before the Inglaterra. + +It faced on a broad covered pavement, an arcade, along which, farther +down, were companies of small iron tables and chairs; and it was so +foreign to Charles, so fascinating, that he stood lost in gazing. A +hotel servant in white, at his elbow, recalled the necessity of +immediate arrangements, and he went on into a high cool corridor set +with a marble flooring. At the office he exchanged his passport for a +solemn printed warning and interminable succession of directions; and +then, climbing an impressive stair, he was ushered into a room where +the ceiling was so far above him that once more he was overcome by +strangeness and surprise. + +He unpacked slowly, with a gratifying sense of the mature significance +of his every gesture; and, in the stone tub hidden by a curtain in a +corner, had a refreshing bath. There was a single window rising from +the tiled floor eight or ten feet, and he opened double shutters, +discovering a shallow iron-railed balcony. Before him was a squat +yellow building with a wide complicated facade; it reached back for a +square, and Charles decided that it was the Tacon Theatre. On the +left was the Parque de Isabel, with its grass plots and gravel walks, +its trees and iron settees, gathered about the statue of Isabel II. + +Charles Abbott's confidence left him little by little; what had seemed +so easy in New York, so apparent, was uncertain with Havana about him. +The careless insolence of the inspectors with the green-tasseled canes +at once filled him with indignation and depression. How was he to +begin his mission? Without a word of Spanish he couldn't even make it +known. There was Andres Escobar to consider: his father had told +Charles that he knew a few words of English. Meanwhile, hungry, he +went down to the eleven o'clock breakfast. + + * * * * * + +A ceremonious head waiter led him to a small table by a long window on +the Parque, where, gazing hastily at the breakfasts around him, he +managed, with the assistance of his waiter's limited English, to +repeat their principal features. These were fruit and salads, coffee +flavored with salt, and French bread. Clear white curtains swung at +the window in a barely perceptible current of air, and he had glimpses +of the expanse without, now veiled and now intolerably brilliant. His +dissatisfaction, doubts, vanished in an extraordinary sense of +well-being, or settled importance and elegance. There were many people +in the dining-room, it was filled with the unfamiliar sound of +Spanish; the men, dark, bearded and brilliant-eyed, in white linens, +with their excitable hands, specially engaged his attention, for it +was to them he was addressed. + +The women he glanced over with a detached and indulgent manner: they +were, on the whole, a little fatter than necessary; but their voices +were soft and their dress and jewels, even so early in the day, nicely +elaborate. All his interest was directed to the Cubans present; other +travellers, like--or, rather, unlike--himself, Americans, French and +English, planning in their loud several tongues the day's excursions, +or breakfasting with gazes fastened on Hingray's English and Spanish +Conversations, Charles carefully ignored. + +He felt, because of the depth of his own implication, his passionate +self-commitment, here, infinitely superior to more casual, to blinder, +journeyings. He disliked the English arrogance, the American clothes, +and the suspicious parsimony of the French. Outside, in the main +corridor of the hotel, he paused undecided; practically no one, he +saw, in the Parque Isabel, was walking; there was an unending broad +stream of single horse victorias for hire; but he couldn't ask any +driver he saw to conduct him to the heart of the Cuban party of +liberty. + +The strongest of all his recognitions was the fact that he had no +desire--but a marked distaste--for sightseeing; he didn't want to be +identified, in the eyes of Havana, with the circulating throng of +the superficially curious. In the end he strolled away from the +Inglaterra, to the left, and discovered the Prado. It was a wide +avenue with the promenade in the center shaded by rows of trees +with small burnished leaves. There, he remembered, was where the +Escobars lived, and he wondered which of the imposing dwellings, blue +or white, with sweeping pillars and carved balconies and great +iron-bound doors, was theirs. He passed a fencing school and +gymnasium; a dilapidated theatre of wood pasted with old French +playbills; fountains with lions' heads; and came to the sea. It +reached in an idyllic and unstirred blue away to the flawless +horizon, with, on the rocks of its shore, a company of parti-colored +bath-houses. There was an old fort, a gate--which, he could see, +once formed part of the city wall--bearing on its top a row of +rusted and antiquated cannon. Slopes of earth led down from the +battery, and beyond he entered a covered stone way with a parapet +dropping to the tranquil tide. After an open space, the Maestranza, +he came to a pretty walk; it was the Paseo de Valdez, with trees, +stone seats and a rippling breeze. + +Charles Abbott indolently examined an arch, fallen into disrepair, +erected, its tablet informed him, by the corps of Royal Engineers. He +sat on a bench, saturated by the hot vivid peace; before him reached +the narrow entrance of the bay with, on the farther hand, the long +pink wall of the Cabanas. A drift of military music came to him from +the fortress.... A great love for Havana stirred in his heart; +already, after only a few hours, he was familiar, contented, there. It +seemed to Charles that he understood its spirit; the beauty of palms +and marble was what, in the bleak north, all his life he had longed +for. The constriction of his breathing had vanished. + +The necessity for an immediate and violent action had lessened; he +would, when the time came, act; he was practically unlimited in days +and money. Charles decided, however, to begin at once the study of +Spanish; and he'd arrange for lessons at the Fencing School. Both of +those accomplishments were imperative to his final intention. He +lingered on the beach without an inclination to move--he had been +lower physically than he realized. The heat increased, the breeze and +band stopped, and finally he rose and returned to the Inglaterra. +There the high cool shadow of his room was so soothing that he fell +into a sound slumber and was waked only by a pounding at his door past +the middle of afternoon. + +A servant tendered him a card that bore engraved the name Andres +Escobar. He would see Mr. Escobar, he sent word, as soon as he could +be dressed. And, choosing his garb in a mingling of haste and +particular care, he was permeated by an indefinable excitement. Facing +Andres, he had a sensation of his own clumsiness, his inept attitude; +for the other, younger than he in appearance, was faultless in +bearing: in immaculately ironed linen, a lavender tie and sprig of +mimosa, he was an impressive figure of the best fashion. But Andres +Escobar was far more than that: his sensitive delicately modelled dark +face, the clear brown eyes and level lips, were stamped with a +superfine personality. + +His English, as his father had said, was halting, confined to the +merest formal phrases, but his tones were warm with hospitality. + +"It was polite of you to come so soon," Charles replied; "and your +father was splendid to me on the steamer." + +"How do you like Havana?" Andres asked. + +"I love it!" Charles Abbott exclaimed, in a burst of enthusiasm, but +of which, immediately after, he was ashamed. "I was thinking this +morning," he continued more stiffly, "when I had hardly got here, how +much at home I felt. That's funny, too; for it's entirely different +from all I have known." + +"You like it!" Andres Escobar reflected his unreserved tone. "That's +good; I am very, very glad. You must come to our house, Papa sends you +this." He smiled delightfully. + +They were standing, and Charles waved toward the dining-room. "Suppose +we go in there and have a drink." In Havana he continually found +himself in situations of the most gratifying maturity--here he was, in +the dining-room of the Inglaterra Hotel, with a tall rum punch before +him, and a mature looking cigar. He was a little doubtful about the +latter, its length was formidable; and he delayed lighting it until +Andres had partly eclipsed himself in smoke. But, to his private +satisfaction, Charles enjoyed the cigar completely. + +He liked his companion enormously, noticing, as they sat in a +comfortable silence, fresh details: Andres' hair, ink-black, grew in a +peak on his forehead; the silk case which held his cigars was bound in +gold; his narrow shoes were patent leather with high heels. But what, +above all else, impressed Charles, was his evidently worldly poise, +the palpable air of experience that clung to him. Andres was at once +younger and much older than himself. + +"How are you interested?" Andres asked, "in ... girls? I know some +very nice ones." + +"Not in the least," Charles Abbott replied decidedly; "the only thing +I care for is politics and the cause of justice and freedom." + + * * * * * + +Andres Escobar gazed swiftly at the occupied tables around them; not +far away there was a party of Spanish officers in loose short +tunics and blue trousers. Then, without commenting on Charles' +assertion, he drank from his glass of punch. "Some very nice +girls," he repeated. Charles was overwhelmed with chagrin at his +indiscretion; Andres would think that he was a babbling idiot. At +the same time he was slightly impatient: his faith in the dangers of +Havana had been shaken by the city's aspect of profound placidity, +its air of unalloyed pleasure. "You should know my friends," Andres +went on conversationally; "Remigio Florez, they are great coffee +planters, and Jaime--Jaime Quintara--and Tirso Labrador. They will +welcome you, as I." + +Charles explained his intention of learning Spanish, of fencing; and +the other promised his unreserved assistance. He would have a teacher +of languages sent to the hotel and himself take Charles to the Fencing +School. "Tomorrow," he promised. The drinks were finished, the cigars +consumed in long ashes, and Andres Escobar rose to go. As they walked +toward the Paseo the Cuban said, "You must be very careful, liberty is +a dangerous word; it is discussed only in private; in our tertulia you +may speak." He held out a straight forward palm. "We shall be +friends." + +Again in his room, Charles dwelt on Andres, conscious of the birth of +a great liking, the friendship the other had put into words. He wanted +to be like Andres, as slender and graceful, with his hair in a peak +and a worldly, contained manner. Charles was thin, rather than +slender, more awkward than not; decidedly fragile in appearance. And +his experience of life had been less than nothing. Yet he would make +up for this lack by the fervor of his attachment to the cause of Cuba. +He recalled all the stories he knew of foreign soldiers heroic in an +adopted cause; that was an even more ideal form of service than the +natural attachment to a land of birth. + +He moved a chair out on his balcony, and sat above the extended +irregular roof of the Tacon Theatre, watching the dusk flood the white +marble ways. The lengthening shadows of the Parque blurred, joined in +one; the facades were golden and then dimly violet; the Gate of +Montserrat lost its boldness of outline. Cries rose from the streets, +"Cuidado! Cuidado!" and "Narranjas, narranjas dulces." The evening +news sheets were called in long falling inflections. + +What surprised him was that, although he had more than an ordinary +affection for his home, his father and mother, now, here, they were of +no importance, no reality, to him. He never, except by an objective +effort, gave the north, the past, a thought. He was carried above +personal relationships and familiar regard; at a blow his old ties +had been severed; the new held him in the grip of their infinite +possibilities. All the petty things of self were obscured in the same +way that the individual aspects of the city below him were being +merged into one dignity of tone. + +Yet, at the same time, his mood had a charming reality--the suaveness +of Andres Escobar. His, Charles Abbott's, would be a select, an +aristocratic, fate; the end, when it overtook him, would find him in +beautiful snowy linens, dignified, exclusive, to the last. His would +be no pot-house brawling. That was his double necessity, the highest +form of good in circumstances of the first breeding. One, perhaps, to +his aesthetic fibre, was as important as the other. And, dressing for +dinner, he spoiled three shirts in the exact right fixing of his +studs. + +In the dining-room, he pressed a liberal sum of American money on the +head waiter, and was conducted to the table he had occupied at +breakfast. Everyone, practically, except some unspeakable tourists, +was in formal clothes; and the conversations, the sparkling light, +were like the champagne everywhere evident. Charles chose a Spanish +wine, the Marquis de Riscal; and prolonged his sitting over coffee and +a cigar, a Partagas, like those in Andres' silk case. He had never +before tasted coffee with such a rich thick savor, its fragrance +alone, blending with the blue smoke of his cigar, filled him with +pleasure. + +The room was long, tiled, and had, against the far wall, a great +mirror which held in reverse the gay sweep of the tables, the heavily +powdered shoulders of women, the prismatic flashes of diamonds and +men's animated faces. The reflections were almost as fascinating as +the reality, and Charles gazed from one to the other. + +Drinking, he saw, was universal, but none of the Cubans were drunk; +and for that reason his attention was held by two men at the table +next to his: the waiter had left a bottle of brandy, and the +individual facing Charles, with a sallow face from which depended, +like a curtain, a square-cut black beard, was filling and refilling +his thimble-sized glass. He was watching, with a shifting intentness +of gaze, all who entered; and suddenly, as Charles' eyes were on him, +he put down his half-lifted brandy and a hand went under the fold of +his coat. + +Charles turned, involuntarily, and saw a small immaculate Cuban with +grey hair and a ribband in his buttonhole advancing among the tables. +He was a man of distinguished appearance, important it was evident, +for a marked number of people bowed as he passed. When he had gone on, +the bearded individual rose, swaying slightly, and, with his hand +still in his coat rapidly overtook the other. + +Charles Abbott had an impulse to cry out; but, oppressed by a sense of +helpless dread, impending disaster, without a sound or power of +movement he followed the course of the second figure. The two were now +at the end of the dining-room, close to the mirror, when the man with +the decoration stopped and turned sharply. There was the sudden +stabbing report of a pistol, and, immediately following, a loud +splintering crash. Charles had the crazy illusion that a man who had +been shot was made of china, and would be found in broken bits on the +floor. + +There was an instantaneous hysterical uproar, dominated by the screams +of women; in the panic which rose there was a rush for the entrance, a +swirl of tearing satin and black dress coats. Then, even before he +heard the concerted derisive amazement, Charles realized that, dazed +by the brandy, the intended murderer had fired at the reflection of +his mark in the glass. + +What an utterly ridiculous error; and yet his hands were wet and cold, +his heart pounding. Something of the masking gaiety, the appearance +of innocent high spirits, was stripped from the dining-room of the +Inglaterra, from Havana. There was an imperative need for Andres +Escobar's caution. Charles' equanimity returned: with a steady hand he +poured out more coffee. He was ashamed of his emotion; but, by heaven, +that was the first of such violence he had witnessed; he knew that it +happened, to a large degree its possibility had brought him to Cuba; +yet directly before him, in a square beard and a decorating +ribband!... On the floor were the torn painted gauze and broken ivory +sticks of a woman's fan. + + * * * * * + +The echo of that futile shot followed Charles Abbott to the Escobars', +where, because of the often repeated names of its principals, he +recognized that the affair was being minutely discussed. The room in +which they sat was octagonal, with the high panels of its walls no +more than frames for towering glass doors set in dark wood; above were +serrated openings, Eastern in form, and the doors were supported by +paired columns of glacial white marble. It was entered through a long +corridor of pillars capped in black onyx with wicker chairs, a tiling +laid in arabesques and potted palms; and opposite was the balcony over +the Prado. A chandelier of crystal, hanging by a chain from the remote +ceiling, with a frosted sparkle like an illuminated wedding cake, +unaffected by prismatic green and red flashes, filled the interior +with a chilly brightness. The chairs of pale gilt set in a circle, the +marble pattern of the floor, the dark heads of the Escobars, looked as +though they were bathed in a vitreous fluid preserving them in a hard +pallor forever. + +But it was cool; the beginning constant night breeze fluttered the +window curtains and swayed the pennants of smoke from the cigars. +Domingo Escobar finished what was evidently a satirical period with a +decisive clearing of his throat--a-ha! He was a small rotund man with +a gigantic moustache laid without a brown hair misplaced over a mouth +kindly and petulant. His wife, Carmita, obese with indulgent +indolence, her placid expression faintly acid, waved a little hand, +like a blanched almond, indicative of her endless surprise at the +clamor of men. Andres was silent, immobile, faultless in a severity of +black and white. + +Charles had begun to admire him inordinately: above everything, +Andres possessed a simple warmness of heart, a generosity of emotion, +together with a fastidious mind. Fortunate combination. And his +person, his gestures and flashing speech, his brooding, were invested +by an intangible quality of romance; whatever he did was absorbing, +dramatic and--and fateful. He was a trifle aloof, in spite of his +impulsive humanity, a thought withdrawn as though by a shadow that +might have been but his unfailing dignity. + +Charles' gaze wandered from him to Narcisa, who, Domingo Escobar had +said, resembled a flower bud. As she sat in pale yellow ruffles, with +her slim hands clasped and her composed face framed in a wide dense +stream of hair, she was decidedly fetching. Or, rather, she gave +promise of charm; at present, she was too young to engage him in any +considerable degree. Narcisa, he concluded, was fourteen. At very long +intervals she looked up and he caught a lustrous, momentary +interrogation of big black eyes. A very satisfactory sister for Andres +Escobar to have; and, wondering at the absence of Vincente, the eldest +son, Charles asked Andres about his brother. + +A marked constraint was immediately visible in the family around him. +Vincente, he was informed abruptly, was out of Havana, he had had to +go to Matanzas. Later, on the balcony over the Prado, Andres added an +absorbing detail. "Vincente, we think, is in the Party of Liberation. +But you must say nothing. I do not know, Vincente will not speak; but +mama has noticed the gendarmes in front of the house, and when she +drives." + +"I should like to talk to him," Charles Abbott declared; "you must +arrange it for me. Look here, there's nobody around, I might as well +tell you that's why I came to Cuba, to fight the cursed Spanish. +I'm--I'm serious, there's nothing I wouldn't do; and if I have to be +killed, why, I am ready for that. It's all worked out in my head, +except some petty little details. Cuba ought to be free; this +oppression is horrible, like a spell on you--you're all afraid to more +than whisper--that must be broken. It must! I have a good little bit +of money and I can get more. You've got to help me." + +Andres clasped his hand. "That is wonderful!" His lowered exclamation +vibrated with feeling. "How can you have such nobility! I am given to +it, and Jaime and Remigio Florez and Tirso. But we are going to wait, +we think that is better; Spain shall pay us when the time comes. +Those students, eight of them, who were shot, were well known to us. +They put them against a wall by the prison and fired. You could hear +it clearly. But, when we are ready, the Spanish Volunteers--" hatred +closed his throat, drew him up rigidly. "Not yet," he insisted; "this +shall be different, forever. Perhaps your country will help us then." + +Charles was increasingly impatient; he couldn't, he felt, wait, delay +his gesture for freedom. He conceived the idea that he might kill the +Captain-General of Spain in Cuba, shoot him from the step of his +carriage and cry that it was a memorial of the innocent boys he had +murdered. Andres dissuaded him; it would, he said, only make the +conditions of living more difficult, harsh, put off the other, the +final, consummation. + +Below, on the promenade, the rows of gas lamps shone wanly through the +close leaves of the India laurels; there was a ceaseless sauntering +throng of men; then, from the Plaza de Armas, there was the hollow +rattat of drums, of tattoo. It was nine o'clock. The night was +magnificent, and Charles Abbott was choked by his emotions; it seemed +to him that his heart must burst with its expanding desire of heroic +good. He had left the earth for cloudy glories, his blood turned to a +silver essence distilled in ethereal honor; he was no longer a body, +but a vow, a purpose. + +One thing, in a surpassing humility, he decided, and turned to Andres. +"Very well, if you think the other is best. Listen to me: I swear +never to leave Cuba, never to have a different thought or a hope, +never to consider myself at all, until you are free." + +The intent face of Andres Escobar, dim in the gloom of the balcony, +was like a holy seal upon his dedication. A clatter of hoofs rose from +below--the passage of a squad of the gendarmes on grey horses, their +white coats a chalky glimmer in the night. Andres and Charles watched +them until they vanished toward the Parque Isabel; then Andres swore, +softly. + +Again in his room at the Inglaterra Charles speculated about the +complications of his determination to stay in Cuba until it was +liberated from Spain. That, he began to realize, might require years. +Questions far more difficult rose than any created by a mere immediate +sacrifice; the attitude of his father, for example; he, conceivably, +would try to force him home, shut off the supply of money. Meanwhile, +since the Inglaterra was quite expensive, he would move to a less +pretentious place. And, in the morning, Charles installed himself at +the Hotel San Felipe, kept on Ancha del Norte Street, near the bay, by +a German woman. + +His room was on the top floor, on, really, a gallery leading to the +open roof that was much frequented after dinner in a cooling air which +bore the restrained masculine chords of guitars. On the right he could +see the flares of Morro Castle, and, farther, the western coast lying +black on the sea. He had his room there, and the first breakfast, but +his formal breakfast and dinner he took at the Restaurant Francais, +the Aguila d'Oro, or the Cafe Dominica. Late, with Andres and their +circle, their tertulia, Charles would idle at the El Louvre over +ice-cream or the sherbets called helados in Havana. On such occasions +they talked with a studied audible care of the most frivolous things; +while Charles cherished close at heart the sensation of their +dangerous secret and patient wisdom, the assurance that some day their +sacred resolution would like lightning shatter their pretence of +docility. + + * * * * * + +Yet, in spite of the dark texture of their minds, they were, at times, +casually happy, intent, together, on mundane affairs. They were, all +five, inseparable: Jaime Quintara, the eldest, was even more of an +exquisite than Andres; he imported his lemon-colored gloves by the box +from Paris, where they were made to his measure; and in them, it was +the common jest, he went to bed. He was almost fat, with absurdly +small feet and a perceptible moustache. In addition, he was in love +with a public girl who lived on Gloria Street; altogether he was a man +of the world. Remigio Florez was absolutely different: the son of a +great coffee estate in Pinar del Rio, of limitless riches, he was +still simple and unaffected, short, with a round cheerful face and +innocent lips. Tirso Labrador was tall and heavy, he had the carriage +of a cavalry officer, a dragoon; and, slow mentally, his chief +characteristic was a remarkable steadfastness, a loyalty of +friendship, admiration, for his more brilliant companions. Tirso +Labrador was very strong, and it was his boast, when they were alone, +that he intended to choke a Spaniard slowly to death with his naked +hands. + +Except, however, for the evening, Charles was rarely idle; upheld by +his fervor he studied Spanish with an instructor through most of the +morning, and rode or fenced in the sala in the afternoon. His +knowledge of Spanish, supplemented by his friends, grew rapidly; he +had, his teacher declared, a very special aptitude for the language. +Domingo Escobar got great delight from throwing sentences, queries, at +him with inconceivable rapidity, and in pretending that every reply +Charles attempted was senseless. + +Narcisa, when he was present, contrived to sit with her gaze on her +hands folded in her ruffled lap and to lift her widely opened eyes for +breathless interrogations. She was, Charles was forced to admit, +notably pretty; in fact, for a little girl, she was a beauty. Now if +she had been thirty he might have had a hopeless passion for her, +hopeless not because she failed to return it, but for the reason that +he was a man without a future--some day, they both knew, he would +desert love for stark death. + +They went, Charles and Andres, Tirso and Remigio and Jaime, to the +Tacon Theatre for every play, where they occupied a box in the first +row, the primer piso, and lounged, between the acts, on the velvet +rail with their high silk hats and canes and boutonnieres. At times +there were capital troupes of players and dancers from Andalusia, and +the evening was well spent. They liked, too, the zarzuelas, the +operettas of one act, largely improvised with local allusions. But +they most warmly applauded the dancers. + +One, La Clavel, from Seville, had been announced by posters all over +the city; and, at the moment she appeared on the Tacon stage, Tirso +had his heavy arm about Remigio's shoulders, Jaime's gloved hands were +draped over his cane, and Charles was sitting in the rear of the box +with Andres. The orchestra began a sharply accented dance measure--it +was a jota--and a lithe figure in a manton of blazing silks and a +raked black felt hat made a sultry bow. + +La Clavel was indolent; she tapped a heel and sounded her castanets +experimentally; a reminiscent smile hovered on the sombre beauty of +her face. Suddenly Charles' attention was wholly captured by the +dancer; he leaned forward, gazing over Remigio's shoulder, vaguely +conscious of the sound of guitars and suppressed drums, the insistent +ring of a triangle. She stamped her foot now, and the castanets were +sharp, exasperated. Then slowly she began to dance. + +She wove a design of simple grace with her hips still and her arms +lifted and swaying; she leaned back, her eyes, under the slanted brim +of her hat, half closed; and her movements, the rhythm, grew more +pronounced. Through the music Charles could hear the stamp of her +heels, the augmented shrilling of the castanets. Her fire increased; +there were great scarlet peonies on her shawl, and they fluttered as +though they were troubled by a rising wind. La Clavel swept in a +widening circle on her hips, and her arms were now extended and now +thrust down rigidly behind her. + +She dominated the cruel colors of her shawl with a savage intensity +that made them but the expressions of her feelings--the scarlet and +magenta and burning orange and blue were her visible moods, her +capriciousness and contempt and variability and searing passion. Her +hat was flung across the stage, and, with her bound hair shaking loose +from its high shell comb, she swept into an appalling fury, a +tormented human flame, of ecstasy. When Charles Abbott felt that he +could support it no longer, suddenly she was, apparently, frozen in +the immobility of a stone; the knotted fringe of her manton hung +without a quiver. + +An uproar of applause rose from the theatre, a confusion of cries, of +Ole! Ole! Anda! Anda! Chiquella! A flight of men's hats sailed like +birds around her. Jaime Quintara pounded his cane until it broke, and, +with the others, Charles shouted his unrestrained Spanish approbation. +They crowded into the front of the box, intent on every movement, +every aspect, of the dancer. Afterwards, at the Tuileries, Andres +expressed their concerted feeling: + +"The most magnificent woman alive!" + +Jaime went across the cafe to speak to a man who had a connection with +the Tacon Theatre. He returned with an assortment of information--La +Clavel was staying at the St. Louis; she would be in Havana for a +month; and she had been seen with Captain Ceaza y Santacilla, of the +regiment of Isabel II. This latter fact cast them into a gloom; and +Remigio Florez so far broke the ban of sustained caution as to swear, +in the name of the Lady of Caridad, at Santacilla and his kind. + +Nothing, though, could reduce their enthusiasm for La Clavel; they +worshipped her severally and together, discussing to the last shading +her every characteristic. She was young, but already the greatest +dancer the world had--would ever have, Charles added. And Andres was +instructed to secure the box for her every appearance in Havana; they +must learn, they decided, if she were to dance in Santiago de Cuba, +in Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Lima, in Cathay. They, if it were +mortally possible, would be present. Meanwhile none of them was to +take advantage of the others in the contingency that she should +miraculously come to love him. That incredible happiness the +individual must sacrifice to his friendship, to his oath above all +other oaths--Cuba. The country's name was not spoken, but it was +entirely understood. + +They were seated on the lower floor, by the stairs which led up to the +salon for women; and, sharply, Charles grasped Andres' arm. Passing +them was a slender woman muffled in a black silk capote, with no hat +to cover the intricate mass of her hair piled against a high comb. +Behind her strode a Spanish officer of cavalry, his burnished scabbard +hooked on his belt against its silver chain; short, with a thick +sanguine neck above the band of his tunic, he had morose pale blue +eyes and the red hair of compounded but distinct bloods. + +"La Clavel," Charles whispered; "and it must be that filthy captain, +Santacilla, with her." + + * * * * * + +Seated on the roof of the Hotel San Felipe, the night's trade wind +faintly vibrant with steel strings, Charles Abbott thought at length +about La Clavel. Two weeks had passed since she first danced at the +Tacon Theatre; she had appeared on the stage three times afterward; +and she was a great success, a prodigious favorite, in Havana. Charles +and Andres, Jaime and Remigio and Tirso Labrador, had, frankly, become +infatuated with her; and it was this feeling which Charles, at +present, was examining. If it endangered the other, his dedication to +an ordeal of right, he had decided, he must resolutely put the dancer +wholly outside his consideration. + +This, he hoped, would not be necessary: his feeling for La Clavel lay +in the realm of the impersonal. It was, in fact, parallel with the +other supreme cause. La Clavel was a glittering thing of beauty, the +perfection of all that in a happier world, an Elysium--life and +romance might be. He regarded her in a mood of decided melancholy as +something greatly desirable and never to be grasped. When she danced +his every sensibility was intensified; life, for the moment, was +immeasurably lovely, flooded with lyrical splendor, vivid with +gorgeous color and aching happiness. Charles' pleasure in every +circumstance of being was acutely expanded--his affection for Andres, +the charm of Havana, the dignity of his impending fate. + +Ordinarily he would not have been content with this; he would have +striven to turn such abstractions into the concrete of an actual +experience. But now an unusual wisdom held him intent on the vision; +that, he recognized, was real; but what the reality, the woman +herself, was, who could be sure? No, he wasn't in love with La Clavel +in the accepted sense of that indefinite term; he was the slave of the +illusion, the emotions, she spun; he adored her as the goddess of his +youth and aspirations. + +He tried to explain this, in halting and inadequate Spanish, to his +tertulia; and because of his spirit rather than his words, his friends +understood him. They were standing by the marble statue of Ferdinand +VII in the Plaza de Armas, waiting for the ceremony of Retrata, to +begin in a few moments. The square was made of four gardens, separated +by formal walks, with a circular glorieta; and the gardens, the royal +palms and banyans and flambeau trees, were palely lighted by gas lamps +which showed, too, the circling procession of carriages about the +Plaza. The square itself was filled with sauntering men, a shifting +pattern of white linens, broad hats and glimmering cigars, diversified +by the uniforms of Spain. + +At eight o'clock a sergeant's guard and the band marched smartly into +position before the Governor-General's palace, where they stood at +rest until the drums of the barracks announced retreat. Then, at +attention, the gun of El Morro sounded, and the band swept into the +strains of Philemon et Baucis. + +Jaime Quintara smiled sceptically at Charles' periods: Platonic +sentiments might satisfy Abbott, he declared, but for himself.... At +this, Remigio insisted on their moving out to inspect the carriages. +They were, for the most part, quitrins, drawn with two horses, one +outside the shafts ridden by a calesero in crimson velvet laced with +gold and a glazed hat. The quitrins had two wheels, a leather hood +strapped back, and held three passengers by means of a small +additional seat, called, Andres explained, la nina bonita, where the +prettiest woman was invariably placed. None of the women wore hats, +but they were nearly all veiled, and the carriages were burdened with +seductive figures in wide dresses of perfumed white waving slow fans. + +There was, however, little conversation between the men on foot and +the women carefully cultivating expressions of remote unconcern. +Rarely, if she were accompanied by a masculine member of her family, a +woman came to earth for a short stroll in the gardens. Charles was +absolutely inattentive to them, but his companions, particularly Tirso +and Jaime, noted and, with dismaying freedom, commented on every +feminine detail that struck their fancy. It was Tirso who excitedly +called their attention to one of the new volantas in which sat La +Clavel. Ceaza y Santacilla was not with her; the place at her side was +occupied by the man to whom Jaime had spoken about the dancer in the +Tuileries. Quintara, capturing his attention, spoke in his profoundest +manner. There was a halt in the movement of carriages, and La Clavel +was directly before them. + +She wore the high comb and a mantilla of black lace falling in +scalloped folds around the vivid flower of her face--her beauty, at +least to Charles, was so extraordinary, her dark loveliness was so +flaming, that the scarlet camellia in her hair seemed wan. They were, +all four, presented to the dancer; and four extreme bows, four fervid +and sonorous acknowledgments, rose to the grace, the divinity, above. +It seemed to Charles that, perhaps because he was an American, La +Clavel noticed him more than the others: certainly she smiled at him +and the brilliancy of her gaze was veiled, made enigmatic, by the +lowering of her sweeping eyelashes. + +The checked restlessness of the horses was again released in a +deliberate progress, but, as La Clavel was carried on, the man with +her added that, after Retreta, they would stop at the El Louvre for an +ice cream, a mantecado. Remigio Florez drew in a deep breath which he +allowed to escape in the form of a sigh; Jaime smoothed the wrists of +his bright yellow gloves; Tirso Labrador settled his guardsman's +shoulders into his coat. "She won't get out of the volanta," Charles +said thoughtfully; "and someone will have to bring out her refresco. +We'd better get there early and stand at the door." + +"No hurry," the suave Jaime put in; "no one will leave here until +after tattoo." + +At nine o'clock the drums and bugles sounded from various parts of the +city. There was one more tune played directly under the palace +windows, after which the band and its guards left briskly to the +measure of a quickstep. Charles led the way through the crowd to the +Prado and the Parque Isabel. A number of carriages were there before +them, the occupants mostly eating ices, and the cafe was being rapidly +filled. Waiting keen-eyed at the entrance, they saw the volante with +La Clavel before it drew up, and the calesero had scarcely dismounted +from his horse when the dancer was offered her choice of the available +sweets. She preferred, rather than an ice, an orchata, and sipped it +slowly with an air of complete enjoyment. Her every movement, Charles +Abbott saw, the turn of the hand holding the glass, her chin and +throat against the black film of lace, her slender body's poise, was +utterly and strongly graceful: it was, more than any other quality, +the vigor of her beauty that impressed him. It seemed as though she +must be superbly young, and dance magnificently, forever. + +As Charles was considering this he was unceremoniously thrust aside +for the passage of Captain Santacilla with another cavalry officer +whose cinnamon colored face was stamped with sultry ill-humor. +Santacilla addressed the dancer aggressively with the query of why she +misspent her evening with the cursed Cuban negroes. + + * * * * * + +La Clavel made no reply, but tended her empty glass to Andres; then +she glanced indifferently at the captains. "Their manners," she said, +"are very pretty; and as for the negro--" she shrugged her delectable +shoulders. + +"My blood is as pure, as Castilian, as your own," Tirso Labrador began +hotly; but Remigio stilled him with a hand on his arm. In an uncolored +voice he begged the dancer to excuse them; and, sweeping off their +hats, they were leaving when Santacilla's companion stepped forward in +a flash of ungoverned anger like an exposed knife: + +"I've noticed you before," he addressed Tirso, "hanging and gabbling +around the cafes and theatres, and it's my opinion you are an +insurrectionist. If the truth were known, I dare say, it would be +found you are a friend to Cespedes. Anyhow, I'm tired of looking at +you; if you are not more retiring, you will find yourself in the +Cabanas." + +"Good evening," Remigio repeated in an even tone. With his hand still +on Tirso's arm he tried to force him into the cafe; but the other, +dark with passion, broke away. + +"You have dishonored my father and the name of a heroic patriot," he +said to the officer of cavalry. "In this I am alone." With a +suspicious quickness he leaned forward and his big hands shut about +the Spaniard's throat. + +Charles, with a suppressed exclamation, recalled Tirso's determination +to choke one of the enemies of Cuba. The man in the gripping fingers +stiffened and then, grotesquely, lost his aspect of a human form; +suddenly he was no more than a thing of limp flesh and gay fabrics. +Instantly an uproar, a surging passionate excitement grew, at the +heart of which Tirso Labrador was curiously still. Heaving bodies, at +once closing in and prudently scattering, hid from Charles his friend. +There was an onrush of gendarmes, harsh exclamations and oaths; then, +at the flash of steel, a short agonized cry--Tirso's voice at once +hoarse and inhuman with death. + +Charles Abbott, hurrying away at Andres' urgent insistence, caught a +final glimpse of a big young body sunk on the flagging of the Paseo; +he saw a leaden face and a bubbling tide of blood. Beyond the +Montserrat gate they halted, and he was shocked to hear Remigio Florez +curse Tirso as brutally as any Spaniard. Andres, white and trembling, +agreed. "Here is what I warned you of," he turned to Charles; "it is +fatal to lose your temper. You think that what Tirso did ends with him +in purgatory ... ha! Perhaps he is best out of it among us all. It +might be better for you to go back to America tomorrow and forget +about Cuba." + +"Yes," Remigio added, "probably we are all ruined; and certainly the +police spies will be waiting for us at home." + +"It would have been better if we had dissipated more," Jaime added: +"we have been entirely too high-minded and unnatural. Young men meet +together only to conspire or find love--the Spaniards know that and we +were fools." + +"We haven't been suspected of anything," Andres pointed out; "and it +may be said that Tirso was killed defending his name. No, the trouble +is to come; and it wasn't our fault. We must see less of each other, +at least in public, and be quite overcome about Tirso; that is another +account I charge to Spain: I knew him when I was a child ... in the +Vuelta Arriba--" Andres Escobar began to cry wholly and unaffectedly; +he leaned against an angle of the gate, his head in an arm, and +prolonged sobs shook his body. Tears were silently streaming over +Jaime's face, but Charles Abbott's eyes were dry. He was filled by an +ecstasy of horror and detestation at the brutal murder of Tirso. Fear +closed his throat and pinched his heart with icy fingers; but he +ignored, rose above, himself, in a tremendous accession of his +determination to drive injustice--if not yet from the world--from +Cuba. + +How little, he thought, anyone knew him who advised a return to +America. Before the cold violent fact of death a great part of his +early melodramatic spirit evaporated; the last possible trace of any +self-glorification left him, the lingering mock-heroics of boyhood +were gone. His emotion, now, was almost exultant; like a blaze of +insuperable white light it drowned all the individual colors of his +personality; it appeared to him almost that he had left the earth, +that he was above other men. + +More than anything, he continued, he would require wisdom, the wisdom +of patience, maturity; Tirso had been completely wasted. He was +seated, again, on the roof of his hotel, and again it was night: the +guitars were like a distant sounding of events evolved in harmonies, +and there was the gleam of moonlight on the sea, a trace of the moon +and the scent of mignonette trees. + +He was, he felt, very old, grave, in deportment; this detachment from +living must be the mark of age. Charles had always been a little +removed from activity by sickness; and now his almost solitary, +dreaming habit of existence had deepened in him. He thought, from time +to time, of other periods than his own, of ages when such service as +his had been, for gentlemen, the commonplace of living: he saw, in +imagination, before the altar of a little chapel, under the glimmer of +tall candles, a boyish figure kneeling in armor throughout the night. +At morning, with a faint clashing of steel, the young knight under a +vow rode into black forests of enchanted beasts and men and impure +magic, from which he delivered the innocent and the pure in heart. + +Charles Abbott recalled the burning of the Protestant Cranmer, and, as +well, the execution of John Felton for posting the Papal bull against +the Queen on the door of London House. They too, like the knights of +Arthurian legend, had conquered the flesh for an ideal. He was carried +in spirit into a whole world of transcendent courage, into a company +who scorned ease and safety in the preservation of an integrity, a +devotion, above self. This gave him a release, the sense that his body +was immaterial, that filled him with a calm serious fervor. + +He was conscious, through this, of the ceaseless playing of the guitars, +strains of jotas and malaguenas, laden with the seductiveness, the +fascination, of sensuous warm life. It was, in its persistence, +mocking; and finally it grew into a bitter undertone to the elevation +of his thought: he wanted, like Savonarola, to bring to an end the +depravity of the city; he wanted to cleanse Havana of everything but +the blanched heavenly ardor of his own dedication. The jotas +continued and the scent of mignonette increased. The moon, slipping +over the sea, shone with a vague brightness on the leaves of the +laurels below, on the whiteness of marble walks, and in the liquid +gleam of fountains. A woman laughed with a note of uncertainty and +passion.... It was all infinitely removed from him, not of the +slightest moment. What rose, dwelt, in Charles was a breath of +eternity, of infinitude; he was lost in a vision of good beyond seasons, +changeless, and for all men whomsoever. It must come, he told himself +so tensely that he was certain he had cried his conviction aloud. The +music sustained its burden of earthly desire to which the harsh +whispering rustle of the palm fronds added a sound like a scoffing +laughter. + + * * * * * + +At the Plaza de Toros, the following Sunday afternoon, Charles saw La +Clavel; she was seated on an upper tier near the stand of the +musicians, over the entrance for the bulls; and, in an audience +composed almost entirely of men, she was brilliantly conspicuous in a +flaming green manton embroidered in white petals; her mantilla was +white, and Charles could distinguish the crimson blot of the flower by +her cheek. The brass horns and drums of the band were making a rasping +uproar, and the crowded wooden amphitheatre was tense with excitement. +Andres Escobar, beside Charles, was being gradually won from a settled +melancholy; and, in an interested voice, he spoke to Charles about the +espada, Jose Ponce, who had not yet killed a bull in Cuba, but who was +a great hero of the ring in Spain and South America. + +"There is La Clavel," Charles said by way of reply; "she is with +Captain Santacilla, and I think, but I can't be sure, the officer +Tirso tried to choke to death. What is his name--de Vaca, Gaspar Arco +de Vaca." + +"Even that," Andres answered, "wasn't accomplished. La Clavel's +engagement in Havana is over; I suppose it will be Buenos Aires next. +Do you remember how we swore to follow her all over the world, and +how Tirso wanted to drag her volanta in place of the horses? At heart, +it's no doubt, she is Spanish, and yet.... There's the procession." + +The key bearer, splendid in velvet and gold and silver, with a short +cloak, rode into the ring followed by the picadores on broken-down +horses: their legs were swathed in leather and their jackets, of ruby +and orange and emerald, were set with expensive lace. They carried +pikes with iron points; while the banderilleros, on foot, with hair +long and knotted like a woman's, hung their bright cloaks over an arm +and bore the darts gay with paper rosettes. + +The espada, Jose Ponce, was greeted with a savage roar of approbation; +he was dressed in green velvet, his zouave jacket heavy with gold +bullion; and his lithe slender dark grace recalled to Charles Abbott +La Clavel. Charles paid little attention to the bull fighting, for he +was far in the sky of his altruism; his presence at the Plaza de Toros +was merely mechanical, the routine of his life in Havana. Across from +him the banked humanity in the cheaper seats a sol, exposed to the +full blaze of mid-afternoon, made a pattern without individual +significance; he heard the quick bells of the mules that dragged out +the dead bulls; a thick revolting odor rose from the hot sand soaked +with the blood and entrails of horses. + +At times, half turning, he saw the brilliant shawl of the dancer, and +more than once he distinguished her voice in the applause following a +specially skilful or daring pass. He thought of her with a passionate +admiration unaffected by the realization that she had brought them the +worst of luck: perhaps any touch of Spain was corrupting, fatal. And +the sudden desire seized him to talk to La Clavel and make sure that +her superb art was unshadowed by the disturbing possibilities voiced +by Andres. + +There were cries of fuego! fuego! and Charles Abbott was conscious of +a bull who had proved indifferent to sport. A banderillero, fluttering +his cloak, stepped forward and planted in the beast's shoulder a dart +that exploded loudly with a spurt of flame and smoke; there was a +smothered bellow, and renewed activities went forward below. "What a +rotten show!" Charles said to Andres, and the latter accused him of +being a tender sentimentalist. Jose Ponce, Andres pronounced with +satisfaction, was a great sword. The espada was about to kill: he +moved as gracefully as though he were in the figure of a dance; his +thrust, as direct as a flash of lightning, went up to the hilt, and +the vomiting bull fell in crashing death at his feet. + +"Suppose, for a change, we go to the Aguila de Oro," Andres suggested; +"the air is better there." By that he meant that the cafe was +relatively free from Spaniards. The throng moved shoulder to shoulder +slowly to the doors; but Charles managed to work his way constantly +nearer the conspicuous figure of La Clavel. He despaired, however, of +getting close to her, when an unforeseen eddy of humanity separated +the dancer from her companions and threw her into Charles' path. She +recognized him immediately: but, checking his formal salutation, she +said, in a rapid lowered voice, that she would very much like to see +him ... at the St. Louis late on the afternoon of tomorrow. They were +separated immediately, leaving in Charles a sense of excited +anticipation. He joined Andres soon after and told him what had +occurred. + +"I suppose it is safe for you," Andres decided; "you are an American, +no one has yet connected you with the cause of Cuba. But this +woman--What do we know of her?--you'll have to be prudent!" + +Andres Escobar had grown severe in the last week, he had hardened +remarkably; his concentration, Charles felt, his bitterness, even +excluded his friends. Charles Abbott's affection for him increased +daily; his love, really, for Andres was a part of all that was highest +in him. Unlike the love of any woman, Andres made no demand on him, +what only mattered was what each intrinsically was: there were no +pretence, no weary protestations, nothing beside the truth of their +mutual regard, their friendship. What Charles possessed belonged +equally, without demand, to Andres; they had, aside from their great +preoccupation, the same thoughts and prejudices, the same taste in +refrescos and beauty and clothes. They discovered fresh identical +tastes with a rush of happiness. + +It was, like the absorbing rest, immaterial, the negation of ordinary +aims and ideas of comfort and self-seeking. Charles would have died +for Andres, Andres for Charles, without of a moment's hesitation; +indeed, the base of their feeling lay in the full recognition of that +fact. This they admitted simply, with no accent of exaggeration or +boasting: on the present plane of their being it was the most natural +thing in the world. + +At the Aguila de Oro, spinning the paddle of a molinillo, and +individual chocolate mill, Andres informed Charles that Vincente was +home. "He has told me everything," Andres Escobar continued with +pride. "We are now more than Escobars--brother Cubans. He has been +both shot and sabred and he has a malaria. But nearly all his friends +are dead. Soon, he says, we, Jaime and Remigio--and, I added, +you--will have to go out. He is to let us know when and how." + +"Do the police know he is in Havana?" + +"We think not; they haven't been about the house since the investigation +of the de Vaca affair, and our servants are not spies. You must come +and see Vincente this evening, for he may leave at any hour. It seems +that he is celebrated for his bravery and the Spaniards have marked +him for special attention. Papa and mama are dreadfully disturbed, +and not only because of him; for if he is discovered, all of us, yes, +little Narcisa, will be made to pay--to a horrible degree, I can tell +you." + + * * * * * + +There was, apparently, nothing unusual in the situation at the +Escobars' when Charles called in the evening. The family, exactly as +he had known it, was assembled in the drawing-room, conversing under +the icy flood of the crystal chandelier. He found a chair by Narcisa, +and listened studiously to the colloquial Spanish, running swiftly +around the circle, alternating with small thoughtful silences. Soon, +however, Charles Abbott could see that the atmosphere was not +normal--the vivacity palpably was forced through the shadow of a +secret apprehension. Domingo Escobar made sudden seemingly irrelevant +gestures, Carmita sighed out of her rotundity. Only Narcisa was beyond +the general subdued gloom: in her clear white dress, her clocked white +silk stockings, and the spread densely black curtain of her hair, she +was intent on a wondering thought of her own. Her gaze, as usual, was +lowered to her loosely clasped hands; but, growing conscious of +Charles' regard, she looked up quickly, and, holding his eyes, smiled +at him with an incomprehensible sweetness. + +He regarded her with a gravity no more than half actual--his mind was +set upon Vincente--and her even pallor was invaded by a slow soft +color. Charles nodded, entirely friendly, and she turned away, so +abruptly that her hair swung out and momentarily hid her profile. He +forgot her immediately, for he had overheard, half understood, an +allusion to the Escobars' elder son. With a growing impatience he +interrogated Andres, and the latter nodded a reassurance. Then Andres +Escobar rose, punctiliously facing his father--he would, with +permission, take Charles to the upper balconies, the wide view from +which he had never seen. Domingo was plainly uneasy, displeased; but, +after a long frowning pause, gave his reluctant consent. Charles +Abbott was acutely aware of his heels striking against the marble +steps which, broad, imposing and dark, led above. Vincente, it +developed, without actually being in hiding, was limited to the scope +of the upper hall, where, partly screened in growing palms, its end +formed a small salon. + +There was a glimmer of light though sword-like leaves, and a lamp on +an alabaster table set in ormolu cast up its illumination on a face +from which every emotion had been banished by a supreme weariness. +Undoubtedly at one time Vincente Escobar had been as handsome as +Andres; more arbitrary, perhaps, with a touch of impatience resembling +petulance; the carriage, the air, of a youth spoiled by unrestrained +inclination and society. The ghost of this still lingered over him, in +the movement of his slender hands, the sharp upflinging of his chin; +but it was no more than a memento of a gay and utterly lost past. The +weariness, Charles began to realize, was the result of more than a +spent physical and mental being--Vincente was ill. He had acquired a +fever, it was brought out, in the jungles of Camagueey. + +At first he was wholly indifferent to Charles; at the end of Andres' +enthusiastic introduction, after a flawless but perfunctory courtesy, +Vincente said: + +"The United States is very important to us; we have had to depend +almost entirely on the New York Junta for our life. We have hope, too, +in General Grant. Finally your country, that was so successful in its +liberation, will understand us completely, and sweep Spain over the +sea. But, until that comes, we need only money and courage in our, in +Cuban, hearts. You are, I understand from Andres, rich; and you are +generous, you will give?" + +That direct question, together with its hint at the personal +unimportance of his attachment to a cause of pure justice, filled +Charles with both resentment and discomfort. He replied stiffly, in +halting but adequate Spanish, that there had been a misunderstanding: +"I am not rich; the money I have you would think nothing--it might buy +a stand or two of rifles, but no more. What I had wanted to spend was +myself, my belief in Cuba. It seemed to me that might be worth +something--" he stopped, in the difficulty of giving expression to his +deep convictions; and Andres warmly grasped his hand. He held Charles' +palm and addressed his brother in a passionate flood of protest and +assertion: Charles Abbott, his dear friend, was as good a patriot as +any Escobar, and they should all embrace him in gratitude and welcome; +he was, if not the gold of the United States, its unselfish and +devoted heart; his presence here, his belief in them, was an +indication of what must follow. + +"If he were killed," Andres explained. "That alone would bring us an +army; the indignation of his land would fall like a mountain on our +enemies." + +This, giving Charles a fresh view of his usefulness, slightly cooled +his ardor; he was willing to accept it, in his exalted state he would +make any sacrifice for the ideal that had possessed him; but there was +an acceptance of brutal unsentimental fact in the Latin fibre of the +Escobars foreign to his own more romantic conceptions. Vincente wasn't +much carried away by the possibility Andres revealed. + +"He'd be got out of the way privately," he explained in his drained +voice; "polite letters and no more, regrets, would be exchanged. The +politicians of Washington are not different from those of Cuba. If he +is wise he will see Havana as an idler. Even you, Andres, do not know +yet what is waiting for you. It is one thing to conspire in a balcony +on the Prado and another to lie in the marshes of Camagueey. You cannot +realize how desperate Spain is with the debt left from her wars with +Morocco and Chile and Peru. Cuba, for a number of years, has been her +richest possession. While the Spaniards were paying taxes of three +dollars and twenty some cents, we, in Cuba, were paying six dollars +and sixty-nine. After our declaration of independence at Manzanillo--" +an eloquent pause left his hearers to the contemplation of what had +followed. + +"You know how it has gone with us," Vincente continued, almost +exclusively to the younger Escobar. "Carlos Cespedes left his practice +of the law at Bayamo for a desperate effort with less than a hundred +and thirty men. But they were successful, and in a few weeks we had +fifteen thousand, with the constitution of a republican government +drawn. We ended slavery," here, for a breath, he addressed Charles +Abbott. "But in that," he specified, "we were different from you. In +the United States slavery was considered as only a moral wrong. Your +Civil War was, after all, an affair of philanthropy; while we freed +the slaves for economic reasons. + +"Well, our struggle went on," he returned to Andres, "and we were +victorious, with, at the most, fifty thousand men against how many? +One, two, hundred thousand. And we began to be recognized abroad, by +Bolivia and Columbia and the Mexican Congress. The best Cubans, those +like ourselves, were in sympathy with the insurrection. Everything was +bright, the climate, too, was fighting for us; and then, Andres, we +lost man after man, the bravest, the youngest, first: they were +murdered, as I may be tonight, killed among the lianas, overtaken in +the villages, smothered in small detachments by great forces, until +now. And it is for that I have said so much, when it is unnecessary to +pronounce a word. What do you think is our present situation? What do +you think I left of our splendid effort in the interior? General +Agramonte and thirty-five men. That and no more! + +"Their condition you may see in me--wasted, hardly stronger than +pigeons, and less than half armed. What, do you think, one boy +from Pennsylvania is worth to that? Can he live without food more +than half the time, without solid land under his feet, without +protection against the mosquitoes and heat and tropical rains? And +in Havana: but remember your friend, Tirso Labrador! You, Andres, +have no alternative; but your Charles Abbott he would be a danger +rather than an assistance." Charles, with a prodigious effort at a +calm self-control, answered him. + +"You are very thoughtful, and it is right to be cautious, but what you +say is useless. Andres understands! I'd never be satisfied to be +anything except a Cuban patriot. It isn't necessary for you to +understand that in a minute, an evening. I might be no good in +Camagueey, but I am not as young as Tirso; I am more bitter and +patient. By heaven, I will do something, I will be a part of your +bravery! Not only the soldiers in the field, not only Agramonte, but +sacrifice--" + + * * * * * + +Charles' throat was closed, his words stopped, by the intensity of his +feeling; his longing to be identified, lost, in the spirit of General +Agramonte and the faithful thirty-five burned into a desperation of +unhappiness. Vincente Escobar, it was evident, thought that he wasn't +capable of sustaining such a trust. Still there was nothing to be +gained by protests, hot asseverations; with difficulty he suppressed +his resentment, and sat, to all appearances, calm, engaged with a +cigar and attending Vincente's irregular vehement speech. Andres was +silent, dark and serious; but the gaze he turned upon Charles was warm +with affection and admiration. Nothing, Vincente insisted, could be +done now; they must wait and draw into their cause every possible +ultimate assistance and understanding. If the truth were known, he +repeated again and again, the world would be at their feet. + +Finally, his enthusiasm, his power, ebbed; his yellow pinched face +sank forward: he was so spent, so delivered to a loose indifference of +body, that he might well have been dead. Charles rose with a formal +Spanish period voicing the appreciation of the honor that had been +his. + +"We are all worried about Vincente," Andres proceeded, as they were +descending the vault-like stairs; "there is a shadow on him like bad +luck. But it may be no more than the fever. Our mother thinks he needs +only her love and enough wine jelly." They were again in the +drawing-room with the Escobars; and Charles momentarily resumed the +seat he had left beside Narcisa. + +Domingo and his wife were submerged in gloomy reflection, and Andres +sat with his gaze fixed on the marble, patterned in white and black, +of the floor. Suddenly Narcisa raised her head with an air of +rebellion. "It's always like the church," she declared incredibly. +"Everything has got so old that I can't bear it--Vincente as good as +dead and Andres resembling a Jesuit father! Must all my life go on in +this funeral march?" The elder Escobars regarded her in a voiceless +amazement; but Andres said severely: + +"You are too young to understand the tragedy of Cuba or Vincente's +heroic spirit. I am ashamed of you--before Charles Abbott." + +Narcisa rose and walked swiftly out upon the balcony. They had been, +it seemed to Charles, rather ridiculous with her; it was hard on +Narcisa to have been thrust, at her age, into such a serious affair. +The Escobars, and particularly Vincente, took their responsibility a +little too ponderously. Following a vague impulse, made up both of his +own slightly damaged pride and a sympathy for Narcisa, he went out to +the balcony where she stood with her hands lightly resting on the +railing. Veiled in the night, her youth seemed more mysterious than +immature; he was conscious of an unsteady flutter at her unformed +breast; her face had an aspect of tears. + +"You mustn't mind them," he told her; "they are tremendously bothered +because they see a great deal farther than you can. The danger to +Vincente, too, in Havana, spies--" + +She interrupted him, looking away so that he could see only a trace of +her cheek against the fragment fall of her hair. "It isn't that, but +what Andres said about you." + +This admission startled him, and he studied Narcisa--her hands now +tightly clasping the iron railing--with a disturbed wonder. Was it +possible that she cared for him? At home, ignored by a maturity such +as his, she would have been absorbed in the trivial activities of +girls of her own age. But Havana, the tropics, was different. It was +significant, as well, that he was permitted to be with her, +practically alone, beyond the sight and hearing of her mother; the +Escobars, he thought, had hopes of such a consummation. It was +useless, he was solely wedded to Cuba; he had already pictured the +only dramatic accident of the heart that could touch him. Not little +Narcisa! She was turned away from him completely: a lovely back, +straight and narrow, virginal--Domingo Escobar had said this--as a +white rose bud, yet with an impalpable and seductive scent. In other +circumstances, a happier and more casual world, she would have been an +adorable fate. An increasing awkwardness seized him, a conviction of +impotence. "Narcisa," he whispered at her ear; but, before he could +finish his sentence, her face was close to his, her eyes were shut and +the tenderness of her lips unprotected. + +Charles put an arm about her slim shoulders and pressed his cheek +against hers. "Listen," he went on, in his lowered voice, patching the +deficiencies of his Spanish with English words clear in their feeling +if not in sound, "nothing could have shown me myself as well as you, +for now I know that I can never give up a thought to anything outside +what I have promised my life to. A great many men are quite happy with +a loving wife and children and a home--a place to go back to always; +and, in a way, since I have known you, I envy them. Their lives are +full of happiness and usefulness and specially peace; but, dearest +Narcisa, I can't be like that, it isn't for me. You see, I have chosen +to love a country; instead of being devoted only to you, there are +thousands of women, rich and poor and black and white, I must give +myself for. I haven't any existence, any rights, of my own; I haven't +any money or time or security to offer. I didn't choose it, no, it +chose me--it's exactly as though I had been stopped on the street and +conscripted. A bugle was blown in my ear. Love, you must realize, is +selfish; it would be selfish to take you on a steamer, for myself, and +go north. If I did that, if I forgot what I have sworn, I'd die. I +should seem to the world to be alive, and I'd walk about and talk and +go into the city on some business or other; but, in reality, I should +be as dead as dust. + +"There are men like that everywhere, Narcisa, perhaps the most of life +is made up of them. They look all right and are generally respected; +yet, at some time or other, they killed themselves, they avoided what +they should have met, tried to save something not worth a thought. I +don't doubt a lot never find it out, they think they are as good as +ever--they don't remember how they once felt. But others discover it, +or the people who love them discover it for them. And that would +happen to me, to us." + +In reply to all this she whispered that she loved him. Her arm slipped +up across his shoulder and the tips of her fingers touched his left +cheek. A momentary dizziness enveloped him at her immeasurable +sweetness: it might be that she was a part of what he was to find, to +do, in Cuba; and then his emotion perished in the bareness of his +heart to physical passion. Its place was taken by a deep pride in his +aloofness from the flesh; that alone, he felt, dignified him, set him +above the mischances of self-betrayal. + +Charles Abbott kissed her softly and then took her hands. "You +wouldn't want me, Narcisa," he continued; "if I failed in this, I +should fail you absolutely. If I were unfaithful now I could never be +faithful to you." + +She drew her hands sharply away. "It's you who are young and not I," +she declared; "you talk like a boy, like Andres. All you want is a +kind of glory, like the gold lace the officers of Isabella wear. +Nothing could be more selfish." + +"You don't understand," he replied patiently. + +Narcisa, he felt, could never grasp what was such a profound part of +his masculine necessity. Abstractions, the liberty, for example, of an +alien people, would have little weight against her instinct for the +realities in her own heart. Her emotion was tangible, compared with +his it was deeply reasonable; it moved in the direction of their +immediate good, of the happiness, the fullness, of their beings; while +all his desire, his hope, was cloudy, of the sky. In the high silver +radiance of his idealism, the warmer green of earth, the promise of +Narcisa's delicate charm, the young desire in his blood, were, he +felt, far away, dim ... below. + + * * * * * + +The conviction fastened upon him that this chance realization would +determine, where women were concerned, the whole of his life. But that +space, he reminded himself, short at best, was, in him, to terminate +almost at once. All his philosophy of resistance, of strength, was +built upon the final dignity of a supreme giving. His thoughts went +back to Narcisa as he sat in La Clavel's room in the St. Louis, +watching a hairdresser skilfully build up the complicated edifice of +the dancer's hair. Soon, he grasped, it would be ready for the +camellia placed back of the lobe of an ear. A towel was pinned about +her naked shoulders, she had on a black fringed petticoat and dangling +slippers of red morocco leather. La Clavel was faced away from +Charles, but, in the mirror before which she sat, he could see her +features and vivid changing expressions. + +The truth was that, close, he had found her disconcerting, almost +appalling. Climbing the long stairs at the message that she would +see him in her room, he had surrendered himself to the romantic +devotion which had overwhelmed the small select circle of his +intimates. This had nothing to do with the admirable sentiment of a +practical all-inclusive love; it was aesthetic rather than social. They +all worshipped La Clavel as a symbol of beauty, as fortunately +unattainable in a small immediate measure; and, bowing inside the +door of her chamber, he had been positively abashed at the strange +actuality of her charm. + +La Clavel was at once more essentially feminine than any other woman +he had encountered and different from all the rest. A part of the +impression she created was the result of her pallor, the even +unnatural whiteness under the night of her hair. Her face was white, +but her lips--a carmine stick lay close at her hands--were brutally +red. She hurt him, struck savagely at the idealism of his image; +indeed, in the room permeated with a dry powdered scent, at the woman +redolent of vital flesh, he had been a little sickened. However, that +had gone; and he watched the supple hands in the crisp coarse mass of +her hair with a sense of adventure lingering faintly from his earlier +youth: he was, in very correct clothes, holding his hat and stick and +gloves, idling through the toilet of a celebrated dancer and beauty. + +Or, rather, he saw himself objectively, as he had been say a year ago, +at which time his present situation would have surpassed his most +splendid worldly hopes. It was strange, he thought, how life granted +one by one every desire ... when it was no longer valued: the +fragrance, the tender passion, of Narcisa, the preference in La Clavel +singling him out from a city for her interest! + +She smiled at him over her shoulder, and, in return, he nodded +seriously, busy with a cigarette; maintaining, in a difficult pass, +his complete air of indifference, of experience. The hairdresser must +have pulled roughly at a strand for, with a sudden harsh vulgarity, +she described him as a blot on the virginity of his mother; in an +instant every atom of her was charged with anger. It was, Charles told +himself, exactly as though a shock of dried grass had caught fire; +ignited gun powder rather than blood seemed to fill her veins. + +Her ill-temper, tempestuous in its course, was over as quickly as it +had flared into being. She paid the hairdresser from a confusion of +silver and gold on her dressing-table and dismissed him with a good +nature flavored by a native proverb. Then, bending above a drawer, she +brought out the vivid shawl in which she had danced. La Clavel folded +its dragging brilliancy squarely along its length, laid it across her +breast, brought the fringed ends under and up over her arms, crossed +them in a swift twist, and she was wholly, magnificently, clothed. She +sat on the edge of a bed covered with gay oddments of attire--fans and +slippers with vermilion heels, lace mantillas, a domino in silver +tissue lined in carnation and a knife with a narrow blade and holder +of silk. + +Charles offered her his cigarette case, but she declined in favor of +the long pale cigars Andres and he himself affected. With its smoke +drifting bluely across her pallid face, her eyes now interrogating +him, and now withdrawn in thought, she asked him about Tirso Labrador. +Charles Abbott quickly gathered that his presence was for that sole +purpose. + +"I heard all that was said," she warned him; "and I don't want that +repeated. Why did he try to garotte de Vaca with his hands? There was +more in it than appeared. But all Ceaza will say is that he was a +cursed traitor to the Crown. Signor American, I like Cuba, they have +been very good to me here; I like you and your polite friends. But +whenever I try to come closer to you, to leave the stage, as it were, +for the audience, we are kept apart. The Spanish officers who take up +so much of my time warn me that I must have nothing to do with +disaffected Cubans; the Cubans, when I reach out my arms to them, are +only polite. + +"Certainly I know that there has been a rebellion; but it is stamped +out, ended, now; there are no signs of it in Havana, when I dance the +jota; so why isn't everyone sensible and social; why, if they are +victorious, are not Gaspar Arco de Vaca and Ceaza y Santacilla easier? +If, as it must be, Cuba is subjected, why doesn't it ignore the +unpleasant and take what the days and nights always offer? There can +be no longer, so late in the history of the world, a need for the old +Inquisition, the stabbers Philip commanded." + +Charles Abbott had an impulse to reply that, far from being conquered, +the spirit of liberty in Cuba was higher than ever before; he wanted +to tell her, to cry out, that it was deathless; and that no horrors of +the black past were more appalling than those practiced now by the +Spanish soldiery. Instead of this he watched a curl of smoke mount +through the height of the room to a small square window far up on the +wall where it was struck gold by a shaft of sunlight. + +"He was particularly a friend of yours?" she insisted, returning to +Tirso. "You were always together, watching me dance from your box in +the Tacon Theatre, and eating ices at the El Louvre or at the +Tuileries." + +He spoke slowly, indifferently, keeping his gaze elevated toward the +ceiling. "Tirso Labrador was a braggard, he was always boasting about +what he could do with his foolish muscles. What happened to him was +unavoidable. We weren't sorry--a thorough bully. As for the others, +that dandy, Quintara, and Remigio Florez, who looks like a coffee +berry from their plantation at Vuelta Arriba, and Escobar, I am very +much in their debt--I bring the gold and they provide the pleasures of +Havana. They are my runners. I haven't the slightest interest in their +politics; if they support the Revolution or Madrid, they keep all that +out of my knowledge." + +A prolonged silence followed, a period devoted to the two cigars. +"That Escobar," La Clavel said, "is a very beautiful boy. What you +tell me is surprising; he, at any rate, seems quite different. And I +have seen you time after time sitting together, the two or three or +four of you, with affectionate glances and arms. I am sensitive to +such things, and I think you are lying." + +An air of amused surprise appeared on his countenance, "If you are so +taken with Andres Escobar," he observed, "why did you make this +appointment with me? May I have the pleasure of taking him a note from +you? he is very fond of intrigues." + +Leaning forward she laid a firm square palm on his knee. "You have +told me all that I wanted--this Tirso, who was killed, he was your +dear friend and his death an agony; the smaller, the coffee berry, you +are devoted to his goodness and simplicity; beneath Quintara's +waistcoats you find a heart of gold. But Escobar--is it Andres?--you +love better than your life. They care nothing for your American +dollars; it is evident they all have much more than you. What is it, +then, you are united by? I shall tell you--Cuba. You are patriots, +insurrectionists; Santacilla was right. And neither is your rebellion +crushed, not with Agramonte alive." She leaned back with glimmering +eyes and the cruel paint of her mouth smiling at him. + + * * * * * + +She was, then, Charles Abbott reflected, an agent of Spain's; calmly +he rehearsed all they had said to each other, he examined every +sentence, every inflection of voice. He could not have been more +circumspect; the position he had taken, of a pleasure-loving young +American, was so natural that it was inevitable. No, La Clavel knew +nothing, she was simply adopting another method in her task of getting +information for Santacilla. At this, remembering the adoration of his +circle for her, he was brushed by a swift sorrow. For them she had +been the symbol, the embodiment, of beauty; the fire and grace of her +dancing had intensified, made richer, their sense of life. She had +been the utmost flashing peak of their desire; and now it was clear to +him that she was rotten at the core, La Clavel was merely a spy; what +had engaged them was nothing more than a brilliant flowery surface, a +bright shawl. + +"You are wasting your efforts," he assured her, with an appearance of +complete comfort. "Even if you were right, I mean about the others, +what, do you think, would make them confide in me, almost a stranger? +You understand this so much better than I that, instead of questioning +me, you ought to explain the whole Cuban situation. Women like +yourself, with genius, know everything." + +She utterly disconcerted Charles by enveloping him in a rapid gesture, +her odorous lips were pressed against his cheek. "You are as sweet as +a lime flower," La Clavel declared. "After the others--" her +expression of disgust was singularly valid. "That is what I love about +you," she cried suddenly, "your youth and freshness and courage. Tirso +Labrador dying so gallantly ... all your beardless intent faces. The +revolt in Cuba, I've felt it ever since I landed at Havana, it's in +the air like wine. I am sick of officers: look, ever since I was a +child the army has forced itself upon me. I had to have their +patronage when I was dancing and their company when I went to the +cafes; and when it wasn't the cavalry it was the gentlemen. They were +always superior, condescending; and always, inside me, I hated them. +They thought, because I was peasant born, that their attentions filled +me with joy, that I should be grateful for their aristocratic +presences. But, because I was what I was, I held them, with their +ladies' hands and sugared voices, in contempt. There isn't one of them +with the entrails to demand my love. + +"I tell you I was smothering in the air about me. My dancing isn't +like the posturing of the court, it's the dancing of the people, my +people, passionate like a knife. I am from the Morena, and there we +are not the human sheep who live in the valleys, along the empty +rivers. How shall I explain? But how can you explain yourself? You are +not a Cuban; this rebellion, in which you may so easily be killed +almost before you begin to live, it isn't yours. What drew you into +it? You must make it plain, for I, too, am caught." + +"Men are different from women," he replied, putting into words his +newly acquired wisdom; "whatever happened to me would be useless for +you, you couldn't be helped by it." Yet he was forced to admit to +himself that all she had said was reasonable; at bottom it didn't +contradict his generalization, for it was based on a reality, on La +Clavel's long resentment, on indignities to her pride, on, as she had +said, the innate freedom of the mountain spirit. If she were honest, +any possible attachment to Cuba might result from her hatred of +Spain, of Sevilla and Madrid. Hers, then, would be the motive of +revenge. + +"You are right about the difference in our experiences," she +agreed; "I was dancing for a living at six; at ten I had another +accomplishment. I have lived in rooms inlaid with gold, and in cellars +with men where murder would have been a gracious virtue. Yes, lime +flower, there is little you know that could be any assistance to +me. But the other, your purity, your effort of nobility, that I must +learn from you." + +He explained his meaning more fully to her, and she listened intently. +"You think," she interrupted, "that a woman must be attached to +something real, like your arm or a pot of gold. You know them, and +that at your age, at any age, is a marvel enough in itself. The wisest +men in Europe have tried to understand the first movement of my +dancing--how, in it, a race, the whole history of a nation, is +expressed in the stamp of a heel, the turn of a hip. They wonder what, +in me, had happened to the maternal instinct, why I chose to reflect +life, as though I were a mirror, rather than experience it. And now, +it seems, you see everything, all is clear to you. You have put a +label, such as are in museums, on women; good!" + +She smiled at him, mocking but not unkind. + +"However," he told her crossly, "that is of very little importance. +How did we begin? I have forgotten already." + +"In this way," she said coolly; "I asked if it would be of any +interest to--let us say, your friends, to learn that the United +States, in spite of the Administration, will not recognize a +Republican Cuba. Fish is unchangeably opposed to the insurgents. You +may expect no help there." + +"That might be important to the insurgents," he admitted; "but where +are they to be found--in the cabildos of Los Egidos?" + +"At least repeat what you have heard to Escobar: is it Andres or +Vincente?" + +The name of Andres' brother was spoken so unexpectedly, the faintest +knowledge of Vincente on the part of the dancer of such grave +importance, that Charles Abbott momentarily lost his composure. +"Vincente!" he exclaimed awkwardly. "Was that the other brother? But +he is dead." + +"Not yet," she replied. "It is planned for tonight, after dinner, when +he is smoking in the little upper salon." + +Agitated, at a loss for further protest, he rose. He must go at once +to the Escobars, warn them. "You will admit now that I have been of +use," La Clavel was standing beside him. "And it is possible, if +Vincente Escobar isn't found, and Ceaza discovers that you were here, +that--" she paused significantly. "I am the victim of a madness," she +declared, "of a Cuban fever." But there was no time now to analyse the +processes of her mind and sex. + +"I'll be going," he said abruptly. + +"Naturally," she returned; "but what about your coming back? That will +be more difficult, and yet it is necessary. Ah, yes, you must pretend +to be in love with me; it will be hard, but what else is there? A +dancer has always a number of youths at her loose heels. + +"You will be laughed at, of course; the officers, Santacilla and +Gaspar, will be unbearable. You will have to play the infatuated fool, +and send me bouquets of gardenias and three-cornered notes, and give +me money. That won't be so hard, because we can use the same sum over +and over; but I shall have to read the notes to my protectors in the +army." + +"I'll be going," he repeated, gathering his stick and gloves from the +floor. She asked, with a breath of wistfulness, if he could manage a +touch of affection for her? Charles Abbott replied that this was not +the hour for such questions. "The young," she sighed, "are glacial." +But that, she proceeded, was exactly what drew her to them. They were +like the pure wind along the eaves under which she had been born. "I +promise never to kiss you again, or, if I must, solely as the mark of +brotherhood. And now go back to--to Andres." + +She backed away from him, superb in the shawl, and again she was rayed +in the superlative beauty of her first appearance. The woman was lost +in the dancer, the flesh in the vision, the art. + +"You could be a goddess," Charles told her, "the shrine of thousands +of hearts." The declaration of his entire secret was on his lips; but, +after all, it wasn't his. There was a possibility that she had lied +about Vincente, and at this second he might be dead, the Volunteers +waiting for him, Charles Abbott, below. + + * * * * * + +Hurrying through the Paseo Isabel to the Prado, Charles, looking at +his watch, found that it was nearly six. Carmita Escobar and Narcisa, +and probably Domingo, were driving perhaps by the sea or perhaps +toward Los Molinos, the park of the Captain-General. At any rate the +women would be away from the house, and that, in the situation which +faced the Escobars, was fortunate. If what La Clavel said were true, +and Charles Abbott now believed her implicitly, the agents of the +Crown would be already watching in the Prado. Vincente must be +smuggled away; how, he didn't yet see; but a consultation would result +in a plan for his escape. The servant who opened the small door in the +great iron-studded double gate, though he knew Charles Abbott well, +was uncommunicative to the point of rudeness. He refused to say who of +the family were at home; he intimated that, in any case, Charles would +not be seen, and he attempted to close him out. + +Charles, however, ignoring the other's protests, forced his way into +the arch on the patio. He went up the wide stairs unceremoniously to +the suite of formal rooms along the street, where, to his amazement, +he found the Escobar family seated in the sombreness of drawn +curtains, and all of them with their faces marked with tears. +Surprised by his abrupt appearance they showed no emotion other than +a dull indifference. Then Andres rose and put his hand on Charles' +shoulder, speaking in a level grave voice: + +"My dear Abbott, Vincente, our brother, has made the last sacrifice +possible to men. He died at noon, sitting in his chair, as a result of +the fever." + +This was tragic, but, with a deeper knowledge of the dilemma facing +them, Charles was actually impatient. "What," he demanded, "are you +going to do with the body?" + +"It is placed in dignity on a couch, and we have sent to Matanzas for +a priest we can trust. He'll be here early in the morning, and then, +and then, we must forget our love." + +"You must do that now, without a minute's loss," Charles urged them. +"You can wait for no priest. The Spanish Government knows he is here; +tonight, after dinner, he was to have been taken. The house will be +stood on its roof, every inch investigated. You spoke, once, of +Narcisa, what might horribly swallow you all. Well, it has almost +come." + +Andres' grip tightened; he was pale but quiet. "You are right," he +asserted; "but how did you find this out, and save us?" That, Charles +replied, was of no importance now. What could they do with Vincente's +body? Carmita, his mother, began to cry again, noiselessly; Narcisa, +as frigid as a statue in marble, sat with her wide gaze fastened on +Charles Abbott. "What?" Domingo echoed desperately. It was no longer a +question of the dignity, the blessing, of the dead, but of the +salvation of the living. Vincente's corpse, revered a few minutes +before, now became a hideous menace; it seemed to have grown to +monumental proportions, a thing impossible to put out of sight. + +Undoubtedly soldiers were watching, guarding the house: a number of +men in nondescript clothes were lounging persistently under the rows +of Indian laurels below. A hundred practical objections immediately +rose to confront every proposal. Carmita and Narcisa had been sent +from the room, and a discussion was in progress of the possibility of +cutting the body into minute fragments. "If that is decided on," +Domingo Escobar declared, with sweat rolling over his forehead, "I +must do it; my darling and heroic son would approve; he would wish me +to be his butcher." + +Andres, harder, more mature, than the elder, stopped such expressions +of sentiment. It would make such a mess, he reminded them; and then, +how far could the servants, the hysterical negroes, be depended upon? +They would soon discover the progress of such an operation. + +Charles suggested fire, but the Spanish stoves, with shallow cups for +charcoal, were useless, and the ovens were cold; it would create +suspicion to set them to burning so late in the day. "Since we can't +get rid of it," Charles declared, "we must accept it. The body is +there, but whose is it? Did you send a servant to Matanzas?" + +Two had gone, riding, once they were beyond Havana, furiously. A +Jamaican negro, huge and black, totally unlike Vincente, and a Cuban +newly in the city, a mestizo, brought in from the Escobars' small +sugar estate near Madriga. Andres at once appropriated Charles' idea. +Their mother and Narcisa, he proclaimed, must go out as usual for +their afternoon drive, and he would secure some clothes that belonged +to Juan Roman, the servant. No one in the back of the house, luckily, +had seen the riders leave. Judged more faithful than the rest, they +had been sent away as secretly as possible. + +"What," Charles Abbott asked, "caused his death?" Andres faced him +coldly. "This pig of a countryman I killed," he said. "The Spanish +will understand that. They have killed a multitude of us, for +nothing, for neglect in polishing the back of a boot. It will be +more difficult with the servants,--they are used to kindness, +consideration, here; but they, too, in other places, have had their +lesson. And I was drunk." + +In spite of Charles' insistence, he was not permitted to assist in the +carrying out of the details that followed. He sat, walked about, alone +in the drawing-room. After an interminable wait he heard the report, +faint and muffled by walls, of a pistol, and then running feet passed +the door. Domingo appeared first, a glass of brandy in his shaking +hand: + +"He has gone, in a sack, to be thrown into the sea ... the blood hid +his face. Ah, Jesu! But it was successful--a corporal looked, with the +hundred doblons I pressed into his hand. He kicked the body three +times, thrust a knife into it, and said that there, anyhow, was one +less Cuban." Andres entered the room and, without speech, embraced +Charles, kissing him on either cheek; and soon Carmita Escobar and +Narcisa, with their parasols and embroidered gloves, returned from +their drive. + +They could do nothing but wait for what impended, and Charles Abbott +related to Andres the entire scene with La Clavel. "I believe in +her," he concluded. Andres agreed with him. "Her plan is excellent," +he pronounced; "it will be very hard on you, though. You will be fed +on insults." That, Charles protested, was nothing. "And, worse still, +it will end our companionship. You will be able no longer to go about +with Jaime and Remigio and me. Yes, that, so soon, is over. What was +left of our happiness together has been taken away. We are nothing now +in ourselves. How quickly, Charles, we have aged; when I look in the +glass I half expect to see grey hair. It is sad, this. Why did you +leave your comfort and safety and come to us? But, thank God, you did. +It was you who saved us for the present. And that, now, is enough; you +must go back to the San Felipe. Put on your best clothes, with a rose +in your buttonhole, and get drunk in all the cafes; tell anyone who +will listen that La Clavel is more superb than Helen of the Greeks, +and buy every Spanish officer you see what he may fancy." + +As Charles Abbott left the Escobar dwelling a detachment of Cuban +Volunteers on horse, and a file of infantry, their uniform of brown +drilling dressed with red collars and cuffs, had gathered across its +face. "Quien vive?" a harsh voice stopped him. "Forastero," Charles +answered sullenly. He was subjected to a long insolent scrutiny, a +whangee cane smote him sharply across the back. He regarded the men +about him stolidly; while an officer, who had some English, advised +him to keep away from suspected Cubans. But, at last, he was released, +directed to proceed at once to Anche del Norte Street, where his +passport would be again examined. Charles prepared slowly for dinner +at the Dominica; and, when he was ready to go out, he was the pattern +of a fashionable and idle young tourist. But what filled his mind was +the speculation whether or not the Escobars would remember to prevent +the return of Juan Roman with the priest from Matanzas. + + * * * * * + +Nothing, considering the aspirations of Charles Abbott, could have +been more ironical than the phase of life he entered upon the +acceptance of La Clavel into the party of independence. The entire +success of this dangerous arrangement depended on his ability to +create an impression, where he was concerned, of unrelieved vapidity. +He was supposed to be infatuated with the dancer; and he lingered, +not wholly sober, about the fashionable resorts. Charles sent her +flowers; and, sitting in his room on the roof of the San Felipe, he +composed, in a cold distaste, innumerable short variations on the +theme of a fluid and fatuous attachment. In reality, he had been +repelled by the actuality of La Clavel; he had an unconquerable +aversion for her room with its tumbled vivid finery, the powdered +scents mingling with the odors of her body and of the brandy always +standing in a glass beside her. Yet the discrepancy between the woman +herself and the vision she had bred continued to puzzle and disconcert +him. + +When they were together it was this he preferred to talk about. At +times she answered his questioning with a like interest; but all, +practically, that she understood about herself, her dancing, had been +expressed in their first conversation upon that topic. The rest, at +best, was no more than a childlike curiosity and vanity. She had an +insatiable appetite for compliment; and, sincere in his admiration for +her impersonal aspect, Charles was content to gratify her; except +when, in spite of her promise, she kissed him ardently. This never +failed to seriously annoy him; and afterwards she would offer him a +mock apology. It detracted, he felt, from his dignity, assaulted, +insidiously, the elevation of his purpose in life. + +He cherished a dislike, part cultivated and part subconscious, for +women. All his thoughts and emotions were celibate, chaste. Such a +scene had just ended, La Clavel was at her glass, busy with a rouge +pot and a scrap of soft leather; and Charles was standing stiffly by +the door. She had used, in describing him, a Spanish word about the +meaning of which he was not quite clear, but he had an idea that it +bore a close resemblance to prig. That specially upset him. At the +moment his dislike for her almost broke down his necessary diplomacy. +In an island of men desirous of her least favor--her fame transcended +seas and reached from coast to coast--he only, thinking less than +nothing of his privilege, had an instant unchallenged access to her. + +He knew, carefully watched, all her various dependents: Calixto Sola, +the hairdresser, a creature with a sterile face constantly twisted +into painful grimaces; he was an employee in a barbering shop on +Neptune Street, too volatile for any convictions, but because of a +spiteful, injured disposition, not to be trusted. Then there was La +Clavel's maid, Jobaba, a girl with an alabaster beauty indefinitely +tainted by Africa. She was, Charles decided, the most corrupt being he +had ever encountered. Her life away from the St. Louis was incredibly, +wildly, debauched. Among other things, she danced, as the mulata, the +rumba, an indescribable affair; and she had connections with the rites +of brujeria, the degraded black magic of the Carabale in Cuba. She was +beautiful, with a perfection of grace, except for the direct gaze of +her brown eyes, which revealed an opacity, a dullness, like mud. She +was, even more than to La Clavel, the servant of Santacilla; she +reported, the dancer told Charles, every possible act and speech of +her mistress to the Spaniards, who, in return, supplied her with a +little money and a load of biting curses. + +The chambermaid who attended La Clavel's room had lost a lover with +the forces of General Agramonte, and was of use to Charles; without +knowledge of the hidden actuality she yet brought him, unread, +communications for the patriotic party; and she warned him of +Santacilla's presence and uncertain humors. The laundress had been, in +her youth, an actress in the cheap local theatres, and, when she was +not sodden with drink, showed an admirable devotion to her famous +patron by the most delicate feats imaginable in ironing. She was +almost purely Spanish and had only a contempt for the Cubenos. + +While Charles Abbott's duty was, on the surface, direct and easy, it was +complicated by the need for a constant watchfulness, a wit in countless +small details. Supporting, well enough, the boredom of his public +role, he had to manage with an unfailing dexterity the transmission of +the information that came to the insurrectionists through La Clavel. +These facts she gathered through the unguarded moments of Ceaza y +Santacilla's talk--he was close to the Captain-General and had +important connections at Madrid--and, at prolonged parties, from the +conversation of his intimates. Charles put these communications into +contracted written English sentences; in that way, even as against the +accidental chance of being, at any time, searched, he could better +convey their import; and gave them in carefully planned, apparently +incidental encounters, to any one of a score of correctly gloved and +boutonniered young men he had come to know by adroitly managed +assurances. + +Charles had formed, as well, principally in the Cafe Dominica, a +superficial familiarity with other Americans in Havana for +banking or commercial purposes. They, regarding him as immensely +rich and dissipated, were half contemptuous and half eager for the +associations, the pleasures, of his mode of life. He went, as often +as it seemed necessary, to the United States Club on Virtudes Street, +where, together with his patriots, but different from them in a hidden +contempt, he gambled, moderately and successfully. His luck became +proverbial, and, coupled with La Clavel's name, his reputation soon +grew into what he intrigued for. Often, alone on the hotel roof, +he regarded himself with an objective amazement: everything was +precisely as he had planned, hoped for, on the steamer Morro +Castle--and entirely different. + +It was probable that the death he had not, in imagination, shrunk +from, would crush him at any unexpected moment, an unpredictable slip; +but how could he have foreseen the trivial guise he would wear? +Charles was forced, it seemed to him, to ape every single quality he +hated. The spending of his money, as legitimately as though it were +exchanged for guns, on casual acquaintances and rum punches, on +gardenias that wilted and entertainment that choked him by its vulgar +banality, gradually embittered him. The insincerity of the +compliments he paid, the lying compliments to which he listened with +an ingenuous smile and an entire comprehension of their worthlessness, +steadily robbed his ideal of its radiant aloofness. + +His enthusiasm, he discovered, his high ardor, must be changed to +patience and fortitude, the qualities which belonged to his +temperament and years had to give place to those of an accomplished +maturity; the romance of his circumstance deserted the surface to +linger hidden, cherished, beneath all the practical and immediate +rest. He began to perceive the inescapable disappointing difference +between an idea, a conception of the mind, and its execution. The +realization of that, he told himself, the seduction of the lofty, the +aerial, to earth, constituted success, power. The spirit and the +flesh! And the flesh constantly betrayed the highest determinations. +How he resented, distrusted, the mechanics, the traps and illusions, +of an existence on an animal plane! + +His fervor, turned in upon itself, began to assume an aspect of the +religious; his imposed revolt from the mundane world turned his +thoughts to an intangible heaven, a spotless and immaterial hereafter. +The white facades of Havana, intolerably gold under the sun and +glimmering in the tropical nights, the procession and clamor of the +Dia des Reyes, the crowded theatres, the restaurants where, with no +appetite, he ate as little as possible--began to appear vague, +unsubstantial. What, so intently, was on every hand being done he +thought meaningless. Where, originally, he had been absorbed in +bringing relief to countless specific Cubans, he now only dwelt on a +possible tranquility of souls, a state, like that promised in the +Bible, without corruption and injustice and tears. + + * * * * * + +These considerations particularly occupied Charles Abbott waiting +inside the door of Santa Clara Church for La Clavel, who was coming to +the eight o'clock morning mass. Outside, the day was still and very +hot, intolerably blazing, but the darkened interior of the church, the +air heavy with incense, was cool. An intermittent stream of people +entered--the white and gilt of a Spanish naval uniform was followed by +gay silks, a priest passed noiselessly, like a shadow; an old woman +with a rippling fire of jewels made her way forward, across the wide +stone floor, with the regular subdued tap of a cane. The impending +celebration of the mass gathered its activity, its white and black +figures, about an altar. Suddenly Charles envied the priests in their +service of an ideal embodied in a spiritual Trinity. Even Cuba +vanished from the foreground of his thoughts at the conception of a +devotion not alone to an island, a nation, but to all the world of +men. His interest, measured with this, was merely temporal, limited. + +Compared with the Protestant influences of his birth and experience, +the separation of religion from society, the all-absorbing gesture and +the mysticism of the Roman church offered a complete escape, an +obliteration, of the individual. But, as he dwelt upon this, he +realized that, for him, it was an impossibility. He might be a +Franciscan, begging his way, in brown bagging and sandals, through a +callous world for which he ceaselessly prayed; or one of the heroic +Jesuits of the early French occupation of the Mississippi Valley. Yet +these, as well, were no more than pictures, designs in a kaleidoscope +which, immediately turned, would be destroyed in a fresh pattern. He +was brought back to reality by the swinging of the heavy curtain at +the door; a segment of day, like a white explosion of powder, was +visible, and La Clavel proceeded to the font of holy water. As he +joined her she complained: + +"You should have held it for me in your palm; what barbarians the +Americans and English are." She was, characteristically, dressed as +brightly as possible, in a mauve skirt with an elaborately cut flounce +swaying about yellow silk stockings, a manton of white crepe de Chine +embroidered with immense emerald green blossoms; her hair piled about +its tall comb was covered with a mantilla falling in scallops across +her brilliant cheeks. In the church, that reduced so much, she was +startling in her bold color and presence. + +A negro, whom Charles recognized as a servant at the St. Louis, +followed her with a heavy roll and a small unpainted chair with a +caned seat. Before the altar, under the low pointed arches of the +transept, he spread out a deep-piled Persian rug--where La Clavel +promptly kneeled--and set the chair conveniently for her. Her devotion +at an end, the dancer rose and disposed herself comfortably. The +constant flutter of a fan with sandal wood sticks stirred the edge of +her mantilla. After she had scrutinized the worshippers about them, +she turned to Charles, speaking in a guarded voice. + +He listened with an intense concentration, in the careful preliminaries +of a difficult act of memory, asking her, when it could not be +avoided, to repeat facts or names. They were, now, concerned with the +New York Junta, involved tables of costs, and La Clavel was palpably +annoyed by the unaccustomed necessity of a strict mental effort. She +raised her eyebrows, shot an inviting glance at an interested man of +middle age, and shut and opened her fan by an irritable twist of the +wrist. Watching, weighing, her mood, Charles abruptly brought her +recital to an end. + +"That is enough for the present," he decided. + +"My choice infant," she retorted, "your air of being my director is +comic. And I could wish you were not so immaculate, so unworldly--you +are tiresome more often than not. I could scream with laughing +when I think you are supposed to be my servant of love." The +striking of a silvery bell interrupted her with the necessity for a +reverence. The mutter of prayer was instantly lost in echoless +space. The genuflexions of the priests and acolytes were rapid. +"This secrecy," she went on, "is against my disposition, unnatural. +I am a woman in whom the complete expression of every feeling is +not only a good but a necessity. There are times when I must, it +seems, give way to my hatred of those perfumed captains. I sit beside +Santacilla, with his hand on my knee, and, hidden by my skirt, my +fingers are wedded to the knife in my stocking. A turn, a sweep of +the arm ... there is a tearing cut I learned in the mountains." + +The prayers, the Latin invocations, grew louder with the symbolized +miracle of transubstantiation, the turning back of the bread and wine +into the humility and forbearance of Christ. + +Charles Abbott was still, pale and remote; and the heat of La Clavel's +words died before the vision of an eternal empire of souls irrevocably +judged. She sank forward again, the knotted fringe of her manton +spread out beyond the rug, upon the stone. After a little he told her +that her courage, her daring and patience, were magnificent. But she +replied that they were cold virtues. "All virtues are cold," Charles +assured her seriously. If that were so, La Clavel whispered, her cheek +close to his, she was lost to virtue. Anyhow, she didn't believe him, +he could not, at his age, know so much. Yet not, God comprehended, +that he wasn't both virtuous and cold; any other man in the world, not +a heathen, would have flung himself at her. Charles said wearily: + +"We have been over this before, and you know that I do not care for +women. What I was a few years ago--" + +"A baby," she informed him. + +"What I was a few years ago," he repeated with dignity, "is no +longer true of me. I belong body and spirit to the cause of which +you are aware. And if I didn't it would be, in many respects, no +different--science and the liberation of a people are all one, +selfless." + +"I left the knife out of my present toilet," she sighed. "It would be +a charity to free you from the shape you hate so dearly." + +"I must go back to the San Felipe and write what you told me," +he proceeded. "I understand that Santacilla has gone out on a +slaughtering party, and I'll have to take you around in the +evening. There are zarzuelas in the Tacon Theatre this evening, +and afterwards, I suppose, dulces upstairs at the Tuileries. +It's no good, though, expecting me for Retreta--I've got to have +some time to recover and sleep: four o'clock last night, with a +pack of imbeciles, and three the night before. The smell of +Jamaica rum and limes makes me sick." + +The mass was over, the people scattering, and, once more cheerful, she +laughed at him. "You might wear a hair shirt," she suggested; "they +are splendid for the soul." He handed her, without reply, into the +small victoria, one of the first in Havana, which had taken the place +of her volanta. In the sun, her shawl, her smile, were dazzling. A +knot of men gathered, gazing at her with longing, regarding Charles +Abbott with insolent resentment and wonder; how, their expressions +made clear the thought, could that insignificant and colorless +foreigner, that tepid American, engage and hold La Clavel, the glory +of Cuba and Spain? + +She drove away, shielding her eyes with the fan, and Charles returned +slowly, on foot, to the hotel, reaching it in time for the eleven +o'clock breakfast. Bolting his door, closing the high shutters of his +glassless window, he lay down tired and feverish. The vendors of +oranges cried, far off, their naranjes, naranjes dulces. The bed, +which had no mattress, its sacking covered by a single sheet, the +pillow stuffed hard with cotton, offered him little rest. His body, +wet with sweat, twisted and turned continually, and sleep evaded him; +its peace almost within his grasp, it fled before the hot insistence +of his thoughts. The uncomfortable flesh mocked and dragged at the +spirit. It occurred to him suddenly, devastatingly, that he might fail +in his purpose; the armor of his conviction of invincibility fell +from him with the semblance of a loud ringing. + + * * * * * + +Of all the disturbing elements in Charles Abbott's present life the +one which, it had seemed, must prove most difficult, Santacilla and +his friends, troubled him least. There was, in their jeering, a +positive quality to be met; his own necessary restraint furnished him +with a sustaining feeling of triumph, stability; in his control, the +sacrifice of his dignity, his actual pride, damaged by La Clavel, +was restored. He acted the part of the infatuated, ubiquitous +youth, he thought, with entire success. It had been hardest at +first--Santacilla, who pretended to find Charles under his feet like +a dog, threatened, if he didn't stay away from the St. Louis, to +fling him down the long flight of stairs descending from the +dancer's room. + +This, Charles wholly realized, was not an idle boasting. Seated, +it might be, quietly against the wall, outside the immediate +circle about La Clavel, the officers, the Spanish grandees in +Cuba for pleasure or for the supervision of their copper mines at +Cobra, Charles would watch, study, Ceaza y Santacilla, finding in +him the epitome of the Spain he himself hated. What, principally, +was evident about the officer with the heavy short neck, the +surprising red hair, and small restless blue eyes, was cruelty of +an extraordinary refined persistence. He had, unexpectedly in his +sheer brutal bulk, a tormenting spirit, a mental abnormality, +rather than the to-be-looked-for mere insensate weight of his fist. +He was, Charles discovered, the victim of disordered nerves, his +gaze, his thick hands or shoulders, were never still, and his lips +had a trick of movement as if in the pronunciation of soundless +periods. + +He spoke, even to La Clavel, abruptly, mockingly; his tenderest +words, addressed to her with a sweeping disregard of whoever could +overhear, were hasty, introspective rather than generous. More +frequently he was silent, redly brooding. It was evident to the most +casual understanding that Santacilla was, by birth, association and +ideas, an aristocrat of the absolute type fast disappearing. It was +his power that, in a world largely affected by the ideal of +Christianity, he was ruthless; in an era of comparative humanity he +was inhuman. There was, about him, the smell of the slow fires of +the Inquisition, of languid murder, curious instruments of pain. +Charles recalled a story of the Spanish occupation of Cuba--how the +soldiers in armor cut and stabbed their way through a village of +naked, unprepared and peaceable bodies. + +That, until he had known Santacilla, had been incomprehensible--a page +of old history; but now Charles understood: he could see the heavy +figure with a darkly suffused face hacking with a sword. He was +insane, Charles Abbott told himself; in other circumstances he'd be +soon convicted of a sensational murder, quickly hanged or put in an +asylum. But in Havana, as an officer of the Crown quartered on a +people he held in less esteem than the cattle whose slaughter he +applauded in the bull ring, nothing, practically, limited his mad +humors. Yes, here, in the West, he was Spain, the old insufferable +despotism, and Charles thought of Santacilla's necessary end as coldly +as though the soldier were no more than a figment of the doomed old +injustice. + +La Clavel was seated with Charles Abbott in the upper room of the +Tuileries, when Santacilla slid into an unoccupied chair beside them. +They were eating mantecados, frozen sweetened cream, and Santacilla +dropped a number of battered Cuban coins, small in denomination, into +Charles' half consumed ice. + +"If you were a man," he said, "you could break them up with your +teeth." + +The other quietly put the plate away and lighted a cigarette. He +smiled, as if in appreciation of his humor, at the officer. + +"But I'll bet you twenty doblons you can't break one," he added. + +Santacilla replied that he was considering having Charles Abbott +deported. + +"You are so dangerous," he explained, with the grimace that served him +as a smile. "I often consult with our Captain-General. 'This Abbott,' +he says; 'Agramonte is nothing, but I am afraid of him. He is wise, he +is deep.' And then we think what can be done with you--a tap on the +head, not too hard and not far from the ear, would make you as gentle +as a kitten. I have had it done; really it is a favor, since then you +would forget all your trouble, the problems of state. You'd cry if I +raised a finger at you." La Clavel interrupted him to swear at his +degraded imagination. "And the figure in the jota!" he turned to her. +"You know that the Spaniards of birth have, as well as their own, the +blood of the Moriscos. What they were, what the East is, with women, +I beg you to remember. + +"This new treatment of women is very regrettable. I am a little late +for absolute happiness; too late, for example, to fasten your tongue +with a copper wire to the tongue across the table from you. Lovers, +you see, joined at last." He talked while he ate, in a manner wholly +delicate, minute fragile dulces, cakes, glazed in green and pink, and +ornamental confections of almond paste. Unperturbed, La Clavel found +him comparable to a number of appalling objects and states. Coarse, +was all that he replied. + +"You are a peasant, a beast, and what you say is merely stupid. There +this Abbott is your superior--he has a trace, a suspicion, of blood. I +am wondering," he was addressing Charles again. "It seems impossible +that you are as dull as you appear; there is more, perhaps, than meets +the eye. Your friendship with the Escobars broke up very suddenly; and +you never see Floret and Quintara with his borrowed French airs. They +are nothing, it is true, yet they have a little Castilian, they are +better than the avaricious fools at the United States Club. Of course, +if you are in love with this cow gone mad, a great deal is accounted +for." He wiped his fingers first on a serviette and then on a sheer +web of linen marked with a coronet and his cipher. + +"Pah!" he exclaimed, looking at the dancer, "your neck is dirty +again." + +Sick with disgust, his blood racing with a passionate detestation, +Charles Abbott laughed loudly. But he was relieved that Santacilla's +attention had been shifted from him. Another officer, a major of the +Isabel regiment, tall and dark and melancholy, joined them. He ignored +Charles completely, and talked to La Clavel about her dances--the +Arragonese jota and those of the other provinces of Spain. He had, it +developed, written an opera on the subject of de Gama and a fabulous +Florida. Santacilla grew restive at this and gazed about the room +maliciously. Then, suddenly, he rose and walked to the table where a +young Cuban exquisite was sitting with a girl slender and darkly +lovely. Santacilla leaned over, with his hands planted on their table, +and made a remark that drove the blood in a scarlet tide to the +civilian's face. Then the Spaniard amazingly produced from his sleeve +a ball of lamb's wool such as women use to powder their faces, and +touched the girl's nose lightly. He went to another table and repeated +his act, to another and another, brushing all the feminine noses, and +returned, unchallenged, to his place. + +"If I had been with any of those women," he related comfortably, "and +the King had done that, there would have been a new king and a new +infanta." + +The musical Spaniard, inappropriately in uniform, remonstrated, "A lot +of them will kill you some night in the Paseo de Valdez or on the +quays." + +Santacilla agreed with him. "No doubt it will overtake me--if not +here, then on the Peninsula. A hundred deaths, all distressing, have +been sworn upon me." Charles Abbott's expression was inane, but, +correcting that statement, he said to himself, "A hundred and one." + +La Clavel yawned, opening to their fullest extent her lips on superb +teeth and a healthy throat. + +"I have, at least, a sponge, a basin of water," she proclaimed +indirectly. + +Santacilla replied, "You think nothing can cleanse me, and, in your +chattering way, you are right; except, it may be, that last twist of +steel or ounce of lead. Some of my soldiers are planning to manage it; +I know them well, and I gave one an opportunity today: I stood with my +back to him in the parapet of the Twelve Apostles for three, five, +minutes, while he tramped and fiddled with his musket, and then I put +him in a hole in the stone for a year." + + * * * * * + +The other Spanish officer, Gaspar Arco de Vaca, Santacilla's closest +companion, observed toward Charles an air of profound civility, and +his pretence was more galling than Santacilla's morbid threats and +exposed contempt. De Vaca was, in temperament and appearance, purely +Iberian: he was of middle height, he carried his slender body with an +assured insulting grace, and had a narrow high-boned face, a bigoted +nose and a moustache like a scrolling of India ink on a repressed and +secretive mouth. Charles often encountered him in the Fencing School +on the Prado, across from the Villa Nueva Theatre. The officers of +Isabella congregated there late in the afternoon, where they occupied +all the chairs and filled the bare room with the soft stamp of their +heels and the harsh grinding of engaged buttoned steel. The foils, +however, were not always covered: there had been some fatalities from +duelling in the sala de Armas since Charles Abbott had been in Havana; +a Cuban gentleman past sixty had been slain by a subaltern of +seventeen; two officers, quarreling over a crillo girl, had sustained +punctured lungs, from which one had bled to death. + +The Cubans, it was made evident, were there by sufferance, and the +fencing master, Galope Hormiguero, an officer who had been retired +from a Castilian regiment under the shadow of an unprovoked murder, +made little effort to conceal his disdain of the Islanders. Charles he +regarded without interest: he was a faithful student, and made all the +required passes, engaged the other beginning students, with +regularity; but even he saw that he would never be notably skilful +with the foil or rapier or broadsword. Charles had a delicate sense of +touch, he bore himself firmly, his eye was true; he had the appearance +of mastery, but the essence of it was not in him. His heart, +Hormiguero frequently told him, was like a sponge; he wasn't tempered +to the commanding of death. + +He agreed, silently, that he wasn't a butcher; and as for his +heart--time would show its material. Meanwhile he kept up the waist +and forearm exercises, the indicated breathing, gaining, if not a +different spirit, a harder and cured body. The room was large, with +the usual high windows on a balcony, and strips of coco-matting over +the tiled floor. A light wooden partition provided dressing space, the +chairs were carried about hither and there, and the racks of foils +against the walls reflected the brightness of day in sudden long +shivers like other and immaterial blades. It had been, originally, a +drawing-room, the cornice was elaborate, and painted on the ceiling +were flying cupids and azure and cornucopias of spilling flowers. + +At moments of rest, his chest laboring and arms limp at his sides, +Charles Abbott would stare up at the remote pastoral of love and Venus +and roses. Then the clamor, the wicked scrape of steel, the sharp +breaths, the sibilant cries that accompanied the lunges, would appear +wholly incomprehensible to him, a business in a mad-house; he'd want +to tear the plastron, with its scarlet heart sewn high on the left, +from his chest, and fling it, with his gauntlet and mask, across the +floor; he'd want to break all the foils, and banish Galope Hormiguero +to live among the wild beasts he resembled. He was deep in such a mood +when de Vaca's considerate tones roused him. "Positively," he said, +"you are like one of the heroes who held Mexico on the point of his +sword or who swept the coast of Peru of its gold. And you are idle, +for you see no one who can hold the mat with you." + +"In reality," Charles replied, "I fence very awkwardly. But you have +often seen me, I haven't any need to tell you that." + +"That can never be established without experience," the Spaniard +asserted; "I should have to feel your wrist against mine. If you will +be patient, if you will wait for me, I'll risk a public humiliation." + +Charles Abbott said evenly: "I'd be very glad to fence with you, of +course." + +When de Vaca, flawlessly appointed, returned, Charles rose steadily, +and strapped on his mask, tightened the leather of the plastron. A +murmur of subdued amusement followed their walking out together onto +an unoccupied strip--de Vaca was a celebrated swordsman. Charles +saluted acceptably, but the wielding of the other's gesture of +courtesy filled him with admiration. The foils struck together, there +was a conventional pass and parry, and from that moment Charles Abbott +lost control of his steel. At a touch from de Vaca, scarcely +perceptible, his foil rose or fell, swept to one side or the other; a +lunge would end in the button describing a whole arc, and pointing +either to the matting or the winged and cherubic cupids. The laughter +from the chairs grew louder, more unguarded, and then settled into a +constant stream of applause and merriment. + +Disengaged, he said in tones which he tried in vain to make steady, +"You have a beautiful hand." + +De Vaca, his eyes shining blackly through wire mesh, thanked him in +the politest language known. He began, then, to make points, touches, +wherever he chose--with a remarkably timed twist he tore the cloth +heart from Charles' wadding; he indicated, as though he were a teacher +with a pointer, anatomical facts and regions; de Vaca seemed to be +calling Charles' attention, by sharp premonitory taps, to what he +might have been saying. There were now a number of voices encouraging +and applauding him; he was begged not to be so hard upon Gaspar; and +it was hoped that he was not giving way to the venting of a secret +spite. A nerveless parry in tierce brought out a tempestuous +support-- + +His arm was as heavy, as numb, as lead, the conventional period had +been ignored, and his torment went on and on. His chest, he thought, +must burst under the strapped plastron, and sweat poured in a sheet +across his eyes. The episode seemed utterly meaningless, undemanded; +the more remarkable because of de Vaca's indifference to him, to all +the trivialities of his Cuban duty. How yellow the face was, the eyes +were like jet, through the mask. Then Charles Abbott grasped what, he +was certain, was the purpose of such an apparently disproportionate +attack. It was the result of a cold effort, a set determination, to +destroy what courage he had. He gazed quickly about, and saw nothing +but Spanish faces; the fencing master was in the far end of the room, +intent upon a sheaf of foils. At any moment de Vaca could have +disarmed him, sent his steel flying through air; but that he forebore +to do. Instead he opposed his skill, his finesse, his strength, in the +attack upon Charles Abbott's fibre. + +"If I collapse," Charles told himself, "it will be for eternity." + +Any sense of time was disintegrated in a physical agony which required +all his wasting being to combat. But, even worse than that, far more +destructive, was the assault upon his mind. If he crumbled ... he +thought of himself as dust, his brain a dry powder in his skull. The +laughter around him, which had seemed to retreat farther and farther, +had ceased, as though it had been lost in the distance. The room, +widening to an immensity of space, was silent, charged with a +malignant expectancy. Soon, Charles felt, he would fall into +unreckoned depths of corrupt shadows, among the obscene figures of the +hideously lost. + +The sweat streaming into his mouth turned thick and salt--blood, from +his nose. There was a tumult in his head: his fencing now was the mere +waving of a reed. Again and again the Spaniard's foil, as cruelly and +vitally direct as at the first pass, struck within Charles' guard. The +face of wood, of yellow wood, the eyes that were bits of coal, behind +the mask, pursued him into the back of his brain. It stirred, there, a +smothering instinct, a dormant memory, and Charles, with a wrenching +effort, in a voice thin like a trickle of water from a spigot, said +again, "--a most beautiful hand." + +Sharply, incomprehensibly, it was over. Drooping forward upon his +knees, dropping his foil from paralysed fingers, he saw de Vaca, with +his mask on an arm, frowning. + +"Now," Charles Abbott thought luxuriously, "I can faint and be damned +to them." + +The cloud of darkness which flowed over him was empty of the vileness +of fear; rather, like the beneficence of night, it was an utterly +peaceful remission of the flesh. + + * * * * * + +His physical exhaustion, the weariness of his mind, continued in a +settled lassitude through the following day. He was to see Andres +Escobar, give him what information he had had from La Clavel, the next +morning at the baths of the Campos Eliseos; and meanwhile he scarcely +stirred from the San Felipe. Charles, for the time, lacked the bravado +necessary for the sustaining of his pretence. His thoughts, turned in +upon his own acts and prospects, dwelt quietly on his determination. +He had changed appreciably during his stay in Havana; even his +physiognomy was different how, he couldn't say, but he was aware that +his expression had, well, hardened. The cure which had been the +principally hoped-for result of Cuba was complete. In spite of his +collapse in the fencing school, he was more compactly strong than ever +before. It occurred to him that, now, he might be described as a man. + +This brought him a certain pleasure, and, in keeping with that state, +he tried to simplify, to comprehend, the idealism which dominated him. +He didn't want to grasp vainly at rosy clouds. His first attitude, +one of hardly more than boyish excitement, had soon become a deep +impersonal engagement--he had promised himself to Cuba. That will was +stronger than ever; but the schooling of the past weeks, together with +the stiffening of his spirit, had bred a new practicality in him, +superior, he felt, to any sheer heroics. He vastly preferred the +latter, he hadn't totally lost the inspiring mental picture of a +glorious sacrifice; but he had come to the realization that it was +more important to stay alive. What, in reality, he was trying to do +was to see himself consecutively, logically. + +In this, he recognized, his mind was different from the Escobars', +from the blind fervor of the many Cuban patriots he knew. He could see +that reflected in their manner toward him: no trace of Vincente's +aloofness remained, they had come, forgetting his comparative youth, +his alien blood, to regard him with almost an anxiety of respect. +When it was possible, men of the widest possible activities talked +to him of their plans. In short, Charles Abbott felt that he might +become a power; and this he coolly set himself to bring about. His +heritage was that of success; there were distinguished men, who had +carried alone heavy responsibilities to their justified end, no more +than two or three generations behind him. His mother, he thought +gladly, surveying her in the clearness of a full detachment, had an +astonishing courage of spirit. Charles told himself that he would +have to become a politician; his undiminished idealism, without which +his validity was nothing, must be shut into his heart, held purely +for the communication of its force and for his own benefit. + +The simple path of truth, of partisan enthusiasm, must be put aside. +The uncalculating bravery of the men gathered about General Agramonte +was of indispensable value; but undirected, with no brain to make +secure, to put into operation, the fire they created, that would come +to little. He wished that his connection, his duty, with La Clavel was +over, that he could delegate it elsewhere, but, obviously, for the +moment, that was impossible. It merely remained for him, then, to take +no unpondered chances, never again to be drawn into such a situation +as he had faced with Gaspar Arco de Vaca. + +Before such a sharp decision, a certain amount of his sheer joy +evaporated: it was less inspiring to be cautious than daring. The +Cubans themselves, always excepting Andres, had lost an appreciable +amount of their glamour for him. They were, now, units, elements, to +be managed, to be tranquilized, steadied, moved about. All this, of +course, was yet to come; the recognition of him was instinctive rather +than acknowledged. But, he repeated to himself, it was forming, +spreading. That, then, was the shape, the actuality, of his vision--to +establish himself indispensably at the fore of a Cuban liberty, +incipient, dreamed of, and accomplished. All his thoughts dropped, +almost with the audible smooth clicking of meshed steel gears, into +place. The last degree of joy was replaced by a fresh calm maturity. +He would never, it was obvious, be a leader of soldiers, and he had no +desire to become the visible head of government; no, his intention was +other than that of Carlos de Cespedes. He viewed his future self +rather as a powerful source of advice with a house on the Prado. It +was curious how coldly, exactly, he planned so much; and he stopped to +examine his ambition even more closely and to discover if it were +merely absurd. + +It struck him that it might be he had lost too much, that already he +had become selfish, ambitious for himself, and he recalled the +religious aspect so quickly gone. No, he decided, his effort was +to bridge that space, already recognized, between desire and +realization. Anyhow, he determined to speak of this as well to +Andres during their bath. The April temporale lay in an even heat +over the city, and the end of the Paseo Isabel was crowded by the +quitrins of women, the caleseros, in their brilliant livery, sleeping +in whatever shade offered. The Escobars had a private bath, but +Andres preferred the larger bano publico, where it was possible to +swim, and there Charles found him. The basin had been hollowed from +the coral rock; it was perhaps eighteen or twenty feet square, and +the height of the water, with a passage for a fresh circulation cut +in the front wall, was level with the calm reach of the sea. + +The pool, as clear as slightly congealed and cooled air, open to the +horizon, was roofed, with a railed ledge and steps descending into the +water, and Andres Escobar sat with his legs half immersed. He greeted +Charles conventionally, concealing the pleasure which shone in his +eyes. + +"I stopped at your dressing-room," Charles Abbott told him; "anything +might be taken from the pockets of your coat." + +The converse of this possibility, that something had been put into a +pocket, he conveyed. Andres nodded indifferently. The other slid into +the water, sinking and swimming beneath the surface to the farther +end. It was delicious. Swimming was his only finished active +accomplishment; and, with a half concealed pride, he exhibited it in +skilful variations. Even the public bath, he felt, was too contracted +for the full expression of his ability. In addition to this, it was +necessary to talk confidentially to Andres. And so, with a wave of his +arm, he indicated the freedom of the sea beyond. + +Andres Escobar followed him over the stone barrier, and together they +swam steadily out into the blue. Finally, they rested, floating, and +Charles diffidently related what was in his heart. His friend, less +secure in the water, listened with a gravity occasionally marred by a +mouthful of sea. + +"You are right," he agreed, when Charles had finished. "Although you +have put it modestly, I think--many of us admit--that you may be a +strong man in Cuba. Indeed, I have heard it said that you should go +back to America, and put more intensity into the Junta. Naturally I +should regret that, but we must all do what, in the end, is best. +Charles, there is a great deal of water under and around us, and I +should feel better nearer the Campos Eliseos." + +"Wait," Charles Abbott replied with a touch of impatience; "you are +quite safe, there is no tide at present." Floating in the calm +immensity, his arms outspread, his face, at once burned by the sun and +lapped by water, turned to the opposed azure above, he drew in +accession after accession of a determination like peace. Nothing +should upset what he had planned. There was a stir beside him--Andre +Escobar was returning to the shore, and lazily, thoughtfully, he swam +back. The Cuban left immediately, for breakfast; but Charles lingered +in the pool, lounging upon the wooden grilling with a cigarette. One +by one the bathers went away. The sky, the sea, were a blaze of blue. +The clatter of hoofs, the caleseros' departing cries, sounded from the +Paseo. "Charles Abbott," he repeated his own name aloud with an accent +of surprise. What, whom, did it describe? He gazed down over his +drying body. This, then, was he--the two legs, thin but sufficiently +muscular, the trunk in a swimming suit, the arms and hands! His hidden +brain, his invisible mind, was himself as well; and, of the two, the +mind and the body, the unseen was overwhelmingly the more important. +He remembered how, fencing with de Vaca, the body had failed him +utterly; de Vaca, attacking his will, was contemptuous of the other +... and his will had survived. Rising, he felt that he commanded +himself absolutely; he had no sympathy, no patience, for frailty, for +a failure through the celebrated weaknesses of humanity: hardness was +the indispensable trait of success. + + * * * * * + +The whole of reasonably intelligent life, Charles discovered, was +disrupted by the ceaseless clash of two utterly opposed ideas, +emotions. There was, first, the need in the individual to serve, +to justify, himself, to maintain his integrity; and, as well, +there was the duty--at least, it was universally called a duty--of +a self-sacrifice for love. The failures of superior men came largely, +he was certain, in the breaking down of the first through the second. +A man, for example, put into motion the accomplishment of his own +demand, and then was appalled by the incidental price, but more to +others than to himself. Yes, love betrayed men. The Escobars were, +inseparably, Cuba, they were happily merged, lost, in one supreme +cause; yet the superiority of their hearts over the head endangered +their dearest preoccupation. They saw symbols as realities, they +wrongly valued emotion more highly than reasoning. + +And further, Charles returned to himself, if he had consulted and +listened to his parents, if his love of home had outweighed his +singular vision, he would be nothing now but an unimportant drifting +figure. His parents had had more knowledge of life than he; +undoubtedly their counsel, in the main, was correct, safe. That word, +safe, was it specially. The instinct of his mother was to preserve, to +spare, him; to win for him as smooth a passage through life as was +procurable. She had her particular feminine idea of what, in her son, +spelled solid accomplishment; and, with all her spirit, it was +material in so far as it was visible: position in a settled community, +the money necessary for an existence both dignified and ornamental, a +"nice" wife--another devoted sheltering soul such as herself--and +well-behaved handsome children. The inner qualities she demanded for +him were faith, honesty, and fidelity. + +Her vision of a broad close-cut lawn and grey stone house with pillars +and a port-cochere, his wife, in silks and chaste jewels, receiving a +polite company in the drawing-room, was admirable. In it he would be +gray-haired and, together with an increasing stoutness, of an assured +dignity. His children would worship his wisdom and paternal +benevolence, and the world of affairs would listen to him with +attentive respect. It was, unquestionably, an impressive conception. +Every detail was excellent, but he cared for, revered, none of them. + +He didn't want to be safe, to decline softly to a soft old age, a +death smothered in feathers. More than anything else his desire was to +live intensely, to ride, upright, the crest of a thunderous wave. He +hated, now, every phase of a decent suburban smugness. Someone else +was welcome to the girl designated, by his mother, to be his wife. +Someone other than himself might sit across the dinner-table from her, +week after week, month after month, year after year, and watch her +stereotyped face beyond the cut flowers; another might listen to the +interminable gabble about servants and neighbors and dresses and +cards. The children would be differently, more appropriately, +fathered; his, Charles Abbott's, potential children were gathered into +an ideal that was, too, an idea. It must be served, realized, within +the dimensions of his own bone and fibre; it was exclusively his, his +the danger, the penalty and the reward. Charles would not have had it +different, even if, although none existed, he had any choice. + +He must, however, prepare himself against the betrayal he was able +to trace so clearly in others; there could be no faltering, no +remorse; he was cut off from the ordinary solaces, the comfortable +compactness, of general living. But, already, temperamentally, he +liked, preferred, this; alone, never for a minute was he lonely. +The inattention to home, primarily the result of a new scene and of +exciting circumstances, had grown into an impersonal fondness for +his family; he failed to miss them, to wish for their presence. The +only element that remained from the past was his love for Andres +Escobar; he confronted it valorously, deposed it from his mind, but +it clung around his heart. How fortunate it was that Andres could +not detach him from his resolve; it was unthinkable that one should +stand in the way of the other. + +These reflections occupied his mind at various times and places: one +day in the American Consulate on Obispo Street; again at the steamship +office on Mercaderes; over his cigarette and cheese and jelly at the +Noble Havana; strolling along Ricla Street where the principal shops +were congregated; at a dinner party in the Palace of the Conde de +Santovernia. He was aloof. All the activity that absorbed the people +among whom he went was to him trivial, utterly of no consequence. +Sometimes he would walk through the stalls of the Mercado de Cristina, +on the Plaza Vieja, or in through the Honradez factory on Sol Street, +where a handful of cigars was courteously given to any appreciative +visitor. He would return along the Paseo de Valdez to the park where +he had sat when he was first in Cuba, and, as then, the strains of the +military band of the Cabanas drifted across the bay. + +The dwelling of the Captain-General, with the Royal Lottery on the +ground floor, had before it sentries in red and white; the Quay de +Caballeria, reached through the Plaza of San Francisco, was tempered +and pleasant in the early dusk, and at the Quay de Machina was a small +garden with grotesque rosy flamingoes and gold-fish in the fountain. +He sat, as well, lonely, considering and content, in the Alameda de +Paula, where, by the glorieta, it was called the Salon O'Donnell. The +moats, filled with earth, truck gardens, the shore covered with sugar +pans, engaged his absent-minded interest. With the improvement of his +Spanish, he deserted the better known cafes and restaurants, the +insolence of the Castilian officers, for modest Cuban places of food, +where he drank Catalan wine, and smoked the Vegueros, the rough +excellent plantation cigars. + +This new mood, he was relieved to find, gave his acquaintances as much +amusement as his public dissipation--it was ascribed to the predicted +collapse of his love affair with La Clavel. She was, he was rallied, +growing tired of his attentions; and, in the United States Club, he +was requested not to drown himself, because of the trouble it would +cause his country. Captain Santacilla, however, studied him with a +growing ill-humor; his peculiar threats and small brutalities had +stopped, but his temper, Charles recognized, was becoming dangerous. +He declared frankly, in the Cafe Dominica, that Charles wasn't the +fool he appeared, and he repeated his assertions of the need for a +deportation or worse. + +This was a condition which, sooner or later, must be met, and for +which Charles prepared himself. Both Cubans and Spaniards occasionally +disappeared forever--the former summarily shot by a file of muskets in +a fosse, and the latter, straying in the anonymous paths of +dissipation, quieted by a patriotic or vindictive knife. This, it +seemed to Charles Abbott, would be the wisest plan with Santacilla; +and he had another strange view of himself considering and plotting a +murder. The officer, who had an extraordinary sense of intangible +surrounding feelings and pressures, spoke again to Charles of the +efforts to dispose of him. + +"The man doesn't draw breath who will do it," he proclaimed to +Charles, at the entrance to the Valla de Gallo. "It's a superstition, +but I'd back it with my last onza of gold. I've seen it in you very +lately, but give it up. Or don't give it up. Either way you are +unimportant. I can't understand why you are still here, why I permit +you to live. If I remember it I'll speak to my sergeant, Javier Gua: +he performs such an errand to a nicety. I have taken a dislike to you, +very unreasonably, for you are no more than a camarone. I believe, for +all your appearance of money, that La Clavel supports you; it is her +doblons, I am certain, you gamble away and spend for food." + +Charles Abbott smiled at the insult: + +"On one hand I hear that she has thrown me over and then you say that +she supports me. Which, I wonder, is to be preferred? But neither, +fortunately, is true. I can still buy her a bouquet of camellias and +she will still wear it. As for the money, I never lose at gambling, +Santacilla, I am always successful; the cards are in my favor. If I +bet on the black, it turns up; and when I choose the red, affairs are +red." + +Santacilla's uneasy eyes shifted over him suspiciously. "Blood and +death, that is what black and red are," he said. "But you are not the +dispenser of fate." The peak of his cockaded hat threw a shadow over +his sanguine face to the chin. "A camarone," he repeated, "a stalk of +celery. Gua, and I'll remember to tell him, will part you from your +conceit." There was a metallic crowing of roosters as the officer +turned away. + + * * * * * + +La Clavel noticed a marked difference in Charles, but proclaimed that +it was no more than an increase in his natural propensity for +high-mindedness. It fatigued her, she declared, to be with him, made +her dizzy to gaze up at his altitude of mind. He was seated in her +room, the hairdresser was sweating in the attempt to produce an effect +she was describing to him with phrases as stinging as the whip of +foils, while Charles watched her with a degree of annoyance. Her +humors, where he was concerned, were unpredictable; and lately she had +found a special delight in attacks on his dignity. She said and did +things--an air of innocence hiding her malice--indecently ribald that +shook his firmest efforts to appear, to be, unconcerned. + +At last, in a volatile rage, she dismissed the servant with his tongs +and pomatum and crimping leads, and swore to Charles Abbott that she +was going to the Argentine by the first boat that offered passage. + +"I am sick of Cuba, and I've forgotten that I am an artist, and that +is bad. You are wrapped up in this liberty, and that is very well for +you, an ordinary person. You must have something like that, outside +you, to follow, for you've very little within. But me, I am not an +ordinary person; I am La Clavel. I am more valuable to the world than +pumpkins or republics. I stamp my heel," she stamped her heel, a clear +sharp sound, and her body swept into a line passionate and tense, "and +I create a people, a history." La Clavel secured the castanets lying +on her dressing-table--in answer to their irritable rhythmic clinking +she projected, for an instant, a vision of all desire. + +"I can make men forget; I can draw them out of their sorrows and away +from their homes; I can put fever in their blood that will blind them +to memories and duty. Or I can be a drum, and lead them out, without a +regret, a fear, to death. That is more than a naranjada or a cigar or +an election. And, because of what I have given you, I have put that +out of my life; I have been living like the mistress of a bodega. To +be clear, Charles, I am tired of you and Cuba, and I have satisfied my +hatred of the officers with cologne on their handkerchiefs." + +"I understand that perfectly," Charles Abbott assured her; "and I +cannot beg you to stay. Whatever your motive was, your value to us has +been beyond any payment. If our movement had a saint, you would fill +that place." + +She laughed, "A strange saint in a manton and slippers with painted +heels." + +"Much better," Charles replied, "than many of those in sanctified +robes. I had the feeling, too," he proceeded, "that our usefulness +together was coming to an end." It seemed to him that again she had +become the glorified figure of the stage, his dislike for her +actuality, her flesh, vanished, leaving only profound admiration. + +"I am amazed," she said, in a lingering half humorous resentment, +"that you never loved me, I never brought you a regret or a longing or +made any trouble in your heart." + +"That was because I put you so high," he explained. She raised her +shoulders and objected that it was late for compliments. + +"Be honest--you didn't care for me. You ought to be very successful, +you have things surprising in the so young. Will you," she demanded +suddenly, totally changing the subject, "be my maid?" He hastened to +inform her, vehemently, that he would not. "Jobaba hasn't come today," +La Clavel continued; "and she wasn't here to dress me for dinner last +evening. That is unusual in her: I have a feeling she is not coming +back." + +"Perhaps she has been murdered in one of the brujos cabildos," Charles +suggested. "It is impossible to say where that frenzy stops." A +happening quite different, the dancer told him, was in her mind. + +"I could never get into the thoughts of Jobaba," she admitted. "And +there is very little I miss. I suppose it's the negro. She is like +cream, smooth and beautiful to look at, but turned by thunder." If she +were going away, Charles reminded her, there were a number of things +to be discussed and closed. And she told Charles how a Cuban, +ostensibly attached to the national party, but in reality a Spanish +secret agent, had been sent into Camagueey. His name was Rimblas. + +Charles Abbott repeated that, and memorized such characteristics as La +Clavel knew. There was an indefinite stir at the door, a short knock, +and he moved to the window as Santacilla entered unceremoniously. + +The Spaniard was a model of politeness, of consideration, and he +listened, seated with his hands folded about the head of his officer's +cane, to La Clavel's determination to go to South America. It was an +excellent plan, he agreed; they would welcome her rapturously in +Buenos Aires; but hadn't she put off her intention a little too long? +It was on account of the climate, the season, he hastened to add. +Although, of course, they would open the opera house for her, the +smart world would come in from their estancias. + +"But what will our young American do?" he demanded. "How will he live +without his delight? But perhaps he is going to the Argentine with +you. He will have a busy time, and a hatful of challenges there, where +beauty is appreciated to the full." + +Charles said, with an appearance of sullenness, that he hadn't been +invited to go farther south; and Santacilla replied that, as a matter +of fact, it might be necessary for him to remain, perhaps forever, in +Havana. He spoke cheerfully, gazing amiably upon them, but a vague +quality of his bearing, his voice, was disturbing, mocking. His words +had the air of an underlying meaning different from their sound. An +uneasiness, as well, was communicated to La Clavel: she watched +Santacilla with an indirect puzzled gaze. + +"Jobaba has gone," she announced abruptly. + +The trace of a smile hovered about the officer's expression of regret. +"A personable clip of hell," was his opinion of the strayed maid. "Do +you remember the major who composed music?" he addressed La Clavel. +"Well, he was always a little touched in the brain, and he caught this +negro hysteria, he became a brujos. He'd come home in the morning with +his body marked in yellow chalk, and wrung out like a boatman's +sponge; and he let drop a fact or two about your Jobaba screaming to +an African drum rubbed with the fingers. In that state, he said, a +great deal that was curious and valuable could be dragged from her. We +encouraged his madness, at the Cabanas, for what it brought us. But it +was unfortunate for him--he ties bright rags about his ankles and +mumbles, when he thinks he is alone." + +Charles Abbott's mind, sifting all that the other said, was abnormally +active, sharp. Something, he couldn't quite grasp what, was acutely, +threateningly, wrong. He had a sense of impending danger, a +premonition of dashing sound, of discord. And, whatever developed, he +must meet it, subdue and conquer it. Ceaza y Santacilla, he saw, was +not visibly armed; but, probably, he would carry a small pistol. The +one his father had given him was in Charles' pocket. The difficulty +was that, in the event of a disturbance, no matter what the outcome +here might happen to be, the dancer and he would bear the weight of +any Spanish fury. And it was no part of his intention to be cut in +half by bullets behind a fortress wall. + +He could only delay, discover as soon as possible what was behind +Santacilla's deceiving patience and good humor. Upon that he would +have to act without hesitation and with no chance of failure. The +regiment should, the dancer complained, send her maid back to her. +Manners were very much corrupted beyond the western ocean--in Sevilla +the servant would have been dispatched in a bullock cart deep in +roses. That, he answered, reminded him of another procession, a +different cart; but it was more French than Castilian--the tumbril. + +He was seated against a wall at a right angle from the door, and +Charles left the vicinity of the window, lounging across the room. La +Clavel said, "I know you so well, Ceaza, what is it; what is it you +are saying and saying without speaking of? Your mind is like a locked +metal box that shows only the flashes on the surface. But you must +open it for us. It seems as though you were threatening me, and that, +you best should realize, is useless." + +His flickering eyes rested first on her and then upon Charles Abbott. +"You will never get to South America now," he asserted; "for you are a +conspirator against your King. Since you have shown such a love of +Cuban soil you are to become a part of it forever." + + * * * * * + +Charles Abbott, now standing by the door, shot in the bolt which +secured it, and, by a fortunate, a chance, twist, broke off the +handle. Santacilla, undisturbed, remained seated, smiling while his +fingers played with the plaited loop of his cane. + +"This infatuation," he indicated them with a wave, "while it convinced +Havana, never entirely satisfied me. I have been watching you, Jobaba +has been listening, for days. You were very cunning, but, in the end, +you failed; you were neither skilful nor patient enough. Yet, at the +last, all that you heard were fairy tales--the spy that was sent to +Camagueey, ha!" + +La Clavel faced him calmly, but, Charles saw, she was pale. He was +revolving a hundred impractical schemes: they had only one end, the +death of Santacilla, but how that was to be brought about with safety +to Cuba evaded him. + +"I am not a traitor in the way you mean," she declared; "what your +conceit never allowed you to note was that, in Spain and here, I have +always detested you; and what I did was the result of that. I struck +at you and not at our country, for the court and church and army are +no longer our strength--if we still have any except the knife and +cord--but our weakness." + +"Fools," he asserted, unmoved. + +"And now you are the fool," she added. + +"No, you are wrong; I am only enjoying myself before the show is over. +I wanted to see you, and your young devotee, twist and turn before the +fact of death. I have killed, and seen executed, a number of people, +men and women; but I was still curious--a great dancer and a rich +young American. That is an unusual day." + +It was best, Charles Abbott decided, to bring about as much as +possible with no more delay; the prime necessary act accomplished, +they could face the problems of the immediate future steadily. He +quietly produced his pistol and levelled it. The dry click which alone +followed the pulling of the trigger made the officer aware of the +attempt upon his life. A dark angry surge invaded his face, and then +receded. "No man will ever kill me," he repeated. "It is my star." A +hand left the cane and produced a small gold whistle. + +Charles stared dully at the useless weapon, with its mounting of +mother-of-pearl, which he still held. + +"The cartridges have been too long in their barrels," Santacilla +explained; "they have dried and shifted. You should have greased them +every week." + +La Clavel stood, lost in thought, like a woman in a dream. Her hair, +over which she had spent such time and curses, was an elaborate +silhouette against the light. "Ceaza, Ceaza," she implored, going to +him, "you must let me go and dance in Buenos Aires, they have never +seen me there, it is necessary to my career." She was close beside +him, when he rose suddenly, pushing the chair between them. + +"You Andalusian devil!" he cried, and put the whistle to his lips. +Before he could blow, the dancer had flung herself on him, with an arm +bound about his neck, a hand dragging at his throat. The whistle fell, +the chair was brushed aside, and the man and woman, in a straining +desperate grip, swayed into the middle of the floor. + +Charles, driven by an inherited instinct to protect La Clavel, to +replace her in such a struggle, caught at either of the locked +shoulders; but, whirling in the passion of their strife, they struck +him aside. He made another effort to pull Santacilla to the floor, +without success; and then, with a small stout chair in his hands, he +waited for an opportunity to bring it crashing on the officer's head. +He was appalled by the fury of the woman silently trying to choke her +enemy; her other hand, grasping the thin glimmer of the knife always +convenient in her stocking, the officer held away from them. Her years +of dancing, her early hardening life in the mountains, had given her a +strength and litheness now tearing at the weight, the masculinity, of +Santacilla. He was trying, in vain, to break her wrist, to close his +fingers into her throat; and, bending, the fragility of her clothes +ripped across her sinuous back. Shifting and evading the thrust of his +power, she was sending the blood in purple waves over his neck and +thick cheeks. Neither of them cried out, spoke; there was only the +sound of hoarse breathing, inarticulate expressions of unendurable +strain. Charles Abbott, raising, holding poised, the chair, and +lowering it, was choked with the grappling horror before him. + +La Clavel's face was as blanched as the officer's was dark, her eyes +were wide-open and set, as though she were in a galvanic trance. Again +and again Santacilla tried to tear away her arms, to release himself +from the constriction at his neck. His fingers dug red furrows through +her flesh, they tormented and outraged her. A palm closed upon her +countenance, and blood ran from under it. But there was no weakening +of her force, no slackening in her superb body. She seemed curiously +impersonal; robbed of all traits of women; she was like a symbolical +fate, the figure from a shield, from an emblem, dragging him to +death. + +Then, suddenly, in an inadequate muffled voice burdened with a +shuddering echo of fear, he cried for her to release him. It was so +unexpected, he became so inexplicably limp, that La Clavel backed away +instinctively. Charles started forward, the chair lifted high; but he +was stopped by the expression, the color, of Ceazy Santacilla's face. +The officer turned, with his hands at his throat, toward the window. +He took an uncertain step, and then stood wavering, strangely +helpless, pathetically stricken. + +"The air," he whispered; "hot as wine." He pitched abruptly face +forward upon the floor. + +La Clavel tried to speak against the labored heaving of her breast, +but what she attempted to say was unintelligible. Charles, slipping +back the broken bolt with a finger in its orifice, listened intently +at the door. The Hotel St. Louis was wrapped undisturbed in its +siesta; no alarm had been created. Santacilla lay as he had fallen, an +arm loosely outspread, a leg doubled unnaturally under its fellow. He +bore the laxness, the emptiness, of death. He had spoken truly that it +wasn't in his star to be killed by a man. Finding that he was still +holding the chair, Charles put it softly down. "Well," he said, "the +revolution is through with him." + +He glanced suddenly at La Clavel. She was drooping, disheveled and +hideous; her hair lay on her bare shoulders in coarse strands; her +face was swollen with bruises. Now, he realized, she would never see +the Argentine; she would never again hear the shouted oles that +greeted, rewarded, the brilliancy of her jota. His thoughts shifted to +Cuba and himself--if it were a crime of passion that had been +committed in her room, the cause, there, would be freed from +suspicion. He had, as customary, come directly, unostentatiously, to +her room, and he was certain that he had not been observed. A duty, +hard in the extreme, was before him. + +"Why did you bring about Santacilla's death?" he demanded. She gazed +at him dully, uncomprehendingly. "It was because he was jealous," he +proceeded; "you must hold to that." She nodded, dazed. "When they come +into the room and find him you must show what he did to you. And, +after all, you didn't kill him. Perhaps that will save you," his voice +was without conviction. "They won't believe you, and they may try +measures to get at the truth; but you will be faithful. You will keep +your secret, and--and I must go. I shall ask for you downstairs, make +them send up a servant, and shout as loudly as any." + +She held up her battered countenance dumbly and, with a feeling of +transcendent reverence, he kissed her cut lips. Thrown across the end +of the bed, the shawl she had danced in, blazing with gay color, cast +the reflection of its carmines and yellows on the calcimined wall. It +was like a burst of the music which accompanied her dancing. The +castanets lay on the floor. The blessed saint of Cuban independence! +Then the caution that had become a part of his necessity rode +uppermost: he proceeded silently to the door, and, closing it behind +him, went, meeting no one, to the ground floor, where he pulled +irritably at the wire hanging from a bell under the ceiling. The raw +jangle brought a servant, a rosy-cheeked Gallego boy, heavy with +sleep, who went stumbling up the stairs on Charles' errand. + + * * * * * + +In his own room a wave of physical horror swept over Charles Abbott; +he was obliged to sit down, and the chair, the floor, seemed to rock +at the giddy sickness of the memory of Santacilla, stumbling with a +wine-colored face toward the window in a vain gasping for air, for +life. He recovered slowly: notwithstanding the death of Tirso +Labrador, the wasted shape of Andres' brother, all the tragedies he +had heard reported, it was not until now that he realized the entire +grimness of the undertaking against Spain. The last possibility of the +spectacular departed, leaving him with a new sense of the imminence of +death. He had considered this, under certain circumstances welcoming +it, or dismissing it with a creditable calmness, many times before; +but then his attitude had been softened by the detachment, the +impersonality, of his view. But at last the feeling of death was +tangibly at his own throat; not today, nor tomorrow, probably; but +inescapably. Well, he assured himself, he wouldn't, at that intense +moment, fail an inner necessity; but his understanding gave him an +additional feeling of the accidental aspects of life and of the Cuban +revolution. + +Until then he had, sub-consciously, except for one short depression, +been certain of the ultimate triumph of right; he had thought it must +succeed through its mere rightness; and he had pictured justice as a +condition dropped beneficently from the clouds, wrought with the +thunder of angels' wings. But accomplishment on earth, with men, he +now saw, was neither safe, easy nor assured. It was the result of +bitter struggle, a strife open to the most appalling mischances. A +necessity of the spirit, it must be executed in the flesh, and flesh +was a treacherous, unstable substance; it was capable not only of +traitorous betrayals, but equally of honest, and no less fatal, +failures. With this in his thoughts he went to the door, in answer to +a knock, and received a heavy carefully tied parcel. + +He opened it, and, dripping in dazzling color from the wrapping paper, +was La Clavel's manton, the one in which he had first seen her +insolently dancing the jota. Charles, with a stirred heart, searched +carefully for a note, a scrap of revealing paper; but there was none. +She had sent it to him silently, before she had been taken away, in a +sentiment the delicacy of which deeply moved him. He laid the shawl +over the bed, where its cruel brilliancy filled the white-walled room, +darkened against the heat, with flashes of magenta and orange and +burning blue. La Clavel had worn it dancing, where it emphasized her +grace and perversity and stark passion; it had been, in Charles +Abbott's mind, synonymous with her, with the vision she created; but, +suddenly, it lost that significance, and he saw it as the revealed +outspread pattern of his own existence. + +The shawl was a map, a representation, of the country of the spirit +through which he passed; such emotions, such heat, and such golden +roses, all had been, were, his against that background of perilous +endeavor. It seemed to float up from the bed and to reach from coast +to coast, from end to end, of Cuba; its flowers took root and grew, +casting about splendor and perfume; the blue widened into the sky, the +tenderness of the clasping sea; the dark greens were the shadows of +the great ceiba trees, the gloom of the jungles, the massed royal +palms of the plains. And not only was it the setting, the country, its +violent dissonances became cries, victorious or hopeless, the sweep of +reddened swords, the explosions of muskets. There was the blood that +had welled into the Laurel Ditch of Cabanas; and, as well, the sultry +mysterious presence of Africa in the West--the buzzing madness of the +music of the danzon, the hysterics of brujeria. + +Charles, at the heart of this, stood enveloped, surrounded, by a drama +like the sharp clash of cymbals. It was easy to be overwhelmed, +strangled, blinded, by the savage color; briefly to be obliterated. +That possibility had been, lately, very much in his mind; and he +wondered, against all his recent change, if, in the surrender of his +idealism, he had lost his amulet, his safety. While he had, to a large +extent, solved, for himself, the philosophy of conduct, cleared the +motives of his acts, a great deal was inexplicable still. He saw, +dimly, that there could be little hope of justice on any island except +as the projection, the replica, of a fundamental universal integrity +of justice. Perfection like that couldn't begin on the rim of being +and extend inward; it must be at the center of all life, obscured, +delayed, but, in an end not computable in the span of human existence, +certain and inevitable. Charles Abbott now had the feeling that, +parallel with the maintaining of his grasp on materialism, his +recognition of the means at his hand, there should be an allegiance to +a supremacy of the immeasurable whole. + +That double vision, the acceptance of a general good together with the +possibility of extreme ill to the individual, puzzled him. He was +required to put faith in a power seemingly indifferent to him, to +discharge a responsibility in return for which nothing that he could +weigh was promised. Charles recalled what had overtaken the dancer, La +Clavel, in payment for a heroic effort against an insupportable +oppression. Disaster had met the body, the flesh; what occurred in +the spirit he was unable to grasp; but this, suddenly, breathlessly, +he saw: + +La Clavel's bitter defiance, her mountain-born hatred of oppression, +her beaten but undefiled body, had communicated to him something of +her own valor. It was as though she had given him a palm, a shielded +flame, to add to his own fortitude. In all probability she would, +soon, be dead; Charles correctly gauged the Spanish animosity; and yet +she was alive, strong, in him. She would be living; it was Ceaza y +Santacilla who had died, been vanquished; his abnormal refinement +dropping so easily into the bestial, the measure of evil, in him, for +which he stood, had been slain, dissipated, ended. The shawl +contracted, became a thing magnificent but silk, a manton invested +with a significance brave and surprisingly tender. It was, now, the +standard of La Clavel, the mantle of the saintliness he had +proclaimed. His doubts, his questioning, were resolved into the +conviction that the act of the dancer was her spirit made visible, +created tangibly for a tangible purpose, and that, there, she was +indestructible. + +With that conclusion to serve as a stay and a belief, a philosophy of +conduct, he returned from the extra-mundane to the world. Charles +thought of La Clavel's desire to dance in Buenos Aires, for South +America. He wondered how old she was; he had never before considered +her in any connection with age; she had seemed neither old nor young, +but as invested with the timeless quality of her art. She had spoken +often of her girlhood, but no picture of her as a girl had formed in +his mind. It was conceivable that, in more stable circumstances, she +would have grown old, become withered with the peculiar ugliness of +aged Spanish women; but that, too, he could not realize. Somehow, La +Clavel's being was her dancing, and what had gone before, or what +might have followed, were irrelevant, unreal; they were not she. He +understood, now, her protest against being absorbed, involved, in +anything but her profession. + +He became conscious of the sustained gravity of his thoughts, how his +activity had been forced from the body to his mind; and that recalled +to him the necessity for a contrary appearance. It would be wise for +him to go to the Cafe Dominica that evening, in an obvious facile +excitement at his connection, at once close and remote, with the death +of Santacilla in the dancer's room. But, beyond the fact that it was +known he had dispatched the servant upstairs, and the usual wild, +thin speculations, nothing had been allowed to appear. Santacilla, it +was announced, had died naturally. La Clavel wasn't mentioned. She had +spoken to others than Charles of her determination to go to the +Argentine; and it was probable, rumor said, principally in Spanish +mouths, that she would go quietly south. At the United States Club, +the idlers and gamblers surveyed Charles with dubious looks; and, over +a rum punch, he adopted a sullen uncommunicative air. It would not do +to drop his widely advertised habits too suddenly; he could not, in a +day, change from a rake to a serious student of such books as +Machiavelli's Prince; and he prepared, with utter disgust, for his +final bow in the cloak of dissipation. + + * * * * * + +Purely by accident he met, at the Plaza de Toros, Jaime Quintara, +Remigio Florez and Andres. It was so fortunately, evidently, +haphazard, that they continued together while Charles related the +circumstances of the tragedy in La Clavel's room. The others were +filled with wonder, bravos, at her strength and courage. Someday, +Remigio swore, when Cuba was free, he would put up a monument to her +in India Park. It would be of heroic size, the bronze figure of a +dancer, in a manton, on a block of stone, with an appropriate +inscription. + +"The trouble with that," Andres objected, "is if we should live and +put up a monument to everyone who deserved it, the parks would be too +crowded with bronzes for walking. All of Cuba might have to be +commemorated in metal." + +At Neptuno Street and the Paseo Isabel they parted. Charles proceeded +alone toward the sea; and, with the knowledge that Andres had not gone +home, but would be evident in public elsewhere, he stopped to see the +other members of the Escobar family. Carmita Escobar had faded +perceptibly since Vincente's death; still riven by sorrow she +ceaselessly regretted the unhappy, the blasphemous, necessity which +made the wearing of mourning for him inadmissible. Domingo Escobar, as +well, showed the effects of continuous strain; his vein of humor was +exhausted, he no longer provoked Charles' inadequate Spanish; he +avoided any direct reference to Cuba. He was, he said, considering +moving to Paris, he was getting old and no one could complain, now, +since--. He broke off, evidently at the point of referring to Vincente +and the Escobar local patriotism. + +But Narcisa, Charles was told, had become promised to Hector Carmache, +an admirable gentleman with large sugar interests; luckily, for +Narcisa, unconnected with any political dreams. + +"She will be very happy," her mother proclaimed. + +Narcisa narrowed her eyes. "He lives on an estancia," she added, +"where there will be banana trees and Haitians to watch; and the +conversation will be about the number of arrobas the mill grinds." She +relapsed again into silence; but, from her lowered countenance, he +caught a quick significant glance toward the balcony. She rose, +presently, and walked out. Charles gazed at Domingo and Carmita +Escobar; they were sunk in thought, inattentive, and he quietly joined +Narcisa. + +"Andres has told me a great deal about you," she proceeded; "I made +him. He loves you too, and he says that you are very strong and +respected everywhere. I have had to hear it like that, for you never +come here now. And I hear other things, too, but from my maid, about +the dancer, La Clavel. You gamble, it seems, and drink as well." + +That, he replied, was no more than half true; it was often necessary +for him to appear other than he was. He studied her at length: she +had grown more lovely, positively beautiful, in the past month; the +maturity of her engagement to marry had already intensified her. +Narcisa's skirt had been lowered and her hair, which had hung like a +black fan, was tied with a ribbon. + +"How do you like me?" she demanded. But when he told her very much, +she shook her head in denial. "I ought to be ashamed," she added, "but +I am not. Did you realize that, when we were out here before, I made +you a proposal? You ignored it, of course.... I am not ashamed of what +I did then, either. Afterwards, standing here, I wanted to throw +myself to the street; but, you see, I hadn't the courage. It's better +now, that time has gone--I'll get fat and frightful." + +"This Carmache," Charles Abbott asked, "don't you like, no, love him?" +She answered: + +"He is, perhaps, fifty--I am fifteen--and quite deaf on one side, I +can never remember which; and he smells like bagasse. I've only seen +him once, for a minute, alone, and then he wanted me to sit on his +knees. I said if he made me I'd kill him some night when he was +asleep. But he only laughed and tried to catch me. You should have +heard him breathing; he couldn't. He called me his Carmencita. But, I +suppose, I shall come to forget that, as well. I wanted you to know +all about it; so, when you hear of my marriage, you will understand +what to look for." + +"That is all very wrong!" Charles exclaimed. + +In reply she said, hurriedly, "Kiss me." + +That was wrong, too, he repeated, afterward. Her warmth and tender +fragrance clung to him like the touch of flower petals. She turned +away, standing at the front of the balcony, her arms, bare under elbow +ruffles, resting on the railing. The flambeau trees in the Parque +Isabel were like conflagrations. Her head drooped on her slender neck +until it almost rested, despairingly, on the support before her. "I +hate your northern way of living," her voice was suppressed, +disturbingly mature; "I hate their bringing you into the house, only +to break my heart. Charles," she laid an appealing hand on his sleeve, +"could you do this--help me to run away? We have cousins in New York +who would receive me. If you could just get me on a steamer!" + +"No," he said decidedly, "I could not; I wouldn't even if it were +possible. What would Andres, my friend, think? It would ruin me +here." + +"If you had," she admitted, after a little, "as soon as we reached +the street, I would have locked myself about your neck like my crystal +beads. Once when I was supposed to be going with a servant to the sea +baths, I had the quitrin stop at the San Felipe, and I went up the +stair, to the roof, to your room, but you were out. You see, I am a +very evil girl." + +He agreed to the extent that she was a very foolish girl. In turn she +studied him carefully. + +"You seem to have no heart," she announced finally; "not because you +don't love me, but in affairs generally; but I can tell you a +secret--you have! It's as plain as water. What you think you +are--poof!" She blew across the open palm of her hand. + +"I hope not," he returned anxiously. "But you are too young, even if +you are to be married, to know about or to discuss such things. As +Andres' best friend I must caution you--" + +"Why did you kiss me?" she interrupted. + +He was, now, genuinely sorry that he had, but he replied that it had +been no more than the salute of a brother. "You had better go in," he +continued; "when they realize we are out here there will be a stir, +perhaps you will be put to bed." + +"I might make a scandal," she deliberated, "throw myself on you and +cry as loudly as possible." A smile appeared upon her fresh charming +lips at his expression of dismay. "Then you would have to marry me." + +"I'd have to spank you," he retorted. + +"I shall never speak directly to you again," she concluded; "so you +must remember what I say, that you are not what you'd like to be." + +She was, he thought, in spite of her loveliness, a very disagreeable +little girl. That designation, ludicrously inadequate, he forced upon +himself. With a flutter of her skirts she was gone. The afternoon was +so still that he could hear the drilling of soldiers by the shore, the +faint guttural commands and the concerted grounding of muskets. +Narcisa and her unpleasant prediction faded from his mind. Standing on +the balcony he imagined a vast concourse gathered below with upturned +faces, waiting for him to speak. He heard the round periods, the +sonorous Spanish, he delivered, welcoming, in the name of the people, +their newly gained independence, and extending to them the applause +and reassurances of the United States. + +"You have won this for yourselves," he proclaimed, "by your valor and +faith and patience; and no alien, myself least of all, could have +been indispensable to you. What I was privileged to do was merely to +hold together some of the more inglorious but necessary parts of your +struggle; to bring, perhaps, some understanding, some good will, from +the world outside. You have added Cuba to the invaluable, the +priceless, parts of the earth where men are free; a deed wrought by +the sacrifice of the best among you. Liberty, as always, is watered by +blood--" he hesitated, frowning, something was wrong about that last +phrase, of, yes--the watered with blood part; sprinkled, nourished, +given birth in? That last was the correct, the inevitable, form. The +hollow disembodied voice of the drill sergeant floated up and then was +lost in the beginning afternoon procession of carriages. + + * * * * * + +With a larger boutonniere than he would have cared to wear at home, a +tea rose, he was making his way through the El Louvre, when Gaspar +Arco de Vaca rose from a gay table and signalled for him. It was after +Retreta, the trade wind was even more refreshing than customary, and +the spirit of Havana, in the parques and paseos and restaurants, was +high. The Louvre was crowded, a dense mass of feminine color against +the white linen of the men, and an animated chatter, like the bubbles +of champagne made articulate, eddied about the tables laden with +dulces and the cold sweet brightness of ices. He hesitated, but de +Vaca was insistent, and Charles approached the table. + +"If you think you can remain by yourself," the Spaniard said +pleasantly, "you are mistaken. For women now, because of the dancer, +you are a figure of enormous interest." + +He presented Charles to a petulant woman with a long nose, a seductive +mouth, and black hair low in the French manner; then to a small woman +in a dinner dress everywhere glittering with clear glass beads, and +eyes in which, as he gazed briefly into them, Charles found bottomless +wells of interrogation and promise. He met a girl to whom, then, he +paid little attention, and a man past middle age with cropped grey +hair on a uniformly brown head and the gilt floriations of a general. +A place was made for Charles into which, against his intention, he was +forced by a light insistence. It was, he discovered, beside the girl; +and, because of their proximity, he turned to her. + +At once he recognized that she was unusual, strange: he had dismissed +her as plain, if not actually ugly, and that judgment he was forced to +recall. The truth was that she possessed a rare fascination; but +where, exactly, did it lie? She was, he thought, even younger than +Narcisa, yet, at the same time, she had the balanced calm of absolute +maturity. Then he realized that a large part of her enigmatic charm +came from the fact that she was, to a marked degree, Chinese. Her +face, evenly, opaquely, pale, was flat, an oval which held eyes with +full, ivory-like lids, narrow eye brows, a straight small nose and +lips heavily coated with a carmine that failed utterly to disguise +their level strength. Her lustreless hair, which might have been soot +metamorphosed into straight broad strands, was drawn back severely, +without ornament or visible pins, over her shapely skull. She wore no +jewelry, no gold bands nor rings nor pendants; and her dress, cut +squarely open at her slim round throat, was the fragile essence of +virginity. She attracted Charles, although he could think of nothing +in the world to say to her; he was powerless to imagine what +interested her; a girl, she had no flavor of the conceits of her +years; feminine, she was without the slightest indication of +appropriate sentiments, little facile interests or enthusiasms. From +time to time she looked at him, he caught a glimpse of eyes, blue, +grey or green, oblique and disturbing; she said nothing and ate in +infinitesimal amounts the frozen concoction of sapote before her. + +Charles Abbott hadn't grasped her name, and in reply to his further +query, she told him in a low voice that it was Pilar, Pilar de Lima. +Yes, she had been born in Peru. No, she had never been to China, +although she had traveled as far as Portugal and London. His +interest in her increased, she was so wholly outside his--any +conceivable--life; and, without words, in a manner which defied +his analysis, she managed to convey to him the assurance that he was +not impossible to her. + +He found, at intervals, fresh qualities to engage him: she had +unmistakably the ease which came from the command of money; the +pointed grace of her hands--for an instant her palm had sought +his--hid an unexpected firmness; she was contemptuous of the other +vivacious women at the table; and not a change of expression crossed +the placidity of a countenance no more than a mask for what, +mysterious and not placid, was back of it. Then, in an undertone +during a burst of conversation, she said, "I like you." She was half +turned from him, in profile, and her lips had not seemed to move. Seen +that way her nose was minute, the upward twist of her eye emphasized, +her mouth no more than a painted sardonic curl. She was as slender as +a boy of a race unknown to Charles--without warmth, without impulses, +fashioned delicately for rooms hung in peacock silks and courtyards of +fretted alabaster and burnished cedar. + +He wanted to reply that he liked her, but, in prospect, that seemed +awkward, banal; and a lull in the conversation discouraged him. +Instead he examined his feelings in regard to this Pilar from Lima. It +was obvious that she had nothing in common with the women he had +dismissed from his present and future; she was more detached, even, +than La Clavel on the stage. And when, abruptly, she began to talk to +him, in an even flow of incomprehensible vowels and sibilants, he was +startled. Gaspar de Vaca spoke to her in a peremptory tone, and then +he addressed Charles, "She'll hardly say a word in a Christian tongue, +but, when it suits her, she will sail on in Chinese for a quarter of +an hour. It may be her sense of humor, it may be a prayer, perhaps +what she says, if it could be understood, would blast your brain, and +perhaps she merely has a stomach ache." But his remonstrance had the +effect designed; and after an imperturbable silence, she said again +that she liked Charles Abbott. + +The General regretfully pushed back his chair, rose, and held out an +arm in formal gallantry, and Charles was left to follow with Pilar. +She lingered, while the others went on, and asked him if, tomorrow, he +would take her driving to Los Molinos. He hesitated, uncertain of the +wisdom of such a proceeding, when her hand again stole into his. What, +anyhow, in the face of that direct request, could he do but agree? +They must have, she proceeded, since he hadn't a private equipage, the +newest quitrin he could procure, and a calesero more brilliant than +any they should pass on the Calzada de la Reina. After all he would be +but keeping up the useful pretence of his worldliness; yet, looking +forward to the drive with her, an hour in the scented shade of the +Captain-General's gardens, he was aware of an anticipated pleasure. + +The need for caution was reduced to a minimum, it shrank from +existence; naturally he wouldn't talk to Pilar de Lima of politics, he +could not be drawn into the mention of his friends, of any names +connected in the slightest way with a national independence. It was +possible that she had been selected, thrown with him, for that very +purpose; but there his intelligence, he thought, his knowledge of +intrigue, had been underestimated, insulted. No--Pilar, de Vaca, +Spain, would gain nothing, and he would have a very pleasant, an oddly +stimulating and exciting, afternoon. The excitement came from her +extraordinary personality, an intensity tempered with a remoteness, an +indifference, which he specially enjoyed after the last few +tempestuous days. Being with her resembled floating in a barge on a +fabulous Celestial river between banks of high green bamboo. It had no +ulterior significance. She was positively inhuman. + +He met her, with an impressive glittering carriage and rider, +according to her appointment, at the end of the Paseo Tacon, past the +heat of afternoon. She was accompanied by a duenna with rustling silk +on a tall gaunt frame, and a harsh countenance, the upper lip marred +by a bluish shadow, swathed in a heavy black mantilla. Pilar was +exactly the same as she had been the evening before. The diminished +but still bright day showed no flaw on the evenness of her pallor, the +artificial carmine of her lips was like the applied petals of a +geranium, her narrow sexless body was upright in its film of clear +white. + +The older woman was assisted into the leather body of the quitrin, +Pilar settled lightly in the nina bonita, Charles mounted to the third +place, the calesero swung up on the horse outside the shafts, and they +rattled smartly into the Queen's Drive. From where he sat he could see +nothing but the sombre edge of the mantilla beside him and Pilar's +erect back, her long slim neck which gave her head, her densely +arranged hair, an appearance of too great weight. On either side the +fountains and glorietas, the files of close-planted laurel trees, +whirled behind them. The statue of Carlos III gave way to the Jardin +Botanico. + + * * * * * + +There he commanded the carriage to halt, and, in reply to Pilar's +surprise, explained that he was following the established course. "We +leave the quitrin here, and it meets us at the gates of the Quinta, +and meanwhile we walk. There are a great many paths and flowers." On +the ground she admitted her ignorance of Havana, and, followed at a +conventional distance by her companion, they entered the Gardens. +There was a warm perfumed steam of watered blossoming plants and +exotic trees; and Charles chose a way that brought them into an avenue +of palms, through which the fading sunlight fell in diagonal bands, to +a wide stone basin where water lilies spread their curd-like +whiteness. There they paused, and Pilar sat on the edge of the pool, +with one hand dipping in the water. He saw that, remarkably, she +resembled a water lily bloom, she was as still, as densely pale; and +he told her this in his best manner. But if it pleased her he was +unable to discover. A hundred feet away from them the chaperone cast +her replica on the unstirred surface of the water, in the middle of +which a fountain of shells maintained a cool splashing. + +"I should like one of those," she said, indicating a floating flower. + +"It's too far out," he responded, and she turned her slow scrutiny +upon him. Her eyes were neither blue nor gray but green, the green of +a stone. + +"That you are agreeable is more important than you know," she said +deliberately. "And de Vaca--" she conveyed a sense of disdain. "What +is it that he wants so much from you? How can it, on this little +island, a place with only two cities, be important? I must tell you +that I am not cheap; and when I was brought here, to see a boy, it +annoyed me. But I am annoyed no longer," her wet fingers swiftly left +their prints on his cheek. "Oporto and the English Court--I understood +that; but to dig secrets from you, an innocent young American," she +relapsed into silence as though he, the subject she had introduced, +were insufficient to excuse the clatter of speech. So far as he was +concerned, he replied, he had no idea of her meaning. + +"You see," he went on more volubly, "I was, to some extent, connected +with the death of Santacilla, an officer of the regiment of Isabel, +and they may still be looking for information about that." + +She assured him he was wrong. "It is Cuba that troubles them. It's in +their heads you are close to powerful families here and in North +America, and that you are bringing them together, pouring Northern +gold into the empty pockets of the Revolution. I saw at once, before I +met you, that I should waste my time, and I was going away at once ... +until you walked into the restaurant. Now it will amuse me, and I +shall take the doblons I get and buy you a present, a ruby, and, when +you see Captain de Vaca, you will wear it and smile and he will know +nothing." + +"You mustn't buy me anything," Charles protested earnestly; "I can at +least understand that, how generous you are. If you are unfamiliar +with Cuba perhaps you will let me inform you. I came to Havana, you +see, for my lungs. They were bad, and now they are good; and that is +my history here. There is no hole in them because I have been careful +to avoid the troubles on the street; and the way to miss them is not +to give them an admission. The reason I am here with you is because +you seemed to me, in yourself, so far away from all that. Your mind +might be in China." He went on to make clear to her his distrust of +women. "But you are different; you are like a statue that has come to +life, a very lovely statue. What you really are doesn't matter, I +don't care, I shall never know. But a water lily--that is enough." + +"Are you wise or no deeper than this?" she asked, indicating the +shallow fountain. "But don't answer; how, as you say, can it affect +us? You are you and I am I. We might even love each other with no +more; that would be best--it is the more that spoils love." + +"What do you know about that?" + +But, relapsing into immobility, she ignored his question. Beyond doubt +his interest in her had increased; it was an attraction without name, +yet none the less potent. Seated close beside him she still seemed to +be fashioned from a vital material other than flesh and blood; she was +like a creation of sheer magic ... for what end? They rose, leaving +the Botanical Gardens, the spotted orchids and air plants and +oleanders, for the Quinta. There they passed into a walk completely +arched over with the bushes of the Mar Pacifico, the rose of the +Pacific, a verdurous tunnel of leaves and broad fragrant pink blooms, +with a farther glimpse of a cascade over mossy rocks. + +The stream entered a canal, holding some gaily painted and cushioned +row boats, and a green-gold flotilla of Mandarin ducks. There were +aviaries of doves, about which strollers were gathered, and a distant +somnolent military guard. It was the first time for weeks that Charles +had been consciously relaxed, submerged in an unguarded pleasure of +being. Pilar might be honest about de Vaca and his purpose, or she +might be covering something infinitely more cunning. It would bring +her nothing! The very simplicity of his relationship with her was a +complete protection; he had no impulse to be serious, nothing in his +conversation to guard. + +Pilar seemed singularly young here, engaged in staring at and +fingering the flowers, reading the sign boards that designated the +various pleasances--the Wood of the Princess, the Garden of San +Antonio, the Queen's Glade. Her tactile curiosity was insatiable, she +trailed her sensitive hands over every strange surface that offered. +Then, with her airy skirt momentarily caught on a spear of bearded +grass, he saw, below her knee, under the white stocking, the +impression of a blade, narrow and wicked. La Clavel had carried a +knife in that manner, many women, he had no doubt, did; but in Pilar +its stealthy subdued gleam affected him unpleasantly. It presented a +sharp mocking contrast to all that, in connection with her, had been +running happily through his mind. + +"I thought you were a moth, soft and white," he told her; "but it +appears that you are a wasp in disguise--I hope it won't occur to you +to sting me." + +Serenely she resettled her skirt. "Did you look for a scapular? Young +men's eyes should be on the sky." Then she put an arm through his. "It +was never there for you ... a moth soft and white. But I don't care +for that." Her gliding magnetic touch again passed, like the fall of +a leaf, over his cheek. Affecting not to notice it he lighted a thin +cigar; he'd have to watch Pilar de Lima. Or was it himself who needed +care? The feeling of detachment, of security, was pierced by a more +acute emotion, a sensation that resembled the traced point of her +knife. She asked, nearing the place where they were to meet the +quitrin, when she might see him again; and mechanically he suggested +that evening, after the music in the Plaza de Armas. + +Returning to Ancha del Norte Street, his face was grave, almost +concerned, but he was made happy by finding Andres Escobar in his +room. Andres, with the window shades lowered, was lounging and smoking +in his fine cambric shirt sleeves. He had a business of routine to +communicate, and then he listened, censoriously, to Charles' account +of his afternoon. + +"She is a little devil, of course, with her gartered steel, but she +amuses me. I have the shadow of an idea that she was truthful about de +Vaca; and the ruby would be an excellent joke." + +"I cannot approve of any of this," Andres decided; "it has so many +hidden possibilities--the Spaniards are so hellish cunning. To be +candid with you, I can't understand why they have neglected you so +long. You are, Charles, fairly conspicuous. Perhaps it is because they +hope, in the end, to get information from you. In that case, if we +were in danger, I would shoot you with my own hand. Drop this Chinese +water lily; their stems are always in the mud." + +"On the contrary, you must see her," Charles Abbott insisted. "I've +explained that she can't hurt us; and we may get something floated the +other way." He was aware of an indefinable resentment at Andres' +attitude: his love for him was all that prevented the acerbity of a +voiced irritation. + + * * * * * + +Yet, when the regimental band was leaving to the diminishing strains +of its quickstep, Andres joined Charles and Pilar--who had left her +quitrin--strolling through the Plaza. As usual she said practically +nothing; but, in the gloom, she was specially potent, like a +fascinating and ironic idol to innocence; and Charles Abbott was +pleased by Andres' instant attention. Pilar was reluctant, now, to +return to the carriage, and she lingered between the men, who, in +turn, gazed down addressing remarks to the smooth blackness of her +hair or to the immobile whiteness of her face. Charles dropped behind, +to light a cigar, and when he came up to them again he had the +illusive sense of a rapid speech stopped at his approach. Andres +Escobar's countenance was lowered, his brow drawn together ... it had +been Pilar de Lima, surprisingly, who had talked. Charles recalled the +manner in which her low, even voice flowed from scarcely moving lips, +with never a shadow of emotion, of animation, across her unstirred +flattened features. + +Some Cubans gathered about the table when, later, they were eating +ices; and, gaining Pilar's consent, he left with the indispensable +polite regrets and bows. He was vaguely and thoroughly disturbed, +uneasy, as though a grain of poison had entered him and were +circulating through all his being. It was a condition he was +unfamiliar with, disagreeable in the extreme; and one which he +determined to stamp out. It hadn't existed in his contact with Pilar +until the appearance of Andres; yes, it came about from the +conjunction of the girl, Andres and himself; spilled into the clarity +of their companionship, Andres and his, her influence had already +darkened and slightly embittered it ... had affected it, Charles +added; she was powerless to touch him in the future; he put her +resolutely, completely, from his thoughts. + +He was a little appalled at the suddenness with which the poison had +tainted him, infecting every quality of superiority, of detachment, of +reasoning, he possessed. When he saw Andres again, after the interval +of a week, his heart was empty of everything but crystal admiration, +affection; but Andres was obscured, his bearing even defiant. They +were at a reception given by a connection of the Cespedes on the +Cerro. Instinctively they had drawn aside, behind a screen of +pomegranate and mignonette trees in the patio; but their privacy, +Charles felt, had been uncomfortably invaded. He spoke of this, +gravely, and Andres suddenly drooped in extreme dejection. + +"Why did you ever bring us together!" he exclaimed. "She, Pilar, has +fastened herself about me like one of those pale strangling orchids. +No other woman alive could have troubled me, but, then, Pilar is not a +woman." Charles Abbott explained his agreement with that. + +"What is she?" Andres cried. "She says nothing, she hardly ever lifts +her eyes from her hands, I can give you my word kissing her is like +tasting a sherbet; and yet I can't put her out of my mind. I get all +my thoughts, my feelings, from her as though they passed in a body +from her brain to mine. They are thoughts I detest. Charles, when I am +away from you, I doubt and question you, and sink into an indifference +toward all we are, all we have been." + +"Something like that began to happen to me," Charles admitted; "it was +necessary to bring it to an end; just as you must. Such things are not +for us. Drop her, Andres, on the Paseo, where she belongs." The other +again slipped outside the bounds of their friendship. "I must ask you +to make no such allusion," he retorted stiffly. Charles laughed, "You +old idiot," he said affectionately, "have her and get over it, then, +as soon as possible; I won't argue with you about such affairs, that's +plain." Andres laid a gripping hand on his arm, avoiding, while he +spoke, Charles' searching gaze. + +"There is one thing you can do for me," he hurried on, "and--and I beg +you not to refuse. The manton that belonged to La Clavel! I described +it to Pilar, and she is mad to wear it to the danzon at the Tacon +Theatre. You see, it was embroidered by the Chinese, and it is +appropriate for her. Think of Pilar in that shawl, Charles." + +"She can't have it," he answered shortly. + +Andres Escobar's face darkened. "It had occurred to me you might +refuse," he replied. "Then there is nothing for me to do. But it +surprises me, when I remember the circumstances, that you have such a +tender feeling for it. After all, it wasn't a souvenir of love; you +never lost an opportunity to say how worn you were with La Clavel." + +"No, Andres, it isn't a token of love, but a banner, yours even more +than mine, a charge we must keep above the earth." + +That, Andres observed satirically, was very pretty; but a manton, a +woman's thing, had no relation to the cause of Cuban independence. + +"Perhaps, but of course, you are right," Charles agreed. "Very well, +then it is only a superstition of mine. I have the feeling that if we +lower this--this standard it will bring us bad luck, it will be +disastrous. What that Pilar, you may think, is to you, the manton has +always been for me. It is in my blood; I regard it as a sailor might a +chart. And then, Andres, remember--it protected Cuba." + +"I have to have it," the other whispered desperately; "she--she wants +it, for the danzon." + +Charles Abbott's resentment changed to pity, and then to a calm +acceptance of what had the aspect of undeviating fate. "Very well," he +said quietly. "After all, you are right, it is nothing but a shawl, +and our love for each other must not suffer. I'll give it to you +freely, Andres: she will look wonderful in it." + +The other grasped his hands. "Be patient, Charles," he begged. "This +will go and leave us as we were before, as we shall always be. It +hasn't touched what you know of, it is absolutely aside from that--a +little scene in front of the curtain between the acts of the serious, +the main, piece. I doubted her honesty, as you described it, at first; +but you were right. She has no interest at all in our small struggle; +she is only anxious to return to Peru." + +"I wish she had never come from there!" Charles declared; "whether she +is honest or dishonest is unimportant. She is spoiled, like a bad +lime." + +"If you had been more successful with her--" Andres paused significantly. + +"So that," Charles returned, "is what she said or hinted to you!" +Andres Escobar was gazing away into the massed and odorous grey-blue +mignonette. "Go away before I get angry with you; you are more +Spanish than any Mendoza. The manton you'll find at home tonight." + +He was, frankly, worried about Andres; not fundamentally--Andres' +loyalty was beyond any personal betrayal--but because he was aware of +the essential inflammability of all tropical emotion. The other might +get into a rage with Pilar, who never, herself, could fall into such +an error, and pay the penalty exacted by a swift gesture toward the +hem of her skirt. Then he recalled, still with a slight shudder of +delight, the soft dragging feel of her fingers on his cheek. He tied +the shawl up sombrely, oppressed by the conviction of mischance he had +expressed to Andres, and despatched it. + +Pilar de Lima might, possibly, depart for Peru earlier even than she +hoped; boats left not infrequently for Mexico and South America--the +Argentine for which La Clavel had longed--and she was welcome to try +her mysterious arts upon the seas away from Cuba and Andres. A sugar +bag could easily, at the appropriate moment, be slipped over her head, +and a bateau carry her out, with a sum of gold, at night to a +departing ship. There would be no trouble, after she had been seen, in +getting her on board. And Charles Abbott thought of her, in her silent +whiteness, corrupting one by one the officers and crew; a vague +hatred would spread over the deck, forward and aft; and through the +cabins, the hearts, her suggestions and breath of evil touched. They +would never see Mexico, he decided; but, on a calm purple night in the +Gulf, a sanguine and volcanic inferno of blackened passion would burst +around the flicker of her blanched dress and face no colder in death +than in life. + + * * * * * + +Charles Abbott's thoughts returned continually to Andres; in the +shadowy region of his brain the latter was like a vividly and singly +illuminated figure. He remembered, too, the occasion of his first +seeing Andres, at the Hotel Inglaterra: they had gone together into +the restaurant, where, over rum punches and cigars, the love he had +for him had been born at once. It was curious--that feeling; a thing +wholly immaterial, idealizing. He had speculated about it before, but +without coming to the end of its possibilities, the bottom of its +meaning. There was no need to search for a reason for the love of +women; that, it might be, was no more than mechanical, the allurement +cast by nature about its automatic purpose. It belonged to earth, +where it touched any sky was not Charles' concern; but his friendship +for Andres Escobar had no relation to material ends. + +At first it had been upheld, vitalized, by admiration, qualities +perceptible to his mind, to analysis; he had often reviewed +them--Andres' deep sense of honor, his allegiance to a conduct free of +self, his generosity, his slightly dramatic but inflexible courage, +the fastidious manners of his person. His clothes, the sprig of mimosa +he preferred, the angle of his hat and the rake back, through an +elbow, of his malacca cane, were all satisfying, distinguished. But +Charles' consciousness of these actual traits, details, had vanished +before an acceptance of Andres as a whole, uncritically. What, once, +had been a process of thought had become an emotion integral with his +own subconscious being. + +Something of his essential character had entered Andres, and a part of +Andres had become bound into him. This, as soon as she had grown into +the slightest menace to it, had cast Pilar de Lima from his +consideration. It had been no effort, at the moment necessary he had +forgotten her; just as Andres, faced with the truth, would put her +away from him. The bond between them, Charles told himself, was forged +from pure gold. + +This was running through his head on the night of the danzon. He was +seated at the entrance of the United States Club, where the sharp +Yankee accents of the gamblers within floated out and were lost in the +narrow walled darkness of Virtudes Street. It was no more than eleven, +the Tacon Theatre would be empty yet.... Charles had no intention of +going to the danzon, but at the same time he was the victim of a +restless curiosity in connection with it; he had an uncomfortable +oppression at the vision of Andres, with Pilar in the bright shawl, on +the floor crowded with the especial depravities of Havana. + +The Spanish officers had made it customary for men of gentility to go +into the criolla festivities; they were always present, the young and +careless, the drunken and degenerate; and that, too, added to Charles' +indefinable sense of possible disaster. In a way, it might be an +excellent thing for him to attend, to watch, the danzon. If Andres +were infatuated he would be blind to the dangers, both the political +and those emanating from the mixture of bloods. At this moment the +game inside ended, and a knot of men, sliding into their coats, +awkwardly grasping broad-brimmed hats, appeared, departing for the +Tacon Theatre. A perfunctory nodded invitation for him to accompany +them settled the indecision in Charles Abbott's mind. And, a half hour +later, he was seated in a palco of the second tier, above the dance. + +Familiar with them, he paid no attention to the sheer fantastic +spectacle; the two orchestras, one taking up the burden of sound when +the other paused, produced not for him their rasping dislocated +rhythm. He was aware only of floating skirts, masks and dark or light +faces, cigars held seriously in serious mouths. Charles soon saw that +Andres and Pilar de Lima had not yet arrived. As he leaned forward +over the railing of the box, Gaspar Arco de Vaca, sardonic and +observing, glanced up and saluted with his exaggerated courtesy. He +disappeared, there was a knock at the closed door behind Charles, and +de Vaca entered. + +There was a general standing acknowledgement of his appearance; the +visor of his dress cap was touched for every man present, and he took +a vacated chair at Charles' side. "You weren't attracted to my white +absinthe," he said easily. On the contrary, Charles replied, he had +liked Pilar very well, although she had annoyed him by foolish tales +of a Spanish interest in him. + +"She is, of course, an agent," de Vaca admitted indifferently. "We +almost have to keep her in a cage, like a leopard from Tartary. She +has killed three officers of high rank; although we do not prefer her +as an assassin. She is valuable as a drop of acid, here, there; and +extraordinary individuals often rave about her. We'll have to garrotte +her some time, and that will be a pity." + +There was a flash of color below, of carmine and golden orange, and +Charles recognized Pilar wrapped, from her narrow shoulders to her +delicate ankles, in the manton. Andres Escobar, with a protruding lip +and sullen eyes, was at her side. Suddenly de Vaca utterly astounded +Charles; with a warning pressure of his hand he spoke at the younger +man's ear: + +"I am leaving at once for Madrid, a promotion has fortunately lifted +me from this stinking black intrigue, and I have a memory ... from the +sala de Armas, the echo of a sufficiently spirited compliment. As I +say, I am off; what is necessary to you is necessary--a death in +Havana or a long life at home. Where I am concerned you have bought +your right to either. You cannot swing the balance against Spain. And +I have this for you to consider. Your friend, Escobar, has reached the +end of his journey. It will accomplish nothing to inform him; he is +not to walk from the theatre. Very well--if you wish to hatch your +seditious wren's eggs tomorrow, if you wish to wake tomorrow at all, +stay away from him. Anything else will do no good except, perhaps, for +us." + +Charles Abbott sat with a mechanical gaze on the floor covered with +revolving figures. He realized instantly that Gaspar Arco de Vaca had +been truthful. The evidence of that lay in the logic of his words, the +ring of his voice. The officer rose, saluted, and left. Andres had +come to the end of his journey! It was incredible. He had not moved +from the spot where Charles had first seen him; he had taken off his +hat, and his dark faultlessly brushed hair held in a smooth gleam the +reflection of a light. + +Andres turned with a chivalrous gesture to Pilar, who, ignoring it +completely, watched with inscrutable eyes the passing men. The shawl, +on her, had lost its beauty; it was malevolent, screaming in color; +contrasted with it her face was marble. How, Charles speculated +desperately, was Andres to be killed? And then he saw. A tall young +Spaniard with a jeering countenance, in the uniform of a captain in a +regiment not attached at Havana, stopped squarely, with absolute +impropriety, before Pilar and asked her to dance. Andres Escobar, for +the moment, was too amazed for objection; and, as Pilar was borne +away, he made a gesture of denial that was too late. + +He glanced around, as though to see if anyone had observed his +humiliation; and Charles Abbott instinctively drew back into the box. +As he did this he cursed himself with an utter loathing. Every natural +feeling impelled him below, to go blindly to the support of Andres. +There must be some way--a quick shifting of masks and escape through a +side door--to get him safely out of the hands of Spain. This, of +course, would involve, endanger, himself, but he would welcome the +necessity of that acceptance. Gaspar de Vaca had indicated the price +he might well pay for such a course--the end, at the same time, of +himself; not only the death of his body but the ruin of his hopes and +high plans. Nothing, he had told himself a thousand times, should be +allowed to assail them. Indeed, he had discussed just such a +contingency as this with Andres. Theoretically there had been no +question of the propriety of an utter seeming selfishness; the way, +across a restaurant table, had been clear. + + * * * * * + +In the box the other Americans maintained a steady absorbed commenting +on the whirling color of the danzon. One, finally, attracted by the +manton on Pilar de Lima, called the attention of the others to her +Chinese characteristics. They all leaned forward, engaged by the total +pallor of her immobility above the blazing silk. They exclaimed when +she left the Spanish officer and resumed her place by Andres Escobar's +side. "Isn't that peculiar?" Charles was asked. "You are supposed to +know all about these dark affairs. Isn't it understood that the women +keep to their own men? And that Cuban, Abbott, you know him; we often +used to see you with him!" + +"Yes," Charles Abbott acknowledged, "partners seldom leave each other. +That is Andres Escobar." + +He paid no more heed to the voices about him, but sat with his gaze, +his hopes and fears, fastened on Andres and Pilar. Back again, she +was, as usual, silent, dragging her fingers through the knotted +magenta fringe of the shawl. Andres, though, was speaking in short +tense phrases that alternated with concentrated angry pauses. She +lifted her arms to him, and they began to dance. They remained, +however, characteristic of the danzon, where they were, turning slowly +and reversing in a remarkably small space. They were a notably +graceful couple, and they varied, with an intricate stepping, the +general monotony of the measure. + +Charles had an insane impulse to call down to Andres, to attract his +attention, and to wave him away from the inimical forces gathering +about him. Instead of this he lighted a cigarette, with hands the +reverse of steady, and concentrated all his thoughts upon the fact of +Cuban independence. That, he told himself, was the only thing of +importance in his life, in the world. And it wasn't Cuba--alone, but +the freedom of life at large, that rested, in part at least, on the +foundation he might help to lay, the beginning solidity of human +liberty, superiority. He forced himself to gaze with an air of +indifference at the dancing below him; but, it seemed, wherever he +looked, the manton floated into his vision. He saw, now, nothing else, +neither Pilar nor Andres, but only the savage challenging fire of +silks. The shawl's old familiar significance had been entirely +lost--here he hated and feared it, it was synonymous with all that +threatened his success. It gathered into its folded and draped square +the evil of the danzon, the spoiled mustiness of joined and debased +bloods, the license under a grotesque similitude of restraint. + +This was obliterated by a wave of affection for Andres so strong that +it had the effect of an intolerable physical pressure within his body: +his love had the aspect of a tangible power bound to assert itself or +to destroy him. With clenched hands he fought it back, he drove it +away before the memory of the other. Voices addressed him, but he paid +no attention, the words were mere sounds from a casual sphere with +which he had nothing in common. He must succeed in his endeavor, put +into actuality at this supreme moment his selfless projection of duty, +responsibility. For it was, in spite of his preoccupation with its +personal possibilities, an ideal to which he, as an entity, was +subordinated. He recalled the increasing number of destinies in which +he was involved, that were being thrust upon him, and for which, at +best, he would become accountable. So much more lay in the immediate +future than was promised--justified--in the present. + +Here, too, Andres was at fault--precisely the accident had happened to +him that he was so strict in facing for others. His absorption +wouldn't, as an infatuation, continue; or, rather, it could not have +lasted ... long. But already it had been long enough to finish, to +kill, Andres. Charles rose uncontrollably to his feet; he would save +his friend from the menace of the whole Spanish army. But de Vaca, +whose every accent carried conviction, had been explicit: he +particularly would not have spoken under any other circumstance. He +had, in reality, been tremendously flattering in depending to such a +degree on Charles' coolness and intellect. Gaspar de Vaca would have +taken no interest in a sentimentalist. The officer without question +had found in Charles Abbott a strain of character, a resolution, which +he understood, approved; to a certain extent built on. He had, in +effect, concluded that Charles and himself would act similarly in +similar positions. + +It was, Charles decided, at an end; he must go on as he had begun. A +strange numb species of calm settled over him. The vast crowded floor, +the boxes on either hand, sweeping tier on tier to the far hidden +ceiling, surrounding the immense chandelier glittering with crystal +lustres, were all removed, distant, from him. The Tacon Theatre took +on the appearance of a limitless pit into which all human life had +been poured, arbitrarily thrown together, and, in the semblance of +masquerading gaiety, made to whirl in a time that had in its measure +the rattle of bones, a drumming on skulls. This conception sickened +him, he could, he felt, no longer breathe in a closeness which he +imagined as fetid; and Charles realized that, at least, there was no +need for him to remain. Indeed, it would be better in every way to +avoid the impending, the immediate, catastrophe. + +With a hasty incoherent remark he secured his hat and left the box. +Outside, in the bare corridor, he paused and his lips automatically +formed the name Andres Escobar. In a flash he saw the gathering +disintegration of the Escobar family--Vincente dead, his body +dishonored; Narcisa, ineffable, flower-like, sacrificed to dull +ineptitude; Domingo, who had been so cheerfully round, furrowed with +care, his spirit dead before his body; Carmita sorrowing; and Andres, +Andres the beautiful, the young and proud, betrayed, murdered in a +brawl at a negro dance. What disaster! And where, in the power of +accomplishment, they had failed, where, fatally, they had been +vulnerable, was at their hearts, in their love each for the other, or +in the fallibility of such an emotion as Andres felt for Pilar. He, +Charles Abbott, must keep free from that entanglement. This +reassurance, however, was not new; all the while it had supported +him. + +He made his way down the broad shallow steps, passing extraordinary +figures--men black and twisted like the carvings of roots in the garb +of holiday minstrels; women coffee-colored and lovely like Jobaba, +their faces pearly with rice powder, in yellow satin or black or raw +purple, their feet in high-heeled white kid slippers. Where they stood +in his way he brushed them unceremoniously, hastily, aside, and he was +followed by low threatening murmurs, witless laughter. A man, loyal to +the Cuban cause, attempted to stop him, to repeat something which, he +assured Charles, was of grave weight; but he went on heedlessly. + +His passage became, against his reasoning mind, a flight; and he +cursed, with an unbalanced rage, in a minor frenzy, when he saw that +he would have to walk through a greater part of the body of the +theatre before he could escape. The dancers had, momentarily, thinned +out, and he went directly across the floor. There was a flame before +his eye, the illusion of a shifting screen of blood; and he found +himself facing Pilar de Lima and Andres; beyond, the Spanish officer, +tall and lank and young, was peering at them with an aggressive +spite. Charles turned aside, avoiding the tableau. Then he heard +Andres' exasperated voice ordering the girl to come with him to the +promenade. Instead of that her glimmering eyes, with lights like the +reflection of polished green stones, evading Andres, sought and found +the officer. + +Charles Abbott's legs were paralysed, he was held stationary, as +though he were helpless in a dream. His heart pounded and burned, and +a great strangling impulse shook him like a flag in the wind. +"Andres!" he cried, "Andres, let her go, she is nothing! Quickly, +before it is too late. Remember--" There was a surging concentration +so rapid that Charles saw it as a constricting menace rather than the +offensive of a group of men. Pilar stooped, her hand at her knee. +Charles threw an arm about Andres, but he was dragged, struggling, +away. She was icy in the hell of the manton. There was a suspension of +breathing, of sound, through which a fragile hand with a knife +searched and searched. Then a shocking blow fell on Charles Abbott's +head and the Tacon Theatre rocked and collapsed in darkness. + + * * * * * + +The sharp closing of a door brought him, a man advanced in middle age, +abruptly to his feet. He was confused, and swayed dizzily, with +out-stretched arms as though he were grasping vainly for the +dissolving fragments of a shining mirage of youth. They left him, +forever, and he stood regaining his strayed sense of immediacy. He was +surprisingly weary, in a gloom made evident by the indirect +illumination of an arc light across and farther up the street. +Fumbling over the wall he encountered the light switch, and flooded +his small drawing-room with brilliance. The clock on the mantle, +crowned by an eagle with lifted gilded wings, pointed to the first +quarter past eleven: when he had sunk into his abstraction from the +present, wandered back into the sunlight of Havana and his days of +promise, it had been no more than late afternoon; and now Mrs. Vauxn +and her daughter, his neighbors, had returned from their dinner +engagement. He wondered, momentarily, why that hour and ceremony had +passed unattended for him, and then recalled that Bruton and his wife, +who kept his house, had gone to the funeral of a relative, leaving on +the dining-room table, carefully covered, some cuts of cold meat, a +salad of lettuce, bran bread and fresh butter, and the coffee +percolator with its attachment for a plug in the floor. + +To the rest, he had faithfully told Mrs. Bruton, who was severe with +him, he'd attend. In place of that he had wandered into an amazing +memory of his beginning manhood. The beginning, he told himself, and, +in many ways the end--since then he had done little or nothing. After +the ignominy of his deportation from Cuba--impending satisfactory +negotiations between the United States and Spain, he gathered later, +had preserved him from the dignity of political martyrdom--a drabness +of life had caught him from which he could perceive no escape. Not, he +was bound to add, that he had actively looked for one. No, his +participation in further events had been interfered with by a doubt, +his life had been drawn into an endless question. If he had walked +steadily past Andres Escobar, left him to a murder which, after all, +he, Charles Abbott, had been powerless to stop, would he have gone on +to the triumph of his ideal? + +In addition to this there was the eternal speculation over the +relation, in human destiny, of the heart to the head--which, in the +end, would, must, triumph? There was no necessity in his final +philosophy for the optimism, where men are concerned, that had been +his first stay. He wasn't so sure now--but was he certain of +anything?--of the coming victory of right, of the spreading, from land +to land, of freedom. Did life reach upward or down, or was it merely +the circling of a carrousel, the whirling of the danzon? Nothing, for +him, could be settled, definite. He was inclined to the belief that +the blow of the scabbard on his head.... That, however, like the rest, +was indeterminate. He came back eternally to the same query--had he, +as for so long, so wearily, he had insisted to himself, failed, proved +weak for the contentions of existence on a positive plane? Had he +become a part, a member, of the nameless, the individually impotent, +throng? His sympathies were, by birth, aristocratic rather than +humane; he preferred strength to acquiescence; but there were times +now, perhaps, when he was aging, when there was a relief in sinking +into the sea of humility. + +Then his thoughts centered again on Howard Gage; who, before leaving +that afternoon, had unpleasantly impressed Charles Abbott by his +inelasticity, the fixity of his gaze upon the ground. Howard had been +involved in a war of a magnitude that swamped every vestige of the +long-sustained Cuban struggle. And he admitted his relation to this +had been one of bitter necessity: + +"I had to go, we all did," Howard Gage had said. "There wasn't any +music about it, any romance. It had to be done, that was all, and it +was. Don't expect me to be poetic." + +Yes, the youth of today were, to Charles' way of thinking, badly off. +Anyone who could not be poetic, who wouldn't be if he had the chance, +was unfortunate, limited, cramped. Visions, ideals, were indispensable +for youth. Why, damn it, love was dependent on dreams, unreality. He +had never known it; but he was able to appreciate what it might be in +a man's life. He no longer scorned love, or the woman he was able to +imagine--a tender loveliness never out of a slightly formal beauty. +For her the service parts of the house would have no existence; and, +strangely, he gave no consideration to children. + +It wasn't that he minded loneliness; that was not an unmixed evil, +especially for a man whose existence was chiefly spun from memories, +speculations, and conditioned by the knowledge that he had had the +best of life, its fullest measure, at the beginning. He had never +again seen a woman like La Clavel, a friend who could compare with +Andres, wickedness such as Pilar's, days and players as brilliant as +those of Havana before, well--before he had passed fifty. If the trade +winds still blew, tempering the magnificence of the Cuban nights, they +no longer blew for him. But Havana, as well, had changed. + +The piano next door took up, where it had been dropped, the jota from +Liszt's Rhapsody Espagnol. It rippled and sang for a moment and then +ended definitely for the night. Other dancers, Charles reasonably +supposed, continued the passionate art of that lyric passage; he read +of them, coming from Spain to the United States for no other purpose. +He had no doubt about their capability, and no wish to see them. They +would do for Howard Gage. What if he, instead of Charles Abbott, had +been at the Tacon Theatre the night Andres had died? That was an +interesting variation of the old question--what, in his predicament, +would Howard Gage have done? Walked away, probably, holding his +purpose undamaged! But Andres could never have loved Howard Gage; +Andres, for his attachment, required warmth, intensity, the ornamental +forms of honor; poetry, briefly. That lost romantic time, that day in +immaculate white linen with a spray of mimosa in its buttonhole! + +There were some flowers, Charles recalled, standing on the table in +the hall, dahlias; and he walked out and drew one into the lapel of +his coat. It was without scent, just as, now, life was unscented; yet, +surveying himself in the mirror over the vase, he saw that the +sombreness of his attire was lightened by the spot of red. Nothing, +though, could give vividness to his countenance, that was dry and +dull, scored with lines that resembled traces of dust. The moustache +across his upper lip was faded and brittle. It was of no account; if +he had lacked ultimately the courage, the stamina, to face and command +life, he was serene at the threat of death. + +Suddenly hungry, he went into the dining-room and removed the napkins, +turned the electricity into the percolator. Then, with a key from +under the edge of the cloth on a console-table, he opened a door of +the sideboard, and produced a tall dark bottle of Marquis de Riscal +wine, and methodically drew the cork. Charles Abbott wiped the glass +throat and, seated, poured out a goblet full of the translucent +crimson liquid. It brought a slight flush to his cheeks, a light in +his eyes, and the shadow of a vital humor, a past challenge, to his +lips. He had lifted many toasts in that vintage, his glass striking +with a clear vibration against other eagerly held glasses. More often +than not they--Tirso, the guardsman in statue, Remigio, Jaime, Andres +and himself--had drunk to La Clavel. He drank to her, probably the +sole repository of her memory, her splendor, on earth, now. "La +Clavel," he said her name aloud. And then, "Andres." + +A sharp gladness seized him that Andres had, almost at the last, heard +his voice, his shouted warning and apprehension and love. If liberty, +justice, were to come, one life, two, could make no difference; a +hundred years, a hundred hundred, were small measures of time. And if +all were doomed, impossible, open to the knife of a fateful Pilar, +why, then, they had had their companionship, their warmth, a period of +unalloyed fidelity to a need that broke ideals like reeds. Perhaps +what they had found was, after all, within them, that for which they +had swept the sky. + + +THE END + + * * * * * + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Bright Shawl, by Joseph Hergesheimer + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRIGHT SHAWL *** + +***** This file should be named 31898.txt or 31898.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/8/9/31898/ + +Produced by Katherine Ward and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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