(From _Harper's Magazine_)
After twenty years I saw Deolda Costa again, Deolda who, when I was a
girl, had meant to me beauty and romance. There she sat before me,
large, mountainous, her lithe gypsy body clothed in fat. Her dark eyes,
beautiful as ever, still with a hint of wildness, met mine proudly. And
as she looked at me the old doubts rose again in my mind, a cold chill
crawled up my back as I thought what was locked in Deolda's heart. My
mind went back to that night twenty years ago, with the rain beating its
devil's tattoo against the window, when all night long I sat holding
Deolda's hand while she never spoke or stirred the hours through, but
stared with her crazy, smut-rimmed eyes out into the storm where Johnny
Deutra was. I heard again the shuttle of her feet weaving up and down
the room through the long hours.
It was a strange thing to see Deolda after having known her as I did.
There she was, with her delight of life all changed into youngsters and
fat. There she was, heavy as a monument, and the devil in her divided
among her children--though Deolda had plenty of devil to divide.
My first thought was: "Here's the end of romance. To think that you once
were love, passion, and maybe even carried death in your hand--and when
I look at you now!"
Then the thought came to me, "After all, it is a greater romance that
she should have triumphed completely, that the weakness of remorse has
never set its fangs in her heart." She had seized the one loophole that
life had given her and had infused her relentless courage into another's
veins.
I was at the bottom of Deolda Costa's coming to live with my aunt
Josephine Kingsbury, for I had been what my mother called "peaked," and
was sent down to the seashore to visit her. And suddenly I, an inland
child, found myself in a world of romance whose very colors were
changed. I had lived in a world of swimming green with faint blue
distance; hills ringed us mildly; wide, green fields lapped up to our
houses; islands of shade trees dotted the fields.
My world of romance was blue and gray, with the savage dunes glittering
gold in the sun. Here life was intense. Danger lurked always under the
horizon. Lights, like warning eyes, flashed at night, and through the
drenching fog, bells on reefs talked to invisible ships. Old men who
told tales of storm and strange, savage islands, of great catches of
fish, of smuggling, visited my aunt.
Then, as if this were merely the background of a drama, Deolda Costa
came to live with us in a prosaic enough fashion, as a "girl to help
out."
If you ask me how my aunt, a decent, law-abiding woman--a sick woman at
that--took a firebrand like Deolda into her home, all I would be able to
answer is: If you had seen her stand there, as I did, on the porch that
morning, you wouldn't ask the question. The doorbell rang and my aunt
opened it, I tagging behind. There was a girl there who looked as though
she were daring all mankind, a strange girl with skin tawny, like sand
on a hot day, and dark, brooding eyes. My aunt said:
"You want to see me?"
The girl glanced up slowly under her dark brows that looked as if they
had been drawn with a pencil.
"I've come to work for you," she said in a shy, friendly fashion. "I'm a
real strong girl."
No one could have turned her away, not unless he were deaf and blind,
not unless he were ready to murder happiness. I was fifteen and
romantic, and I was bedazzled just as the others were. She made me think
of dancing women I have heard of, and music, and of soft, starlit
nights, velvet black. She was more foreign than anything I had ever seen
and she meant to me what she did to plenty of others--romance. She must
have meant it to my aunt, sick as she was and needing a hired girl. So
when Deolda asked, in that soft way of hers:
"Shall I stay?"
"Yes," answered my aunt, reluctantly, her eyes on the girl's lovely
mouth.
While she stood there, her shoulders drooping, her eyes searching my
aunt's face, she still found time to shoot a glance like a flaming
signal to Johnny Deutra, staring at her agape. I surprised the glance,
and so did my aunt Josephine, who must have known she was in for nothing
but trouble. And so was Johnny Deutra, for from that first glance of
Deolda's that dared him, love laid its heavy hand on his young
shoulders.
"What's your name, dear?" my aunt asked.
"Deolda Costa," said she.
"Oh, you're one-armed Manel's girl. I don't remember seeing you about
lately."
"I been working to New Bedford. My father an' mother both died. I came
up for the funeral. I--don't want to go back to the mills--" Then sudden
fury flamed in her. "I hate the men there!" she cried. "I'd drown before
I'd go back!"
"There, there, dear," my aunt soothed her. "You ain't going back--you're
going to work for Auntie Kingsbury."
That was the way Deolda had. She never gave one any chance for an
illusion about her, for there was handsome Johnny Deutra still hanging
round the gate watching Deolda, and she already held my aunt's heart in
her slender hand.
My aunt went around muttering, "One-armed Manel's girl!" She appealed to
me: "She's got to live somewhere, hasn't she?"
I imagine that my aunt excused herself for deliberately, running into
foul weather by telling herself that Deolda Was her "lot," something the
Lord had sent her to take care of.
"Who was one-armed Manel?" I asked, tagging after my aunt.
"Oh, he was a queer old one-armed Portygee who lived down along," said
my aunt, "clear down along under the sand dunes in a green-painted house
with a garden in front of it with as many colors as Joseph's coat. Those
Costas lived 'most any way." Then my aunt added, over her shoulder:
"They say the old woman was a gypsy and got married to one-armed Manel
jumping over a broomstick. And I wouldn't wonder a mite if 'twas true.
She was a queer looking old hag with black, piercing eyes and a proud
way of walking. The boys are a wild crew. Why, I remember this girl
Deolda, like a little leopard cat with blue-black shadows in her hair
and eyes like saucers, selling berries at the back door!"
My uncle Ariel, Aunt Josephine's brother, came in after a while. As he
took a look at Deolda going out of the room, he said:
"P--hew! What's that?"
"I told you I was sick and had to get a girl to help out--what with
Susie visiting and all," said my aunt, very short.
"Help out? Help out! My lord! _help out!_ What's her name--Beth Sheba?"
Now this wasn't as silly as it sounded. I suppose what Uncle Ariel meant
was that Deolda made him think of Eastern queens and Araby. But my
attention was distracted by the appearance of two wild-looking boys with
a green-blue sea chest which served Deolda as a trunk. I followed it to
her room and started making friends with Deolda, who opened the trunk,
and I glimpsed something embroidered in red flowers.
"Oh, Deolda, let me see. Oh, let me see!" I cried.
It was a saffron shawl all embroidered with splotchy red flowers as big
as my hand. It made me tingle as it lay there in its crinkly folds,
telling of another civilization and other lands than our somber shores.
The shawl and its crawling, venomous, alluring flowers marked Deolda off
from us. She seemed to belong to the shawl and its scarlet insinuations.
"That was my mother's," she said. Then she added this astounding thing:
"My mother was a great dancer. All Lisbon went wild about her. When she
danced the whole town went crazy. The bullfighters and the princes would
come--"
"But how--?" I started, and stopped, for Deolda had dropped beside the
chest and pressed her face in the shawl, and I remembered that her
mother was dead only a few days ago, and I couldn't ask her how the
great dancer came to be in Dennisport in the cabin under the dunes. I
tiptoed out, my heart thrilled with romance for the gypsy dancer's
daughter.
When my aunt was ready for bed there was no Deolda. Later came the sound
of footsteps and my aunt's voice in the hall outside my room.
"That you, Deolda?"
"Yes'm."
"Where were you all evening?"
"Oh, just out under the lilacs."
"For pity's sake! Out under the lilacs! What were you doing out there?"
Deolda's voice came clear and tranquil. "Making love with Johnny
Deutra."