The Doctor's glass had been filled as often as any, but he seemed as
yet quite untouched by the revel. The small, demure, merry mouth was
composed and peaceful, the calm face showed only a tinge of added
color, the slight pressure of the fingers on Andrew's elbow was firm
and springy as a vise of tough, light whalebone.
"Shall we stroll in the garden a moment and let the air freshen us?"
Andrew assented, with an effort, but a fuddled cry of "Gentian! One
moment, Gentian!" called the Doctor away for a moment and Andrew
remained at the window, gazing up at the sky and trying to keep a
sparkling wheel from whirring about in his head.
The moonlight was bright indeed, the moon huge and pale, the garden
crowded with silver trees and flowers. At its foot grew a single
bush of Spanish bayonet which seemed to Andrew, as he stared, the
most beautiful thing he had ever seen, for it too was in flower, and
the single stalk of waxen petals rose out of the green spikes of the
plant like a cold plume set upon a barbarous crest. Andrew filled
his eyes with the sight of it--it seemed to him, suddenly, as if he
had run his hand into the very soil of this new country and touched
its heart. Not even the orange-groves could so explain the nature of
the land, for they were fruitful and, after a fashion, tamed, but
this bush of thorns gave nothing to man but a single bloom of
moonlight, serene, careless and wholly pure. More northern latitudes
could not suffer such a creation--only in the hot night of the south
could the ivory frond arise from among edged blades to challenge a
tropic star.
As Andrew considered this, he felt just on the edge of some great
discovery--some immense understanding--some gift of tongues--but Dr.
Gentian's hand was lightly imperious on his arm again, and he was
being led outside to have his eyes dazzled by the moon. The
half-made discovery slipped away--the gift of tongues was forgotten.
There remained only a leaden body and a flight of stairs unnaturally
steep and limitless, up which he was being assisted to lie down at
last in a bed that whirled into spinning darkness.
5.
Three days later the events of that evening were forgotten
phantasmagoria, and only the shape of the Spanish bayonet stood out
distinct and fruitful in Andrew's memory. To have been drunk in good
company was nothing to be ashamed of--but the long next day in the
saddle had been torment, in spite of all Dr. Gentian's
solicitude--and the following one had found Andrew sober enough, but
stiff and sore. The third day, however, almost made him regret that
they would reach the end of their journey at evening. The air had
been flawless since dawn, his first saddle-weariness had abated a
little, and he had begun to notice the details of the land.
All morning they had ridden through low barrens, smelling of
pine-needles--then the road had turned to swampier country, where red
cane fringed the edge of the spongy bay-galls and a thrown stone went
in with a sucking sound. Over languid creeks bridged with
cedar-planking the road took its way--past swamps where mosquitoes
buzzed and alligators slept and rotting ancient trees were hung with
Spanish moss like witches' hair--then wound up into the woods again.
They had passed a woodrat's disorderly house of sticks and seen the
rat run chattering up a tree with a young rat hanging to its tail.
They had slept in the green russell chamber of a manor-house whose
furnishings would not have shamed the Patroon and whose master
entertained them with music upon the German flute; they had plucked
dwarf wild-oranges from stunted, untended trees and ridden, at
evening, up a grassy avenue heavy with the sweetness of
magnolia-bloom; and once Andrew had seen a cinnamon-colored Indian
stare at them for a moment out of the tangled underbrush with eyes
black as obsidian beads, to vanish among the leaves as noiselessly as
a puff of dandelion seed. Now the shadows were long with late
afternoon, the road skirted the river, and New Sparta was near.
"There," said Dr. Gentian as they came to a fork in the road.
Andrew followed the line of his hand and made out a clot of white
among distant trees. "The upper road is ours, Mr. Beard--the lower
goes down to the colony itself. You shall see it soon enough. For
the present," he smiled, "I imagine you have ridden hard enough these
last days to postpone the pleasure. The best lands are farther down
the river--that is why you see no signs of our industry here."
"I thought you lived in the colony itself, sir," said Andrew, making
conversation.
"Not precisely," Dr. Gentian was very amiable, "My own house is over
a mile from the wharves--you see, indigo needs space and we have more
than a thousand souls in the settlement itself--there were more at
first but one always loses a number when men are transplanted to a
new climate--"
He chatted on, describing his newly-finished sugar-mill and the
system of irrigation he had recently completed. Andrew fell more and
more under the spell of that easy, Cæsarean voice. Beside this man,
with his tales of strange travel in the Indies and the Greek Islands,
with his casual chat of the great ones of London and Paris, even
Alexander Beard began to seem a little provincial. Now he quoted a
passage from the Georgics to illustrate a point in husbandry, and
turned from that to a discussion as to whether Dr. Goldsmith's "She
Stoops to Conquer," witty though it was, might fitly be compared to
the best of the comedies of Plautus. Andrew felt his own mammoth
ignorance descend upon him like a heavy velvet pall and thought
humbly that Lucius should have come in his place. He resolved to
write to Lucius for the best edition of Plautus procurable at Garret
Noel's bookshop before the week was out.
He was so engaged in trying to listen intelligently that he did not
notice how the road stole away from the river again; and the goal of
their three days' ride was almost upon him before he realized it.
The great, white coquina house stood on a slight rise of ground, its
stables and outbuildings massed behind it. There were lights in its
windows, for twilight had fallen, and as the tired horses pricked
their ears and whinnied at the thought of oats, servants came running
out with lanterns and hubbub. Andrew knew suddenly that he was very
tired and struggled from his saddle at last with the stiff
awkwardness of a marionette. He was glad to throw the horse's reins
to a grinning little boy, but too weary to pay much attention to the
bustle about him.
"My dear," said Dr. Gentian and kissed a tall woman with a proud nose
and a secret mouth delicately upon the cheek. "This is our young
friend from New York, Mr. Beard, my dear," and Andrew made his
manners dutifully to a worn comely hand and words of greeting that
had a foreign slur in them. Then there was another hand, warm and
pleasant to touch, and he was being introduced to a yellow-haired
girl with eyes grey and changing as winter cloud--"My daughter--Miss
Sparta Gentian." But she was not at all like his image of Nausicaa
and Andrew felt vaguely disappointed. Then he only knew that he was
hobbling up the steps of the porch in a disgracefully ungenteel
manner, but he could not help it for each of his boots was made of
solid stone.
Strength and curiosity returned to him with food and wine, and at
last, seated alone with Dr. Gentian while the Madeira passed between
them the way of the sun, he began to appraise the circumstances of
his new environment.
"You will find we live in simple rusticity, Mr. Beard," Dr. Gentian
had said--but if these were Florida notions of simple rusticity! It
was true that the servants were not in livery and that the dress of
the Gentian ladies was not quite in the latest mode, but otherwise,
from the old silver plate on the sideboard to the new forte-piano
with Lord Kelly's Overtures upon it in the drawing-room, Andrew might
have thought himself enjoying the famous hospitality of a Philipse or
a William Walton the elder. That was certainly a fruit-piece by
Vandermoulen on the wall, and the Indian chintz hangings of his own
bedroom could not have been bettered at the fashionable upholsterer,
Joseph Cox's.
His eye was caught by the flash of a green stone on Dr. Gentian's
finger. There was cold, precious light in the stone like the light
at the bottom of the eyes of a great cat.
"A quaint setting," said his host, politely, "I had it when I served
in India. The Begum happened to think me a practitioner in the black
arts." He rose, "Shall we join the ladies?"
In the flowered drawing-room, the tall woman with the proud nose and
the secret mouth was embroidering upon catgut-gauze with a needle
tiny as a fairy's spear and the grey-eyed girl who was not like
Nausicaa was seated at the forte-piano, playing. She broke off as
they came in.
"I beg you will not cease your playing, Miss Gentian," said Andrew,
awkwardly, "I am devoted to the forte-piano," he added, feeling the
words were foolish as soon as they were out of his mouth.
"Then I shan't dare continue," said the girl carelessly. "My
strumming must sound like a rigadoon on a milkpan to the ears of such
a connoisseur--from New York--"
"Miss Gentian--I implore you," said Andrew, embarrassed.
"Oh, if you'll promise me no criticism, I'll play, sir--or sing
perhaps--'tis too hot for playing alone--the piano sounds like a
locust in August--heat--heat--heat--" she drummed it out on the keys,
impatiently, "But sing, sing, what shall I sing? Shall it be Charley
over the Water, father, to remind you of the Forty-Five--or let me
see--'Bobby Shaftoe,' for Mr. Beard--'Bobby Shaftoe's come from
sea--Silver buckles on his--shoon--" she hummed with gipsy
impertinence and Andrew winced as he saw her eyes fixed mockingly on
his shoe-buckles--"Come, fine ladies and gentlemen--what d'ye
lack--lack--"
"Sing 'Beauty Retire,' daughter," said her father quietly. His eyes
were intent upon hers and it seemed to Andrew as if he were
witnessing some obscure and inaudible struggle of wills between
them--a struggle watched by the tall woman in the chair with great
weariness of mind.
"That old thing? Oh, very well--I'm a dutiful daughter. You'll
pardon our rusticity Mr. Beard--we have none of your New York
novelties here in songs or ladies--" She struck a chord on the
forte-piano as if she hated it, and began to sing.
"Beauty retire--retire--" she sang,
"Retire--retire, thou dost my pity move
Believe my pity and then trust my love--"
Her voice was extraordinarily pure and moving. Andrew, listening,
thought of skeins of rock-crystal, flecked through and through with
tiny flakes of the softest gold--of a golden box where a crystal bird
beat and beat its wings in trammelled, scornful delight. Her face
had turned grave as she sang, and a little drowsy, as if some excess
of vitality came to her through the act of singing and suffused the
veins of her heart with a sleepy power. She was like a child now,
Andrew thought--a beautiful, daunting child--
The song ceased, and Andrew, back in his chair again, stammered some
sort of compliment. But she would not sing again. Instead she
professed an interest in paduasoys and cordova-water and the
genuineness of the reported mode in sage-green cloaks trimmed with
ermine. Andrew, trying vainly to remember the cut of the sleeves on
the last fashion doll from London, made but heavy weather of it. But
he did not mind, for the girl seemed to have forgotten her obvious
first intention of being rude to him, and he was able to watch the
play of her smooth hands as she talked. Her foreign strain came out
in that, he thought--no New York girl of his acquaintance would have
gestured with such fluid deftness. He saw her hands for a moment as
separate and living creatures, molding Tanagra clay to the shape of a
precious urn.
Then at last Dr. Gentian was offering him a candlestick and he was
bidding them all good night. He happened to say good night to the
daughter last of all and the warm touch of her hand went with him all
the way up the stairs, as if he had dipped his fingers in quicksilver
for an instant and seen them come out silvered. Dr. Gentian
accompanied him to his door.
"Good night, Mr. Beard. You will find the mosquito-net at the foot
of your bed a necessity. We are not so much troubled with them here
as down at the colony--but they have a particular passion for
strangers."
"Many thanks for the warning, sir," Andrew smiled. "Good night."
The smiling little Cæsar in black broadcloth passed down the long
corridor with a wavering flame in his hand and disappeared. Andrew
turned toward his own door, yawning. A spot of hot wax fell on the
back of his hand--he swore and dropped his candle, which fuffed and
went out. He groped blindly for it in the sudden pitch a moment and
then stood up. Another will-o'-the-wisp of light trembled far down
the corridor, and came nearer. He waited--perhaps the Doctor had
noted his misadventure and was coming back with a new candle for him.
The will-o'-the-wisp grew and became a candle held in the hands of a
girl. For a moment he thought, with a beat in his heart, that it
might be Sparta Gentian, but it was not. This girl seemed about Miss
Gentian's age and height but the faint, deceptive flame she carried
illuminated dark brows and darker eyes, a skin tinctured with the
sun, a mouth ripened by it. Seen thus, in a weak halo of light which
defined no more than head and shoulders and hands, the features were
startling like those of some worn young Madonna of olivewood in the
stone niche of a Spanish church, and Andrew excused himself easily
enough for watching from his dark doorway.
No, she was not beautiful as Sparta Gentian was, in the way of a
golden rose, but she had her qualities. The face was at once more
reticent and more untamed--the manner had an odd dignity as of one
who lives in oppression but is not afraid. He thought of the Spanish
bayonet, in flower in Judge Willo's garden, under the swimming moon.
Then he realized with a little shock, as the girl drew nearer, that
from her dress she must be a servant in the house, and stepped
forward abruptly to borrow light from her taper.
"Can you--" he began, but got no further, for the girl saw him
suddenly, cried out, and dropped her candle, which went out
instantly, leaving the corridor a pit of black velvet. He heard
footsteps running away from him and called again, but there was no
reply. He stayed futilely in the corridor for some time, cursing
himself for forgetting that any serving-wench might well be
frightened at a strange voice speaking suddenly out of gloom, and
waiting for sounds that would tell him his idiocy had aroused the
house. But the running footsteps ceased after a brief moment as if
they had plunged into quicksand, and were followed by no sound at
all. At first he was more than glad of this--then the continued
quiet began to finger at his spine.
The girl had made noise enough to wake any ordinary set of sleepers,
yet no one seemed to have stirred. And why had she cried out just
once, when he first spoke to her and not again--a frightened maid in
most houses would have screamed her throat dry. He stood uneasily in
his doorway till doing so began to seem ridiculous, of a sudden
feeling insecure and a stranger in a soft and hostile night. Then he
went into his room and shut his door very carefully as if to shut out
entirely the deeper darkness in the corridor. But he had an uncanny
feeling that it seeped in after him, and would have given a gold
Johannes to be able to find his tinder-box. Presently, though, his
eyes became more accustomed to the gloom. He thought of the clear
stream of Sparta Gentian's voice as it flowed over golden sand in
"Beauty Retire" and hummed to himself as he undressed in the dark.
6.
The morning was so bright and calm, that he could afford to laugh at
his fears of the night. He found one of the light striped-cotton
suits that Mr. Windlestraw at the Sign of the Needle and Shears had
assured him were all the fashion in the Southern Colonies and put it
on. From his window he could see Dr. Gentian walking about his
garden. The merry-mouthed Doctor seemed all content this morning, he
was whistling a tune as he walked and now and then paused to smell at
a flower or chirrup to a bird. He wore a broad leaf-hat and a
flowered dressing-gown and looked more comfortably like the planter
of Andrew's imagination. When Andrew bade him good morning, he found
him observing a hedged-in patch of cactus on which tiny, red and
brown insects crawled like baby ladybugs.
"Observe an industry that shames lazy fellows like you and myself,
Mr. Beard," he called gayly as Andrew came up to him, "Those are
cochineal insects--they have but two ends in life--to eat and make
dye for our garments. I am experimenting with them now--perhaps next
year we can produce the dye in quantities worth your London
merchants' notice. Strange, is it not, that a little bug should
carry royal colors in its belly?"
He delicately shook a few of the insects in his cupped palm and
extended it for Andrew's inspection. They ran about it like tiny
drops of blood, in an intent, blind busyness. Andrew looked at them
with interest, feeling it strange that they did not stain the
Doctor's white hand. The man was certainly a compound of the most
diverse interests. Now one of the insects fell from the enclosing
hand. The Doctor set his foot on it, idly. Andrew shivered.
"After breakfast you shall make the grand tour of our settlement,"
promised the Doctor, replacing the other insects on their fleshy
green feeding-place with exquisite care.
Two things stuck in Andrew's mind particularly from that first
confused trip of inspection--the babbling sound of water in the
network of irrigation-canals that made New Sparta like a tropical
Venice of palmetto and coquina--and the stink of the rotting indigo
in the great vats in the fields where it was steeped and beaten and
settled. He had never encountered such an overpowering and
all-pervasive stench or such clouds of flies. "You may understand
now, why my own house is built some distance from the fields," said
the Doctor, offering Andrew the gilt pomander he carried in his hand,
and Andrew, putting it gratefully to his nose, understood indeed.
"I don't see how your men endure it," he confessed.
"Oh--they grow accustomed," said the Doctor, carelessly. He
addressed a question in lilting Italian to a bronzed statue whose
naked neck crawled with flies. The statue grinned nervously with
white teeth and replied.
"He says it stinks no worse than a Minorcan," translated the Doctor,
smiling, "You would think that when men came to a new country they
might give up the narrower prejudices of race--but not so. My
Italians hate my Minorcans and my Greeks hate them both. There is
always bad blood between one or the other. Of course they
intermarry, too, but that only makes things worse."
He spoke casually, as of a herd of serviceable but unruly animals,
and Andrew sympathized with him. The headship of a mixed colony such
as this, must be a constant balancing upon thorns, though the Doctor
did not seem bowed down. He walked among his men with the easy grace
of a beast-tamer, and yet, Andrew noticed, with the same alert and
penetrating eye.
"But which are the Minorcans?" said Andrew, vaguely looking for some
odd, distinctive type of body or skull, as they passed along.
The Doctor smiled. "There is one," he said, pointing. "That fellow
testing the vat. I forget his name."
Andrew looked. Four men with their trousers rolled above their knees
and their legs stained with dye-water were churning the liquor in the
beating-vat with a lever that had two bottomless square buckets at
either end; and a younger man, at the side, was stooping over
occasionally to dip out some of the liquor in a wooden cup and test
it. Andrew caught his breath as he looked at this man; he thought he
had never seen so fine a human creature. The fellow was of the
middle height and seemed of Andrew's years--but so perfectly and
aptly proportioned was he that Andrew felt himself clumsy and
rudely-fashioned in comparison. The sun, which had fairly blackened
the skins of many of the colonists, had only browned him to the deep
tawniness of fine Spanish leather, his face wore the aloof dignity of
a sombre prince, and every movement of his body was as deft as a
gymnast's. Andrew could have visualized him far more easily
dispensing justice from a stone chair of state or riding a horse to
war clad in antique armor, than stirring indigo-muck. He said
something of the sort.
"A good man, though sullen like most of them," Dr. Gentian agreed.
"All the Mahonese are a fine-looking lot. Meaninglessly fine. The
Greeks are much sharper. But that fellow knows his business. Few of
them can judge a test rightly--and judgment's the secret of
indigo-culture--for if the beating and churning there is stopped too
soon some of the dye-matter stays in solution and if beat too long it
begins to dissolve again. Either way you get bad indigo. This is
the second cutting now--we hope for five cuttings this season if all
goes well. The profit will mean we can finish our fort and add to
the sugar-works. The fort will lie over there--it commands the
wharves and the storehouses--"
Andrew looked across fields checkered with irrigation and beheld vast
raw foundations of coquina.
"I should not have thought you needed so large a defensive work in a
peaceable colony," he said, somewhat astonished. He had already
noted the colony's guard-house with its garrison of eight bored
soldiers--but this new work would hold a company, at least, and was
planned for cannon.
"We had trouble here two years ago," said Dr. Gentian briefly. "The
ringleaders were hanged in St. Augustine. And then--most of the
Indians are peaceable enough--but Cowkeeper, the Creek Chief, is a
mischief-maker. Ah, Mr. Cave," as a heavy-set man in his thirties,
with a red, sweating face and odd, crumpled-looking ears, came toward
them with his broad hat in his hand.
"This is Mr. Beard, Mr. Cave--the young gentleman I was speaking of
before I went to St. Augustine. Mr. Cave, our chief overseer, Mr.
Beard--"
"Servant, I'm sure," grunted Mr. Cave in a piggy voice and stared at
Andrew intently. His eyes were a dull, hard blue, with reddened
rings about them, and Andrew felt uncomfortable under their gaze.
"Mr. Cave comes from an English family," said Dr. Gentian pleasantly.
"He is my right hand."
He laid his fingers on Mr. Cave's bare forearm, as if in
acknowledgment of Mr. Cave's abilities, and Andrew saw the muscles
twitch an instant under that light touch.
"Dr. Gentian's very kind," said Mr. Cave defiantly. "He knows how to
treat a man, Dr. Gentian does."
"Mr. Cave flatters me sadly," said the Doctor, sniffing his pomander.
"He is aware how indispensable he is to us all. You and Mr. Cave
must be better acquainted, Mr. Beard. We must have Mr. Cave to
supper--tonight, perhaps," he continued reflectively. "Will you sup
with us tonight, Mr. Cave?'
"Thank you sir. You're very kind indeed," said Mr. Cave, again with
that strange rebelliousness in his voice. Andrew thought him a
queer, ungenteel sort of person and wondered at the Doctor's
tolerance of his eccentricities. But doubtless he made a good
chief-overseer.
"And, by the way," said Dr. Gentian, amiably, "You must be provided
with a body-servant, Mr. Beard--I grieve I did not think of it
before. Perhaps Mr. Cave would recommend us one. Shall it be a
Greek, Mr. Cave--or an Italian--or one of your favorite Mahonese?"
"Don't ask me, sir," growled Mr. Cave with a bull-like shake of his
head. "They all look alike to me--the lot of them. Not one of
them's worth a sucked sugar cane, if you want my advice."
"Come, come, Mr. Cave, we must not belittle our good colonists," said
the Doctor in light reproof that made Mr. Cave's muscles twitch anew.
He turned to Andrew. "What preference have you, Mr. Beard?"
"I am confident that anyone Mr. Cave recommends," said Andrew, a
little puzzled. Mr. Cave gave a brief, uncivil bark of laughter.
"But I did not understand--I thought they were all free colonists--I
mean--I did not think they would be willing to do body-service for
a--"