find out the color of his fortune, black or gold. In the interval
after supper, when the Gentian ladies had withdrawn, he would speak
to his surgeon Cæsar, and know his fate there, at least. Admitted,
the Doctor was too liberal and modern a father to give away his
daughter against her will--etiquette was etiquette--and it must never
be said in the Floridas that a New Yorker lacked proper punctilio.
But even if the Doctor did approve--what of Sparta herself? Andrew
sifted a thousand little incidents of the past few months between his
fingers like grains of sparkling sand. Here she had certainly
smiled, yes--and there thanked him most graciously for turning over
the leaves of her new song. But there she had been distant as a
ghost, and there again, definitely satiric. This balanced that, and
left him in troubled confusion. He was so absorbed in love-stricken
calculations that he nearly ran into one of the servants, on the
stairs, before he realized where he was.
"Ten thousand dev--," he began, in irritation, then, seeing it was
Sparta's Minorcan maid, changed his tune abruptly. If this girl were
not divinity itself, she was blessed at least by the service of
divinity, and he stared at her hungrily, as if he expected to see a
golden collar, with godhead's name upon it, around her throat. He
had noticed the wench very little after that first awkward encounter
in the corridor--she went about her duties as unobtrusively as a
spirit--but tonight she seemed to him, somehow, a precious object,
and he spoke to her on impulse.
"Is anything wrong?" he said, for now that he came to observe her,
she seemed more sombre than usual and her face was a trifle drawn.
"Nothing, _señor_," said the girl, quietly. "Supper will be ready in
half an hour." She stood aside for him to pass. He lingered,
feeling, in the folly of a lover, that her presence might have some
sort of augury for him, if he could only puzzle it out.
"But--there is something the matter, Caterina," he went on, with
vague kindliness, "You really look very tired--and the fever-season's
coming on. You should go to Dr. Gentian and have him give you a
powder of cinchona."
"No, _gracias_, I am quite well, _señor_," said the girl, and sucked
in her breath. A dark glow came into her eyes for a second, like the
soul of a flame in an obscured mirror, and died again. For some
reason, Andrew felt, momentarily, as he had that evening in the
corridor when her footsteps had died away so suddenly and left him
alone in the very belly of night. The sensation was so acute that he
almost put out a hand to steady himself against an assault of
shadows. Then he remembered.
"Of course," he said rather aimlessly, "Of course--but still, you
don't look very well, Caterina,--and really, now, if you went to--"
"I am quite well," the girl repeated steadily, but he saw a sob rise
in her throat. It broke now, and tore her. "But the Minorcans will
never have their lands, now--the Minorcans will never have their
lands!" she cried, passionately, in a deep, shaken voice, and then
pushing him aside with a child's gesture of impotent pain, ran
sobbing down the stairs. Andrew gazed after her helplessly,
reflecting that Minorcans were very peculiar. One got just so far
with them--and then one came up against a blind wall of silence or an
inexplicable grief. Her words were meaningless, of course, but
coming, as they did, after Sebastian's talk about the thunder, they
jarred him and set the pattern of the evening awry. He went to his
room with a prickle in his mind, and was not pleased, when he got
there, to hear, through the open window, the mutter of other voices
in irritated discussion.
He was about to go out and silence the debate--the room next his was
a store-room and generally only frequented by servants--when the
voices rose higher, and he caught one sentence clearly.
"You've been at that wench, again," said a dry, passionless accent
which Andrew was horrified to recognize as Mrs. Gentian's. "I'll not
suffer it, Hilary. I'll not suffer it any more."
A low rasping murmur replied. The other voice fell to meet it, and
Andrew found himself gripping the back of a chair with a clenched
hand. Mrs. Gentian was so taciturn at the best of times that he had
come to think of her as a statue rather than a woman--a statue whose
worn, fine hands busied themselves interminably with flowers of lace
and needlework, but whose memorial mouth was as dedicated to silence
as the mouth of a buried nun. Now, though, those lips had opened,
and a voice, arid and clear as the rattle of dry palm-branches in the
wind, spoke out a hate so weary and long enduring that it hurt the
mind.
Andrew closed the window as quickly as he could but he could not shut
out the sour, tearless repetition of the words, "I will not suffer
it, Hilary. I will not suffer it again," or the hard rasp of the
Doctor's voice in reply. He felt very sorry for Dr. Gentian--Mrs.
Gentian had the wreck of what must have been a great beauty. The
beauty had gone, but its jealousy, apparently, remained--acrid as the
dregs of spoilt incense. Andrew had heard, in books, of the lengths
to which such ingrown jealousy may lead very worthy women, and shook
his head in wise acknowledgment of the strangeness of existence. It
was worse, somehow, that Sparta's mother should yield to such a
failing. He could not restrain a natural pity for the unhappy lady,
but he felt that in combining Sparta's mother with a jealous wife,
she had committed, at the least, a serious breach of taste.
He was relieved to find no traces of the quarrel lingering in the air
when he came down to the supper-table. Dr. Gentian was pleasanter
than usual, if anything, and Mrs. Gentian very composed. He
marvelled anew at the deceptiveness of all women but Sparta--he could
hardly believe that the cool, terse accents which asked him politely
for his verdict on the salad of hearts of cabbage-palm, belonged to
the same woman whose voice had been so sere with an exhausted flame a
little while ago. Then he was left alone with Dr. Gentian, and it
was time for him to put his question. Only now, when the time had
come, in spite of any fortification of wine, the question stuck in
his throat.
"Shall we take our wine into my study?" said Dr. Gentian and rose,
"There is a new herbal I should like to show you--the author has some
ingenious ideas upon the domestication of the mulberry-tree in these
parts."
Andrew assented gratefully, grasping at the moment's relief. Besides
he took it as a good omen that on this night of all nights, Dr.
Gentian should invite him to the seldom-visited chamber which he had
always visualized as the hidden brain of the plantation.
He took in its details now with care, as if some one of them might
give him a clue to his future. The fantastic yet effective diversity
of its master's character was displayed in the chamber almost to
excess. It was a long, oval, high-ceiled room, hung in blue and gold
leather--the domed ceiling was blue, as well, and powdered with small
gold stars. There were books and chemical apparatus, a set of
chessmen whose kings rode ivory elephants, a foreign dagger with
beryls set in the blade. An herbarium stood in a corner beside the
articulated skeleton of a child--a violin lay on a carved wooden
chest, neighbored by a case of surgical instruments, a pair of
dividers and an azimuth. Yet in spite of this litter of incompatible
objects and interests, the room gave an impression of neatness and
order as precise as that of a captain's cabin on a shipshape frigate.
Andrew felt that Dr. Gentian could go blindfold to any single thing
in the room and put his hand upon it--and also, that the room was, in
a measure, an extension of the soul of its master, and, should he
die, would be haunted forever by a light, sure footstep and a tight,
Roman smile. He turned over the leaves of the herbal--the plates
made a blur of color in his eyes and Dr. Gentian was saying something
about mulberries that he should listen to, but his mind was racked,
and he could not attend.
"I intended the ceiling as a planetary map, showing roughly the
movements of the various heavenly bodies and the transit of the
moon," said his host, politely, as Andrew's eyes strayed from the
herbal to the ceiling, "But the work was never completed." He
sighed. "Perhaps some day, we can manage it."
"It is a splendid chamber, sir," said Andrew, thinking of Sparta.
"It is my retreat," Dr. Gentian confided. "You may not have
noticed--but there is deadening in the walls, and when I am secluded
here, there are orders I shall not be disturbed. I even have my own
staircase to the upper part of the house."
"Really?" said Andrew, marshalling the facts of his birth and worldly
circumstances in proper order to present to a father.
"Yes, indeed," said Dr. Gentian. He rose and opened a door at the
side--a door flush with the wall. "Would you like to see it--the
workmanship is truly ingenious."
He led the way up a short, winding stair, chatting. At a landing, he
paused. "We are behind the ceiling now," he said. He slid a little
panel back with an oily click. "When I planned my planetary map, I
thought to place my moon here and light it with a concealed lamp--a
childish fancy enough, but what's life without vagaries? Then I
thought my toy might burn the roof down over my head some fine night
and gave up the plan. As it is, my moon makes an excellent
Judas-hole if I had need of one." He stepped aside. Andrew came
forward and peered through a small round opening directly down into
the room which they had just left. He muttered something about an
interesting device.
"Only a toy," said Dr. Gentian, "and a costly one. I fear I am too
fond of toys." He shut the panel with a smooth sound, and waved into
the gloom. "The stair there leads direct to the main corridor--I
find it convenient, but I will not make you climb any further beyond
the moon." He chuckled and led the way down again. "I have always
hankered after oddities--'tis my greatest defect. I never realize
how I may fatigue others with my hobbies--as I fear I have fatigued
you, this evening, Mr. Beard, by your face--"
"Not at all, sir," said Andrew, untruthfully, seated in his chair
again. He cleared his throat desperately. "Dr. Gentian--" he said.
"Yes, Mr. Beard?--the bottle lies with you, I think--thank you." The
little gurgle of the Doctor's wine into his glass put Andrew off
unaccountably. For a moment be thoroughly wished himself heartwhole
and a thousand miles away. But he set his teeth and brought up an
image of Sparta to aid him.
"Dr. Gentian--" he began again, with an unfortunate sense of
repetition.
"Pardon me," interrupted the smiling Doctor politely, "But your glass
is already full. You may not have observed it." And Andrew
discovered to his horror-that he was spilling a red stream on the
table from an overflowing glass.
"Sorry, I'm sure," he mumbled.
"It is nothing," the Doctor assured him. "But I chance to have a
peculiar affection for certain years. of Madeira. Pray continue,
Mr. Beard--you will find it a trifle difficult to rest the bottle on
a walnut--I mention it, merely--pray continue--"
Andrew silently placed the bottle as far from him as possible and
wetted his lips.
"Dr. Gentian," he said for the third time, "I crave--I wish--May I
humbly crave, sir, your permission to--"
"You may certainly have my most willing permission to pay your
addresses to my daughter, Sparta," said the Doctor, briskly snipping
Andrew's disjoined stammerings in two. Then, seeing Andrew's
stupefied face, he threw back his head and burst into a shout of
laughter.
"Why, you silly boy," he said, laughing and wiping the tears of
laughter from his eyes, "D'you suppose I haven't seen where your
heart's been drifting this last half-year? But the blindest worm in
the ground's a crystal-gazer to a young man in love. Here, lad--"
and he gave his hand to Andrew across the table. "Shake hands and
don't look so solemn. You can have her if you can win her. I can
say no more than that, for I won't force her--but that I'll say with
a good conscience."
"I can never thank you enough, sir," said Andrew, solemnly, shaking
hands.
"Well then--don't thank me at all--that's far the best course for
both of us," said the Doctor, cheerfully. "I'll say this, too--the
girl has no other attachment I know of, and I'll be glad to give her
to you, should she be agreeable. But a word on other matters." He
grew serious now. "I am not a young man, Mr. Beard, and somewhat
loath to part with my one chick for the few years left me. So I must
ask you this--should you marry my daughter, sir, would you intend to
remain in the Floridas or return to New York?"
Andrew felt himself unable to think of such petty matters.
"I have grown much attached to the Floridas," he said, smiling. "So
much that I should not think of quitting them, if--"
"Good," said the Doctor. "Then we're agreed. I confess--I'd feel a
wrench were it to be otherwise. Well, sir--I think that is all I
wished to say. The settlements--of course I speak merely in the
eventuality, Mr. Beard--had best be discussed between your father and
myself--I might even make the voyage North in case--though in these
uneasy times--"
"My father is much interested in the Floridas," Andrew blurted out.
"It is even possible my father might remove some of his interests
here--" He half-regretted the words once they were spoken, but Dr.
Gentian had behaved with such admirable candor that it surely
behooved him to do likewise.
"Indeed?" said the Doctor quietly. "That is very interesting." He
reflected. "Your father is a wise man," he said. "No one knows what
this stir in the North may lead to--but the Floridas will stand by
the Crown. And should your father--well, well," he broke off.
"There'll be time enough to talk of that later. At present, no doubt
you're already busy with a sonnet to my daughter's eyebrow and aching
for the sight of her. Ah, youth--what a heat in the mind it is, and
how we cool when it's over. By the way," he went on more
practically, "as you know, I must visit St. Augustine in a month or
so, and be gone some time. If this matter we have discussed might be
settled before I leave--"
"But sir--I--I--Miss Gentian--" said Andrew, his mind topsy-turvy.
Dr. Gentian laid a paternal hand on his shoulder.
"There, lad--I don't mean to press you--or you her--but take my word
for it, the swiftest love is often the surest and lastingest--and
your bold, rapid lover is wedded and bedded and got his child on the
maid while Sir Timothy Shilly-Shally is still sighing outside her
door."
Andrew felt this last advice a trifle frank in tone--but it was an
unsqueamish age, and he could hardly quibble with so amiable a
prospective father-in-law over niceties of language. He went out of
the study, with the other's hand on his shoulder and a bronze call,
like the call of a centaur's hunting-horn, in his heart.
2.
He was alone with Sparta in the garden, and his hour was upon him.
The opportunity had come so swiftly and easily that he felt
bewildered. A word from Dr. Gentian as to the beauty of that strange
plant, the cereus, which blooms only at night. A sigh from Sparta
that the house was close and she would risk any treachery of the
night air for a breath of cool from the river. She had put a light
shawl about her shoulders, impatiently, at her mother's insistence.
In the white shine of the stars its vivid flowers were darkened and
strange, it wrapped her shoulders in a pale fleece, marked obscurely
with the imprint of blossoms sprung from fields on the dark side of
the moon. Andrew had never seen her more beautiful or less
attainable. Her composed face seemed to have no room for thoughts of
him or any other man, her eyes were lighted at an indifferent planet,
her mouth was a shut flower.
They had seen the cereus and marvelled--the night-flower that blooms
when heaven is dark and dies in the sun, showing only the secret
hours of the risen planets the perfection of its whiteness, cool,
sterile and lovely as a blossom congealed from some metal slighter
than foam. They had talked of a dozen, indifferent things as they
strolled about. Andrew had long ago discovered that Sparta was very
curious of New York and of cities in general. Her childish years
were a confused memory of long sea-voyages and strange nurses. The
one glimpse of London, seen when she was eleven and her roving father
had been interesting Lord Hillsborough in his projects, was hugged
like the ghost of a jewel to her breast. She remembered Vauxhall
passionately--and the very sprigs on the dresses of the fine ladies
in panniered silk who came there in sedan-chairs with a train of tame
wits and sniffing lapdogs.
"Sometimes, I confess, Mr. Beard--I must have a foolish heart--I'd
rather be an orange girl in the meanest London playhouse than an
empress in these exiled Floridas. But then I remember, when I was a
child my sole ambition was to be a midshipman on one of His Majesty's
frigates so I could carry a dirk and kill Frenchmen--and I calm
myself."
Andrew longed to tell her, that he would give her London, a
chicken-skin fan, and a lapdog with the arrogant nose of a Chinese
god--but his promise to Dr. Gentian held him back. At least, he
thought, she should be an empress in the Floridas, if he could make
her one. He glanced up the sky--the change Sebastian had predicted
was beginning. Clouds hurried across the stars like trotting black
sheep--a rampart of darkness built itself up steadily in the
glittering wake of the moon. He chose a particular cloud. When it
blotted the moon he would speak.
"Mr. Beard--Mr. Beard--is my company so wearisome? You have not
honored me with a word these five minutes past." Her shoe tapped on
the path. Her face was amused. He stared at her in silence, waiting
for his omen. It came at last. The cloud blotted the moon and
darkness fell on them both.
"Miss Gentian--Sparta--" he said with a crack in his throat. Then
all his elaborate prologue of speech forgotten, he put shaking hands
on her shoulders and drew her to him.
"Sparta? You'll marry me?" he said, in that same, cracked, violent
voice. She was very near, now. He could see her eyes in the
darkness, the grey had gone out of them, they were black as opals,
and in each was a tiny gleaming image of his face. She looked at him
steadily, for an instant, without replying. Then, "Yes, I'll marry
you," she said, the crystal bell of her voice untroubled by doubt or
surprise. Then his arms went round her and she kissed him full on
the mouth, and he felt his heart stop in his body for that instant of
felicity as if the pointed blade of the Spanish bayonet had run him
through and through with a golden thorn.
Through the further events of the evening, Andrew moved like a man in
trance. There were Sparta's kisses in the garden, which were real,
though incredible, and there was the formal reception of their
betrothal by Dr. and Mrs. Gentian, which, while equally real no
doubt, seemed in memory, vague as a painting upon a dream. He could
hear the words on Sparta's lips clearly enough, "Mr. Beard has asked
for me in marriage, Father, and I have accepted him, subject to your
consent," but of the practical conversation which followed he had
little recollection. Dr. Gentian had drunk his health and called him
son--he had drunk Dr. Gentian's health--Mrs. Gentian had been terse
but agreeable--he was going to marry? Sparta--that remained,
unbelievable though it might be, the one steadfast fact in a rocking
world. He tried to recall what Mrs. Gentian had said to him--her
congratulations had certainly not erred on the side of loquacity.
He was sure she had said no more than, "So you are to marry our
daughter, Mr. Beard? I wish you much joy," while she looked at him
curiously. But then he had taken her hand to kiss it in
acknowledgement and had been surprised to find it trembling.
Obviously a lady of deep, if hidden, feeling--and certainly Dr.
Gentian's cheery talkativeness more than made up for any curtness of
hers.
He must tell Sebastian, in the morning. He had forgotten all about
Sebastian till now, he realized with a start. No--not quite
forgotten. He had paused an instant as Sparta and he were about to
reënter the house, and glancing about idly, had seen two indistinct
shapes, a woman's and a man's, part from each other in the shadows of
the outbuildings. He suspected them of being lovers, and had felt
friendship for them because he was now happy in love. Now he
suspected more--that one shape had been Sebastian's and the other
that of Caterina, the Minorcan maid. The thought pleased him
extraordinarily--he was in that benevolent state when we are generous
enough to wish all our friends a bliss only slightly less than our
own. He gave Sebastian a suitable wedding, engaged him as
chief-overseer on his new plantation and stood godfather to his first
child, before he fell asleep to the rushing of light, fierce rain on
the roof above his head.
3.
About the time that Andrew and his divinity were first observing the
mystery of the cereus, the monkey in Sebastian's hut gave over its
attempts to capture a peculiarly elusive flea and began to consider
other means of diversion. Its master was away--fleas ceased to
interest after a certain time--life in general was a sucked cocoanut
and obedience a rusty chain about the body that kept one from all
sorts of pleasantly destructive occupations. If the chain could only
be got rid of somehow--but there the monkey had never had the
slightest success before and hoped for little now. Still, it was
worth trying, and the monkey bit at it a couple of times for luck and
then squatted down sailorwise and tugged at it till it rattled,
delightfully.
To his surprise, it seemed to give a little--Sebastian had hammered
the staple in a new place that morning without noticing the
rottenness of the wood. The monkey, encouraged, tried again and
again, with less result, and was about to give it up and go to sleep,
when one last jerk pulled the staple loose and set him free. He
bounded instantly upon Sebastian's bed and sat there chattering
triumphantly. There were so many breakable objects within easy reach
that he did not know quite where to begin. He started by hammering
Sebastian's red clay pipe against a stone. It smashed very
satisfactorily in a moment or two and he amused himself for some time
by carefully distributing the bits inside Sebastian's blankets. Then
that too palled and he scuttled over to the door, his chain jingling
behind him. The night seemed very large and interesting. There were
trees in it. He had not climbed a tree in a long time.
He remedied the lack immediately, but the tree he chose wasn't much
of a tree at that--it had no fruit on it to suck and throw away, with
a squash, at other men or monkeys. Still, it was good to be
independent again, at last. He said so at length, to the surrounding
world, and set out upon his travels.
The joys of independence lasted till the first large drops of rain
began to soak into his fur. Then they grew a trifle dubious. After
all, he had become used to living in a house with a roof on it, and
the society of mankind, while often tedious, had its compensations.
He had had an adventurous outing and smelled and bitten at all sorts
of new and interesting substances. He had proven himself a monkey of
ingenuity and initiative. Now, the hut on the edge of the Minorcan
quarter seemed snug and warm, and the food he shared with Sebastian
more filling, on the whole, than what one could forage for oneself.
He would go back--but he had come a considerable distance in his
careless rambling and was not quite sure of his bearings.
He looked around him--ah, there was a house with a light in the
window. That meant man and warmth and shelter. A different master,
perhaps--but he had been so long with Sebastian that he had quite
forgotten his first unpleasant experiences with masters.
He slipped down to the ground and jangled over toward the lighted
house, shivering as he ran. It was really raining now, and he hated
rain like a cat.
Mr. Cave, alone in colloquy with a half-emptied bottle of spirits,
heard a sudden ghostly clanking through the dripping pour of the
rain, and looking up, saw the Devil in person standing in his doorway
with a chain wrapped around his middle. He rubbed horrified eyes and
began to pray in a whisper. Then his mind righted itself and he sank
back in his chair, muttering. It was only that impudent Minorcan's
draggled pet-ape--but it had given him a start, and he did not like
being startled when he was in liquor.
The wet monkey had jumped on the table now and sat opposite him,
grinning and looking at the bottle of spirits. He grinned back at
it. It would be funny to give the miserable little beast some liquor
and get it drunk. You could get a chicken drunk on corn soaked in
brandy but a drunken monkey would be even more amusing.