|DAY was dawning in Buenaventura, republic of Sobrante, as invariably it
dawns in the tropics--without extended preliminary symptoms. The soft,
silvery light of a full moon that had stayed out scandalously late had
merged imperceptibly into gray; the gray was swiftly yielding place to a
faint crimson that was spreading and deepening upward athwart the east.
In the Calle Nueva a game cock, pride of an adoring family of Sobrante's
lower class, crowed defiance to a neighbouring bird. A dog barked. From
the patch of vivid green at the head of the Calle San Rosario a troupe
of howling monkeys raised a sun-up cheer that marked the finish of a
night of roystering; from wattled hut and adobe _casa_ brunette women
in red calico wrappers came forth, sleepy-eyed and dishevelled;
and presently from a thousand little adobe fireplaces in a thousand
backyards thin blue spirals of smoke mounted--incense to the household
gods of Sobrante--Tortilla and Frijoles. Brown men, black men,
lemon-tinted men, and white men whose fingernails showed blue instead
of white at the base, came to the doors of their respective habitations,
leaned against them, lighted post-breakfast cigarettes, and waited for
somebody to start something.
To these indolent watchers of the dawn was vouchsafed presently the
sight of Senora Concepcion Josefina Morelos on her way to early mass at
the Catedral de la Vera Cruz. Men called to each other, when she passed,
that Senora Morelos shortly would seek, in a Carmelite convent, surcease
from the grief caused by the premature demise of her husband, General
Pablo Morelos, at the hands of a firing-squad in the _cuartel_ yard,
as a warning to others of similar kidney to forbear and cease to tamper
with the machinery of politics. And when Senora Morelos had passed, came
Alberto Guzman with two smart mules hitched to a dilapidated street-car;
came Don Juan Cafetéro, _peseta_-less, still slightly befuddled from
his potations of the night before, and raising the echoes in the _calle_
with a song singularly alien to his surroundings:
Green were the fields where my forefathers dwelt--
O, Erin, mavourneen, slan laght go bragh!
At the theatre we sit patiently waiting for the stage electrician to
switch on the footlights and warn us that the drama is about to begin.
Let us, in a broader sense, appropriate that cue to mark the beginning
of the drama with which this story deals; instead of a stage, however,
we have the republic of Sobrante; in lieu of footlights we have the sun
popping up out of the Caribbean Sea.
Those actors whose acquaintance we have so briefly made thus far must be
presumed to be supers crossing the stage and loitering thereon while the
curtain is down. Now, therefore, let us drive them into the wings while
the curtain rises on a tropical scene.
In the _patio_ of Mother Jenks's establishment in the Çalle de
Concordia, No. 19, the first shafts of morning light were filtering
obliquely through the orange trees and creeping in under the deep,
Gothic-arched veranda flanking the western side of the _patio_, to
reveal a dusky maiden of more or less polyglot antecedents, asleep upon
a bright, parti-coloured blanket spread over a wicker couch.
Presently, through the silent reaches of the Calle de Concordia, the
sound of a prodigious knocking and thumping echoed, as of some fretful
individual seeking admission at the street door of El Buen Amigo, by
which euphonious designation Mother Jenks's caravansary was known to the
public of Buenaventura. In the second story, front, a window slid back
and a woman's voice, husky with that huskiness that speaks so accusingly
of cigarettes and alcohol, demanded:
“_Quien es?_ Who is it? _Que quiere usted?_ Wot do yer want?”
“Ye might dispinse wit' that paraqueet conversation whin addhressin' the
likes av me,” a voice replied. “'Tis me--Cafferty. I have a cablegram
Leber give me to deliver----”
“Gawd's truth! Would yer wake the 'ole 'ouse with yer'ammering?”
“All right. I'll not say another worrd!”
A minute passed; then the same husky voice, the owner of which had
evidently descended from her sleeping chamber above, spoke in a steadily
rising crescendo from a room just off the veranda:
“Car-may-lee-ta-a-a!”
We can serve no useful purpose by endeavouring to conceal from the
reader, even temporarily, the information that Carmelita was the
sleeping naiad on the couch; also that she continued to sleep, for hers
was that quality of slumber which is the heritage of dark blood and
defies any commotion short of that incident to a three-alarm fire. Three
times the husky voice addressed Carmelita with cumulative vehemence; but
Carmelita slept on, and presently the husky voice ceased to cry aloud
for her. Followed the sound of bare feet thudding across the floor.
Forth from the house came Mother Jenks, a redfaced, coarse-jowled,
slightly bearded lady of undoubted years and indiscretion, in
curl-papers and nightgown, barefoot and carrying a bucket. One scornful
glance at the sleeping Carmelita, and mother Jenks crossed to the
fountain plashing in the centre of the _patio_, filled her bucket,
stepped to the veranda and dashed three gallons of tepid water into
Carme-lita's face.
_That_ awakened Carmelita--Mother Jenks's raucous “Git up, yer bloody
wench! Out, yer 'ussy, an' cook _almuerzo_. Gawd strike me pink, if I
don't give yer the sack for this--an' sleepin' on my best new blenkit!”
being in the nature of a totally unnecessary exordium.
Carmelita shrieked and fled, while Mother Jenks scuttled along in
pursuit like a belligerent old duck, the while she heaped opprobrium
upon Carmelita and all her tribe, the republic of Sobrante, its capital,
its government officials, and the cable company: Finally she disappeared
into El Buen Amigo with a hearty Cockney oath at her own lack of
foresight in ever permitting her sainted 'Enery to set foot on a foreign
shore.
Once inside, Mother Jenks proceeded down a tiled hallway to the
_cantina_ of her hostelry and opened the street door a few inches.
Without the portal stood Don Juan Cafetéro, of whom a word or two before
proceeding.
To begin, Don Juan Cafetéro was not his real name, but rather a free
Spanish translation of the Gaelic, John Cafferty. As would be indicated
by the song he was singing when first we made his acquaintance, coupled
with the unstable condition of his legs, Mr. Cafferty was an exile of
Erin with a horrible thirst. He had first arrived in Sobrante some five
years before, as section-boss in the employ of the little foreign-owned
narrow-gauge railway which ran from Buenaventura on the Caribbean coast
to San Miguel de Padua, up-country where the nitrate beds were located.
Prior to his advent the railroad people had tried many breeds of
section-boss without visible results, until a Chicago man, who had come
to Sobrante to install an intercommunicating telephone system in the
Government buildings, suggested to the superintendent of the road,
who was a German, that the men made for bosses come from Erin's isle;
wherefore Mr. Cafferty had been imported at a price of five dollars a
day gold. Result--a marked improvement in the road-bed and consequently
the train-schedules, and the ultimate loss of the Cafferty soul.
Don Juan, with the perversity of the Celt, and contrary to precept and
example, forbore to curse Sobrante. On the contrary, he liked Sobrante
immediately upon arrival and so stated in public--this unusual state of
affairs doubtless being due to the fact that his job furnished much of
excitement and interest, for his driving tactics were not calculated to
imbue in his dusky section-hands a love for the new section-boss; and
from the day he took charge until he lost the job, the life of Don Juan
Cafetéro had been equivalent in intrinsic value to two squirts of swamp
water--possibly one.
Something in the climate of Sobrante must have appealed to a touch of
_laissez faire_ in Don Juan's amiable nature, for in the course of time
he had taken unto himself, without bell or book, after the fashion of
the proletariat of Sobrante, the daughter of one Estebân Manuel Enrique
José Maria Pasqual y Miramontes, an estimable peon who was singularly
glad to have his daughter off his hands and no questions asked.
Following the fashion of the country, however, Esteban had forthwith
moved the remainder of his numerous progeny under the mantle of Don Juan
Cafetéro's philanthropy, and resigned a position which for many years he
had not enjoyed--to wit: salting and packing green hides at a local
_abattoir_. This foolhardy economic move had so incensed Don Juan that
in a fit of pique he spurned his father-in-law (we must call Esteban
something and so why split hairs?) under the tails of his _camisa_, with
such vigour as to sever forever the friendly relations hitherto existing
between the families. Mrs. Cafferty (again we transgress, but what of
it?) subsequently passed away in childbirth, and no sooner had she been
decently buried than Don Juan took a week off to drown his sorrows.
In this condition he had encountered Esteban Manuel Enrique José Maria
Pasqual y Miramontes and called him out of his name--for which there
appears to be little excuse, in view of the many the latter possessed.
In the altercation that ensued Esteban, fully convinced that he had
received the nub end of the transaction from start to finish, cut Don
Juan severely in the region of the umbilicus; Don Juan had thereupon
slain Esteban with a.44-calibre revolver, and upon emerging from
the railroad hospital a month later had been tried by a Sobrantean
magistrate and fined the sum of twenty thousand dollars, legal tender of
the Republic of Sobrante. Of course he had paid it off within six months
from his wages as section-boss, but the memory of the injustice always
rankled in him, and gradually he moved down the scale of society from
section-boss to day labourer, day labourer to tropical tramp, and
tropical tramp to beach-comber, in which latter state he had now existed
for several months.
While waiting to round out the brief period of existence which drink and
the devil had left him, this poor human fragment had become a protégé of
Ignatz Leber, an Alsatian, manager for a German importing and
exporting house, and agent for the cable company. By the grace of the
philanthropic Ignatz, Don Juan slept under Leber's warehouse and ate in
his kitchen.
To return to Mother Jenks.