“Of how mooch?”

“Of the Lord of Hosts--of the Almighty in Heaven.” He lifted his long

arms reverently on high.

“Oh!” she said, with a frightened look, slightly edging away from the

wall. At a secure distance she stopped. “Then you are a soldier, Don

Esteban?”

“No!”

“Then what for you sink 'I am a soldier of the Lord,' and you will make

die 'in His army'? Oh, yes; you have said.” She gathered up her guitar

tightly under her arm, shook her small finger at him gravely, and said,

“You are a hoombog, Don Esteban; good a' night,” and began to glide

away.

“One moment, Miss--Miss Ramirez,” called Masterton. “I--that is you--you

have--forgotten your rose,” he added, feebly, holding up the flower. She

halted.

“Ah, yes; he have drop, you have pick him up, he is yours. I have drop,

you have pick ME up, but I am NOT yours. Good a' night, COMANDANTE Don

Esteban!”

With a light laugh she ran along beside the wall for a little distance,

suddenly leaped up and disappeared in one of the largest gaps in

its ruined and helpless structure. Stephen Masterton gazed after her

stupidly, still holding the rose in his hand. Then he threw it away and

re-entered his home.

Lighting his candle, he undressed himself, prayed fervently--so

fervently that all remembrance of the idle, foolish incident was wiped

from his mind, and went to bed. He slept well and dreamlessly. The next

morning, when his thoughts recurred to the previous night, this seemed

to him a token that he had not deviated from his spiritual integrity; it

did not occur to him that the thought itself was a tacit suspicion.

So his feet quite easily sought the garden again in the early sunshine,

even to the wall where she had stood. But he had not taken into account

the vivifying freshness of the morning, the renewed promise of life and

resurrection in the pulsing air and potent sunlight, and as he stood

there he seemed to see the figure of the young girl again leaning

against the wall in all the charm of her irrepressible and innocent

youth. More than that, he found the whole scene re-enacting itself

before him; the nebulous drapery half hidden in the foliage, the cry and

the fall; the momentary soft contact of the girl's figure against his

own, the clinging arms around his neck, the brush and fragrance of her

flounces--all this came back to him with a strength he had NOT felt when

it occurred.

He was turning hurriedly away when his eyes fell upon the yellow rose

still lying in the debris where he had thrown it--but still pure, fresh,

and unfaded. He picked it up again, with a singular fancy that it was

the girl herself, and carried it into the house.

As he placed it half shyly in a glass on his table a wonderful thought

occurred to him. Was not the episode of last night a special providence?

Was not that young girl, wayward and childlike, a mere neophyte in her

idolatrous religion, as yet unsteeped in sloth and ignorance, presented

to him as a brand to be snatched from the burning? Was not this

the opportunity of conversion he had longed for--this the chance of

exercising his gifts of exhortation that he had been hiding in the

napkin of solitude and seclusion? Nay, was not all this PREDESTINED?

His illness, his consequent exile to this land of false gods--this

contiguity to the Mission--was not all this part of a supremely ordered

plan for the girl's salvation--and was HE not elected and ordained for

that service? Nay, more, was not the girl herself a mere unconscious

instrument in the hands of a higher power; was not her voluntary attempt

to accompany him in his devotional exercise a vague stirring of that

predestined force within her? Was not even that wantonness and

frivolity contrasted with her childishness--which he had at first

misunderstood--the stirrings of the flesh and the spirit, and was he to

abandon her in that struggle of good and evil?

He lifted his bowed head, that had been resting on his arm before the

little flower on the table--as if it were a shrine--with a flash of

resolve in his blue eyes. The wrinkled Concepcion coming to her duties

in the morning scarcely recognized her gloomily abstracted master in

this transfigured man. He looked ten years younger.

She met his greeting, and the few direct inquiries that his new resolve

enabled him to make more freely, with some information--which a later

talk with the shopkeeper, who had a fuller English vocabulary, confirmed

in detail.

“YES! truly this was a niece of the Mission gardener, who lived with

her uncle in the ruined wing of the presidio. She had taken her first

communion four years ago. Ah, yes, she was a great musician, and could

play on the organ. And the guitar, ah, yes--of a certainty. She was gay,

and flirted with the caballeros, young and old, but she cared not for

any.”

Whatever satisfaction this latter statement gave Masterton, he believed

it was because the absence of any disturbing worldly affection would

make her an easier convert.

But how continue this chance acquaintance and effect her conversion?

For the first time Masterton realized the value of expediency; while his

whole nature impelled him to seek her society frankly and publicly and

exhort her openly, he knew that this was impossible; still more, he

remembered her unmistakable fright at his first expression of faith;

he must “be wise as the serpent and harmless as the dove.” He must work

upon her soul alone, and secretly. He, who would have shrunk from any

clandestine association with a girl from mere human affection, saw

no wrong in a covert intimacy for the purpose of religious salvation.

Ignorant as he was of the ways of the world, and inexperienced in the

usages of society, he began to plan methods of secretly meeting her with

all the intrigue of a gallant. The perspicacity as well as the intuition

of a true lover had descended upon him in this effort of mere spiritual

conquest.

Armed with his information and a few Spanish words, he took the

yellow Concepcion aside and gravely suborned her to carry a note to

be delivered secretly to Miss Ramirez. To his great relief and some

surprise the old woman grinned with intelligence, and her withered

hand closed with a certain familiar dexterity over the epistle and the

accompanying gratuity. To a man less naively one-ideaed it might

have awakened some suspicion; but to the more sanguine hopefulness of

Masterton it only suggested the fancy that Concepcion herself might

prove to be open to conversion, and that he should in due season attempt

HER salvation also. But that would be later. For Concepcion was always

with him and accessible; the girl was not.

The note, which had cost him some labor of composition, simple and

almost businesslike as was the result, ran as follows:

“I wish to see you upon some matter of grave concern to yourself. Will

you oblige me by coming again to the wall of the Mission tonight at

early candlelight? It would avert worldly suspicion if you brought also

your guitar.”

The afternoon dragged slowly on; Concepcion returned; she had, with

great difficulty, managed to see the senorita, but not alone; she had,

however, slipped the note into her hand, not daring to wait for an

answer.

In his first hopefulness Masterton did not doubt what the answer

would be, but as evening approached he grew concerned as to the girl's

opportunities of coming, and regretted that he had not given her a

choice of time.

Before his evening meal was finished he began to fear for her

willingness, and doubt the potency of his note. He was accustomed

to exhort ORALLY--perhaps he ought to have waited for the chance of

SPEAKING to her directly without writing.

When the moon rose he was already in the garden. Lingering at first in

the shadow of an olive tree, he waited until the moonbeams fell on

the wall and its crests of foliage. But nothing moved among that ebony

tracery; his ear was strained for the familiar tinkle of the guitar--all

was silent. As the moon rose higher he at last boldly walked to the

wall, and listened for any movement on the other side of it. But nothing

stirred. She was evidently NOT coming--his note had failed.

He was turning away sadly, but as he faced his home again he heard a

light laugh beside him. He stopped. A black shadow stepped out from

beneath his own almond tree. He started when, with a gesture that seemed

familiar to him, the upper part of the shadow seemed to fall away with a

long black mantilla and the face of the young girl was revealed.

He could see now that she was clad in black lace from head to foot. She

looked taller, older, and he fancied even prettier than before. A sudden

doubt of his ability to impress her, a swift realization of all the

difficulties of the attempt, and, for the first time perhaps, a dim

perception of the incongruity of the situation came over him.

“I was looking for you on the wall,” he stammered.

“MADRE DE DIOS!” she retorted, with a laugh and her old audacity, “you

would that I shall ALWAYS hang there, and drop upon you like a pear when

you shake the tree? No!”

“You haven't brought your guitar,” he continued, still more awkwardly,

as he noticed that she held only a long black fan in her hand.

“For why? You would that I PLAY it, and when my uncle say 'Where

go Pepita? She is loss,' someone shall say, 'Oh! I have hear her

tink-a-tink in the garden of the Americano, who lif alone.' And then--it

ess finish!”

Masterton began to feel exceedingly uncomfortable. There was something

in this situation that he had not dreamed of. But with the persistency

of an awkward man he went on.

“But you played on the wall the other night, and tried to accompany me.”

“But that was lass night and on the wall. I had not speak to you, you

had not speak to me. You had not sent me the leetle note by your peon.”

She stopped, and suddenly opening her fan before her face, so that only

her mischievous eyes were visible, added: “You had not asked me then to

come to hear you make lof to me, Don Esteban. That is the difference.”

The circuit preacher felt the blood rush to his face. Anger, shame,

mortification, remorse, and fear alternately strove with him, but

above all and through all he was conscious of a sharp, exquisite

pleasure--that frightened him still more. Yet he managed to exclaim:

“No! no! You cannot think me capable of such a cowardly trick?”

The girl started, more at the unmistakable sincerity of his utterance

than at the words, whose full meaning she may have only imperfectly

caught.

“A treek? A treek?” she slowly and wonderingly repeated. Then suddenly,

as if comprehending him, she turned her round black eyes full upon him

and dropped her fan from her face.

“And WHAT for you ask me to come here then?”

“I wanted to talk with you,” he began, “on far more serious matters.

I wished to--” but he stopped. He could not address this quaint

child-woman staring at him in black-eyed wonder, in either the measured

or the impetuous terms with which he would have exhorted a maturer

responsible being. He made a step toward her; she drew back, striking at

his extended hand half impatiently, half mischievously with her fan.

He flushed--and then burst out bluntly, “I want to talk with you about

your soul.”

“My what?”

“Your immortal soul, unhappy girl.”

“What have you to make with that? Are you a devil?” Her eyes grew

rounder, though she faced him boldly.

“I am a Minister of the Gospel,” he said, in hurried entreaty. “You must

hear me for a moment. I would save your soul.”

“My immortal soul lif with the Padre at the Mission--you moost seek her

there! My mortal BODY,” she added, with a mischievous smile, “say to

you, 'good a' night, Don Esteban.'” She dropped him a little curtsy

and--ran away.

“One moment, Miss Ramirez,” said Masterton, eagerly; but she had already

slipped beyond his reach. He saw her little black figure passing swiftly

beside the moonlit wall, saw it suddenly slide into a shadowy fissure,

and vanish.

In his blank disappointment he could not bear to re-enter the house he

had left so sanguinely a few moments before, but walked moodily in the

garden. His discomfiture was the more complete since he felt that

his defeat was owing to some mistake in his methods, and not the

incorrigibility of his subject.

Was it not a spiritual weakness in him to have resented so sharply the

girl's imputation that he wished to make love to her? He should have

borne it as Christians had even before now borne slander and false

testimony for their faith! He might even have ACCEPTED it, and let the

triumph of her conversion in the end prove his innocence. Or was his

purpose incompatible with that sisterly affection he had so often

preached to the women of his flock? He might have taken her hand, and

called her “Sister Pepita,” even as he had called Deborah “Sister.” He

recalled the fact that he had for an instant held her struggling in his

arms: he remembered the thrill that the recollection had caused him,

and somehow it now sent a burning blush across his face. He hurried back

into the house.

The next day a thousand wild ideas took the place of his former settled

resolution. He would seek the Padre, this custodian of the young girl's

soul; he would convince HIM of his error, or beseech him to give him

an equal access to her spirit! He would seek the uncle of the girl, and

work upon his feelings.

Then for three or four days he resolved to put the young girl from his

mind, trusting after the fashion of his kind for some special revelation

from a supreme source as an indication for his conduct. This revelation

presently occurred, as it is apt to occur when wanted.

One evening his heart leaped at the familiar sound of Pepita's guitar in

the distance. Whatever his ultimate intention now, he hurriedly ran

into the garden. The sound came from the former direction, but as he

unhesitatingly approached the Mission wall, he could see that she was

not upon it, and as the notes of her guitar were struck again, he knew

that they came from the other side. But the chords were a prelude to one

of his own hymns, and he stood entranced as her sweet, childlike voice

rose with the very words that he had sung. The few defects were those of

purely oral imitation, the accents, even the slight reiteration of the

“s,” were Pepita's own:

Cheeldren oof the Heavenly King,

As ye journey essweetly ssing;

Essing your great Redeemer's praise,

Glorioos in Hees works and ways.

He was astounded. Her recollection of the air and words was the more

wonderful, for he remembered now that he had only sung that particular

hymn once. But to his still greater delight and surprise, her voice rose

again in the second verse, with a touch of plaintiveness that swelled

his throat:

We are traveling home to God,

In the way our farzers trod,

They are happy now, and we

Soon their happiness shall see.

The simple, almost childish words--so childish that they might have been

the fitting creation of her own childish lips--here died away with a

sweep and crash of the whole strings. Breathless silence followed, in

which Stephen Masterton could feel the beatings of his own heart.

“Miss Ramirez,” he called, in a voice that scarcely seemed his own.

There was no reply. “Pepita!” he repeated; it was strangely like the

accent of a lover, but he no longer cared. Still the singer's voice was

silent.

Then he ran swiftly beside the wall, as he had seen her run, until he

came to the fissure. It was overgrown with vines and brambles almost

as impenetrable as an abatis, but if she had pierced it in her delicate

crape dress, so could he! He brushed roughly through, and found himself

in a glimmering aisle of pear trees close by the white wall of the

Mission church.

For a moment in that intricate tracing of ebony and ivory made by

the rising moon, he was dazzled, but evidently his irruption into the

orchard had not been as lithe and silent as her own, for a figure in a

parti-colored dress suddenly started into activity, and running from

the wall, began to course through the trees until it became apparently

a part of that involved pattern. Nothing daunted, however, Stephen

Masterton pursued, his speed increased as he recognized the flounces of

Pepita's barred dress, but the young girl had the advantage of knowing

the locality, and could evade her pursuer by unsuspected turns and

doubles.

For some moments this fanciful sylvan chase was kept up in perfect

silence; it might have been a woodland nymph pursued by a wandering

shepherd. Masterton presently saw that she was making toward a tiled

roof that was now visible as projecting over the presidio wall, and

was evidently her goal of refuge. He redoubled his speed; with skillful

audacity and sheer strength of his broad shoulders he broke through a

dense ceanothus hedge which Pepita was swiftly skirting, and suddenly

appeared between her and her house.

With her first cry, the young girl turned and tried to bury herself in

the hedge; but in another stride the circuit preacher was at her side,

and caught her panting figure in his arms.

While he had been running he had swiftly formulated what he should

do and what he should say to her. To his simple appeal for her

companionship and willing ear he would add a brotherly tenderness, that

should invite her trustfulness in him; he would confess his wrong and

ask her forgiveness of his abrupt solicitations; he would propose to

teach her more hymns, they would practice psalmody together; even this

priest, the custodian of her soul, could not object to that; but chiefly

he would thank her: he would tell her how she had pleased him, and this

would lead to more serious and thoughtful converse. All this was in his

mind while he ran, was upon his lips as he caught her and for an instant

she lapsed, exhausted, in his arms. But, alas! even in that moment he

suddenly drew her toward him, and kissed her as only a lover could!

The wire grass was already yellowing on the Tasajara plains with the

dusty decay of the long, dry summer when Dr. Duchesne returned to

Tasajara. He came to see the wife of Deacon Sanderson, who, having for

the twelfth time added to the population of the settlement, was not

“doing as well” as everybody--except, possibly, Dr. Duchesne--expected.

After he had made this hollow-eyed, over-burdened, undernourished woman

as comfortable as he could in her rude, neglected surroundings, to

change the dreary chronicle of suffering, he turned to the husband,

and said, “And what has become of Mr. Masterton, who used to be in

your--vocation?” A long groan came from the deacon.

“Hallo! I hope he has not had a relapse,” said the doctor, earnestly. “I

thought I'd knocked all that nonsense out of him--I beg your pardon--I

mean,” he added, hurriedly, “he wrote to me only a few weeks ago that he

was picking up his strength again and doing well!”

“In his weak, gross, sinful flesh--yes, no doubt,” returned the Deacon,

scornfully, “and, perhaps, even in a worldly sense, for those who value

the vanities of life; but he is lost to us, for all time, and lost

to eternal life forever. Not,” he continued in sanctimonious

vindictiveness, “but that I often had my doubts of Brother Masterton's

steadfastness. He was too much given to imagery and song.”

“But what has he done?” persisted Dr. Duchesne.

“Done! He has embraced the Scarlet Woman!”

“Dear me!” said the doctor, “so soon? Is it anybody you knew here?--not

anybody's wife? Eh?”

“He has entered the Church of Rome,” said the Deacon, indignantly, “he

has forsaken the God of his fathers for the tents of the idolaters; he

is the consort of Papists and the slave of the Pope!”

“But are you SURE?” said Dr. Duchesne, with perhaps less concern than

before.

“Sure,” returned the Deacon angrily, “didn't Brother Bulkley, on account

of warning reports made by a God-fearing and soul-seeking teamster, make

a special pilgrimage to this land of Sodom to inquire and spy out its

wickedness? Didn't he find Stephen Masterton steeped in the iniquity of

practicing on an organ--he that scorned even a violin or harmonium in

the tents of the Lord--in an idolatrous chapel, with a foreign female

Papist for a teacher? Didn't he find him a guest at the board of a

Jesuit priest, visiting the schools of the Mission where this young

Jezebel of a singer teaches the children to chant in unknown tongues?

Didn't he find him living with a wrinkled Indian witch who called him

'Padrone'--and speaking her gibberish? Didn't he find him, who left here

a man mortified in flesh and spirit and pale with striving with sinners,

fat and rosy from native wines and fleshpots, and even vain and gaudy

in colored apparel? And last of all, didn't Brother Bulkley hear that a

rumor was spread far and wide that this miserable backslider was to take

to himself a wife--in one of these strange women--that very Jezebel who

seduced him? What do you call that?”

“It looks a good deal like human nature,” said the doctor, musingly,

“but I call it a cure!”

THE INDISCRETION OF ELSBETH

The American paused. He had evidently lost his way. For the last half

hour he had been wandering in a medieval town, in a profound medieval

dream. Only a few days had elapsed since he had left the steamship that

carried him hither; and the accents of his own tongue, the idioms of

his own people, and the sympathetic community of New World tastes and

expressions still filled his mind until he woke up, or rather, as it

seemed to him, was falling asleep in the past of this Old World town

which had once held his ancestors. Although a republican, he had liked

to think of them in quaint distinctive garb, representing state and

importance--perhaps even aristocratic pre-eminence--content to let the

responsibility of such “bad eminence” rest with them entirely, but a

habit of conscientiousness and love for historic truth eventually led

him also to regard an honest BAUER standing beside his cattle in the

quaint market place, or a kindly-faced black-eyed DIENSTMADCHEN in a

doorway, with a timid, respectful interest, as a possible type of his

progenitors. For, unlike some of his traveling countrymen in Europe, he

was not a snob, and it struck him--as an American--that it was,

perhaps, better to think of his race as having improved than as having

degenerated. In these ingenuous meditations he had passed the long rows

of quaint, high houses, whose sagging roofs and unpatched dilapidations

were yet far removed from squalor, until he had reached the road

bordered by poplars, all so unlike his own country's waysides--and knew

that he had wandered far from his hotel.

He did not care, however, to retrace his steps and return by the way

he had come. There was, he reasoned, some other street or turning that

would eventually bring him to the market place and his hotel, and yet

extend his experience of the town. He turned at right angles into a

narrow grass lane, which was, however, as neatly kept and apparently as

public as the highway. A few moments' walking convinced him that it was

not a thoroughfare and that it led to the open gates of a park. This had

something of a public look, which suggested that his intrusion might be

at least a pardonable trespass, and he relied, like most strangers, on

the exonerating quality of a stranger's ignorance. The park lay in the

direction he wished to go, and yet it struck him as singular that a park

of such extent should be still allowed to occupy such valuable urban

space. Indeed, its length seemed to be illimitable as he wandered on,

until he became conscious that he must have again lost his way, and he

diverged toward the only boundary, a high, thickset hedge to the right,

whose line he had been following.

As he neared it he heard the sound of voices on the other side, speaking

in German, with which he was unfamiliar. Having, as yet, met no one, and

being now impressed with the fact that for a public place the park was

singularly deserted, he was conscious that his position was getting

serious, and he determined to take this only chance of inquiring his

way. The hedge was thinner in some places than in others, and at times

he could see not only the light through it but even the moving figures

of the speakers, and the occasional white flash of a summer gown. At

last he determined to penetrate it, and with little difficulty emerged

on the other side. But here he paused motionless. He found himself

behind a somewhat formal and symmetrical group of figures with their

backs toward him, but all stiffened into attitudes as motionless as his

own, and all gazing with a monotonous intensity in the direction of a

handsome building, which had been invisible above the hedge but which

now seemed to arise suddenly before him. Some of the figures were in

uniform. Immediately before him, but so slightly separated from

the others that he was enabled to see the house between her and her

companions, he was confronted by the pretty back, shoulders, and blond

braids of a young girl of twenty. Convinced that he had unwittingly

intruded upon some august ceremonial, he instantly slipped back into

the hedge, but so silently that his momentary presence was evidently

undetected. When he regained the park side he glanced back through

the interstices; there was no movement of the figures nor break in the

silence to indicate that his intrusion had been observed. With a long

breath of relief he hurried from the park.

It was late when he finally got back to his hotel. But his little modern

adventure had, I fear, quite outrun his previous medieval reflections,

and almost his first inquiry of the silver-chained porter in the

courtyard was in regard to the park. There was no public park in

Alstadt! The Herr possibly alluded to the Hof Gardens--the Schloss,

which was in the direction he indicated. The Schloss was the residency

of the hereditary Grand Duke. JA WOHL! He was stopping there with

several Hoheiten. There was naturally a party there--a family reunion.

But it was a private enclosure. At times, when the Grand Duke was “not in

residence,” it was open to the public. In point of fact, at such times

tickets of admission were to be had at the hotel for fifty pfennige

each. There was not, of truth, much to see except a model farm and

dairy--the pretty toy of a previous Grand Duchess.

But he seemed destined to come into closer collision with the modern

life of Alstadt. On entering the hotel, wearied by his long walk, he

passed the landlord and a man in half-military uniform on the landing

near his room. As he entered his apartment he had a vague impression,

without exactly knowing why, that the landlord and the military

stranger had just left it. This feeling was deepened by the evident

disarrangement of certain articles in his unlocked portmanteau and the

disorganization of his writing case. A wave of indignation passed over

him. It was followed by a knock at the door, and the landlord blandly

appeared with the stranger.

“A thousand pardons,” said the former, smilingly, “but Herr Sanderman,

the Ober-Inspector of Police, wishes to speak with you. I hope we are

not intruding?”

“Not NOW,” said the American, dryly.

The two exchanged a vacant and deprecating smile.

“I have to ask only a few formal questions,” said the Ober-Inspector in

excellent but somewhat precise English, “to supplement the report which,

as a stranger, you may not know is required by the police from the

landlord in regard to the names and quality of his guests who are

foreign to the town. You have a passport?”

“I have,” said the American still more dryly. “But I do not keep it in

an unlocked portmanteau or an open writing case.”

“An admirable precaution,” said Sanderman, with unmoved politeness.

“May I see it? Thanks,” he added, glancing over the document which the

American produced from his pocket. “I see that you are a born American

citizen--and an earlier knowledge of that fact would have prevented

this little contretemps. You are aware, Mr. Hoffman, that your name is

German?”

“It was borne by my ancestors, who came from this country two centuries

ago,” said Hoffman, curtly.

“We are indeed honored by your return to it,” returned Sanderman

suavely, “but it was the circumstance of your name being a local one,

and the possibility of your still being a German citizen liable to

unperformed military duty, which has caused the trouble.” His manner was

clearly civil and courteous, but Hoffman felt that all the time his own

face and features were undergoing a profound scrutiny from the speaker.

“And you are making sure that you will know me again?” said Hoffman,

with a smile.

“I trust, indeed, both,” returned Sanderman, with a bow, “although

you will permit me to say that your description here,” pointing to the

passport, “scarcely does you justice. ACH GOTT! it is the same in all

countries; the official eye is not that of the young DAMEN.”

Hoffman, though not conceited, had not lived twenty years without

knowing that he was very good-looking, yet there was something in the

remark that caused him to color with a new uneasiness.

The Ober-Inspector rose with another bow, and moved toward the door. “I

hope you will let me make amends for this intrusion by doing anything I

can to render your visit here a pleasant one. Perhaps,” he added, “it is

not for long.”

But Hoffman evaded the evident question, as he resented what he imagined

was a possible sneer.

“I have not yet determined my movements,” he said.

The Ober-Inspector brought his heels together in a somewhat stiffer

military salute and departed.

Nothing, however, could have exceeded the later almost servile urbanity

of the landlord, who seemed to have been proud of the official visit to

his guest. He was profuse in his attentions, and even introduced him to

a singularly artistic-looking man of middle age, wearing an order in his

buttonhole, whom he met casually in the hall.

“Our Court photographer,” explained the landlord with some fervor,

“at whose studio, only a few houses distant, most of the Hoheiten and

Prinzessinen of Germany have sat for their likenesses.”

“I should feel honored if the distinguished American Herr would give

me a visit,” said the stranger gravely, as he gazed at Hoffman with an

intensity which recalled the previous scrutiny of the Police Inspector,

“and I would be charmed if he would avail himself of my poor skill to

transmit his picturesque features to my unique collection.”

Hoffman returned a polite evasion to this invitation, although he was

conscious of being struck with this second examination of his face, and

the allusion to his personality.

The next morning the porter met him with a mysterious air. The Herr

would still like to see the Schloss? Hoffman, who had quite forgotten

his adventure in the park, looked vacant. JA WOHL--the Hof authorities

had no doubt heard of his visit and had intimated to the hotel

proprietor that he might have permission to visit the model farm and

dairy. As the American still looked indifferent the porter pointed out

with some importance that it was a Ducal courtesy not to be lightly

treated; that few, indeed, of the burghers themselves had ever been

admitted to this eccentric whim of the late Grand Duchess. He would, of

course, be silent about it; the Court would not like it known that they

had made an exception to their rules in favor of a foreigner; he would

enter quickly and boldly alone. There would be a housekeeper or a

dairymaid to show him over the place.

More amused at this important mystery over what he, as an American, was

inclined to classify as a “free pass” to a somewhat heavy “side show,”

he gravely accepted the permission, and the next morning after breakfast

set out to visit the model farm and dairy. Dismissing his driver, as

he had been instructed, Hoffman entered the gateway with a mingling of

expectancy and a certain amusement over the “boldness” which the

porter had suggested should characterize his entrance. Before him was

a beautifully kept lane bordered by arbored and trellised roses, which

seemed to sink into the distance. He was instinctively following it when

he became aware that he was mysteriously accompanied by a man in the

livery of a chasseur, who was walking among the trees almost abreast

of him, keeping pace with his step, and after the first introductory

military salute preserving a ceremonious silence. There was something

so ludicrous in this solemn procession toward a peaceful, rural industry

that by the time they had reached the bottom of the lane the American

had quite recovered his good humor. But here a new astonishment awaited

him. Nestling before him in a green amphitheater lay a little wooden

farm-yard and outbuildings, which irresistibly suggested that it had

been recently unpacked and set up from a box of Nuremberg toys. The

symmetrical trees, the galleried houses with preternaturally glazed

windows, even the spotty, disproportionately sized cows in the

white-fenced barnyards were all unreal, wooden and toylike.

Crossing a miniature bridge over a little stream, from which he was

quite prepared to hook metallic fish with a magnet their own size,

he looked about him for some real being to dispel the illusion. The

mysterious chasseur had disappeared. But under the arch of an arbor,

which seemed to be composed of silk ribbons, green glass, and pink

tissue paper, stood a quaint but delightful figure.

At first it seemed as if he had only dispelled one illusion for another.

For the figure before him might have been made of Dresden china--so

daintily delicate and unique it was in color and arrangement. It was

that of a young girl dressed in some forgotten medieval peasant garb

of velvet braids, silver-staylaced corsage, lace sleeves, and helmeted

metallic comb. But, after the Dresden method, the pale yellow of her

hair was repeated in her bodice, the pink of her cheeks was in the

roses of her chintz overskirt. The blue of her eyes was the blue of her

petticoat; the dazzling whiteness of her neck shone again in the

sleeves and stockings. Nevertheless she was real and human, for the

pink deepened in her cheeks as Hoffman's hat flew from his head, and she

recognized the civility with a grave little curtsy.

“You have come to see the dairy,” she said in quaintly accurate English;

“I will show you the way.”

“If you please,” said Hoffman, gaily, “but--”

“But what?” she said, facing him suddenly with absolutely astonished

eyes.

Hoffman looked into them so long that their frank wonder presently

contracted into an ominous mingling of restraint and resentment. Nothing

daunted, however, he went on:

“Couldn't we shake all that?”

The look of wonder returned. “Shake all that?” she repeated. “I do not

understand.”

“Well! I'm not positively aching to see cows, and you must be sick of

showing them. I think, too, I've about sized the whole show. Wouldn't

it be better if we sat down in that arbor--supposing it won't fall

down--and you told me all about the lot? It would save you a heap of

trouble and keep your pretty frock cleaner than trapesing round. Of

course,” he said, with a quick transition to the gentlest courtesy, “if

you're conscientious about this thing we'll go on and not spare a cow.

Consider me in it with you for the whole morning.”

She looked at him again, and then suddenly broke into a charming laugh.

It revealed a set of strong white teeth, as well as a certain barbaric

trace in its cadence which civilized restraint had not entirely

overlaid.

“I suppose she really is a peasant, in spite of that pretty frock,” he

said to himself as he laughed too.

But her face presently took a shade of reserve, and with a gentle but

singular significance she said:

“I think you must see the dairy.”

Hoffman's hat was in his hand with a vivacity that tumbled the brown

curls on his forehead. “By all means,” he said instantly, and began

walking by her side in modest but easy silence. Now that he thought her

a conscientious peasant he was quiet and respectful.

Presently she lifted her eyes, which, despite her gravity, had not

entirely lost their previous mirthfulness, and said:

“But you Americans--in your rich and prosperous country, with your large

lands and your great harvests--you must know all about farming.”

“Never was in a dairy in my life,” said Hoffman gravely. “I'm from

the city of New York, where the cows give swill milk, and are kept in

cellars.”

Her eyebrows contracted prettily in an effort to understand. Then she

apparently gave it up, and said with a slanting glint of mischief in her

eyes:

“Then you come here like the other Americans in hope to see the Grand

Duke and Duchess and the Princesses?”

“No. The fact is I almost tumbled into a lot of 'em--standing like wax

figures--the other side of the park lodge, the other day--and got away

as soon as I could. I think I prefer the cows.”

Her head was slightly turned away. He had to content himself with

looking down upon the strong feet in their serviceable but smartly

buckled shoes that uplifted her upright figure as she moved beside him.

“Of course,” he added with boyish but unmistakable courtesy, “if it's

part of your show to trot out the family, why I'm in that, too. I dare

say you could make them interesting.”

“But why,” she said with her head still slightly turned away toward

a figure--a sturdy-looking woman, which, for the first time, Hoffman

perceived was walking in a line with them as the chasseur had done--“why

did you come here at all?”

“The first time was a fool accident,” he returned frankly. “I was making

a short cut through what I thought was a public park. The second time

was because I had been rude to a Police Inspector whom I found going

through my things, but who apologized--as I suppose--by getting me an

invitation from the Grand Duke to come here, and I thought it only the

square thing to both of 'em to accept it. But I'm mighty glad I came;

I wouldn't have missed YOU for a thousand dollars. You see I haven't

struck anyone I cared to talk to since.” Here he suddenly remarked that

she hadn't looked at him, and that the delicate whiteness of her neck

was quite suffused with pink, and stopped instantly. Presently he said

quite easily:

“Who's the chorus?”

“The lady?”

“Yes. She's watching us as if she didn't quite approve, you know--just

as if she didn't catch on.”

“She's the head housekeeper of the farm. Perhaps you would prefer to

have her show you the dairy; shall I call her?”

The figure in question was very short and stout, with voluminous

petticoats.

“Please don't; I'll stay without your setting that paperweight on me.

But here's the dairy. Don't let her come inside among those pans of

fresh milk with that smile, or there'll be trouble.”

The young girl paused too, made a slight gesture with her hand, and the

figure passed on as they entered the dairy. It was beautifully clean and

fresh. With a persistence that he quickly recognized as mischievous and

ironical, and with his characteristic adaptability accepted with even

greater gravity and assumption of interest, she showed him all the

details. From thence they passed to the farmyard, where he hung with

breathless attention over the names of the cows and made her repeat

them. Although she was evidently familiar with the subject, he could see

that her zeal was fitful and impatient.

“Suppose we sit down,” he said, pointing to an ostentatious rustic seat

in the center of the green.

“Sir down?” she repeated wonderingly. “What for?”

“To talk. We'll knock off and call it half a day.”

“But if you are not looking at the farm you are, of course, going,” she

said quickly.

“Am I? I don't think these particulars were in my invitation.”

She again broke into a fit of laughter, and at the same time cast a

bright eye around the field.

“Come,” he said gently, “there are no other sightseers waiting, and your

conscience is clear,” and he moved toward the rustic seat.

“Certainly not--there,” she added in a low voice.

They moved on slowly together to a copse of willows which overhung the

miniature stream.

“You are not staying long in Alstadt?” she said.

“No; I only came to see the old town that my ancestors came from.”

They were walking so close together that her skirt brushed his trousers,

but she suddenly drew away from him, and looking him fixedly in the eye

said:

“Ah, you have relations here?”

“Yes, but they are dead two hundred years.”

She laughed again with a slight expression of relief. They had entered

the copse and were walking in dense shadow when she suddenly stopped and

sat down upon a rustic bench. To his surprise he found that they were

quite alone.

“Tell me about these relatives,” she said, slightly drawing aside her

skirt to make room for him on the seat.

He did not require a second invitation. He not only told her all about

his ancestral progenitors, but, I fear, even about those more recent and

more nearly related to him; about his own life, his vocation--he was a

clever newspaper correspondent with a roving commission--his ambitions,

his beliefs and his romance.

“And then, perhaps, of this visit--you will also make 'copy'?”

He smiled at her quick adaptation of his professional slang, but shook

his head.

“No,” he said gravely. “No--this is YOU. The CHICAGO INTERVIEWER is big

pay and is rich, but it hasn't capital enough to buy you from me.”

He gently slid his hand toward hers and slipped his fingers softly

around it. She made a slight movement of withdrawal, but even then--as

if in forgetfulness or indifference--permitted her hand to rest

unresponsively in his. It was scarcely an encouragement to gallantry,

neither was it a rejection of an unconscious familiarity.

“But you haven't told me about yourself,” he said.

“Oh, I,” she returned, with her first approach to coquetry in a laugh

and a sidelong glance, “of what importance is that to you? It is the

Grand Duchess and Her Highness the Princess that you Americans seek to

know. I am--what I am--as you see.”

“You bet,” said Hoffman with charming decision.

“I WHAT?”

“You ARE, you know, and that's good enough for me, but I don't even know

your name.”

She laughed again, and after a pause, said: “Elsbeth.”

“But I couldn't call you by your first name on our first meeting, you

know.”

“Then you Americans are really so very formal--eh?” she said slyly,

looking at her imprisoned hand.

“Well, yes,” returned Hoffman, disengaging it. “I suppose we are

respectful, or mean to be. But whom am I to inquire for? To write to?”

“You are neither to write nor inquire.”

“What?” She had moved in her seat so as to half-face him with eyes in

which curiosity, mischief, and a certain seriousness alternated, but for

the first time seemed conscious of his hand, and accented her words with

a slight pressure.

“You are to return to your hotel presently, and say to your landlord:

'Pack up my luggage. I have finished with this old town and my

ancestors, and the Grand Duke, whom I do not care to see, and I shall

leave Alstadt tomorrow!'”

“Thank you! I don't catch on.”

“Of what necessity should you? I have said it. That should be enough for

a chivalrous American like you.” She again significantly looked down at

her hand.

“If you mean that you know the extent of the favor you ask of me, I can

say no more,” he said seriously; “but give me some reason for it.”

“Ah so!” she said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders. “Then I must

tell you. You say you do not know the Grand Duke and Duchess. Well! THEY

KNOW YOU. The day before yesterday you were wandering in the park, as

you admit. You say, also, you got through the hedge and interrupted

some ceremony. That ceremony was not a Court function, Mr. Hoffman, but

something equally sacred--the photographing of the Ducal family

before the Schloss. You say that you instantly withdrew. But after the

photograph was taken the plate revealed a stranger standing actually

by the side of the Princess Alexandrine, and even taking the PAS of the

Grand Duke himself. That stranger was you!”

“And the picture was spoiled,” said the American, with a quiet laugh.

“I should not say that,” returned the lady, with a demure glance at her

companion's handsome face, “and I do not believe that the Princess--who

first saw the photograph--thought so either. But she is very young

and willful, and has the reputation of being very indiscreet, and

unfortunately she begged the photographer not to destroy the plate, but

to give it to her, and to say nothing about it, except that the plate

was defective, and to take another. Still it would have ended there if

her curiosity had not led her to confide a description of the stranger

to the Police Inspector, with the result you know.”

“Then I am expected to leave town because I accidentally stumbled into a

family group that was being photographed?”

“Because a certain Princess was indiscreet enough to show her curiosity

about you,” corrected the fair stranger.

“But look here! I'll apologize to the Princess, and offer to pay for the

plate.”

“Then you do want to see the Princess?” said the young girl smiling;

“you are like the others.”

“Bother the Princess! I want to see YOU. And I don't see how they can

prevent it if I choose to remain.”

“Very easily. You will find that there is something wrong with your

passport, and you will be sent on to Pumpernickel for examination. You

will unwittingly transgress some of the laws of the town and be ordered

to leave it. You will be shadowed by the police until you quarrel with

them--like a free American--and you are conducted to the frontier.

Perhaps you will strike an officer who has insulted you, and then you

are finished on the spot.”

The American's crest rose palpably until it cocked his straw hat over

his curls.

“Suppose I am content to risk it--having first laid the whole matter and

its trivial cause before the American Minister, so that he could make it

hot for this whole caboodle of a country if they happened to 'down me.'

By Jove! I shouldn't mind being the martyr of an international episode

if they'd spare me long enough to let me get the first 'copy' over to

the other side.” His eyes sparkled.

“You could expose them, but they would then deny the whole story, and

you have no evidence. They would demand to know your informant, and I

should be disgraced, and the Princess, who is already talked about,

made a subject of scandal. But no matter! It is right that an American's

independence shall not be interfered with.”

She raised the hem of her handkerchief to her blue eyes and slightly

turned her head aside. Hoffman gently drew the handkerchief away, and in

so doing possessed himself of her other hand.

“Look here, Miss--Miss--Elsbeth. You know I wouldn't give you away,

whatever happened. But couldn't I get hold of that photographer--I saw

him, he wanted me to sit to him--and make him tell me?”

“He wanted you to sit to him,” she said hurriedly, “and did you?”

“No,” he replied. “He was a little too fresh and previous, though I

thought he fancied some resemblance in me to somebody else.”

“Ah!” She said something to herself in German which he did not

understand, and then added aloud:

“You did well; he is a bad man, this photographer. Promise me you shall

not sit for him.”

“How can I if I'm fired out of the place like this?” He added ruefully,

“But I'd like to make him give himself away to me somehow.”

“He will not, and if he did he would deny it afterward. Do not go near

him nor see him. Be careful that he does not photograph you with his

instantaneous instrument when you are passing. Now you must go. I must

see the Princess.”

“Let me go, too. I will explain it to her,” said Hoffman.

She stopped, looked at him keenly, and attempted to withdraw her

hands. “Ah, then it IS so. It is the Princess you wish to see. You are

curious--you, too; you wish to see this lady who is interested in you. I

ought to have known it. You are all alike.”

He met her gaze with laughing frankness, accepting her outburst as a

charming feminine weakness, half jealousy, half coquetry--but retained

her hands.

“Nonsense,” he said. “I wish to see her that I may have the right to see

you--that you shall not lose your place here through me; that I may come

again.”

“You must never come here again.”

“Then you must come where I am. We will meet somewhere when you have

an afternoon off. You shall show me the town--the houses of my

ancestors--their tombs; possibly--if the Grand Duke rampages--the

probable site of my own.”

She looked into his laughing eyes with her clear, stedfast, gravely

questioning blue ones. “Do not you Americans know that it is not the

fashion here, in Germany, for the young men and the young women to walk

together--unless they are VERLOBT?”

“VER--which?”

“Engaged.” She nodded her head thrice: viciously, decidedly,

mischievously.

“So much the better.”

“ACH GOTT!” She made a gesture of hopelessness at his incorrigibility,

and again attempted to withdraw her hands.

“I must go now.”

“Well then, good-by.”

It was easy to draw her closer by simply lowering her still captive

hands. Then he suddenly kissed her coldly startled lips, and instantly

released her. She as instantly vanished.

“Elsbeth,” he called quickly. “Elsbeth!”

Her now really frightened face reappeared with a heightened color from

the dense foliage--quite to his astonishment.

“Hush,” she said, with her finger on her lips. “Are you mad?”

“I only wanted to remind you to square me with the Princess,” he laughed

as her head disappeared.

He strolled back toward the gate. Scarcely had he quitted the shrubbery

before the same chasseur made his appearance with precisely the same

salute; and, keeping exactly the same distance, accompanied him to the

gate. At the corner of the street he hailed a droshky and was driven to

his hotel.

The landlord came up smiling. He trusted that the Herr had greatly

enjoyed himself at the Schloss. It was a distinguished honor--in fact,

quite unprecedented. Hoffman, while he determined not to commit himself,

nor his late fair companion, was nevertheless anxious to learn something

more of her relations to the Schloss. So pretty, so characteristic, and

marked a figure must be well known to sightseers. Indeed, once or twice

the idea had crossed his mind with a slightly jealous twinge that left

him more conscious of the impression she had made on him than he had

deemed possible. He asked if the model farm and dairy were always shown

by the same attendants.

“ACH GOTT! no doubt, yes; His Royal Highness had quite a retinue when he

was in residence.”

“And were these attendants in costume?”

“There was undoubtedly a livery for the servants.”

Hoffman felt a slight republican irritation at the epithet--he knew not

why. But this costume was rather a historical one; surely it was not

entrusted to everyday menials--and he briefly described it.

His host's blank curiosity suddenly changed to a look of mysterious and

arch intelligence.

“ACH GOTT! yes!” He remembered now (with his finger on his nose) that

when there was a fest at the Schloss the farm and dairy were filled with

shepherdesses, in quaint costume worn by the ladies of the Grand Duke's

own theatrical company, who assumed the characters with great vivacity.

Surely it was the same, and the Grand Duke had treated the Herr to this

special courtesy. Yes--there was one pretty, blonde young lady--the

Fraulein Wimpfenbuttel, a most popular soubrette, who would play it to

the life! And the description fitted her to a hair! Ah, there was no

doubt of it; many persons, indeed, had been so deceived.

But happily, now that he had given him the wink, the Herr could

corroborate it himself by going to the theater tonight. Ah, it would be

a great joke--quite colossal! if he took a front seat where she could

see him. And the good man rubbed his hands in gleeful anticipation.

Hoffman had listened to him with a slow repugnance that was only equal

to his gradual conviction that the explanation was a true one, and

that he himself had been ridiculously deceived. The mystery of his fair

companion's costume, which he had accepted as part of the “show”; the

inconsistency of her manner and her evident occupation; her undeniable

wish to terminate the whole episode with that single interview;

her mingling of worldly aplomb and rustic innocence; her perfect

self-control and experienced acceptance of his gallantry under the

simulated attitude of simplicity--all now struck him as perfectly

comprehensible. He recalled the actress's inimitable touch in certain

picturesque realistic details in the dairy--which she had not spared

him; he recognized it now even in their bowered confidences (how like a

pretty ballet scene their whole interview on the rustic bench was!),

and it breathed through their entire conversation--to their theatrical

parting at the close! And the whole story of the photograph was, no

doubt, as pure a dramatic invention as the rest! The Princess's romantic

interest in him--that Princess who had never appeared (why had he not

detected the old, well-worn, sentimental situation here?)--was all a

part of it. The dark, mysterious hint of his persecution by the police

was a necessary culmination to the little farce. Thank Heaven! he had

not “risen” at the Princess, even if he had given himself away to the

clever actress in her own humble role. Then the humor of the whole

situation predominated and he laughed until the tears came to his eyes,

and his forgotten ancestors might have turned over in their graves

without his heeding them. And with this humanizing influence upon him he

went to the theater.

It was capacious even for the town, and although the performance was a

special one he had no difficulty in getting a whole box to himself. He

tried to avoid this public isolation by sitting close to the next box,

where there was a solitary occupant--an officer--apparently as lonely as

himself. He had made up his mind that when his fair deceiver appeared

he would let her see by his significant applause that he recognized her,

but bore no malice for the trick she had played on him. After all, he

had kissed her--he had no right to complain. If she should recognize

him, and this recognition led to a withdrawal of her prohibition, and

their better acquaintance, he would be a fool to cavil at her pleasant

artifice. Her vocation was certainly a more independent and original

one than that he had supposed; for its social quality and inequality he

cared nothing. He found himself longing for the glance of her calm blue

eyes, for the pleasant smile that broke the seriousness of her sweetly

restrained lips. There was no doubt that he should know her even as the

heroine of DER CZAR UND DER ZIMMERMANN on the bill before him. He was

becoming impatient. And the performance evidently was waiting. A stir

in the outer gallery, the clatter of sabers, the filing of uniforms

into the royal box, and a triumphant burst from the orchestra showed the

cause. As a few ladies and gentlemen in full evening dress emerged from

the background of uniforms and took their places in the front of the

box, Hoffman looked with some interest for the romantic Princess.

Suddenly he saw a face and shoulders in a glitter of diamonds that

startled him, and then a glance that transfixed him.

He leaned over to his neighbor. “Who is the young lady in the box?”

“The Princess Alexandrine.”

“I mean the young lady in blue with blond hair and blue eyes.”

“It is the Princess Alexandrine Elsbeth Marie Stephanie, the daughter of

the Grand Duke--there is none other there.”

“Thank you.”

He sat silently looking at the rising curtain and the stage. Then he

rose quietly, gathered his hat and coat, and left the box. When he

reached the gallery he turned instinctively and looked back at the royal

box. Her eyes had followed him, and as he remained a moment motionless

in the doorway her lips parted in a grateful smile, and she waved her

fan with a faint but unmistakable gesture of farewell.

The next morning he left Alstadt. There was some little delay at the

Zoll on the frontier, and when Hoffman received back his trunk it was

accompanied by a little sealed packet which was handed to him by the

Customhouse Inspector. Hoffman did not open it until he was alone.

There hangs upon the wall of his modest apartment in New York a narrow,

irregular photograph ingeniously framed, of himself standing side

by side with a young German girl, who, in the estimation of his

compatriots, is by no means stylish and only passably good-looking.

When he is joked by his friends about the post of honor given to this

production, and questioned as to the lady, he remains silent. The

Princess Alexandrine Elsbeth Marie Stephanie von Westphalen-Alstadt,

among her other royal qualities, knew whom to trust.

THE DEVOTION OF ENRIQUEZ

In another chronicle which dealt with the exploits of “Chu Chu,”

a Californian mustang, I gave some space to the accomplishments of

Enriquez Saltillo, who assisted me in training her, and who was also

brother to Consuelo Saitillo, the young lady to whom I had freely given

both the mustang and my youthful affections. I consider it a proof of

the superiority of masculine friendship that neither the subsequent

desertion of the mustang nor that of the young lady ever made the

slightest difference to Enriquez or me in our exalted amity. To a

wondering doubt as to what I ever could possibly have seen in his sister

to admire he joined a tolerant skepticism of the whole sex. This he was

wont to express in that marvelous combination of Spanish precision and

California slang for which he was justly famous. “As to thees women and

their little game,” he would say, “believe me, my friend, your old

Oncle 'Enry is not in it. No; he will ever take a back seat when lofe is

around. For why? Regard me here! If she is a horse, you shall say, 'She

will buck-jump,' 'She will ess-shy,' 'She will not arrive,' or 'She will

arrive too quick.' But if it is thees women, where are you? For when you

shall say, 'She will ess-shy,' look you, she will walk straight; or

she will remain tranquil when you think she buck-jump; or else she will

arrive and, look you, you will not. You shall get left. It is ever so.

My father and the brother of my father have both make court to my mother

when she was but a senorita. My father think she have lofe his brother

more. So he say to her: 'It is enofe; tranquillize yourself. I will go.

I will efface myself. Adios! Shake hands! Ta-ta! So long! See you

again in the fall.' And what make my mother? Regard me! She marry my

father--on the instant! Of thees women, believe me, Pancho, you shall

know nothing. Not even if they shall make you the son of your father or

his nephew.”

I have recalled this characteristic speech to show the general tendency

of Enriquez' convictions at the opening of this little story. It is

only fair to say, however, that his usual attitude toward the sex he so

cheerfully maligned exhibited little apprehension or caution in dealing

with them. Among the frivolous and light-minded intermixture of his race

he moved with great freedom and popularity. He danced well; when we went

to fandangos together his agility and the audacity of his figures

always procured him the prettiest partners, his professed sentiments,

I presume, shielding him from subsequent jealousies, heartburnings,

or envy. I have a vivid recollection of him in the mysteries of the

SEMICUACUA, a somewhat corybantic dance which left much to the invention

of the performers, and very little to the imagination of the spectator.

In one of the figures a gaudy handkerchief, waved more or less

gracefully by dancer and danseuse before the dazzled eyes of each other,

acted as love's signal, and was used to express alternate admiration

and indifference, shyness and audacity, fear and transport, coyness

and coquetry, as the dance proceeded. I need not say that Enriquez'

pantomimic illustration of these emotions was peculiarly extravagant;

but it was always performed and accepted with a gravity that was an

essential feature of the dance. At such times sighs would escape him

which were supposed to portray the incipient stages of passion;

snorts of jealousy burst from him at the suggestion of a rival; he was

overtaken by a sort of St. Vitus's dance that expressed his timidity in

making the first advances of affection; the scorn of his ladylove struck

him with something like a dumb ague; and a single gesture of invitation

from her produced marked delirium. All this was very like Enriquez; but

on the particular occasion to which I refer, I think no one was prepared

to see him begin the figure with the waving of FOUR handkerchiefs! Yet

this he did, pirouetting, capering, brandishing his silken signals like

a ballerina's scarf in the languishment or fire of passion, until, in a

final figure, where the conquered and submitting fair one usually

sinks into the arms of her partner, need it be said that the ingenious

Enriquez was found in the center of the floor supporting four of the

dancers! Yet he was by no means unduly excited either by the plaudits of

the crowd or by his evident success with the fair. “Ah, believe me, it

is nothing,” he said quietly, rolling a fresh cigarette as he leaned

against the doorway. “Possibly, I shall have to offer the chocolate or

the wine to thees girls, or make to them a promenade in the moonlight

on the veranda. It is ever so. Unless, my friend,” he said, suddenly

turning toward me in an excess of chivalrous self-abnegation, “unless

you shall yourself take my place. Behold, I gif them to you! I vamos!

I vanish! I make track! I skedaddle!” I think he would have carried

his extravagance to the point of summoning his four gypsy witches of

partners, and committing them to my care, if the crowd had not at

that moment parted before the remaining dancers, and left one of

the onlookers, a tall, slender girl, calmly surveying them through

gold-rimmed eyeglasses in complete critical absorption. I stared in

amazement and consternation; for I recognized in the fair stranger Miss

Urania Mannersley, the Congregational minister's niece!

Everybody knew Rainie Mannersley throughout the length and breadth of

the Encinal. She was at once the envy and the goad of the daughters of

those Southwestern and Eastern immigrants who had settled in the valley.

She was correct, she was critical, she was faultless and observant. She

was proper, yet independent; she was highly educated; she was suspected

of knowing Latin and Greek; she even spelled correctly! She could wither

the plainest field nosegay in the hands of other girls by giving the

flowers their botanical names. She never said “Ain't you?” but “Aren't

you?” She looked upon “Did I which?” as an incomplete and imperfect

form of “What did I do?” She quoted from Browning and Tennyson, and was

believed to have read them. She was from Boston. What could she possibly

be doing at a free-and-easy fandango?

Even if these facts were not already familiar to everyone there, her

outward appearance would have attracted attention. Contrasted with

the gorgeous red, black, and yellow skirts of the dancers, her

plain, tightly fitting gown and hat, all of one delicate gray, were

sufficiently notable in themselves, even had they not seemed, like the

girl herself, a kind of quiet protest to the glaring flounces before

her. Her small, straight waist and flat back brought into greater relief

the corsetless, waistless, swaying figures of the Mexican girls, and her

long, slim, well-booted feet, peeping from the stiff, white edges of her

short skirt, made their broad, low-quartered slippers, held on by the

big toe, appear more preposterous than ever. Suddenly she seemed

to realize that she was standing there alone, but without fear or

embarrassment. She drew back a little, glancing carelessly behind her

as if missing some previous companion, and then her eyes fell upon mine.

She smiled an easy recognition; then a moment later, her glance rested

more curiously upon Enriquez, who was still by my side. I disengaged

myself and instantly joined her, particularly as I noticed that a few of

the other bystanders were beginning to stare at her with little reserve.

“Isn't it the most extraordinary thing you ever saw?” she said quietly.

Then, presently noticing the look of embarrassment on my face, she went

on, more by way of conversation than of explanation:

“I just left uncle making a call on a parishioner next door, and was

going home with Jocasta (a peon servant of her uncle's), when I heard

the music, and dropped in. I don't know what has become of her,” she

added, glancing round the room again; “she seemed perfectly wild when

she saw that creature over there bounding about with his handkerchiefs.

You were speaking to him just now. Do tell me--is he real?”

“I should think there was little doubt of that,” I said with a vague

laugh.

“You know what I mean,” she said simply. “Is he quite sane? Does he do

that because he likes it, or is he paid for it?”

This was too much. I pointed out somewhat hurriedly that he was a scion

of one of the oldest Castilian families, that the performance was a

national gypsy dance which he had joined in as a patriot and a patron,

and that he was my dearest friend. At the same time I was conscious that

I wished she hadn't seen his last performance.

“You don't mean to say that all that he did was in the dance?” she said.

“I don't believe it. It was only like him.” As I hesitated over this

palpable truth, she went on: “I do wish he'd do it again. Don't you

think you could make him?”

“Perhaps he might if YOU asked him,” I said a little maliciously.

“Of course I shouldn't do that,” she returned quietly. “All the same, I

do believe he is really going to do it--or something else. Do look!”

I looked, and to my horror saw that Enriquez, possibly incited by the

delicate gold eyeglasses of Miss Mannersley, had divested himself of

his coat, and was winding the four handkerchiefs, tied together,

picturesquely around his waist, preparatory to some new performance. I

tried furtively to give him a warning look, but in vain.

“Isn't he really too absurd for anything?” said Miss Mannersley, yet

with a certain comfortable anticipation in her voice. “You know, I never

saw anything like this before. I wouldn't have believed such a creature

could have existed.”

Even had I succeeded in warning him, I doubt if it would have been of

any avail. For, seizing a guitar from one of the musicians, he struck a

few chords, and suddenly began to zigzag into the center of the floor,

swaying his body languishingly from side to side in time with the

music and the pitch of a thin Spanish tenor. It was a gypsy love song.

Possibly Miss Mannersley's lingual accomplishments did not include a

knowledge of Castilian, but she could not fail to see that the gestures

and illustrative pantomime were addressed to her. Passionately assuring

her that she was the most favored daughter of the Virgin, that her eyes

were like votive tapers, and yet in the same breath accusing her of

being a “brigand” and “assassin” in her attitude toward “his heart,” he

balanced with quivering timidity toward her, threw an imaginary cloak

in front of her neat boots as a carpet for her to tread on, and with a

final astonishing pirouette and a languishing twang of his guitar, sank

on one knee, and blew, with a rose, a kiss at her feet.

If I had been seriously angry with him before for his grotesque

extravagance, I could have pitied him now for the young girl's absolute

unconsciousness of anything but his utter ludicrousness. The applause

of dancers and bystanders was instantaneous and hearty; her only

contribution to it was a slight parting of her thin red lips in a

half-incredulous smile. In the silence that followed the applause, as

Enriquez walked pantingly away, I heard her saying, half to herself,

“Certainly a most extraordinary creature!” In my indignation I could not

help turning suddenly upon her and looking straight into her eyes. They

were brown, with that peculiar velvet opacity common to the pupils of

nearsighted persons, and seemed to defy internal scrutiny. She only

repeated carelessly, “Isn't he?” and added: “Please see if you can find

Jocasta. I suppose we ought to be going now; and I dare say he won't be

doing it again. Ah! there she is. Good gracious, child! what have you

got there?”

It was Enriquez' rose which Jocasta had picked up, and was timidly

holding out toward her mistress.

“Heavens! I don't want it. Keep it yourself.”

I walked with them to the door, as I did not fancy a certain glitter in

the black eyes of the Senoritas Manuela and Pepita, who were watching

her curiously. But I think she was as oblivious of this as she was of

Enriquez' particular attentions. As we reached the street I felt that I

ought to say something more.

“You know,” I began casually, “that although those poor people meet here

in this public way, their gathering is really quite a homely pastoral

and a national custom; and these girls are all honest, hardworking peons

or servants enjoying themselves in quite the old idyllic fashion.”

“Certainly,” said the young girl, half-abstractedly. “Of course it's

a Moorish dance, originally brought over, I suppose, by those old

Andalusian immigrants two hundred years ago. It's quite Arabic in its

suggestions. I have got something like it in an old CANCIONERO I picked

up at a bookstall in Boston. But,” she added, with a gasp of reminiscent

satisfaction, “that's not like HIM! Oh, no! HE is decidedly original.

Heavens! yes.”

I turned away in some discomfiture to join Enriquez, who was calmly

awaiting me, with a cigarette in his mouth, outside the sala. Yet he

looked so unconscious of any previous absurdity that I hesitated in what

I thought was a necessary warning. He, however, quickly precipitated it.

Glancing after the retreating figures of the two women, he said: “Thees

mees from Boston is return to her house. You do not accompany her? I

shall. Behold me--I am there.” But I linked my arm firmly in his. Then

I pointed out, first, that she was already accompanied by a servant;

secondly, that if I, who knew her, had hesitated to offer myself as an

escort, it was hardly proper for him, a perfect stranger, to take that

liberty; that Miss Mannersley was very punctilious of etiquette, which

he, as a Castilian gentleman, ought to appreciate.

“But will she not regard lofe--the admiration excessif?” he said,

twirling his thin little mustache meditatively.

“No; she will not,” I returned sharply; “and you ought to understand

that she is on a different level from your Manuelas and Carmens.”

“Pardon, my friend,” he said gravely; “thees women are ever the same.

There is a proverb in my language. Listen: 'Whether the sharp blade of

the Toledo pierce the satin or the goatskin, it shall find behind it

ever the same heart to wound.' I am that Toledo blade--possibly it is

you, my friend. Wherefore, let us together pursue this girl of Boston on

the instant.”

But I kept my grasp on Enriquez' arm, and succeeded in restraining his

mercurial impulses for the moment. He halted, and puffed vigorously at

his cigarette; but the next instant he started forward again. “Let us,

however, follow with discretion in the rear; we shall pass her house; we

shall gaze at it; it shall touch her heart.”

Ridiculous as was this following of the young girl we had only just

parted from, I nevertheless knew that Enriquez was quite capable of

attempting it alone, and I thought it better to humor him by consenting

to walk with him in that direction; but I felt it necessary to say:

“I ought to warn you that Miss Mannersley already looks upon your

performances at the sala as something outre and peculiar, and if I were

you I shouldn't do anything to deepen that impression.”

“You are saying she ees shock?” said Enriquez, gravely.

I felt I could not conscientiously say that she was shocked, and he saw

my hesitation. “Then she have jealousy of the senoritas,” he observed,

with insufferable complacency. “You observe! I have already said. It is

ever so.”

I could stand it no longer. “Look here, Harry,” I said, “if you must

know it, she looks upon you as an acrobat--a paid performer.”

“Ah!”--his black eyes sparkled--“the torero, the man who fights the

bull, he is also an acrobat.”

“Yes; but she thinks you a clown!--a GRACIOSO DE TEATRO--there!”

“Then I have make her laugh?” he said coolly.

I don't think he had; but I shrugged my shoulders.

“BUENO!” he said cheerfully. “Lofe, he begin with a laugh, he make

feenish with a sigh.”

I turned to look at him in the moonlight. His face presented its

habitual Spanish gravity--a gravity that was almost ironical. His

small black eyes had their characteristic irresponsible audacity--the

irresponsibility of the vivacious young animal. It could not be

possible that he was really touched with the placid frigidities of

Miss Mannersley. I remembered his equally elastic gallantries with Miss

Pinkey Smith, a blonde Western belle, from which both had harmlessly

rebounded. As we walked on slowly I continued more persuasively: “Of

course this is only your nonsense; but don't you see, Miss Mannersley

thinks it all in earnest and really your nature?” I hesitated, for

it suddenly struck me that it WAS really his nature. “And--hang it

all!--you don't want her to believe you a common buffoon., or some

intoxicated muchacho.”

“Intoxicated?” repeated Enriquez, with exasperating languishment. “Yes;

that is the word that shall express itself. My friend, you have made

a shot in the center--you have ring the bell every time! It is

intoxication--but not of aguardiente. Look! I have long time an ancestor

of whom is a pretty story. One day in church he have seen a young

girl--a mere peasant girl--pass to the confessional. He look her in

her eye, he stagger”--here Enriquez wobbled pantomimically into the

road--“he fall!”--he would have suited the action to the word if I had

not firmly held him up. “They have taken him home, where he have remain

without his clothes, and have dance and sing. But it was the drunkenness

of lofe. And, look you, thees village girl was a nothing, not even

pretty. The name of my ancestor was--”

“Don Quixote de La Mancha,” I suggested maliciously. “I suspected as

much. Come along. That will do.”

“My ancestor's name,” continued Enriquez, gravely, “was Antonio

Hermenegildo de Salvatierra, which is not the same. Thees Don Quixote of

whom you speak exist not at all.”

“Never mind. Only, for heaven's sake, as we are nearing the house, don't

make a fool of yourself again.”

It was a wonderful moonlight night. The deep redwood porch of the

Mannersley parsonage, under the shadow of a great oak--the largest in

the Encinal--was diapered in black and silver. As the women stepped

upon the porch their shadows were silhouetted against the door. Miss

Mannersley paused for an instant, and turned to give a last look at the

beauty of the night as Jocasta entered. Her glance fell upon us as

we passed. She nodded carelessly and unaffectedly to me, but as she

recognized Enriquez she looked a little longer at him with her previous

cold and invincible curiosity. To my horror Enriquez began instantly to

affect a slight tremulousness of gait and a difficulty of breathing; but

I gripped his arm savagely, and managed to get him past the house as the

door closed finally on the young lady.

“You do not comprehend, friend Pancho,” he said gravely, “but those eyes

in their glass are as the ESPEJO USTORIO, the burning mirror. They burn,

they consume me here like paper. Let us affix to ourselves thees tree.

She will, without doubt, appear at her window. We shall salute her for

good night.”

“We will do nothing of the kind,” I said sharply. Finding that I was

determined, he permitted me to lead him away. I was delighted to

notice, however, that he had indicated the window which I knew was

the minister's study, and that as the bedrooms were in the rear of the

house, this later incident was probably not overseen by the young lady

or the servant. But I did not part from Enriquez until I saw him

safely back to the sala, where I left him sipping chocolate, his

arm alternating around the waists of his two previous partners in a

delightful Arcadian and childlike simplicity, and an apparent utter

forgetfulness of Miss Mannersley.

The fandangos were usually held on Saturday night, and the next day,

being Sunday, I missed Enriquez; but as he was a devout Catholic I

remembered that he was at mass in the morning, and possibly at the

bullfight at San Antonio in the afternoon. But I was somewhat surprised

on the Monday morning following, as I was crossing the plaza, to have

my arm taken by the Rev. Mr. Mannersley in the nearest approach to

familiarity that was consistent with the reserve of this eminent divine.

I looked at him inquiringly. Although scrupulously correct in attire,

his features always had a singular resemblance to the national

caricature known as “Uncle Sam,” but with the humorous expression

left out. Softly stroking his goatee with three fingers, he began

condescendingly: “You are, I think, more or less familiar with the

characteristics and customs of the Spanish as exhibited by the settlers

here.” A thrill of apprehension went through me. Had he heard of

Enriquez' proceedings? Had Miss Mannersley cruelly betrayed him to her

uncle? “I have not given that attention myself to their language and

social peculiarities,” he continued, with a large wave of the hand,

“being much occupied with a study of their religious beliefs and

superstitions”--it struck me that this was apt to be a common fault of

people of the Mannersley type--“but I have refrained from a personal

discussion of them; on the contrary, I have held somewhat broad views

on the subject of their remarkable missionary work, and have suggested

a scheme of co-operation with them, quite independent of doctrinal

teaching, to my brethren of other Protestant Christian sects. These

views I first incorporated in a sermon last Sunday week, which I am told

has created considerable attention.” He stopped and coughed slightly. “I

have not yet heard from any of the Roman clergy, but I am led to believe

that my remarks were not ungrateful to Catholics generally.”

I was relieved, although still in some wonder why he should address me

on this topic. I had a vague remembrance of having heard that he had

said something on Sunday which had offended some Puritans of his

flock, but nothing more. He continued: “I have just said that I was

unacquainted with the characteristics of the Spanish-American race. I

presume, however, they have the impulsiveness of their Latin origin.

They gesticulate--eh? They express their gratitude, their joy, their

affection, their emotions generally, by spasmodic movements? They

naturally dance--sing--eh?” A horrible suspicion crossed my mind;

I could only stare helplessly at him. “I see,” he said graciously;

“perhaps it is a somewhat general question. I will explain myself.

A rather singular occurrence happened to me the other night. I had

returned from visiting a parishioner, and was alone in my study

reviewing my sermon for the next day. It must have been quite late

before I concluded, for I distinctly remember my niece had returned

with her servant fully an hour before. Presently I heard the sounds of

a musical instrument in the road, with the accents of someone singing or

rehearsing some metrical composition in words that, although couched

in a language foreign to me, in expression and modulation gave me the

impression of being distinctly adulatory. For some little time, in

the greater preoccupation of my task, I paid little attention to the

performance; but its persistency at length drew me in no mere idle

curiosity to the window. From thence, standing in my dressing-gown,

and believing myself unperceived, I noticed under the large oak in the

roadside the figure of a young man who, by the imperfect light, appeared

to be of Spanish extraction. But I evidently miscalculated my own

invisibility; for he moved rapidly forward as I came to the window, and

in a series of the most extraordinary pantomimic gestures saluted me.

Beyond my experience of a few Greek plays in earlier days, I confess I

am not an adept in the understanding of gesticulation; but it struck me

that the various phases of gratitude, fervor, reverence, and exaltation

were successively portrayed. He placed his hands upon his head,

his heart, and even clasped them together in this manner.” To my

consternation the reverend gentleman here imitated Enriquez' most

extravagant pantomime. “I am willing to confess,” he continued, “that

I was singularly moved by them, as well as by the highly creditable and

Christian interest that evidently produced them. At last I opened the

window. Leaning out, I told him that I regretted that the lateness of

the hour prevented any further response from me than a grateful though

hurried acknowledgment of his praiseworthy emotion, but that I should be

glad to see him for a few moments in the vestry before service the next

day, or at early candlelight, before the meeting of the Bible class. I

told him that as my sole purpose had been the creation of an evangelical

brotherhood and the exclusion of merely doctrinal views, nothing could

be more gratifying to me than his spontaneous and unsolicited testimony

to my motives. He appeared for an instant to be deeply affected, and,

indeed, quite overcome with emotion, and then gracefully retired, with

some agility and a slight saltatory movement.”

He paused. A sudden and overwhelming idea took possession of me, and

I looked impulsively into his face. Was it possible that for once

Enriquez' ironical extravagance had been understood, met, and vanquished

by a master hand? But the Rev. Mr. Mannersley's self-satisfied face

betrayed no ambiguity or lurking humor. He was evidently in earnest; he

had complacently accepted for himself the abandoned Enriquez' serenade

to his niece. I felt a hysterical desire to laugh, but it was checked by

my companion's next words.

“I informed my niece of the occurrence in the morning at breakfast. She

had not heard anything of the strange performance, but she agreed with

me as to its undoubted origin in a grateful recognition of my liberal

efforts toward his coreligionists. It was she, in fact, who suggested

that your knowledge of these people might corroborate my impressions.”

I was dumfounded. Had Miss Mannersley, who must have recognized

Enriquez' hand in this, concealed the fact in a desire to shield him?

But this was so inconsistent with her utter indifference to him, except

as a grotesque study, that she would have been more likely to tell

her uncle all about his previous performance. Nor could it be that she

wished to conceal her visit to the fandango. She was far too independent

for that, and it was even possible that the reverend gentleman, in his

desire to know more of Enriquez' compatriots, would not have objected.

In my confusion I meekly added my conviction to hers, congratulated him

upon his evident success, and slipped away. But I was burning with

a desire to see Enriquez and know all. He was imaginative but not

untruthful. Unfortunately, I learned that he was just then following one

of his erratic impulses, and had gone to a rodeo at his cousin's, in

the foothills, where he was alternately exercising his horsemanship in

catching and breaking wild cattle and delighting his relatives with his

incomparable grasp of the American language and customs, and of the airs

of a young man of fashion. Then my thoughts recurred to Miss Mannersley.

Had she really been oblivious that night to Enriquez' serenade? I

resolved to find out, if I could, without betraying Enriquez. Indeed, it

was possible, after all, that it might not have been he.

Chance favored me. The next evening I was at a party where

Miss Mannersley, by reason of her position and quality, was a

distinguished--I had almost written a popular--guest. But, as I

have formerly stated, although the youthful fair of the Encinal were

flattered by her casual attentions, and secretly admired her superior

style and aristocratic calm, they were more or less uneasy under the

dominance of her intelligence and education, and were afraid to attempt

either confidence or familiarity. They were also singularly jealous

of her, for although the average young man was equally afraid of her

cleverness and her candor, he was not above paying a tremulous and timid

court to her for its effect upon her humbler sisters. This evening she

was surrounded by her usual satellites, including, of course, the local

notables and special guests of distinction. She had been discussing,

I think, the existence of glaciers on Mount Shasta with a spectacled

geologist, and had participated with charming frankness in a

conversation on anatomy with the local doctor and a learned professor,

when she was asked to take a seat at the piano. She played with

remarkable skill and wonderful precision, but coldly and brilliantly.

As she sat there in her subdued but perfectly fitting evening dress,

her regular profile and short but slender neck firmly set upon her high

shoulders, exhaling an atmosphere of refined puritanism and provocative

intelligence, the utter incongruity of Enriquez' extravagant attentions

if ironical, and their equal hopelessness if not, seemed to me plainer

than ever. What had this well-poised, coldly observant spinster to do

with that quaintly ironic ruffler, that romantic cynic, that rowdy Don

Quixote, that impossible Enriquez? Presently she ceased playing. Her

slim, narrow slipper, revealing her thin ankle, remained upon the

pedal; her delicate fingers were resting idly on the keys; her head was

slightly thrown back, and her narrow eyebrows prettily knit toward the

ceiling in an effort of memory.

“Something of Chopin's,” suggested the geologist, ardently.

“That exquisite sonata!” pleaded the doctor.

“Suthin' of Rubinstein. Heard him once,” said a gentleman of Siskiyou.

“He just made that pianner get up and howl. Play Rube.”

She shook her head with parted lips and a slight touch of girlish

coquetry in her manner. Then her fingers suddenly dropped upon the keys

with a glassy tinkle; there were a few quick pizzicato chords, down went

the low pedal with a monotonous strumming, and she presently began to

hum to herself. I started--as well I might--for I recognized one of

Enriquez' favorite and most extravagant guitar solos. It was audacious;

it was barbaric; it was, I fear, vulgar. As I remembered it--as he

sang it--it recounted the adventures of one Don Francisco, a provincial

gallant and roisterer of the most objectionable type. It had one hundred

and four verses, which Enriquez never spared me. I shuddered as in a

pleasant, quiet voice the correct Miss Mannersley warbled in musical

praise of the PELLEJO, or wineskin, and a eulogy of the dicebox came

caressingly from her thin red lips. But the company was far differently

affected: the strange, wild air and wilder accompaniment were evidently

catching; people moved toward the piano; somebody whistled the air from

a distant corner; even the faces of the geologist and doctor brightened.

“A tarantella, I presume?” blandly suggested the doctor.

Miss Mannersley stopped, and rose carelessly from the piano. “It is a

Moorish gypsy song of the fifteenth century,” she said dryly.

“It seemed sorter familiar, too,” hesitated one of the young men,

timidly, “like as if--don't you know?--you had without knowing it, don't

you know?”--he blushed slightly--“sorter picked it up somewhere.”

“I 'picked it up,' as you call it, in the collection of medieval

manuscripts of the Harvard Library, and copied it,” returned Miss

Mannersley coldly as she turned away.

But I was not inclined to let her off so easily. I presently made my way

to her side. “Your uncle was complimentary enough to consult me as to

the meaning of the appearance of a certain exuberant Spanish visitor

at his house the other night.” I looked into her brown eyes, but my

own slipped off her velvety pupils without retaining anything. Then she

reinforced her gaze with a pince-nez, and said carelessly:

“Oh, it's you? How are you? Well, could you give him any information?”

“Only generally,” I returned, still looking into her eyes. “These people

are impulsive. The Spanish blood is a mixture of gold and quicksilver.”

She smiled slightly. “That reminds me of your volatile friend. He was

mercurial enough, certainly. Is he still dancing?”

“And singing sometimes,” I responded pointedly. But she only added

casually, “A singular creature,” without exhibiting the least

consciousness, and drifted away, leaving me none the wiser. I felt that

Enriquez alone could enlighten me. I must see him.

I did, but not in the way I expected. There was a bullfight at San

Antonio the next Saturday afternoon, the usual Sunday performance being

changed in deference to the Sabbatical habits of the Americans. An

additional attraction was offered in the shape of a bull-and-bear fight,

also a concession to American taste, which had voted the bullfight

“slow,” and had averred that the bull “did not get a fair show.” I am

glad that I am able to spare the reader the usual realistic horrors, for

in the Californian performances there was very little of the brutality

that distinguished this function in the mother country. The horses were

not miserable, worn-out hacks, but young and alert mustangs; and the

display of horsemanship by the picadors was not only wonderful, but

secured an almost absolute safety to horse and rider. I never saw

a horse gored; although unskillful riders were sometimes thrown in

wheeling quickly to avoid the bull's charge, they generally regained

their animals without injury.

The Plaza de Toros was reached through the decayed and tile-strewn

outskirts of an old Spanish village. It was a rudely built oval

amphitheater, with crumbling, whitewashed adobe walls, and roofed only

over portions of the gallery reserved for the provincial “notables,” but

now occupied by a few shopkeepers and their wives, with a sprinkling of

American travelers and ranchmen. The impalpable adobe dust of the arena

was being whirled into the air by the strong onset of the afternoon

trade winds, which happily, however, helped also to dissipate a reek

of garlic, and the acrid fumes of cheap tobacco rolled in cornhusk

cigarettes. I was leaning over the second barrier, waiting for the

meager and circuslike procession to enter with the keys of the bull pen,

when my attention was attracted to a movement in the reserved gallery.

A lady and gentleman of a quality that was evidently unfamiliar to the

rest of the audience were picking their way along the rickety benches

to a front seat. I recognized the geologist with some surprise, and the

lady he was leading with still greater astonishment. For it was Miss

Mannersley, in her precise, well-fitting walking-costume--a monotone of

sober color among the parti-colored audience.

However, I was perhaps less surprised than the audience, for I was not

only becoming as accustomed to the young girl's vagaries as I had been

to Enriquez' extravagance, but I was also satisfied that her uncle

might have given her permission to come, as a recognition of the Sunday

concession of the management, as well as to conciliate his supposed

Catholic friends. I watched her sitting there until the first bull

had entered, and, after a rather brief play with the picadors and

banderilleros, was dispatched. At the moment when the matador approached

the bull with his lethal weapon I was not sorry for an excuse to glance

at Miss Mannersley. Her hands were in her lap, her head slightly bent

forward over her knees. I fancied that she, too, had dropped her

eyes before the brutal situation; to my horror, I saw that she had a

drawing-book in her hand and was actually sketching it. I turned my eyes

in preference to the dying bull.

The second animal led out for this ingenious slaughter was, however,

more sullen, uncertain, and discomposing to his butchers. He accepted

the irony of a trial with gloomy, suspicious eyes, and he declined

the challenge of whirling and insulting picadors. He bristled with

banderillas like a hedgehog, but remained with his haunches backed

against the barrier, at times almost hidden in the fine dust raised by

the monotonous stroke of his sullenly pawing hoof--his one dull, heavy

protest. A vague uneasiness had infected his adversaries; the picadors

held aloof, the banderilleros skirmished at a safe distance. The

audience resented only the indecision of the bull. Galling epithets

were flung at him, followed by cries of “ESPADA!” and, curving his elbow

under his short cloak, the matador, with his flashing blade in hand,

advanced and--stopped. The bull remained motionless.

For at that moment a heavier gust of wind than usual swept down upon

the arena, lifted a suffocating cloud of dust, and whirled it around the

tiers of benches and the balcony, and for a moment seemed to stop the

performance. I heard an exclamation from the geologist, who had risen to

his feet. I fancied I heard even a faint cry from Miss Mannersley; but

the next moment, as the dust was slowly settling, we saw a sheet

of paper in the air, that had been caught up in this brief cyclone,

dropping, dipping from side to side on uncertain wings, until it slowly

descended in the very middle of the arena. It was a leaf from Miss

Mannersley's sketchbook, the one on which she had been sketching.

In the pause that followed it seemed to be the one object that at last

excited the bull's growing but tardy ire. He glanced at it with murky,

distended eyes; he snorted at it with vague yet troubled fury. Whether

he detected his own presentment in Miss Mannersley's sketch, or

whether he recognized it as an unknown and unfamiliar treachery in his

surroundings, I could not conjecture; for the next moment the matador,

taking advantage of the bull's concentration, with a complacent leer at

the audience, advanced toward the paper. But at that instant a young

man cleared the barrier into the arena with a single bound, shoved the

matador to one side, caught up the paper, turned toward the balcony

and Miss Mannersley with a gesture of apology, dropped gaily before the

bull, knelt down before him with an exaggerated humility, and held up

the drawing as if for his inspection. A roar of applause broke from the

audience, a cry of warning and exasperation from the attendants, as the

goaded bull suddenly charged the stranger. But he sprang to one side

with great dexterity, made a courteous gesture to the matador as if

passing the bull over to him, and still holding the paper in his hand,

re-leaped the barrier, and rejoined the audience in safety. I did not

wait to see the deadly, dominant thrust with which the matador received

the charging bull; my eyes were following the figure now bounding up the

steps to the balcony, where with an exaggerated salutation he laid the

drawing in Miss Mannersley's lap and vanished. There was no mistaking

that thin lithe form, the narrow black mustache, and gravely dancing

eyes. The audacity of conception, the extravagance of execution, the

quaint irony of the sequel, could belong to no one but Enriquez.

I hurried up to her as the six yoked mules dragged the carcass of the

bull away. She was placidly putting up her book, the unmoved focus of

a hundred eager and curious eyes. She smiled slightly as she saw me. “I

was just telling Mr. Briggs what an extraordinary creature it was, and

how you knew him. He must have had great experience to do that sort of

thing so cleverly and safely. Does he do it often? Of course, not just

that. But does he pick up cigars and things that I see they throw to the

matador? Does he belong to the management? Mr. Briggs thinks the whole

thing was a feint to distract the bull,” she added, with a wicked glance

at the geologist, who, I fancied, looked disturbed.

“I am afraid,” I said dryly, “that his act was as unpremeditated and

genuine as it was unusual.”

“Why afraid?”

It was a matter-of-fact question, but I instantly saw my mistake. What

right had I to assume that Enriquez' attentions were any more genuine

than her own easy indifference; and if I suspected that they were, was

it fair in me to give my friend away to this heartless coquette?

“You are not very gallant,” she said, with a slight laugh, as I was

hesitating, and turned away with her escort before I could frame a

reply. But at least Enriquez was now accessible, and I should gain some

information from him. I knew where to find him, unless he were still

lounging about the building, intent upon more extravagance; but I

waited until I saw Miss Mannersley and Briggs depart without further

interruption.

The hacienda of Ramon Saltillo, Enriquez' cousin, was on the outskirts

of the village. When I arrived there I found Enriquez' pinto mustang

steaming in the corral, and although I was momentarily delayed by the

servants at the gateway, I was surprised to find Enriquez himself lying

languidly on his back in a hammock in the patio. His arms were hanging

down listlessly on each side as if in the greatest prostration, yet I

could not resist the impression that the rascal had only just got into

the hammock when he heard of my arrival.

“You have arrived, friend Pancho, in time,” he said, in accents of

exaggerated weakness. “I am absolutely exhaust. I am bursted, caved in,

kerflummoxed. I have behold you, my friend, at the barrier. I speak not,

I make no sign at the first, because I was on fire; I speak not at the

feenish--for I am exhaust.”

“I see; the bull made it lively for you.”

He instantly bounded up in the hammock. “The bull! Caramba! Not a

thousand bulls! And thees one, look you, was a craven. I snap my fingers

over his horn; I roll my cigarette under his nose.”

“Well, then--what was it?”

He instantly lay down again, pulling up the sides of the hammock.

Presently his voice came from its depths, appealing in hollow tones to

the sky. “He asks me--thees friend of my soul, thees brother of my life,

thees Pancho that I lofe--what it was? He would that I should tell him

why I am game in the legs, why I shake in the hand, crack in the voice,

and am generally wipe out! And yet he, my pardner--thees Francisco--know

that I have seen the mees from Boston! That I have gaze into the eye,

touch the hand, and for the instant possess the picture that hand have

drawn! It was a sublime picture, Pancho,” he said, sitting up again

suddenly, “and have kill the bull before our friend Pepe's sword have

touch even the bone of hees back and make feenish of him.”

“Look here, Enriquez,” I said bluntly, “have you been serenading that

girl?”

He shrugged his shoulders without the least embarrassment, and said:

“Ah, yes. What would you? It is of a necessity.”

“Well,” I retorted, “then you ought to know that her uncle took it all to

himself--thought you some grateful Catholic pleased with his religious

tolerance.”

He did not even smile. “BUENO,” he said gravely. “That make something,

too. In thees affair it is well to begin with the duenna. He is the

duenna.”

“And,” I went on relentlessly, “her escort told her just now that your

exploit in the bull ring was only a trick to divert the bull, suggested

by the management.”

“Bah! her escort is a geologian. Naturally, she is to him as a stone.”

I would have continued, but a peon interrupted us at this moment with a

sign to Enriquez, who leaped briskly from the hammock, bidding me wait

his return from a messenger in the gateway.

Still unsatisfied of mind, I waited, and sat down in the hammock that

Enriquez had quitted. A scrap of paper was lying in its meshes, which

at first appeared to be of the kind from which Enriquez rolled his

cigarettes; but as I picked it up to throw it away, I found it was of

much firmer and stouter material. Looking at it more closely, I was

surprised to recognize it as a piece of the tinted drawing-paper torn

off the “block” that Miss Mannersley had used. It had been deeply

creased at right angles as if it had been folded; it looked as if it

might have been the outer half of a sheet used for a note.

It might have been a trifling circumstance, but it greatly excited my

curiosity. I knew that he had returned the sketch to Miss Mannersley,

for I had seen it in her hand. Had she given him another? And if so, why

had it been folded to the destruction of the drawing? Or was it part

of a note which he had destroyed? In the first impulse of discovery

I walked quickly with it toward the gateway where Enriquez had

disappeared, intending to restore it to him. He was just outside talking

with a young girl. I started, for it was Jocasta--Miss Mannersley's

maid.

With this added discovery came that sense of uneasiness and indignation

with which we illogically are apt to resent the withholding of a

friend's confidence, even in matters concerning only himself. It was no

use for me to reason that it was no business of mine, that he was right

in keeping a secret that concerned another--and a lady; but I was afraid

I was even more meanly resentful because the discovery quite upset my

theory of his conduct and of Miss Mannersley's attitude toward him. I

continued to walk on to the gateway, where I bade Enriquez a hurried

good-by, alleging the sudden remembrance of another engagement, but

without appearing to recognize the girl, who was moving away when, to

my further discomfiture, the rascal stopped me with an appealing wink,

threw his arms around my neck, whispered hoarsely in my ear, “Ah! you

see--you comprehend--but you are the mirror of discretion!” and returned

to Jocasta. But whether this meant that he had received a message from

Miss Mannersley, or that he was trying to suborn her maid to carry one,

was still uncertain. He was capable of either. During the next two

or three weeks I saw him frequently; but as I had resolved to try the

effect of ignoring Miss Mannersley in our conversation, I gathered

little further of their relations, and, to my surprise, after one or two

characteristic extravagances of allusion, Enriquez dropped the subject,

too. Only one afternoon, as we were parting, he said carelessly: “My

friend, you are going to the casa of Mannersley tonight. I too have the

honor of the invitation. But you will be my Mercury--my Leporello--you

will take of me a message to thees Mees Boston, that I am crushed,

desolated, prostrate, and flabbergasted--that I cannot arrive, for I

have of that night to sit up with the grand-aunt of my brother-in-law,

who has a quinsy to the death. It is sad.”

This was the first indication I had received of Miss Mannersley's

advances. I was equally surprised at Enriquez' refusal.

“Nonsense!” I said bluntly. “Nothing keeps you from going.”

“My friend,” returned Enriquez, with a sudden lapse into languishment

that seemed to make him absolutely infirm, “it is everything that

shall restrain me. I am not strong. I shall become weak of the knee and

tremble under the eye of Mees Boston. I shall precipitate myself to the

geologian by the throat. Ask me another conundrum that shall be easy.”

He seemed idiotically inflexible, and did not go. But I did. I found

Miss Mannersley exquisitely dressed and looking singularly animated and

pretty. The lambent glow of her inscrutable eye as she turned toward me

might have been flattering but for my uneasiness in regard to Enriquez.

I delivered his excuses as naturally as I could. She stiffened for an

instant, and seemed an inch higher. “I am so sorry,” she said at last in

a level voice. “I thought he would have been so amusing. Indeed, I had

hoped we might try an old Moorish dance together which I have found and

was practicing.”

“He would have been delighted, I know. It's a great pity he didn't come

with me,” I said quickly; “but,” I could not help adding, with emphasis

on her words, “he is such an 'extraordinary creature,' you know.”

“I see nothing extraordinary in his devotion to an aged relative,”

returned Miss Mannersley quietly as she turned away, “except that it

justifies my respect for his character.”

I do not know why I did not relate this to him. Possibly I had given up

trying to understand them; perhaps I was beginning to have an idea that

he could take care of himself. But I was somewhat surprised a few days

later when, after asking me to go with him to a rodeo at his uncle's he

added composedly, “You will meet Mees Boston.”

I stared, and but for his manner would have thought it part of his

extravagance. For the rodeo--a yearly chase of wild cattle for the

purpose of lassoing and branding them--was a rather brutal affair,

and purely a man's function; it was also a family affair--a property

stock-taking of the great Spanish cattle-owners--and strangers,

particularly Americans, found it difficult to gain access to its

mysteries and the fiesta that followed.

“But how did she get an invitation?” I asked. “You did not dare to

ask--” I began.

“My friend,” said Enriquez, with a singular deliberation, “the great and

respectable Boston herself, and her serene, venerable oncle, and other

Boston magnificos, have of a truth done me the inexpressible honor to

solicit of my degraded, papistical oncle that she shall come--that she

shall of her own superior eye behold the barbaric customs of our race.”

His tone and manner were so peculiar that I stepped quickly before him,

laid my hands on his shoulders, and looked down into his face. But the

actual devil which I now for the first time saw in his eyes went out

of them suddenly, and he relapsed again in affected languishment in his

chair. “I shall be there, friend Pancho,” he said, with a preposterous

gasp. “I shall nerve my arm to lasso the bull, and tumble him before her

at her feet. I shall throw the 'buck-jump' mustang at the same sacred

spot. I shall pluck for her the buried chicken at full speed from the

ground, and present it to her. You shall see it, friend Pancho. I shall

be there.”

He was as good as his word. When Don Pedro Amador, his uncle, installed

Miss Mannersley, with Spanish courtesy, on a raised platform in the long

valley where the rodeo took place, the gallant Enriquez selected a bull

from the frightened and galloping herd, and, cleverly isolating him

from the band, lassoed his hind legs, and threw him exactly before the

platform where Miss Mannersley was seated. It was Enriquez who caught

the unbroken mustang, sprang from his own saddle to the bare back of his

captive, and with the lasso for a bridle, halted him on rigid haunches

at Miss Mannersley's feet. It was Enriquez who, in the sports that

followed, leaned from his saddle at full speed, caught up the chicken

buried to its head in the sand, without wringing its neck, and tossed

it unharmed and fluttering toward his mistress. As for her, she wore

the same look of animation that I had seen in her face at our previous

meeting. Although she did not bring her sketchbook with her, as at the

bullfight, she did not shrink from the branding of the cattle, which

took place under her very eyes.

Yet I had never seen her and Enriquez together; they had never, to my

actual knowledge, even exchanged words. And now, although she was the

guest of his uncle, his duties seemed to keep him in the field, and

apart from her. Nor, as far as I could detect, did either apparently

make any effort to have it otherwise. The peculiar circumstance seemed

to attract no attention from anyone else. But for what I alone knew--or

thought I knew--of their actual relations, I should have thought them

strangers.

But I felt certain that the fiesta which took place in the broad patio

of Don Pedro's casa would bring them together. And later in the evening,

as we were all sitting on the veranda watching the dancing of the

Mexican women, whose white-flounced sayas were monotonously rising and

falling to the strains of two melancholy harps, Miss Mannersley rejoined

us from the house. She seemed to be utterly absorbed and abstracted in

the barbaric dances, and scarcely moved as she leaned over the railing

with her cheek resting on her hand. Suddenly she arose with a little

cry.

“What is it?” asked two or three.

“Nothing--only I have lost my fan.” She had risen, and was looking

abstractedly on the floor.

Half a dozen men jumped to their feet. “Let me fetch it,” they said.

“No, thank you. I think I know where it is, and will go for it myself.”

She was moving away.

But Don Pedro interposed with Spanish gravity. Such a thing was not to

be heard of in his casa. If the senorita would not permit HIM--an old

man--to go for it, it must be brought by Enriquez, her cavalier of the

day.

But Enriquez was not to be found. I glanced at Miss Mannersley's

somewhat disturbed face, and begged her to let me fetch it. I thought I

saw a flush of relief come into her pale cheek as she said, in a lower

voice, “On the stone seat in the garden.”

I hurried away, leaving Don Pedro still protesting. I knew the gardens,

and the stone seat at an angle of the wall, not a dozen yards from

the casa. The moon shone full upon it. There, indeed, lay the little

gray-feathered fan. But beside it, also, lay the crumpled black

gold-embroidered riding-gauntlet that Enriquez had worn at the rodeo.

I thrust it hurriedly into my pocket, and ran back. As I passed through

the gateway I asked a peon to send Enriquez to me. The man stared. Did I

not know that Don Enriquez had ridden away two minutes ago?

When I reached the veranda, I handed the fan to Miss Mannersley without

a word. “BUENO,” said Don Pedro, gravely; “it is as well. There shall be

no bones broken over the getting of it, for Enriquez, I hear, has had to

return to the Encinal this very evening.”

Miss Mannersley retired early. I did not inform her of my discovery, nor

did I seek in any way to penetrate her secret. There was no doubt that

she and Enriquez had been together, perhaps not for the first time; but

what was the result of their interview? From the young girl's demeanor

and Enriquez' hurried departure, I could only fear the worst for him.

Had he been tempted into some further extravagance and been angrily

rebuked, or had he avowed a real passion concealed under his exaggerated

mask and been deliberately rejected? I tossed uneasily half the night,

following in my dreams my poor friend's hurrying hoofbeats, and ever

starting from my sleep at what I thought was the sound of galloping

hoofs.

I rose early, and lounged into the patio; but others were there before

me, and a small group of Don Pedro's family were excitedly discussing

something, and I fancied they turned away awkwardly and consciously as

I approached. There was an air of indefinite uneasiness everywhere. A

strange fear came over me with the chill of the early morning air. Had

anything happened to Enriquez? I had always looked upon his extravagance

as part of his playful humor. Could it be possible that under the sting

of rejection he had made his grotesque threat of languishing effacement

real? Surely Miss Mannersley would know or suspect something, if it were

the case.

I approached one of the Mexican women and asked if the senorita had

risen. The woman started, and looked covertly round before she replied.

Did not Don Pancho know that Miss Mannersley and her maid had not slept

in their beds that night, but had gone, none knew where?

For an instant I felt an appalling sense of my own responsibility in

this suddenly serious situation, and hurried after the retreating

family group. But as I entered the corridor a vaquero touched me on the

shoulder. He had evidently just dismounted, and was covered with the

dust of the road. He handed me a note written in pencil on a leaf

from Miss Mannersley's sketchbook. It was in Enriquez' hand, and his

signature was followed by his most extravagant rubric.

Friend Pancho: When you read this line you shall of a possibility think

I am no more. That is where you shall slip up, my little brother! I am

much more--I am two times as much, for I have marry Miss Boston. At the

Mission Church, at five of the morning, sharp! No cards shall be left! I

kiss the hand of my venerable uncle-in-law. You shall say to him that

we fly to the South wilderness as the combined evangelical missionary to

the heathen! Miss Boston herself say this. Ta-ta! How are you now?

Your own Enriquez.