arrange it for me. Look here, there's nobody around, I might as well
tell you that's why I came to Cuba, to fight the cursed Spanish.
I'm--I'm serious, there's nothing I wouldn't do; and if I have to be
killed, why, I am ready for that. It's all worked out in my head,
except some petty little details. Cuba ought to be free; this
oppression is horrible, like a spell on you--you're all afraid to more
than whisper--that must be broken. It must! I have a good little bit
of money and I can get more. You've got to help me."
Andres clasped his hand. "That is wonderful!" His lowered exclamation
vibrated with feeling. "How can you have such nobility! I am given to
it, and Jaime and Remigio Florez and Tirso. But we are going to wait,
we think that is better; Spain shall pay us when the time comes.
Those students, eight of them, who were shot, were well known to us.
They put them against a wall by the prison and fired. You could hear
it clearly. But, when we are ready, the Spanish Volunteers--" hatred
closed his throat, drew him up rigidly. "Not yet," he insisted; "this
shall be different, forever. Perhaps your country will help us then."
Charles was increasingly impatient; he couldn't, he felt, wait, delay
his gesture for freedom. He conceived the idea that he might kill the
Captain-General of Spain in Cuba, shoot him from the step of his
carriage and cry that it was a memorial of the innocent boys he had
murdered. Andres dissuaded him; it would, he said, only make the
conditions of living more difficult, harsh, put off the other, the
final, consummation.
Below, on the promenade, the rows of gas lamps shone wanly through the
close leaves of the India laurels; there was a ceaseless sauntering
throng of men; then, from the Plaza de Armas, there was the hollow
rattat of drums, of tattoo. It was nine o'clock. The night was
magnificent, and Charles Abbott was choked by his emotions; it seemed
to him that his heart must burst with its expanding desire of heroic
good. He had left the earth for cloudy glories, his blood turned to a
silver essence distilled in ethereal honor; he was no longer a body,
but a vow, a purpose.
One thing, in a surpassing humility, he decided, and turned to Andres.
"Very well, if you think the other is best. Listen to me: I swear
never to leave Cuba, never to have a different thought or a hope,
never to consider myself at all, until you are free."
The intent face of Andres Escobar, dim in the gloom of the balcony,
was like a holy seal upon his dedication. A clatter of hoofs rose from
below--the passage of a squad of the gendarmes on grey horses, their
white coats a chalky glimmer in the night. Andres and Charles watched
them until they vanished toward the Parque Isabel; then Andres swore,
softly.
Again in his room at the Inglaterra Charles speculated about the
complications of his determination to stay in Cuba until it was
liberated from Spain. That, he began to realize, might require years.
Questions far more difficult rose than any created by a mere immediate
sacrifice; the attitude of his father, for example; he, conceivably,
would try to force him home, shut off the supply of money. Meanwhile,
since the Inglaterra was quite expensive, he would move to a less
pretentious place. And, in the morning, Charles installed himself at
the Hotel San Felipe, kept on Ancha del Norte Street, near the bay, by
a German woman.
His room was on the top floor, on, really, a gallery leading to the
open roof that was much frequented after dinner in a cooling air which
bore the restrained masculine chords of guitars. On the right he could
see the flares of Morro Castle, and, farther, the western coast lying
black on the sea. He had his room there, and the first breakfast, but
his formal breakfast and dinner he took at the Restaurant Francais,
the Aguila d'Oro, or the Cafe Dominica. Late, with Andres and their
circle, their tertulia, Charles would idle at the El Louvre over
ice-cream or the sherbets called helados in Havana. On such occasions
they talked with a studied audible care of the most frivolous things;
while Charles cherished close at heart the sensation of their
dangerous secret and patient wisdom, the assurance that some day their
sacred resolution would like lightning shatter their pretence of
docility.
* * * * *
Yet, in spite of the dark texture of their minds, they were, at times,
casually happy, intent, together, on mundane affairs. They were, all
five, inseparable: Jaime Quintara, the eldest, was even more of an
exquisite than Andres; he imported his lemon-colored gloves by the box
from Paris, where they were made to his measure; and in them, it was
the common jest, he went to bed. He was almost fat, with absurdly
small feet and a perceptible moustache. In addition, he was in love
with a public girl who lived on Gloria Street; altogether he was a man
of the world. Remigio Florez was absolutely different: the son of a
great coffee estate in Pinar del Rio, of limitless riches, he was
still simple and unaffected, short, with a round cheerful face and
innocent lips. Tirso Labrador was tall and heavy, he had the carriage
of a cavalry officer, a dragoon; and, slow mentally, his chief
characteristic was a remarkable steadfastness, a loyalty of
friendship, admiration, for his more brilliant companions. Tirso
Labrador was very strong, and it was his boast, when they were alone,
that he intended to choke a Spaniard slowly to death with his naked
hands.
Except, however, for the evening, Charles was rarely idle; upheld by
his fervor he studied Spanish with an instructor through most of the
morning, and rode or fenced in the sala in the afternoon. His
knowledge of Spanish, supplemented by his friends, grew rapidly; he
had, his teacher declared, a very special aptitude for the language.
Domingo Escobar got great delight from throwing sentences, queries, at
him with inconceivable rapidity, and in pretending that every reply
Charles attempted was senseless.
Narcisa, when he was present, contrived to sit with her gaze on her
hands folded in her ruffled lap and to lift her widely opened eyes for
breathless interrogations. She was, Charles was forced to admit,
notably pretty; in fact, for a little girl, she was a beauty. Now if
she had been thirty he might have had a hopeless passion for her,
hopeless not because she failed to return it, but for the reason that
he was a man without a future--some day, they both knew, he would
desert love for stark death.
They went, Charles and Andres, Tirso and Remigio and Jaime, to the
Tacon Theatre for every play, where they occupied a box in the first
row, the primer piso, and lounged, between the acts, on the velvet
rail with their high silk hats and canes and boutonnieres. At times
there were capital troupes of players and dancers from Andalusia, and
the evening was well spent. They liked, too, the zarzuelas, the
operettas of one act, largely improvised with local allusions. But
they most warmly applauded the dancers.
One, La Clavel, from Seville, had been announced by posters all over
the city; and, at the moment she appeared on the Tacon stage, Tirso
had his heavy arm about Remigio's shoulders, Jaime's gloved hands were
draped over his cane, and Charles was sitting in the rear of the box
with Andres. The orchestra began a sharply accented dance measure--it
was a jota--and a lithe figure in a manton of blazing silks and a
raked black felt hat made a sultry bow.
La Clavel was indolent; she tapped a heel and sounded her castanets
experimentally; a reminiscent smile hovered on the sombre beauty of
her face. Suddenly Charles' attention was wholly captured by the
dancer; he leaned forward, gazing over Remigio's shoulder, vaguely
conscious of the sound of guitars and suppressed drums, the insistent
ring of a triangle. She stamped her foot now, and the castanets were
sharp, exasperated. Then slowly she began to dance.
She wove a design of simple grace with her hips still and her arms
lifted and swaying; she leaned back, her eyes, under the slanted brim
of her hat, half closed; and her movements, the rhythm, grew more
pronounced. Through the music Charles could hear the stamp of her
heels, the augmented shrilling of the castanets. Her fire increased;
there were great scarlet peonies on her shawl, and they fluttered as
though they were troubled by a rising wind. La Clavel swept in a
widening circle on her hips, and her arms were now extended and now
thrust down rigidly behind her.
She dominated the cruel colors of her shawl with a savage intensity
that made them but the expressions of her feelings--the scarlet and
magenta and burning orange and blue were her visible moods, her
capriciousness and contempt and variability and searing passion. Her
hat was flung across the stage, and, with her bound hair shaking loose
from its high shell comb, she swept into an appalling fury, a
tormented human flame, of ecstasy. When Charles Abbott felt that he
could support it no longer, suddenly she was, apparently, frozen in
the immobility of a stone; the knotted fringe of her manton hung
without a quiver.
An uproar of applause rose from the theatre, a confusion of cries, of
Ole! Ole! Anda! Anda! Chiquella! A flight of men's hats sailed like
birds around her. Jaime Quintara pounded his cane until it broke, and,
with the others, Charles shouted his unrestrained Spanish approbation.
They crowded into the front of the box, intent on every movement,
every aspect, of the dancer. Afterwards, at the Tuileries, Andres
expressed their concerted feeling:
"The most magnificent woman alive!"
Jaime went across the cafe to speak to a man who had a connection with
the Tacon Theatre. He returned with an assortment of information--La
Clavel was staying at the St. Louis; she would be in Havana for a
month; and she had been seen with Captain Ceaza y Santacilla, of the
regiment of Isabel II. This latter fact cast them into a gloom; and
Remigio Florez so far broke the ban of sustained caution as to swear,
in the name of the Lady of Caridad, at Santacilla and his kind.
Nothing, though, could reduce their enthusiasm for La Clavel; they
worshipped her severally and together, discussing to the last shading
her every characteristic. She was young, but already the greatest
dancer the world had--would ever have, Charles added. And Andres was
instructed to secure the box for her every appearance in Havana; they
must learn, they decided, if she were to dance in Santiago de Cuba,
in Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Lima, in Cathay. They, if it were
mortally possible, would be present. Meanwhile none of them was to
take advantage of the others in the contingency that she should
miraculously come to love him. That incredible happiness the
individual must sacrifice to his friendship, to his oath above all
other oaths--Cuba. The country's name was not spoken, but it was
entirely understood.
They were seated on the lower floor, by the stairs which led up to the
salon for women; and, sharply, Charles grasped Andres' arm. Passing
them was a slender woman muffled in a black silk capote, with no hat
to cover the intricate mass of her hair piled against a high comb.
Behind her strode a Spanish officer of cavalry, his burnished scabbard
hooked on his belt against its silver chain; short, with a thick
sanguine neck above the band of his tunic, he had morose pale blue
eyes and the red hair of compounded but distinct bloods.
"La Clavel," Charles whispered; "and it must be that filthy captain,
Santacilla, with her."
* * * * *
Seated on the roof of the Hotel San Felipe, the night's trade wind
faintly vibrant with steel strings, Charles Abbott thought at length
about La Clavel. Two weeks had passed since she first danced at the
Tacon Theatre; she had appeared on the stage three times afterward;
and she was a great success, a prodigious favorite, in Havana. Charles
and Andres, Jaime and Remigio and Tirso Labrador, had, frankly, become
infatuated with her; and it was this feeling which Charles, at
present, was examining. If it endangered the other, his dedication to
an ordeal of right, he had decided, he must resolutely put the dancer
wholly outside his consideration.
This, he hoped, would not be necessary: his feeling for La Clavel lay
in the realm of the impersonal. It was, in fact, parallel with the
other supreme cause. La Clavel was a glittering thing of beauty, the
perfection of all that in a happier world, an Elysium--life and
romance might be. He regarded her in a mood of decided melancholy as
something greatly desirable and never to be grasped. When she danced
his every sensibility was intensified; life, for the moment, was
immeasurably lovely, flooded with lyrical splendor, vivid with
gorgeous color and aching happiness. Charles' pleasure in every
circumstance of being was acutely expanded--his affection for Andres,
the charm of Havana, the dignity of his impending fate.
Ordinarily he would not have been content with this; he would have
striven to turn such abstractions into the concrete of an actual
experience. But now an unusual wisdom held him intent on the vision;
that, he recognized, was real; but what the reality, the woman
herself, was, who could be sure? No, he wasn't in love with La Clavel
in the accepted sense of that indefinite term; he was the slave of the
illusion, the emotions, she spun; he adored her as the goddess of his
youth and aspirations.
He tried to explain this, in halting and inadequate Spanish, to his
tertulia; and because of his spirit rather than his words, his friends
understood him. They were standing by the marble statue of Ferdinand
VII in the Plaza de Armas, waiting for the ceremony of Retrata, to
begin in a few moments. The square was made of four gardens, separated
by formal walks, with a circular glorieta; and the gardens, the royal
palms and banyans and flambeau trees, were palely lighted by gas lamps
which showed, too, the circling procession of carriages about the
Plaza. The square itself was filled with sauntering men, a shifting
pattern of white linens, broad hats and glimmering cigars, diversified
by the uniforms of Spain.
At eight o'clock a sergeant's guard and the band marched smartly into
position before the Governor-General's palace, where they stood at
rest until the drums of the barracks announced retreat. Then, at
attention, the gun of El Morro sounded, and the band swept into the
strains of Philemon et Baucis.
Jaime Quintara smiled sceptically at Charles' periods: Platonic
sentiments might satisfy Abbott, he declared, but for himself.... At
this, Remigio insisted on their moving out to inspect the carriages.
They were, for the most part, quitrins, drawn with two horses, one
outside the shafts ridden by a calesero in crimson velvet laced with
gold and a glazed hat. The quitrins had two wheels, a leather hood
strapped back, and held three passengers by means of a small
additional seat, called, Andres explained, la nina bonita, where the
prettiest woman was invariably placed. None of the women wore hats,
but they were nearly all veiled, and the carriages were burdened with
seductive figures in wide dresses of perfumed white waving slow fans.
There was, however, little conversation between the men on foot and
the women carefully cultivating expressions of remote unconcern.
Rarely, if she were accompanied by a masculine member of her family, a
woman came to earth for a short stroll in the gardens. Charles was
absolutely inattentive to them, but his companions, particularly Tirso
and Jaime, noted and, with dismaying freedom, commented on every
feminine detail that struck their fancy. It was Tirso who excitedly
called their attention to one of the new volantas in which sat La
Clavel. Ceaza y Santacilla was not with her; the place at her side was
occupied by the man to whom Jaime had spoken about the dancer in the
Tuileries. Quintara, capturing his attention, spoke in his profoundest
manner. There was a halt in the movement of carriages, and La Clavel
was directly before them.
She wore the high comb and a mantilla of black lace falling in
scalloped folds around the vivid flower of her face--her beauty, at
least to Charles, was so extraordinary, her dark loveliness was so
flaming, that the scarlet camellia in her hair seemed wan. They were,
all four, presented to the dancer; and four extreme bows, four fervid
and sonorous acknowledgments, rose to the grace, the divinity, above.
It seemed to Charles that, perhaps because he was an American, La
Clavel noticed him more than the others: certainly she smiled at him
and the brilliancy of her gaze was veiled, made enigmatic, by the
lowering of her sweeping eyelashes.
The checked restlessness of the horses was again released in a
deliberate progress, but, as La Clavel was carried on, the man with
her added that, after Retreta, they would stop at the El Louvre for an
ice cream, a mantecado. Remigio Florez drew in a deep breath which he
allowed to escape in the form of a sigh; Jaime smoothed the wrists of
his bright yellow gloves; Tirso Labrador settled his guardsman's
shoulders into his coat. "She won't get out of the volanta," Charles
said thoughtfully; "and someone will have to bring out her refresco.
We'd better get there early and stand at the door."
"No hurry," the suave Jaime put in; "no one will leave here until
after tattoo."
At nine o'clock the drums and bugles sounded from various parts of the
city. There was one more tune played directly under the palace
windows, after which the band and its guards left briskly to the
measure of a quickstep. Charles led the way through the crowd to the
Prado and the Parque Isabel. A number of carriages were there before
them, the occupants mostly eating ices, and the cafe was being rapidly
filled. Waiting keen-eyed at the entrance, they saw the volante with
La Clavel before it drew up, and the calesero had scarcely dismounted
from his horse when the dancer was offered her choice of the available
sweets. She preferred, rather than an ice, an orchata, and sipped it
slowly with an air of complete enjoyment. Her every movement, Charles
Abbott saw, the turn of the hand holding the glass, her chin and
throat against the black film of lace, her slender body's poise, was
utterly and strongly graceful: it was, more than any other quality,
the vigor of her beauty that impressed him. It seemed as though she
must be superbly young, and dance magnificently, forever.
As Charles was considering this he was unceremoniously thrust aside
for the passage of Captain Santacilla with another cavalry officer
whose cinnamon colored face was stamped with sultry ill-humor.
Santacilla addressed the dancer aggressively with the query of why she
misspent her evening with the cursed Cuban negroes.
* * * * *
La Clavel made no reply, but tended her empty glass to Andres; then
she glanced indifferently at the captains. "Their manners," she said,
"are very pretty; and as for the negro--" she shrugged her delectable
shoulders.
"My blood is as pure, as Castilian, as your own," Tirso Labrador began
hotly; but Remigio stilled him with a hand on his arm. In an uncolored
voice he begged the dancer to excuse them; and, sweeping off their
hats, they were leaving when Santacilla's companion stepped forward in
a flash of ungoverned anger like an exposed knife:
"I've noticed you before," he addressed Tirso, "hanging and gabbling
around the cafes and theatres, and it's my opinion you are an
insurrectionist. If the truth were known, I dare say, it would be
found you are a friend to Cespedes. Anyhow, I'm tired of looking at
you; if you are not more retiring, you will find yourself in the
Cabanas."
"Good evening," Remigio repeated in an even tone. With his hand still
on Tirso's arm he tried to force him into the cafe; but the other,
dark with passion, broke away.
"You have dishonored my father and the name of a heroic patriot," he
said to the officer of cavalry. "In this I am alone." With a
suspicious quickness he leaned forward and his big hands shut about
the Spaniard's throat.
Charles, with a suppressed exclamation, recalled Tirso's determination
to choke one of the enemies of Cuba. The man in the gripping fingers
stiffened and then, grotesquely, lost his aspect of a human form;
suddenly he was no more than a thing of limp flesh and gay fabrics.
Instantly an uproar, a surging passionate excitement grew, at the
heart of which Tirso Labrador was curiously still. Heaving bodies, at
once closing in and prudently scattering, hid from Charles his friend.
There was an onrush of gendarmes, harsh exclamations and oaths; then,
at the flash of steel, a short agonized cry--Tirso's voice at once
hoarse and inhuman with death.
Charles Abbott, hurrying away at Andres' urgent insistence, caught a
final glimpse of a big young body sunk on the flagging of the Paseo;
he saw a leaden face and a bubbling tide of blood. Beyond the
Montserrat gate they halted, and he was shocked to hear Remigio Florez
curse Tirso as brutally as any Spaniard. Andres, white and trembling,
agreed. "Here is what I warned you of," he turned to Charles; "it is
fatal to lose your temper. You think that what Tirso did ends with him
in purgatory ... ha! Perhaps he is best out of it among us all. It
might be better for you to go back to America tomorrow and forget
about Cuba."
"Yes," Remigio added, "probably we are all ruined; and certainly the
police spies will be waiting for us at home."
"It would have been better if we had dissipated more," Jaime added:
"we have been entirely too high-minded and unnatural. Young men meet
together only to conspire or find love--the Spaniards know that and we
were fools."
"We haven't been suspected of anything," Andres pointed out; "and it
may be said that Tirso was killed defending his name. No, the trouble
is to come; and it wasn't our fault. We must see less of each other,
at least in public, and be quite overcome about Tirso; that is another
account I charge to Spain: I knew him when I was a child ... in the
Vuelta Arriba--" Andres Escobar began to cry wholly and unaffectedly;
he leaned against an angle of the gate, his head in an arm, and
prolonged sobs shook his body. Tears were silently streaming over
Jaime's face, but Charles Abbott's eyes were dry. He was filled by an
ecstasy of horror and detestation at the brutal murder of Tirso. Fear
closed his throat and pinched his heart with icy fingers; but he
ignored, rose above, himself, in a tremendous accession of his
determination to drive injustice--if not yet from the world--from
Cuba.
How little, he thought, anyone knew him who advised a return to
America. Before the cold violent fact of death a great part of his
early melodramatic spirit evaporated; the last possible trace of any
self-glorification left him, the lingering mock-heroics of boyhood
were gone. His emotion, now, was almost exultant; like a blaze of
insuperable white light it drowned all the individual colors of his
personality; it appeared to him almost that he had left the earth,
that he was above other men.
More than anything, he continued, he would require wisdom, the wisdom
of patience, maturity; Tirso had been completely wasted. He was
seated, again, on the roof of his hotel, and again it was night: the
guitars were like a distant sounding of events evolved in harmonies,
and there was the gleam of moonlight on the sea, a trace of the moon
and the scent of mignonette trees.
He was, he felt, very old, grave, in deportment; this detachment from
living must be the mark of age. Charles had always been a little
removed from activity by sickness; and now his almost solitary,
dreaming habit of existence had deepened in him. He thought, from time
to time, of other periods than his own, of ages when such service as
his had been, for gentlemen, the commonplace of living: he saw, in
imagination, before the altar of a little chapel, under the glimmer of
tall candles, a boyish figure kneeling in armor throughout the night.
At morning, with a faint clashing of steel, the young knight under a
vow rode into black forests of enchanted beasts and men and impure
magic, from which he delivered the innocent and the pure in heart.