well, the execution of John Felton for posting the Papal bull against
the Queen on the door of London House. They too, like the knights of
Arthurian legend, had conquered the flesh for an ideal. He was carried
in spirit into a whole world of transcendent courage, into a company
who scorned ease and safety in the preservation of an integrity, a
devotion, above self. This gave him a release, the sense that his body
was immaterial, that filled him with a calm serious fervor.
He was conscious, through this, of the ceaseless playing of the guitars,
strains of jotas and malaguenas, laden with the seductiveness, the
fascination, of sensuous warm life. It was, in its persistence,
mocking; and finally it grew into a bitter undertone to the elevation
of his thought: he wanted, like Savonarola, to bring to an end the
depravity of the city; he wanted to cleanse Havana of everything but
the blanched heavenly ardor of his own dedication. The jotas
continued and the scent of mignonette increased. The moon, slipping
over the sea, shone with a vague brightness on the leaves of the
laurels below, on the whiteness of marble walks, and in the liquid
gleam of fountains. A woman laughed with a note of uncertainty and
passion.... It was all infinitely removed from him, not of the
slightest moment. What rose, dwelt, in Charles was a breath of
eternity, of infinitude; he was lost in a vision of good beyond seasons,
changeless, and for all men whomsoever. It must come, he told himself
so tensely that he was certain he had cried his conviction aloud. The
music sustained its burden of earthly desire to which the harsh
whispering rustle of the palm fronds added a sound like a scoffing
laughter.
* * * * *
At the Plaza de Toros, the following Sunday afternoon, Charles saw La
Clavel; she was seated on an upper tier near the stand of the
musicians, over the entrance for the bulls; and, in an audience
composed almost entirely of men, she was brilliantly conspicuous in a
flaming green manton embroidered in white petals; her mantilla was
white, and Charles could distinguish the crimson blot of the flower by
her cheek. The brass horns and drums of the band were making a rasping
uproar, and the crowded wooden amphitheatre was tense with excitement.
Andres Escobar, beside Charles, was being gradually won from a settled
melancholy; and, in an interested voice, he spoke to Charles about the
espada, Jose Ponce, who had not yet killed a bull in Cuba, but who was
a great hero of the ring in Spain and South America.
"There is La Clavel," Charles said by way of reply; "she is with
Captain Santacilla, and I think, but I can't be sure, the officer
Tirso tried to choke to death. What is his name--de Vaca, Gaspar Arco
de Vaca."
"Even that," Andres answered, "wasn't accomplished. La Clavel's
engagement in Havana is over; I suppose it will be Buenos Aires next.
Do you remember how we swore to follow her all over the world, and
how Tirso wanted to drag her volanta in place of the horses? At heart,
it's no doubt, she is Spanish, and yet.... There's the procession."
The key bearer, splendid in velvet and gold and silver, with a short
cloak, rode into the ring followed by the picadores on broken-down
horses: their legs were swathed in leather and their jackets, of ruby
and orange and emerald, were set with expensive lace. They carried
pikes with iron points; while the banderilleros, on foot, with hair
long and knotted like a woman's, hung their bright cloaks over an arm
and bore the darts gay with paper rosettes.
The espada, Jose Ponce, was greeted with a savage roar of approbation;
he was dressed in green velvet, his zouave jacket heavy with gold
bullion; and his lithe slender dark grace recalled to Charles Abbott
La Clavel. Charles paid little attention to the bull fighting, for he
was far in the sky of his altruism; his presence at the Plaza de Toros
was merely mechanical, the routine of his life in Havana. Across from
him the banked humanity in the cheaper seats a sol, exposed to the
full blaze of mid-afternoon, made a pattern without individual
significance; he heard the quick bells of the mules that dragged out
the dead bulls; a thick revolting odor rose from the hot sand soaked
with the blood and entrails of horses.
At times, half turning, he saw the brilliant shawl of the dancer, and
more than once he distinguished her voice in the applause following a
specially skilful or daring pass. He thought of her with a passionate
admiration unaffected by the realization that she had brought them the
worst of luck: perhaps any touch of Spain was corrupting, fatal. And
the sudden desire seized him to talk to La Clavel and make sure that
her superb art was unshadowed by the disturbing possibilities voiced
by Andres.
There were cries of fuego! fuego! and Charles Abbott was conscious of
a bull who had proved indifferent to sport. A banderillero, fluttering
his cloak, stepped forward and planted in the beast's shoulder a dart
that exploded loudly with a spurt of flame and smoke; there was a
smothered bellow, and renewed activities went forward below. "What a
rotten show!" Charles said to Andres, and the latter accused him of
being a tender sentimentalist. Jose Ponce, Andres pronounced with
satisfaction, was a great sword. The espada was about to kill: he
moved as gracefully as though he were in the figure of a dance; his
thrust, as direct as a flash of lightning, went up to the hilt, and
the vomiting bull fell in crashing death at his feet.
"Suppose, for a change, we go to the Aguila de Oro," Andres suggested;
"the air is better there." By that he meant that the cafe was
relatively free from Spaniards. The throng moved shoulder to shoulder
slowly to the doors; but Charles managed to work his way constantly
nearer the conspicuous figure of La Clavel. He despaired, however, of
getting close to her, when an unforeseen eddy of humanity separated
the dancer from her companions and threw her into Charles' path. She
recognized him immediately: but, checking his formal salutation, she
said, in a rapid lowered voice, that she would very much like to see
him ... at the St. Louis late on the afternoon of tomorrow. They were
separated immediately, leaving in Charles a sense of excited
anticipation. He joined Andres soon after and told him what had
occurred.
"I suppose it is safe for you," Andres decided; "you are an American,
no one has yet connected you with the cause of Cuba. But this
woman--What do we know of her?--you'll have to be prudent!"
Andres Escobar had grown severe in the last week, he had hardened
remarkably; his concentration, Charles felt, his bitterness, even
excluded his friends. Charles Abbott's affection for him increased
daily; his love, really, for Andres was a part of all that was highest
in him. Unlike the love of any woman, Andres made no demand on him,
what only mattered was what each intrinsically was: there were no
pretence, no weary protestations, nothing beside the truth of their
mutual regard, their friendship. What Charles possessed belonged
equally, without demand, to Andres; they had, aside from their great
preoccupation, the same thoughts and prejudices, the same taste in
refrescos and beauty and clothes. They discovered fresh identical
tastes with a rush of happiness.
It was, like the absorbing rest, immaterial, the negation of ordinary
aims and ideas of comfort and self-seeking. Charles would have died
for Andres, Andres for Charles, without of a moment's hesitation;
indeed, the base of their feeling lay in the full recognition of that
fact. This they admitted simply, with no accent of exaggeration or
boasting: on the present plane of their being it was the most natural
thing in the world.
At the Aguila de Oro, spinning the paddle of a molinillo, and
individual chocolate mill, Andres informed Charles that Vincente was
home. "He has told me everything," Andres Escobar continued with
pride. "We are now more than Escobars--brother Cubans. He has been
both shot and sabred and he has a malaria. But nearly all his friends
are dead. Soon, he says, we, Jaime and Remigio--and, I added,
you--will have to go out. He is to let us know when and how."
"Do the police know he is in Havana?"
"We think not; they haven't been about the house since the investigation
of the de Vaca affair, and our servants are not spies. You must come
and see Vincente this evening, for he may leave at any hour. It seems
that he is celebrated for his bravery and the Spaniards have marked
him for special attention. Papa and mama are dreadfully disturbed,
and not only because of him; for if he is discovered, all of us, yes,
little Narcisa, will be made to pay--to a horrible degree, I can tell
you."
* * * * *
There was, apparently, nothing unusual in the situation at the
Escobars' when Charles called in the evening. The family, exactly as
he had known it, was assembled in the drawing-room, conversing under
the icy flood of the crystal chandelier. He found a chair by Narcisa,
and listened studiously to the colloquial Spanish, running swiftly
around the circle, alternating with small thoughtful silences. Soon,
however, Charles Abbott could see that the atmosphere was not
normal--the vivacity palpably was forced through the shadow of a
secret apprehension. Domingo Escobar made sudden seemingly irrelevant
gestures, Carmita sighed out of her rotundity. Only Narcisa was beyond
the general subdued gloom: in her clear white dress, her clocked white
silk stockings, and the spread densely black curtain of her hair, she
was intent on a wondering thought of her own. Her gaze, as usual, was
lowered to her loosely clasped hands; but, growing conscious of
Charles' regard, she looked up quickly, and, holding his eyes, smiled
at him with an incomprehensible sweetness.
He regarded her with a gravity no more than half actual--his mind was
set upon Vincente--and her even pallor was invaded by a slow soft
color. Charles nodded, entirely friendly, and she turned away, so
abruptly that her hair swung out and momentarily hid her profile. He
forgot her immediately, for he had overheard, half understood, an
allusion to the Escobars' elder son. With a growing impatience he
interrogated Andres, and the latter nodded a reassurance. Then Andres
Escobar rose, punctiliously facing his father--he would, with
permission, take Charles to the upper balconies, the wide view from
which he had never seen. Domingo was plainly uneasy, displeased; but,
after a long frowning pause, gave his reluctant consent. Charles
Abbott was acutely aware of his heels striking against the marble
steps which, broad, imposing and dark, led above. Vincente, it
developed, without actually being in hiding, was limited to the scope
of the upper hall, where, partly screened in growing palms, its end
formed a small salon.
There was a glimmer of light though sword-like leaves, and a lamp on
an alabaster table set in ormolu cast up its illumination on a face
from which every emotion had been banished by a supreme weariness.
Undoubtedly at one time Vincente Escobar had been as handsome as
Andres; more arbitrary, perhaps, with a touch of impatience resembling
petulance; the carriage, the air, of a youth spoiled by unrestrained
inclination and society. The ghost of this still lingered over him, in
the movement of his slender hands, the sharp upflinging of his chin;
but it was no more than a memento of a gay and utterly lost past. The
weariness, Charles began to realize, was the result of more than a
spent physical and mental being--Vincente was ill. He had acquired a
fever, it was brought out, in the jungles of Camagueey.
At first he was wholly indifferent to Charles; at the end of Andres'
enthusiastic introduction, after a flawless but perfunctory courtesy,
Vincente said:
"The United States is very important to us; we have had to depend
almost entirely on the New York Junta for our life. We have hope, too,
in General Grant. Finally your country, that was so successful in its
liberation, will understand us completely, and sweep Spain over the
sea. But, until that comes, we need only money and courage in our, in
Cuban, hearts. You are, I understand from Andres, rich; and you are
generous, you will give?"
That direct question, together with its hint at the personal
unimportance of his attachment to a cause of pure justice, filled
Charles with both resentment and discomfort. He replied stiffly, in
halting but adequate Spanish, that there had been a misunderstanding:
"I am not rich; the money I have you would think nothing--it might buy
a stand or two of rifles, but no more. What I had wanted to spend was
myself, my belief in Cuba. It seemed to me that might be worth
something--" he stopped, in the difficulty of giving expression to his
deep convictions; and Andres warmly grasped his hand. He held Charles'
palm and addressed his brother in a passionate flood of protest and
assertion: Charles Abbott, his dear friend, was as good a patriot as
any Escobar, and they should all embrace him in gratitude and welcome;
he was, if not the gold of the United States, its unselfish and
devoted heart; his presence here, his belief in them, was an
indication of what must follow.
"If he were killed," Andres explained. "That alone would bring us an
army; the indignation of his land would fall like a mountain on our
enemies."
This, giving Charles a fresh view of his usefulness, slightly cooled
his ardor; he was willing to accept it, in his exalted state he would
make any sacrifice for the ideal that had possessed him; but there was
an acceptance of brutal unsentimental fact in the Latin fibre of the
Escobars foreign to his own more romantic conceptions. Vincente wasn't
much carried away by the possibility Andres revealed.
"He'd be got out of the way privately," he explained in his drained
voice; "polite letters and no more, regrets, would be exchanged. The
politicians of Washington are not different from those of Cuba. If he
is wise he will see Havana as an idler. Even you, Andres, do not know
yet what is waiting for you. It is one thing to conspire in a balcony
on the Prado and another to lie in the marshes of Camagueey. You cannot
realize how desperate Spain is with the debt left from her wars with
Morocco and Chile and Peru. Cuba, for a number of years, has been her
richest possession. While the Spaniards were paying taxes of three
dollars and twenty some cents, we, in Cuba, were paying six dollars
and sixty-nine. After our declaration of independence at Manzanillo--"
an eloquent pause left his hearers to the contemplation of what had
followed.
"You know how it has gone with us," Vincente continued, almost
exclusively to the younger Escobar. "Carlos Cespedes left his practice
of the law at Bayamo for a desperate effort with less than a hundred
and thirty men. But they were successful, and in a few weeks we had
fifteen thousand, with the constitution of a republican government
drawn. We ended slavery," here, for a breath, he addressed Charles
Abbott. "But in that," he specified, "we were different from you. In
the United States slavery was considered as only a moral wrong. Your
Civil War was, after all, an affair of philanthropy; while we freed
the slaves for economic reasons.
"Well, our struggle went on," he returned to Andres, "and we were
victorious, with, at the most, fifty thousand men against how many?
One, two, hundred thousand. And we began to be recognized abroad, by
Bolivia and Columbia and the Mexican Congress. The best Cubans, those
like ourselves, were in sympathy with the insurrection. Everything was
bright, the climate, too, was fighting for us; and then, Andres, we
lost man after man, the bravest, the youngest, first: they were
murdered, as I may be tonight, killed among the lianas, overtaken in
the villages, smothered in small detachments by great forces, until
now. And it is for that I have said so much, when it is unnecessary to
pronounce a word. What do you think is our present situation? What do
you think I left of our splendid effort in the interior? General
Agramonte and thirty-five men. That and no more!
"Their condition you may see in me--wasted, hardly stronger than
pigeons, and less than half armed. What, do you think, one boy
from Pennsylvania is worth to that? Can he live without food more
than half the time, without solid land under his feet, without
protection against the mosquitoes and heat and tropical rains? And
in Havana: but remember your friend, Tirso Labrador! You, Andres,
have no alternative; but your Charles Abbott he would be a danger
rather than an assistance." Charles, with a prodigious effort at a
calm self-control, answered him.
"You are very thoughtful, and it is right to be cautious, but what you
say is useless. Andres understands! I'd never be satisfied to be
anything except a Cuban patriot. It isn't necessary for you to
understand that in a minute, an evening. I might be no good in
Camagueey, but I am not as young as Tirso; I am more bitter and
patient. By heaven, I will do something, I will be a part of your
bravery! Not only the soldiers in the field, not only Agramonte, but
sacrifice--"
* * * * *
Charles' throat was closed, his words stopped, by the intensity of his
feeling; his longing to be identified, lost, in the spirit of General
Agramonte and the faithful thirty-five burned into a desperation of
unhappiness. Vincente Escobar, it was evident, thought that he wasn't
capable of sustaining such a trust. Still there was nothing to be
gained by protests, hot asseverations; with difficulty he suppressed
his resentment, and sat, to all appearances, calm, engaged with a
cigar and attending Vincente's irregular vehement speech. Andres was
silent, dark and serious; but the gaze he turned upon Charles was warm
with affection and admiration. Nothing, Vincente insisted, could be
done now; they must wait and draw into their cause every possible
ultimate assistance and understanding. If the truth were known, he
repeated again and again, the world would be at their feet.
Finally, his enthusiasm, his power, ebbed; his yellow pinched face
sank forward: he was so spent, so delivered to a loose indifference of
body, that he might well have been dead. Charles rose with a formal
Spanish period voicing the appreciation of the honor that had been
his.
"We are all worried about Vincente," Andres proceeded, as they were
descending the vault-like stairs; "there is a shadow on him like bad
luck. But it may be no more than the fever. Our mother thinks he needs
only her love and enough wine jelly." They were again in the
drawing-room with the Escobars; and Charles momentarily resumed the
seat he had left beside Narcisa.
Domingo and his wife were submerged in gloomy reflection, and Andres
sat with his gaze fixed on the marble, patterned in white and black,
of the floor. Suddenly Narcisa raised her head with an air of
rebellion. "It's always like the church," she declared incredibly.
"Everything has got so old that I can't bear it--Vincente as good as
dead and Andres resembling a Jesuit father! Must all my life go on in
this funeral march?" The elder Escobars regarded her in a voiceless
amazement; but Andres said severely:
"You are too young to understand the tragedy of Cuba or Vincente's
heroic spirit. I am ashamed of you--before Charles Abbott."
Narcisa rose and walked swiftly out upon the balcony. They had been,
it seemed to Charles, rather ridiculous with her; it was hard on
Narcisa to have been thrust, at her age, into such a serious affair.
The Escobars, and particularly Vincente, took their responsibility a
little too ponderously. Following a vague impulse, made up both of his
own slightly damaged pride and a sympathy for Narcisa, he went out to
the balcony where she stood with her hands lightly resting on the
railing. Veiled in the night, her youth seemed more mysterious than
immature; he was conscious of an unsteady flutter at her unformed
breast; her face had an aspect of tears.
"You mustn't mind them," he told her; "they are tremendously bothered
because they see a great deal farther than you can. The danger to
Vincente, too, in Havana, spies--"
She interrupted him, looking away so that he could see only a trace of
her cheek against the fragment fall of her hair. "It isn't that, but
what Andres said about you."
This admission startled him, and he studied Narcisa--her hands now
tightly clasping the iron railing--with a disturbed wonder. Was it
possible that she cared for him? At home, ignored by a maturity such
as his, she would have been absorbed in the trivial activities of
girls of her own age. But Havana, the tropics, was different. It was
significant, as well, that he was permitted to be with her,
practically alone, beyond the sight and hearing of her mother; the
Escobars, he thought, had hopes of such a consummation. It was
useless, he was solely wedded to Cuba; he had already pictured the
only dramatic accident of the heart that could touch him. Not little
Narcisa! She was turned away from him completely: a lovely back,
straight and narrow, virginal--Domingo Escobar had said this--as a
white rose bud, yet with an impalpable and seductive scent. In other
circumstances, a happier and more casual world, she would have been an
adorable fate. An increasing awkwardness seized him, a conviction of
impotence. "Narcisa," he whispered at her ear; but, before he could
finish his sentence, her face was close to his, her eyes were shut and
the tenderness of her lips unprotected.
Charles put an arm about her slim shoulders and pressed his cheek
against hers. "Listen," he went on, in his lowered voice, patching the
deficiencies of his Spanish with English words clear in their feeling
if not in sound, "nothing could have shown me myself as well as you,
for now I know that I can never give up a thought to anything outside
what I have promised my life to. A great many men are quite happy with
a loving wife and children and a home--a place to go back to always;
and, in a way, since I have known you, I envy them. Their lives are
full of happiness and usefulness and specially peace; but, dearest
Narcisa, I can't be like that, it isn't for me. You see, I have chosen
to love a country; instead of being devoted only to you, there are
thousands of women, rich and poor and black and white, I must give
myself for. I haven't any existence, any rights, of my own; I haven't
any money or time or security to offer. I didn't choose it, no, it
chose me--it's exactly as though I had been stopped on the street and
conscripted. A bugle was blown in my ear. Love, you must realize, is
selfish; it would be selfish to take you on a steamer, for myself, and
go north. If I did that, if I forgot what I have sworn, I'd die. I
should seem to the world to be alive, and I'd walk about and talk and
go into the city on some business or other; but, in reality, I should
be as dead as dust.
"There are men like that everywhere, Narcisa, perhaps the most of life
is made up of them. They look all right and are generally respected;
yet, at some time or other, they killed themselves, they avoided what
they should have met, tried to save something not worth a thought. I
don't doubt a lot never find it out, they think they are as good as
ever--they don't remember how they once felt. But others discover it,
or the people who love them discover it for them. And that would
happen to me, to us."
In reply to all this she whispered that she loved him. Her arm slipped
up across his shoulder and the tips of her fingers touched his left
cheek. A momentary dizziness enveloped him at her immeasurable
sweetness: it might be that she was a part of what he was to find, to
do, in Cuba; and then his emotion perished in the bareness of his
heart to physical passion. Its place was taken by a deep pride in his
aloofness from the flesh; that alone, he felt, dignified him, set him
above the mischances of self-betrayal.
Charles Abbott kissed her softly and then took her hands. "You
wouldn't want me, Narcisa," he continued; "if I failed in this, I
should fail you absolutely. If I were unfaithful now I could never be
faithful to you."
She drew her hands sharply away. "It's you who are young and not I,"
she declared; "you talk like a boy, like Andres. All you want is a
kind of glory, like the gold lace the officers of Isabella wear.
Nothing could be more selfish."
"You don't understand," he replied patiently.