indirectly.
Santacilla replied, "You think nothing can cleanse me, and, in your
chattering way, you are right; except, it may be, that last twist of
steel or ounce of lead. Some of my soldiers are planning to manage it;
I know them well, and I gave one an opportunity today: I stood with my
back to him in the parapet of the Twelve Apostles for three, five,
minutes, while he tramped and fiddled with his musket, and then I put
him in a hole in the stone for a year."
* * * * *
The other Spanish officer, Gaspar Arco de Vaca, Santacilla's closest
companion, observed toward Charles an air of profound civility, and
his pretence was more galling than Santacilla's morbid threats and
exposed contempt. De Vaca was, in temperament and appearance, purely
Iberian: he was of middle height, he carried his slender body with an
assured insulting grace, and had a narrow high-boned face, a bigoted
nose and a moustache like a scrolling of India ink on a repressed and
secretive mouth. Charles often encountered him in the Fencing School
on the Prado, across from the Villa Nueva Theatre. The officers of
Isabella congregated there late in the afternoon, where they occupied
all the chairs and filled the bare room with the soft stamp of their
heels and the harsh grinding of engaged buttoned steel. The foils,
however, were not always covered: there had been some fatalities from
duelling in the sala de Armas since Charles Abbott had been in Havana;
a Cuban gentleman past sixty had been slain by a subaltern of
seventeen; two officers, quarreling over a crillo girl, had sustained
punctured lungs, from which one had bled to death.
The Cubans, it was made evident, were there by sufferance, and the
fencing master, Galope Hormiguero, an officer who had been retired
from a Castilian regiment under the shadow of an unprovoked murder,
made little effort to conceal his disdain of the Islanders. Charles he
regarded without interest: he was a faithful student, and made all the
required passes, engaged the other beginning students, with
regularity; but even he saw that he would never be notably skilful
with the foil or rapier or broadsword. Charles had a delicate sense of
touch, he bore himself firmly, his eye was true; he had the appearance
of mastery, but the essence of it was not in him. His heart,
Hormiguero frequently told him, was like a sponge; he wasn't tempered
to the commanding of death.
He agreed, silently, that he wasn't a butcher; and as for his
heart--time would show its material. Meanwhile he kept up the waist
and forearm exercises, the indicated breathing, gaining, if not a
different spirit, a harder and cured body. The room was large, with
the usual high windows on a balcony, and strips of coco-matting over
the tiled floor. A light wooden partition provided dressing space, the
chairs were carried about hither and there, and the racks of foils
against the walls reflected the brightness of day in sudden long
shivers like other and immaterial blades. It had been, originally, a
drawing-room, the cornice was elaborate, and painted on the ceiling
were flying cupids and azure and cornucopias of spilling flowers.
At moments of rest, his chest laboring and arms limp at his sides,
Charles Abbott would stare up at the remote pastoral of love and Venus
and roses. Then the clamor, the wicked scrape of steel, the sharp
breaths, the sibilant cries that accompanied the lunges, would appear
wholly incomprehensible to him, a business in a mad-house; he'd want
to tear the plastron, with its scarlet heart sewn high on the left,
from his chest, and fling it, with his gauntlet and mask, across the
floor; he'd want to break all the foils, and banish Galope Hormiguero
to live among the wild beasts he resembled. He was deep in such a mood
when de Vaca's considerate tones roused him. "Positively," he said,
"you are like one of the heroes who held Mexico on the point of his
sword or who swept the coast of Peru of its gold. And you are idle,
for you see no one who can hold the mat with you."
"In reality," Charles replied, "I fence very awkwardly. But you have
often seen me, I haven't any need to tell you that."
"That can never be established without experience," the Spaniard
asserted; "I should have to feel your wrist against mine. If you will
be patient, if you will wait for me, I'll risk a public humiliation."
Charles Abbott said evenly: "I'd be very glad to fence with you, of
course."
When de Vaca, flawlessly appointed, returned, Charles rose steadily,
and strapped on his mask, tightened the leather of the plastron. A
murmur of subdued amusement followed their walking out together onto
an unoccupied strip--de Vaca was a celebrated swordsman. Charles
saluted acceptably, but the wielding of the other's gesture of
courtesy filled him with admiration. The foils struck together, there
was a conventional pass and parry, and from that moment Charles Abbott
lost control of his steel. At a touch from de Vaca, scarcely
perceptible, his foil rose or fell, swept to one side or the other; a
lunge would end in the button describing a whole arc, and pointing
either to the matting or the winged and cherubic cupids. The laughter
from the chairs grew louder, more unguarded, and then settled into a
constant stream of applause and merriment.
Disengaged, he said in tones which he tried in vain to make steady,
"You have a beautiful hand."
De Vaca, his eyes shining blackly through wire mesh, thanked him in
the politest language known. He began, then, to make points, touches,
wherever he chose--with a remarkably timed twist he tore the cloth
heart from Charles' wadding; he indicated, as though he were a teacher
with a pointer, anatomical facts and regions; de Vaca seemed to be
calling Charles' attention, by sharp premonitory taps, to what he
might have been saying. There were now a number of voices encouraging
and applauding him; he was begged not to be so hard upon Gaspar; and
it was hoped that he was not giving way to the venting of a secret
spite. A nerveless parry in tierce brought out a tempestuous
support--
His arm was as heavy, as numb, as lead, the conventional period had
been ignored, and his torment went on and on. His chest, he thought,
must burst under the strapped plastron, and sweat poured in a sheet
across his eyes. The episode seemed utterly meaningless, undemanded;
the more remarkable because of de Vaca's indifference to him, to all
the trivialities of his Cuban duty. How yellow the face was, the eyes
were like jet, through the mask. Then Charles Abbott grasped what, he
was certain, was the purpose of such an apparently disproportionate
attack. It was the result of a cold effort, a set determination, to
destroy what courage he had. He gazed quickly about, and saw nothing
but Spanish faces; the fencing master was in the far end of the room,
intent upon a sheaf of foils. At any moment de Vaca could have
disarmed him, sent his steel flying through air; but that he forebore
to do. Instead he opposed his skill, his finesse, his strength, in the
attack upon Charles Abbott's fibre.
"If I collapse," Charles told himself, "it will be for eternity."
Any sense of time was disintegrated in a physical agony which required
all his wasting being to combat. But, even worse than that, far more
destructive, was the assault upon his mind. If he crumbled ... he
thought of himself as dust, his brain a dry powder in his skull. The
laughter around him, which had seemed to retreat farther and farther,
had ceased, as though it had been lost in the distance. The room,
widening to an immensity of space, was silent, charged with a
malignant expectancy. Soon, Charles felt, he would fall into
unreckoned depths of corrupt shadows, among the obscene figures of the
hideously lost.
The sweat streaming into his mouth turned thick and salt--blood, from
his nose. There was a tumult in his head: his fencing now was the mere
waving of a reed. Again and again the Spaniard's foil, as cruelly and
vitally direct as at the first pass, struck within Charles' guard. The
face of wood, of yellow wood, the eyes that were bits of coal, behind
the mask, pursued him into the back of his brain. It stirred, there, a
smothering instinct, a dormant memory, and Charles, with a wrenching
effort, in a voice thin like a trickle of water from a spigot, said
again, "--a most beautiful hand."
Sharply, incomprehensibly, it was over. Drooping forward upon his
knees, dropping his foil from paralysed fingers, he saw de Vaca, with
his mask on an arm, frowning.
"Now," Charles Abbott thought luxuriously, "I can faint and be damned
to them."
The cloud of darkness which flowed over him was empty of the vileness
of fear; rather, like the beneficence of night, it was an utterly
peaceful remission of the flesh.
* * * * *
His physical exhaustion, the weariness of his mind, continued in a
settled lassitude through the following day. He was to see Andres
Escobar, give him what information he had had from La Clavel, the next
morning at the baths of the Campos Eliseos; and meanwhile he scarcely
stirred from the San Felipe. Charles, for the time, lacked the bravado
necessary for the sustaining of his pretence. His thoughts, turned in
upon his own acts and prospects, dwelt quietly on his determination.
He had changed appreciably during his stay in Havana; even his
physiognomy was different how, he couldn't say, but he was aware that
his expression had, well, hardened. The cure which had been the
principally hoped-for result of Cuba was complete. In spite of his
collapse in the fencing school, he was more compactly strong than ever
before. It occurred to him that, now, he might be described as a man.
This brought him a certain pleasure, and, in keeping with that state,
he tried to simplify, to comprehend, the idealism which dominated him.
He didn't want to grasp vainly at rosy clouds. His first attitude,
one of hardly more than boyish excitement, had soon become a deep
impersonal engagement--he had promised himself to Cuba. That will was
stronger than ever; but the schooling of the past weeks, together with
the stiffening of his spirit, had bred a new practicality in him,
superior, he felt, to any sheer heroics. He vastly preferred the
latter, he hadn't totally lost the inspiring mental picture of a
glorious sacrifice; but he had come to the realization that it was
more important to stay alive. What, in reality, he was trying to do
was to see himself consecutively, logically.
In this, he recognized, his mind was different from the Escobars',
from the blind fervor of the many Cuban patriots he knew. He could see
that reflected in their manner toward him: no trace of Vincente's
aloofness remained, they had come, forgetting his comparative youth,
his alien blood, to regard him with almost an anxiety of respect.
When it was possible, men of the widest possible activities talked
to him of their plans. In short, Charles Abbott felt that he might
become a power; and this he coolly set himself to bring about. His
heritage was that of success; there were distinguished men, who had
carried alone heavy responsibilities to their justified end, no more
than two or three generations behind him. His mother, he thought
gladly, surveying her in the clearness of a full detachment, had an
astonishing courage of spirit. Charles told himself that he would
have to become a politician; his undiminished idealism, without which
his validity was nothing, must be shut into his heart, held purely
for the communication of its force and for his own benefit.
The simple path of truth, of partisan enthusiasm, must be put aside.
The uncalculating bravery of the men gathered about General Agramonte
was of indispensable value; but undirected, with no brain to make
secure, to put into operation, the fire they created, that would come
to little. He wished that his connection, his duty, with La Clavel was
over, that he could delegate it elsewhere, but, obviously, for the
moment, that was impossible. It merely remained for him, then, to take
no unpondered chances, never again to be drawn into such a situation
as he had faced with Gaspar Arco de Vaca.
Before such a sharp decision, a certain amount of his sheer joy
evaporated: it was less inspiring to be cautious than daring. The
Cubans themselves, always excepting Andres, had lost an appreciable
amount of their glamour for him. They were, now, units, elements, to
be managed, to be tranquilized, steadied, moved about. All this, of
course, was yet to come; the recognition of him was instinctive rather
than acknowledged. But, he repeated to himself, it was forming,
spreading. That, then, was the shape, the actuality, of his vision--to
establish himself indispensably at the fore of a Cuban liberty,
incipient, dreamed of, and accomplished. All his thoughts dropped,
almost with the audible smooth clicking of meshed steel gears, into
place. The last degree of joy was replaced by a fresh calm maturity.
He would never, it was obvious, be a leader of soldiers, and he had no
desire to become the visible head of government; no, his intention was
other than that of Carlos de Cespedes. He viewed his future self
rather as a powerful source of advice with a house on the Prado. It
was curious how coldly, exactly, he planned so much; and he stopped to
examine his ambition even more closely and to discover if it were
merely absurd.
It struck him that it might be he had lost too much, that already he
had become selfish, ambitious for himself, and he recalled the
religious aspect so quickly gone. No, he decided, his effort was
to bridge that space, already recognized, between desire and
realization. Anyhow, he determined to speak of this as well to
Andres during their bath. The April temporale lay in an even heat
over the city, and the end of the Paseo Isabel was crowded by the
quitrins of women, the caleseros, in their brilliant livery, sleeping
in whatever shade offered. The Escobars had a private bath, but
Andres preferred the larger bano publico, where it was possible to
swim, and there Charles found him. The basin had been hollowed from
the coral rock; it was perhaps eighteen or twenty feet square, and
the height of the water, with a passage for a fresh circulation cut
in the front wall, was level with the calm reach of the sea.
The pool, as clear as slightly congealed and cooled air, open to the
horizon, was roofed, with a railed ledge and steps descending into the
water, and Andres Escobar sat with his legs half immersed. He greeted
Charles conventionally, concealing the pleasure which shone in his
eyes.
"I stopped at your dressing-room," Charles Abbott told him; "anything
might be taken from the pockets of your coat."
The converse of this possibility, that something had been put into a
pocket, he conveyed. Andres nodded indifferently. The other slid into
the water, sinking and swimming beneath the surface to the farther
end. It was delicious. Swimming was his only finished active
accomplishment; and, with a half concealed pride, he exhibited it in
skilful variations. Even the public bath, he felt, was too contracted
for the full expression of his ability. In addition to this, it was
necessary to talk confidentially to Andres. And so, with a wave of his
arm, he indicated the freedom of the sea beyond.
Andres Escobar followed him over the stone barrier, and together they
swam steadily out into the blue. Finally, they rested, floating, and
Charles diffidently related what was in his heart. His friend, less
secure in the water, listened with a gravity occasionally marred by a
mouthful of sea.
"You are right," he agreed, when Charles had finished. "Although you
have put it modestly, I think--many of us admit--that you may be a
strong man in Cuba. Indeed, I have heard it said that you should go
back to America, and put more intensity into the Junta. Naturally I
should regret that, but we must all do what, in the end, is best.
Charles, there is a great deal of water under and around us, and I
should feel better nearer the Campos Eliseos."
"Wait," Charles Abbott replied with a touch of impatience; "you are
quite safe, there is no tide at present." Floating in the calm
immensity, his arms outspread, his face, at once burned by the sun and
lapped by water, turned to the opposed azure above, he drew in
accession after accession of a determination like peace. Nothing
should upset what he had planned. There was a stir beside him--Andre
Escobar was returning to the shore, and lazily, thoughtfully, he swam
back. The Cuban left immediately, for breakfast; but Charles lingered
in the pool, lounging upon the wooden grilling with a cigarette. One
by one the bathers went away. The sky, the sea, were a blaze of blue.
The clatter of hoofs, the caleseros' departing cries, sounded from the
Paseo. "Charles Abbott," he repeated his own name aloud with an accent
of surprise. What, whom, did it describe? He gazed down over his
drying body. This, then, was he--the two legs, thin but sufficiently
muscular, the trunk in a swimming suit, the arms and hands! His hidden
brain, his invisible mind, was himself as well; and, of the two, the
mind and the body, the unseen was overwhelmingly the more important.
He remembered how, fencing with de Vaca, the body had failed him
utterly; de Vaca, attacking his will, was contemptuous of the other
... and his will had survived. Rising, he felt that he commanded
himself absolutely; he had no sympathy, no patience, for frailty, for
a failure through the celebrated weaknesses of humanity: hardness was
the indispensable trait of success.
* * * * *
The whole of reasonably intelligent life, Charles discovered, was
disrupted by the ceaseless clash of two utterly opposed ideas,
emotions. There was, first, the need in the individual to serve,
to justify, himself, to maintain his integrity; and, as well,
there was the duty--at least, it was universally called a duty--of
a self-sacrifice for love. The failures of superior men came largely,
he was certain, in the breaking down of the first through the second.
A man, for example, put into motion the accomplishment of his own
demand, and then was appalled by the incidental price, but more to
others than to himself. Yes, love betrayed men. The Escobars were,
inseparably, Cuba, they were happily merged, lost, in one supreme
cause; yet the superiority of their hearts over the head endangered
their dearest preoccupation. They saw symbols as realities, they
wrongly valued emotion more highly than reasoning.
And further, Charles returned to himself, if he had consulted and
listened to his parents, if his love of home had outweighed his
singular vision, he would be nothing now but an unimportant drifting
figure. His parents had had more knowledge of life than he;
undoubtedly their counsel, in the main, was correct, safe. That word,
safe, was it specially. The instinct of his mother was to preserve, to
spare, him; to win for him as smooth a passage through life as was
procurable. She had her particular feminine idea of what, in her son,
spelled solid accomplishment; and, with all her spirit, it was
material in so far as it was visible: position in a settled community,
the money necessary for an existence both dignified and ornamental, a
"nice" wife--another devoted sheltering soul such as herself--and
well-behaved handsome children. The inner qualities she demanded for
him were faith, honesty, and fidelity.
Her vision of a broad close-cut lawn and grey stone house with pillars
and a port-cochere, his wife, in silks and chaste jewels, receiving a
polite company in the drawing-room, was admirable. In it he would be
gray-haired and, together with an increasing stoutness, of an assured
dignity. His children would worship his wisdom and paternal
benevolence, and the world of affairs would listen to him with
attentive respect. It was, unquestionably, an impressive conception.
Every detail was excellent, but he cared for, revered, none of them.
He didn't want to be safe, to decline softly to a soft old age, a
death smothered in feathers. More than anything else his desire was to
live intensely, to ride, upright, the crest of a thunderous wave. He
hated, now, every phase of a decent suburban smugness. Someone else
was welcome to the girl designated, by his mother, to be his wife.
Someone other than himself might sit across the dinner-table from her,
week after week, month after month, year after year, and watch her
stereotyped face beyond the cut flowers; another might listen to the
interminable gabble about servants and neighbors and dresses and
cards. The children would be differently, more appropriately,
fathered; his, Charles Abbott's, potential children were gathered into
an ideal that was, too, an idea. It must be served, realized, within
the dimensions of his own bone and fibre; it was exclusively his, his
the danger, the penalty and the reward. Charles would not have had it
different, even if, although none existed, he had any choice.
He must, however, prepare himself against the betrayal he was able
to trace so clearly in others; there could be no faltering, no
remorse; he was cut off from the ordinary solaces, the comfortable
compactness, of general living. But, already, temperamentally, he
liked, preferred, this; alone, never for a minute was he lonely.
The inattention to home, primarily the result of a new scene and of
exciting circumstances, had grown into an impersonal fondness for
his family; he failed to miss them, to wish for their presence. The
only element that remained from the past was his love for Andres
Escobar; he confronted it valorously, deposed it from his mind, but
it clung around his heart. How fortunate it was that Andres could
not detach him from his resolve; it was unthinkable that one should
stand in the way of the other.
These reflections occupied his mind at various times and places: one
day in the American Consulate on Obispo Street; again at the steamship
office on Mercaderes; over his cigarette and cheese and jelly at the
Noble Havana; strolling along Ricla Street where the principal shops
were congregated; at a dinner party in the Palace of the Conde de
Santovernia. He was aloof. All the activity that absorbed the people
among whom he went was to him trivial, utterly of no consequence.
Sometimes he would walk through the stalls of the Mercado de Cristina,
on the Plaza Vieja, or in through the Honradez factory on Sol Street,
where a handful of cigars was courteously given to any appreciative
visitor. He would return along the Paseo de Valdez to the park where
he had sat when he was first in Cuba, and, as then, the strains of the
military band of the Cabanas drifted across the bay.
The dwelling of the Captain-General, with the Royal Lottery on the
ground floor, had before it sentries in red and white; the Quay de
Caballeria, reached through the Plaza of San Francisco, was tempered
and pleasant in the early dusk, and at the Quay de Machina was a small
garden with grotesque rosy flamingoes and gold-fish in the fountain.
He sat, as well, lonely, considering and content, in the Alameda de
Paula, where, by the glorieta, it was called the Salon O'Donnell. The
moats, filled with earth, truck gardens, the shore covered with sugar
pans, engaged his absent-minded interest. With the improvement of his
Spanish, he deserted the better known cafes and restaurants, the
insolence of the Castilian officers, for modest Cuban places of food,
where he drank Catalan wine, and smoked the Vegueros, the rough
excellent plantation cigars.