possibility of extreme ill to the individual, puzzled him. He was
required to put faith in a power seemingly indifferent to him, to
discharge a responsibility in return for which nothing that he could
weigh was promised. Charles recalled what had overtaken the dancer, La
Clavel, in payment for a heroic effort against an insupportable
oppression. Disaster had met the body, the flesh; what occurred in
the spirit he was unable to grasp; but this, suddenly, breathlessly,
he saw:
La Clavel's bitter defiance, her mountain-born hatred of oppression,
her beaten but undefiled body, had communicated to him something of
her own valor. It was as though she had given him a palm, a shielded
flame, to add to his own fortitude. In all probability she would,
soon, be dead; Charles correctly gauged the Spanish animosity; and yet
she was alive, strong, in him. She would be living; it was Ceaza y
Santacilla who had died, been vanquished; his abnormal refinement
dropping so easily into the bestial, the measure of evil, in him, for
which he stood, had been slain, dissipated, ended. The shawl
contracted, became a thing magnificent but silk, a manton invested
with a significance brave and surprisingly tender. It was, now, the
standard of La Clavel, the mantle of the saintliness he had
proclaimed. His doubts, his questioning, were resolved into the
conviction that the act of the dancer was her spirit made visible,
created tangibly for a tangible purpose, and that, there, she was
indestructible.
With that conclusion to serve as a stay and a belief, a philosophy of
conduct, he returned from the extra-mundane to the world. Charles
thought of La Clavel's desire to dance in Buenos Aires, for South
America. He wondered how old she was; he had never before considered
her in any connection with age; she had seemed neither old nor young,
but as invested with the timeless quality of her art. She had spoken
often of her girlhood, but no picture of her as a girl had formed in
his mind. It was conceivable that, in more stable circumstances, she
would have grown old, become withered with the peculiar ugliness of
aged Spanish women; but that, too, he could not realize. Somehow, La
Clavel's being was her dancing, and what had gone before, or what
might have followed, were irrelevant, unreal; they were not she. He
understood, now, her protest against being absorbed, involved, in
anything but her profession.
He became conscious of the sustained gravity of his thoughts, how his
activity had been forced from the body to his mind; and that recalled
to him the necessity for a contrary appearance. It would be wise for
him to go to the Cafe Dominica that evening, in an obvious facile
excitement at his connection, at once close and remote, with the death
of Santacilla in the dancer's room. But, beyond the fact that it was
known he had dispatched the servant upstairs, and the usual wild,
thin speculations, nothing had been allowed to appear. Santacilla, it
was announced, had died naturally. La Clavel wasn't mentioned. She had
spoken to others than Charles of her determination to go to the
Argentine; and it was probable, rumor said, principally in Spanish
mouths, that she would go quietly south. At the United States Club,
the idlers and gamblers surveyed Charles with dubious looks; and, over
a rum punch, he adopted a sullen uncommunicative air. It would not do
to drop his widely advertised habits too suddenly; he could not, in a
day, change from a rake to a serious student of such books as
Machiavelli's Prince; and he prepared, with utter disgust, for his
final bow in the cloak of dissipation.
* * * * *
Purely by accident he met, at the Plaza de Toros, Jaime Quintara,
Remigio Florez and Andres. It was so fortunately, evidently,
haphazard, that they continued together while Charles related the
circumstances of the tragedy in La Clavel's room. The others were
filled with wonder, bravos, at her strength and courage. Someday,
Remigio swore, when Cuba was free, he would put up a monument to her
in India Park. It would be of heroic size, the bronze figure of a
dancer, in a manton, on a block of stone, with an appropriate
inscription.
"The trouble with that," Andres objected, "is if we should live and
put up a monument to everyone who deserved it, the parks would be too
crowded with bronzes for walking. All of Cuba might have to be
commemorated in metal."
At Neptuno Street and the Paseo Isabel they parted. Charles proceeded
alone toward the sea; and, with the knowledge that Andres had not gone
home, but would be evident in public elsewhere, he stopped to see the
other members of the Escobar family. Carmita Escobar had faded
perceptibly since Vincente's death; still riven by sorrow she
ceaselessly regretted the unhappy, the blasphemous, necessity which
made the wearing of mourning for him inadmissible. Domingo Escobar, as
well, showed the effects of continuous strain; his vein of humor was
exhausted, he no longer provoked Charles' inadequate Spanish; he
avoided any direct reference to Cuba. He was, he said, considering
moving to Paris, he was getting old and no one could complain, now,
since--. He broke off, evidently at the point of referring to Vincente
and the Escobar local patriotism.
But Narcisa, Charles was told, had become promised to Hector Carmache,
an admirable gentleman with large sugar interests; luckily, for
Narcisa, unconnected with any political dreams.
"She will be very happy," her mother proclaimed.
Narcisa narrowed her eyes. "He lives on an estancia," she added,
"where there will be banana trees and Haitians to watch; and the
conversation will be about the number of arrobas the mill grinds." She
relapsed again into silence; but, from her lowered countenance, he
caught a quick significant glance toward the balcony. She rose,
presently, and walked out. Charles gazed at Domingo and Carmita
Escobar; they were sunk in thought, inattentive, and he quietly joined
Narcisa.
"Andres has told me a great deal about you," she proceeded; "I made
him. He loves you too, and he says that you are very strong and
respected everywhere. I have had to hear it like that, for you never
come here now. And I hear other things, too, but from my maid, about
the dancer, La Clavel. You gamble, it seems, and drink as well."
That, he replied, was no more than half true; it was often necessary
for him to appear other than he was. He studied her at length: she
had grown more lovely, positively beautiful, in the past month; the
maturity of her engagement to marry had already intensified her.
Narcisa's skirt had been lowered and her hair, which had hung like a
black fan, was tied with a ribbon.
"How do you like me?" she demanded. But when he told her very much,
she shook her head in denial. "I ought to be ashamed," she added, "but
I am not. Did you realize that, when we were out here before, I made
you a proposal? You ignored it, of course.... I am not ashamed of what
I did then, either. Afterwards, standing here, I wanted to throw
myself to the street; but, you see, I hadn't the courage. It's better
now, that time has gone--I'll get fat and frightful."
"This Carmache," Charles Abbott asked, "don't you like, no, love him?"
She answered:
"He is, perhaps, fifty--I am fifteen--and quite deaf on one side, I
can never remember which; and he smells like bagasse. I've only seen
him once, for a minute, alone, and then he wanted me to sit on his
knees. I said if he made me I'd kill him some night when he was
asleep. But he only laughed and tried to catch me. You should have
heard him breathing; he couldn't. He called me his Carmencita. But, I
suppose, I shall come to forget that, as well. I wanted you to know
all about it; so, when you hear of my marriage, you will understand
what to look for."
"That is all very wrong!" Charles exclaimed.
In reply she said, hurriedly, "Kiss me."
That was wrong, too, he repeated, afterward. Her warmth and tender
fragrance clung to him like the touch of flower petals. She turned
away, standing at the front of the balcony, her arms, bare under elbow
ruffles, resting on the railing. The flambeau trees in the Parque
Isabel were like conflagrations. Her head drooped on her slender neck
until it almost rested, despairingly, on the support before her. "I
hate your northern way of living," her voice was suppressed,
disturbingly mature; "I hate their bringing you into the house, only
to break my heart. Charles," she laid an appealing hand on his sleeve,
"could you do this--help me to run away? We have cousins in New York
who would receive me. If you could just get me on a steamer!"
"No," he said decidedly, "I could not; I wouldn't even if it were
possible. What would Andres, my friend, think? It would ruin me
here."
"If you had," she admitted, after a little, "as soon as we reached
the street, I would have locked myself about your neck like my crystal
beads. Once when I was supposed to be going with a servant to the sea
baths, I had the quitrin stop at the San Felipe, and I went up the
stair, to the roof, to your room, but you were out. You see, I am a
very evil girl."
He agreed to the extent that she was a very foolish girl. In turn she
studied him carefully.
"You seem to have no heart," she announced finally; "not because you
don't love me, but in affairs generally; but I can tell you a
secret--you have! It's as plain as water. What you think you
are--poof!" She blew across the open palm of her hand.
"I hope not," he returned anxiously. "But you are too young, even if
you are to be married, to know about or to discuss such things. As
Andres' best friend I must caution you--"
"Why did you kiss me?" she interrupted.
He was, now, genuinely sorry that he had, but he replied that it had
been no more than the salute of a brother. "You had better go in," he
continued; "when they realize we are out here there will be a stir,
perhaps you will be put to bed."
"I might make a scandal," she deliberated, "throw myself on you and
cry as loudly as possible." A smile appeared upon her fresh charming
lips at his expression of dismay. "Then you would have to marry me."
"I'd have to spank you," he retorted.
"I shall never speak directly to you again," she concluded; "so you
must remember what I say, that you are not what you'd like to be."
She was, he thought, in spite of her loveliness, a very disagreeable
little girl. That designation, ludicrously inadequate, he forced upon
himself. With a flutter of her skirts she was gone. The afternoon was
so still that he could hear the drilling of soldiers by the shore, the
faint guttural commands and the concerted grounding of muskets.
Narcisa and her unpleasant prediction faded from his mind. Standing on
the balcony he imagined a vast concourse gathered below with upturned
faces, waiting for him to speak. He heard the round periods, the
sonorous Spanish, he delivered, welcoming, in the name of the people,
their newly gained independence, and extending to them the applause
and reassurances of the United States.
"You have won this for yourselves," he proclaimed, "by your valor and
faith and patience; and no alien, myself least of all, could have
been indispensable to you. What I was privileged to do was merely to
hold together some of the more inglorious but necessary parts of your
struggle; to bring, perhaps, some understanding, some good will, from
the world outside. You have added Cuba to the invaluable, the
priceless, parts of the earth where men are free; a deed wrought by
the sacrifice of the best among you. Liberty, as always, is watered by
blood--" he hesitated, frowning, something was wrong about that last
phrase, of, yes--the watered with blood part; sprinkled, nourished,
given birth in? That last was the correct, the inevitable, form. The
hollow disembodied voice of the drill sergeant floated up and then was
lost in the beginning afternoon procession of carriages.
* * * * *
With a larger boutonniere than he would have cared to wear at home, a
tea rose, he was making his way through the El Louvre, when Gaspar
Arco de Vaca rose from a gay table and signalled for him. It was after
Retreta, the trade wind was even more refreshing than customary, and
the spirit of Havana, in the parques and paseos and restaurants, was
high. The Louvre was crowded, a dense mass of feminine color against
the white linen of the men, and an animated chatter, like the bubbles
of champagne made articulate, eddied about the tables laden with
dulces and the cold sweet brightness of ices. He hesitated, but de
Vaca was insistent, and Charles approached the table.
"If you think you can remain by yourself," the Spaniard said
pleasantly, "you are mistaken. For women now, because of the dancer,
you are a figure of enormous interest."
He presented Charles to a petulant woman with a long nose, a seductive
mouth, and black hair low in the French manner; then to a small woman
in a dinner dress everywhere glittering with clear glass beads, and
eyes in which, as he gazed briefly into them, Charles found bottomless
wells of interrogation and promise. He met a girl to whom, then, he
paid little attention, and a man past middle age with cropped grey
hair on a uniformly brown head and the gilt floriations of a general.
A place was made for Charles into which, against his intention, he was
forced by a light insistence. It was, he discovered, beside the girl;
and, because of their proximity, he turned to her.
At once he recognized that she was unusual, strange: he had dismissed
her as plain, if not actually ugly, and that judgment he was forced to
recall. The truth was that she possessed a rare fascination; but
where, exactly, did it lie? She was, he thought, even younger than
Narcisa, yet, at the same time, she had the balanced calm of absolute
maturity. Then he realized that a large part of her enigmatic charm
came from the fact that she was, to a marked degree, Chinese. Her
face, evenly, opaquely, pale, was flat, an oval which held eyes with
full, ivory-like lids, narrow eye brows, a straight small nose and
lips heavily coated with a carmine that failed utterly to disguise
their level strength. Her lustreless hair, which might have been soot
metamorphosed into straight broad strands, was drawn back severely,
without ornament or visible pins, over her shapely skull. She wore no
jewelry, no gold bands nor rings nor pendants; and her dress, cut
squarely open at her slim round throat, was the fragile essence of
virginity. She attracted Charles, although he could think of nothing
in the world to say to her; he was powerless to imagine what
interested her; a girl, she had no flavor of the conceits of her
years; feminine, she was without the slightest indication of
appropriate sentiments, little facile interests or enthusiasms. From
time to time she looked at him, he caught a glimpse of eyes, blue,
grey or green, oblique and disturbing; she said nothing and ate in
infinitesimal amounts the frozen concoction of sapote before her.
Charles Abbott hadn't grasped her name, and in reply to his further
query, she told him in a low voice that it was Pilar, Pilar de Lima.
Yes, she had been born in Peru. No, she had never been to China,
although she had traveled as far as Portugal and London. His
interest in her increased, she was so wholly outside his--any
conceivable--life; and, without words, in a manner which defied
his analysis, she managed to convey to him the assurance that he was
not impossible to her.
He found, at intervals, fresh qualities to engage him: she had
unmistakably the ease which came from the command of money; the
pointed grace of her hands--for an instant her palm had sought
his--hid an unexpected firmness; she was contemptuous of the other
vivacious women at the table; and not a change of expression crossed
the placidity of a countenance no more than a mask for what,
mysterious and not placid, was back of it. Then, in an undertone
during a burst of conversation, she said, "I like you." She was half
turned from him, in profile, and her lips had not seemed to move. Seen
that way her nose was minute, the upward twist of her eye emphasized,
her mouth no more than a painted sardonic curl. She was as slender as
a boy of a race unknown to Charles--without warmth, without impulses,
fashioned delicately for rooms hung in peacock silks and courtyards of
fretted alabaster and burnished cedar.
He wanted to reply that he liked her, but, in prospect, that seemed
awkward, banal; and a lull in the conversation discouraged him.
Instead he examined his feelings in regard to this Pilar from Lima. It
was obvious that she had nothing in common with the women he had
dismissed from his present and future; she was more detached, even,
than La Clavel on the stage. And when, abruptly, she began to talk to
him, in an even flow of incomprehensible vowels and sibilants, he was
startled. Gaspar de Vaca spoke to her in a peremptory tone, and then
he addressed Charles, "She'll hardly say a word in a Christian tongue,
but, when it suits her, she will sail on in Chinese for a quarter of
an hour. It may be her sense of humor, it may be a prayer, perhaps
what she says, if it could be understood, would blast your brain, and
perhaps she merely has a stomach ache." But his remonstrance had the
effect designed; and after an imperturbable silence, she said again
that she liked Charles Abbott.
The General regretfully pushed back his chair, rose, and held out an
arm in formal gallantry, and Charles was left to follow with Pilar.
She lingered, while the others went on, and asked him if, tomorrow, he
would take her driving to Los Molinos. He hesitated, uncertain of the
wisdom of such a proceeding, when her hand again stole into his. What,
anyhow, in the face of that direct request, could he do but agree?
They must have, she proceeded, since he hadn't a private equipage, the
newest quitrin he could procure, and a calesero more brilliant than
any they should pass on the Calzada de la Reina. After all he would be
but keeping up the useful pretence of his worldliness; yet, looking
forward to the drive with her, an hour in the scented shade of the
Captain-General's gardens, he was aware of an anticipated pleasure.
The need for caution was reduced to a minimum, it shrank from
existence; naturally he wouldn't talk to Pilar de Lima of politics, he
could not be drawn into the mention of his friends, of any names
connected in the slightest way with a national independence. It was
possible that she had been selected, thrown with him, for that very
purpose; but there his intelligence, he thought, his knowledge of
intrigue, had been underestimated, insulted. No--Pilar, de Vaca,
Spain, would gain nothing, and he would have a very pleasant, an oddly
stimulating and exciting, afternoon. The excitement came from her
extraordinary personality, an intensity tempered with a remoteness, an
indifference, which he specially enjoyed after the last few
tempestuous days. Being with her resembled floating in a barge on a
fabulous Celestial river between banks of high green bamboo. It had no
ulterior significance. She was positively inhuman.
He met her, with an impressive glittering carriage and rider,
according to her appointment, at the end of the Paseo Tacon, past the
heat of afternoon. She was accompanied by a duenna with rustling silk
on a tall gaunt frame, and a harsh countenance, the upper lip marred
by a bluish shadow, swathed in a heavy black mantilla. Pilar was
exactly the same as she had been the evening before. The diminished
but still bright day showed no flaw on the evenness of her pallor, the
artificial carmine of her lips was like the applied petals of a
geranium, her narrow sexless body was upright in its film of clear
white.
The older woman was assisted into the leather body of the quitrin,
Pilar settled lightly in the nina bonita, Charles mounted to the third
place, the calesero swung up on the horse outside the shafts, and they
rattled smartly into the Queen's Drive. From where he sat he could see
nothing but the sombre edge of the mantilla beside him and Pilar's
erect back, her long slim neck which gave her head, her densely
arranged hair, an appearance of too great weight. On either side the
fountains and glorietas, the files of close-planted laurel trees,
whirled behind them. The statue of Carlos III gave way to the Jardin
Botanico.
* * * * *
There he commanded the carriage to halt, and, in reply to Pilar's
surprise, explained that he was following the established course. "We
leave the quitrin here, and it meets us at the gates of the Quinta,
and meanwhile we walk. There are a great many paths and flowers." On
the ground she admitted her ignorance of Havana, and, followed at a
conventional distance by her companion, they entered the Gardens.
There was a warm perfumed steam of watered blossoming plants and
exotic trees; and Charles chose a way that brought them into an avenue
of palms, through which the fading sunlight fell in diagonal bands, to
a wide stone basin where water lilies spread their curd-like
whiteness. There they paused, and Pilar sat on the edge of the pool,
with one hand dipping in the water. He saw that, remarkably, she
resembled a water lily bloom, she was as still, as densely pale; and
he told her this in his best manner. But if it pleased her he was
unable to discover. A hundred feet away from them the chaperone cast
her replica on the unstirred surface of the water, in the middle of
which a fountain of shells maintained a cool splashing.
"I should like one of those," she said, indicating a floating flower.
"It's too far out," he responded, and she turned her slow scrutiny
upon him. Her eyes were neither blue nor gray but green, the green of
a stone.
"That you are agreeable is more important than you know," she said
deliberately. "And de Vaca--" she conveyed a sense of disdain. "What
is it that he wants so much from you? How can it, on this little
island, a place with only two cities, be important? I must tell you
that I am not cheap; and when I was brought here, to see a boy, it
annoyed me. But I am annoyed no longer," her wet fingers swiftly left
their prints on his cheek. "Oporto and the English Court--I understood
that; but to dig secrets from you, an innocent young American," she
relapsed into silence as though he, the subject she had introduced,
were insufficient to excuse the clatter of speech. So far as he was
concerned, he replied, he had no idea of her meaning.
"You see," he went on more volubly, "I was, to some extent, connected
with the death of Santacilla, an officer of the regiment of Isabel,
and they may still be looking for information about that."
She assured him he was wrong. "It is Cuba that troubles them. It's in
their heads you are close to powerful families here and in North
America, and that you are bringing them together, pouring Northern
gold into the empty pockets of the Revolution. I saw at once, before I
met you, that I should waste my time, and I was going away at once ...
until you walked into the restaurant. Now it will amuse me, and I
shall take the doblons I get and buy you a present, a ruby, and, when
you see Captain de Vaca, you will wear it and smile and he will know
nothing."
"You mustn't buy me anything," Charles protested earnestly; "I can at
least understand that, how generous you are. If you are unfamiliar
with Cuba perhaps you will let me inform you. I came to Havana, you
see, for my lungs. They were bad, and now they are good; and that is
my history here. There is no hole in them because I have been careful
to avoid the troubles on the street; and the way to miss them is not
to give them an admission. The reason I am here with you is because
you seemed to me, in yourself, so far away from all that. Your mind
might be in China." He went on to make clear to her his distrust of
women. "But you are different; you are like a statue that has come to
life, a very lovely statue. What you really are doesn't matter, I
don't care, I shall never know. But a water lily--that is enough."
"Are you wise or no deeper than this?" she asked, indicating the
shallow fountain. "But don't answer; how, as you say, can it affect
us? You are you and I am I. We might even love each other with no
more; that would be best--it is the more that spoils love."
"What do you know about that?"