his interest in her had increased; it was an attraction without name,
yet none the less potent. Seated close beside him she still seemed to
be fashioned from a vital material other than flesh and blood; she was
like a creation of sheer magic ... for what end? They rose, leaving
the Botanical Gardens, the spotted orchids and air plants and
oleanders, for the Quinta. There they passed into a walk completely
arched over with the bushes of the Mar Pacifico, the rose of the
Pacific, a verdurous tunnel of leaves and broad fragrant pink blooms,
with a farther glimpse of a cascade over mossy rocks.
The stream entered a canal, holding some gaily painted and cushioned
row boats, and a green-gold flotilla of Mandarin ducks. There were
aviaries of doves, about which strollers were gathered, and a distant
somnolent military guard. It was the first time for weeks that Charles
had been consciously relaxed, submerged in an unguarded pleasure of
being. Pilar might be honest about de Vaca and his purpose, or she
might be covering something infinitely more cunning. It would bring
her nothing! The very simplicity of his relationship with her was a
complete protection; he had no impulse to be serious, nothing in his
conversation to guard.
Pilar seemed singularly young here, engaged in staring at and
fingering the flowers, reading the sign boards that designated the
various pleasances--the Wood of the Princess, the Garden of San
Antonio, the Queen's Glade. Her tactile curiosity was insatiable, she
trailed her sensitive hands over every strange surface that offered.
Then, with her airy skirt momentarily caught on a spear of bearded
grass, he saw, below her knee, under the white stocking, the
impression of a blade, narrow and wicked. La Clavel had carried a
knife in that manner, many women, he had no doubt, did; but in Pilar
its stealthy subdued gleam affected him unpleasantly. It presented a
sharp mocking contrast to all that, in connection with her, had been
running happily through his mind.
"I thought you were a moth, soft and white," he told her; "but it
appears that you are a wasp in disguise--I hope it won't occur to you
to sting me."
Serenely she resettled her skirt. "Did you look for a scapular? Young
men's eyes should be on the sky." Then she put an arm through his. "It
was never there for you ... a moth soft and white. But I don't care
for that." Her gliding magnetic touch again passed, like the fall of
a leaf, over his cheek. Affecting not to notice it he lighted a thin
cigar; he'd have to watch Pilar de Lima. Or was it himself who needed
care? The feeling of detachment, of security, was pierced by a more
acute emotion, a sensation that resembled the traced point of her
knife. She asked, nearing the place where they were to meet the
quitrin, when she might see him again; and mechanically he suggested
that evening, after the music in the Plaza de Armas.
Returning to Ancha del Norte Street, his face was grave, almost
concerned, but he was made happy by finding Andres Escobar in his
room. Andres, with the window shades lowered, was lounging and smoking
in his fine cambric shirt sleeves. He had a business of routine to
communicate, and then he listened, censoriously, to Charles' account
of his afternoon.
"She is a little devil, of course, with her gartered steel, but she
amuses me. I have the shadow of an idea that she was truthful about de
Vaca; and the ruby would be an excellent joke."
"I cannot approve of any of this," Andres decided; "it has so many
hidden possibilities--the Spaniards are so hellish cunning. To be
candid with you, I can't understand why they have neglected you so
long. You are, Charles, fairly conspicuous. Perhaps it is because they
hope, in the end, to get information from you. In that case, if we
were in danger, I would shoot you with my own hand. Drop this Chinese
water lily; their stems are always in the mud."
"On the contrary, you must see her," Charles Abbott insisted. "I've
explained that she can't hurt us; and we may get something floated the
other way." He was aware of an indefinable resentment at Andres'
attitude: his love for him was all that prevented the acerbity of a
voiced irritation.
* * * * *
Yet, when the regimental band was leaving to the diminishing strains
of its quickstep, Andres joined Charles and Pilar--who had left her
quitrin--strolling through the Plaza. As usual she said practically
nothing; but, in the gloom, she was specially potent, like a
fascinating and ironic idol to innocence; and Charles Abbott was
pleased by Andres' instant attention. Pilar was reluctant, now, to
return to the carriage, and she lingered between the men, who, in
turn, gazed down addressing remarks to the smooth blackness of her
hair or to the immobile whiteness of her face. Charles dropped behind,
to light a cigar, and when he came up to them again he had the
illusive sense of a rapid speech stopped at his approach. Andres
Escobar's countenance was lowered, his brow drawn together ... it had
been Pilar de Lima, surprisingly, who had talked. Charles recalled the
manner in which her low, even voice flowed from scarcely moving lips,
with never a shadow of emotion, of animation, across her unstirred
flattened features.
Some Cubans gathered about the table when, later, they were eating
ices; and, gaining Pilar's consent, he left with the indispensable
polite regrets and bows. He was vaguely and thoroughly disturbed,
uneasy, as though a grain of poison had entered him and were
circulating through all his being. It was a condition he was
unfamiliar with, disagreeable in the extreme; and one which he
determined to stamp out. It hadn't existed in his contact with Pilar
until the appearance of Andres; yes, it came about from the
conjunction of the girl, Andres and himself; spilled into the clarity
of their companionship, Andres and his, her influence had already
darkened and slightly embittered it ... had affected it, Charles
added; she was powerless to touch him in the future; he put her
resolutely, completely, from his thoughts.
He was a little appalled at the suddenness with which the poison had
tainted him, infecting every quality of superiority, of detachment, of
reasoning, he possessed. When he saw Andres again, after the interval
of a week, his heart was empty of everything but crystal admiration,
affection; but Andres was obscured, his bearing even defiant. They
were at a reception given by a connection of the Cespedes on the
Cerro. Instinctively they had drawn aside, behind a screen of
pomegranate and mignonette trees in the patio; but their privacy,
Charles felt, had been uncomfortably invaded. He spoke of this,
gravely, and Andres suddenly drooped in extreme dejection.
"Why did you ever bring us together!" he exclaimed. "She, Pilar, has
fastened herself about me like one of those pale strangling orchids.
No other woman alive could have troubled me, but, then, Pilar is not a
woman." Charles Abbott explained his agreement with that.
"What is she?" Andres cried. "She says nothing, she hardly ever lifts
her eyes from her hands, I can give you my word kissing her is like
tasting a sherbet; and yet I can't put her out of my mind. I get all
my thoughts, my feelings, from her as though they passed in a body
from her brain to mine. They are thoughts I detest. Charles, when I am
away from you, I doubt and question you, and sink into an indifference
toward all we are, all we have been."
"Something like that began to happen to me," Charles admitted; "it was
necessary to bring it to an end; just as you must. Such things are not
for us. Drop her, Andres, on the Paseo, where she belongs." The other
again slipped outside the bounds of their friendship. "I must ask you
to make no such allusion," he retorted stiffly. Charles laughed, "You
old idiot," he said affectionately, "have her and get over it, then,
as soon as possible; I won't argue with you about such affairs, that's
plain." Andres laid a gripping hand on his arm, avoiding, while he
spoke, Charles' searching gaze.
"There is one thing you can do for me," he hurried on, "and--and I beg
you not to refuse. The manton that belonged to La Clavel! I described
it to Pilar, and she is mad to wear it to the danzon at the Tacon
Theatre. You see, it was embroidered by the Chinese, and it is
appropriate for her. Think of Pilar in that shawl, Charles."
"She can't have it," he answered shortly.
Andres Escobar's face darkened. "It had occurred to me you might
refuse," he replied. "Then there is nothing for me to do. But it
surprises me, when I remember the circumstances, that you have such a
tender feeling for it. After all, it wasn't a souvenir of love; you
never lost an opportunity to say how worn you were with La Clavel."
"No, Andres, it isn't a token of love, but a banner, yours even more
than mine, a charge we must keep above the earth."
That, Andres observed satirically, was very pretty; but a manton, a
woman's thing, had no relation to the cause of Cuban independence.
"Perhaps, but of course, you are right," Charles agreed. "Very well,
then it is only a superstition of mine. I have the feeling that if we
lower this--this standard it will bring us bad luck, it will be
disastrous. What that Pilar, you may think, is to you, the manton has
always been for me. It is in my blood; I regard it as a sailor might a
chart. And then, Andres, remember--it protected Cuba."
"I have to have it," the other whispered desperately; "she--she wants
it, for the danzon."
Charles Abbott's resentment changed to pity, and then to a calm
acceptance of what had the aspect of undeviating fate. "Very well," he
said quietly. "After all, you are right, it is nothing but a shawl,
and our love for each other must not suffer. I'll give it to you
freely, Andres: she will look wonderful in it."
The other grasped his hands. "Be patient, Charles," he begged. "This
will go and leave us as we were before, as we shall always be. It
hasn't touched what you know of, it is absolutely aside from that--a
little scene in front of the curtain between the acts of the serious,
the main, piece. I doubted her honesty, as you described it, at first;
but you were right. She has no interest at all in our small struggle;
she is only anxious to return to Peru."
"I wish she had never come from there!" Charles declared; "whether she
is honest or dishonest is unimportant. She is spoiled, like a bad
lime."
"If you had been more successful with her--" Andres paused significantly.
"So that," Charles returned, "is what she said or hinted to you!"
Andres Escobar was gazing away into the massed and odorous grey-blue
mignonette. "Go away before I get angry with you; you are more
Spanish than any Mendoza. The manton you'll find at home tonight."
He was, frankly, worried about Andres; not fundamentally--Andres'
loyalty was beyond any personal betrayal--but because he was aware of
the essential inflammability of all tropical emotion. The other might
get into a rage with Pilar, who never, herself, could fall into such
an error, and pay the penalty exacted by a swift gesture toward the
hem of her skirt. Then he recalled, still with a slight shudder of
delight, the soft dragging feel of her fingers on his cheek. He tied
the shawl up sombrely, oppressed by the conviction of mischance he had
expressed to Andres, and despatched it.
Pilar de Lima might, possibly, depart for Peru earlier even than she
hoped; boats left not infrequently for Mexico and South America--the
Argentine for which La Clavel had longed--and she was welcome to try
her mysterious arts upon the seas away from Cuba and Andres. A sugar
bag could easily, at the appropriate moment, be slipped over her head,
and a bateau carry her out, with a sum of gold, at night to a
departing ship. There would be no trouble, after she had been seen, in
getting her on board. And Charles Abbott thought of her, in her silent
whiteness, corrupting one by one the officers and crew; a vague
hatred would spread over the deck, forward and aft; and through the
cabins, the hearts, her suggestions and breath of evil touched. They
would never see Mexico, he decided; but, on a calm purple night in the
Gulf, a sanguine and volcanic inferno of blackened passion would burst
around the flicker of her blanched dress and face no colder in death
than in life.
* * * * *
Charles Abbott's thoughts returned continually to Andres; in the
shadowy region of his brain the latter was like a vividly and singly
illuminated figure. He remembered, too, the occasion of his first
seeing Andres, at the Hotel Inglaterra: they had gone together into
the restaurant, where, over rum punches and cigars, the love he had
for him had been born at once. It was curious--that feeling; a thing
wholly immaterial, idealizing. He had speculated about it before, but
without coming to the end of its possibilities, the bottom of its
meaning. There was no need to search for a reason for the love of
women; that, it might be, was no more than mechanical, the allurement
cast by nature about its automatic purpose. It belonged to earth,
where it touched any sky was not Charles' concern; but his friendship
for Andres Escobar had no relation to material ends.
At first it had been upheld, vitalized, by admiration, qualities
perceptible to his mind, to analysis; he had often reviewed
them--Andres' deep sense of honor, his allegiance to a conduct free of
self, his generosity, his slightly dramatic but inflexible courage,
the fastidious manners of his person. His clothes, the sprig of mimosa
he preferred, the angle of his hat and the rake back, through an
elbow, of his malacca cane, were all satisfying, distinguished. But
Charles' consciousness of these actual traits, details, had vanished
before an acceptance of Andres as a whole, uncritically. What, once,
had been a process of thought had become an emotion integral with his
own subconscious being.
Something of his essential character had entered Andres, and a part of
Andres had become bound into him. This, as soon as she had grown into
the slightest menace to it, had cast Pilar de Lima from his
consideration. It had been no effort, at the moment necessary he had
forgotten her; just as Andres, faced with the truth, would put her
away from him. The bond between them, Charles told himself, was forged
from pure gold.
This was running through his head on the night of the danzon. He was
seated at the entrance of the United States Club, where the sharp
Yankee accents of the gamblers within floated out and were lost in the
narrow walled darkness of Virtudes Street. It was no more than eleven,
the Tacon Theatre would be empty yet.... Charles had no intention of
going to the danzon, but at the same time he was the victim of a
restless curiosity in connection with it; he had an uncomfortable
oppression at the vision of Andres, with Pilar in the bright shawl, on
the floor crowded with the especial depravities of Havana.
The Spanish officers had made it customary for men of gentility to go
into the criolla festivities; they were always present, the young and
careless, the drunken and degenerate; and that, too, added to Charles'
indefinable sense of possible disaster. In a way, it might be an
excellent thing for him to attend, to watch, the danzon. If Andres
were infatuated he would be blind to the dangers, both the political
and those emanating from the mixture of bloods. At this moment the
game inside ended, and a knot of men, sliding into their coats,
awkwardly grasping broad-brimmed hats, appeared, departing for the
Tacon Theatre. A perfunctory nodded invitation for him to accompany
them settled the indecision in Charles Abbott's mind. And, a half hour
later, he was seated in a palco of the second tier, above the dance.
Familiar with them, he paid no attention to the sheer fantastic
spectacle; the two orchestras, one taking up the burden of sound when
the other paused, produced not for him their rasping dislocated
rhythm. He was aware only of floating skirts, masks and dark or light
faces, cigars held seriously in serious mouths. Charles soon saw that
Andres and Pilar de Lima had not yet arrived. As he leaned forward
over the railing of the box, Gaspar Arco de Vaca, sardonic and
observing, glanced up and saluted with his exaggerated courtesy. He
disappeared, there was a knock at the closed door behind Charles, and
de Vaca entered.
There was a general standing acknowledgement of his appearance; the
visor of his dress cap was touched for every man present, and he took
a vacated chair at Charles' side. "You weren't attracted to my white
absinthe," he said easily. On the contrary, Charles replied, he had
liked Pilar very well, although she had annoyed him by foolish tales
of a Spanish interest in him.
"She is, of course, an agent," de Vaca admitted indifferently. "We
almost have to keep her in a cage, like a leopard from Tartary. She
has killed three officers of high rank; although we do not prefer her
as an assassin. She is valuable as a drop of acid, here, there; and
extraordinary individuals often rave about her. We'll have to garrotte
her some time, and that will be a pity."
There was a flash of color below, of carmine and golden orange, and
Charles recognized Pilar wrapped, from her narrow shoulders to her
delicate ankles, in the manton. Andres Escobar, with a protruding lip
and sullen eyes, was at her side. Suddenly de Vaca utterly astounded
Charles; with a warning pressure of his hand he spoke at the younger
man's ear:
"I am leaving at once for Madrid, a promotion has fortunately lifted
me from this stinking black intrigue, and I have a memory ... from the
sala de Armas, the echo of a sufficiently spirited compliment. As I
say, I am off; what is necessary to you is necessary--a death in
Havana or a long life at home. Where I am concerned you have bought
your right to either. You cannot swing the balance against Spain. And
I have this for you to consider. Your friend, Escobar, has reached the
end of his journey. It will accomplish nothing to inform him; he is
not to walk from the theatre. Very well--if you wish to hatch your
seditious wren's eggs tomorrow, if you wish to wake tomorrow at all,
stay away from him. Anything else will do no good except, perhaps, for
us."
Charles Abbott sat with a mechanical gaze on the floor covered with
revolving figures. He realized instantly that Gaspar Arco de Vaca had
been truthful. The evidence of that lay in the logic of his words, the
ring of his voice. The officer rose, saluted, and left. Andres had
come to the end of his journey! It was incredible. He had not moved
from the spot where Charles had first seen him; he had taken off his
hat, and his dark faultlessly brushed hair held in a smooth gleam the
reflection of a light.
Andres turned with a chivalrous gesture to Pilar, who, ignoring it
completely, watched with inscrutable eyes the passing men. The shawl,
on her, had lost its beauty; it was malevolent, screaming in color;
contrasted with it her face was marble. How, Charles speculated
desperately, was Andres to be killed? And then he saw. A tall young
Spaniard with a jeering countenance, in the uniform of a captain in a
regiment not attached at Havana, stopped squarely, with absolute
impropriety, before Pilar and asked her to dance. Andres Escobar, for
the moment, was too amazed for objection; and, as Pilar was borne
away, he made a gesture of denial that was too late.
He glanced around, as though to see if anyone had observed his
humiliation; and Charles Abbott instinctively drew back into the box.
As he did this he cursed himself with an utter loathing. Every natural
feeling impelled him below, to go blindly to the support of Andres.
There must be some way--a quick shifting of masks and escape through a
side door--to get him safely out of the hands of Spain. This, of
course, would involve, endanger, himself, but he would welcome the
necessity of that acceptance. Gaspar de Vaca had indicated the price
he might well pay for such a course--the end, at the same time, of
himself; not only the death of his body but the ruin of his hopes and
high plans. Nothing, he had told himself a thousand times, should be
allowed to assail them. Indeed, he had discussed just such a
contingency as this with Andres. Theoretically there had been no
question of the propriety of an utter seeming selfishness; the way,
across a restaurant table, had been clear.
* * * * *
In the box the other Americans maintained a steady absorbed commenting
on the whirling color of the danzon. One, finally, attracted by the
manton on Pilar de Lima, called the attention of the others to her
Chinese characteristics. They all leaned forward, engaged by the total
pallor of her immobility above the blazing silk. They exclaimed when
she left the Spanish officer and resumed her place by Andres Escobar's
side. "Isn't that peculiar?" Charles was asked. "You are supposed to
know all about these dark affairs. Isn't it understood that the women
keep to their own men? And that Cuban, Abbott, you know him; we often
used to see you with him!"
"Yes," Charles Abbott acknowledged, "partners seldom leave each other.
That is Andres Escobar."
He paid no more heed to the voices about him, but sat with his gaze,
his hopes and fears, fastened on Andres and Pilar. Back again, she
was, as usual, silent, dragging her fingers through the knotted
magenta fringe of the shawl. Andres, though, was speaking in short
tense phrases that alternated with concentrated angry pauses. She
lifted her arms to him, and they began to dance. They remained,
however, characteristic of the danzon, where they were, turning slowly
and reversing in a remarkably small space. They were a notably
graceful couple, and they varied, with an intricate stepping, the
general monotony of the measure.
Charles had an insane impulse to call down to Andres, to attract his
attention, and to wave him away from the inimical forces gathering
about him. Instead of this he lighted a cigarette, with hands the
reverse of steady, and concentrated all his thoughts upon the fact of
Cuban independence. That, he told himself, was the only thing of
importance in his life, in the world. And it wasn't Cuba--alone, but
the freedom of life at large, that rested, in part at least, on the
foundation he might help to lay, the beginning solidity of human
liberty, superiority. He forced himself to gaze with an air of
indifference at the dancing below him; but, it seemed, wherever he
looked, the manton floated into his vision. He saw, now, nothing else,
neither Pilar nor Andres, but only the savage challenging fire of
silks. The shawl's old familiar significance had been entirely
lost--here he hated and feared it, it was synonymous with all that
threatened his success. It gathered into its folded and draped square
the evil of the danzon, the spoiled mustiness of joined and debased
bloods, the license under a grotesque similitude of restraint.
This was obliterated by a wave of affection for Andres so strong that
it had the effect of an intolerable physical pressure within his body:
his love had the aspect of a tangible power bound to assert itself or
to destroy him. With clenched hands he fought it back, he drove it
away before the memory of the other. Voices addressed him, but he paid
no attention, the words were mere sounds from a casual sphere with
which he had nothing in common. He must succeed in his endeavor, put
into actuality at this supreme moment his selfless projection of duty,
responsibility. For it was, in spite of his preoccupation with its
personal possibilities, an ideal to which he, as an entity, was
subordinated. He recalled the increasing number of destinies in which
he was involved, that were being thrust upon him, and for which, at
best, he would become accountable. So much more lay in the immediate
future than was promised--justified--in the present.