suppose it was running in my mind. And then, my dear, Fanny began. Well,
the things she told me about that transcendental young man were of such
a nature that when he next called I was not at home. He came again, of
course. And again. He sent me a note which I returned unopened. That, I
confess, was a foolish thing to do. It showed him that I was annoyed. I
might better have left it unanswered. After all, there is nothing so
impenetrable as silence. Finally, he got one of his friends to come and
reconnoitre. Indeed, he did not desist until I had an opportunity of
cutting him dead. I was angry, I admit it. And it was after that little
experience that I determined, the next time I felt myself going, I
would make sure beforehand where I was going to. H'm. I wonder what his
sister thought of him? You see, it was not that I had fallen in love;
the word was as unintelligible to me as before, but I had fancied that,
through him, I might intercept some inkling of its meaning, and I was
put out at having been tricked. _Ach! diese Maenner!_"
Beneath descending night the sky was gold-barred and green. In the east
the moon glittered like a sickle of tin. The air was warm and freighted
with the odors of August. You could hear the crickets hum, and here and
there was the spark of a fire-fly gyrating in loops of flame. From
across the meadows came the slumbrous tinkle of a bell.
She raised a gloved hand to her brow and looked down at the yellow road.
To one who loved her, the Helen for whom the war of the world was
fought was not so fair as she. And presently the hand moved about the
brow, and, resting a second's space on the coil just above the neck,
fell again to her side.
"Well," she continued, "you can see how it was. Even before the
illusion, disillusionment had come. That winter I went with the Bunker
Hills to Monaco. Were it not for the riff-raff, that place would be a
paradise in duodecimo. We had a villa, of course. One evening, shortly
after our arrival, we went to the Casino. For the fun of the thing I put
some money on the _Trente et Quarante_. I did nothing but win. It was
tiresome; I would rather have lost; I had to speak to the dealer, and
that, as you can fancy, was not to my liking. There was a great crowd.
One little old woman put money wherever I did. She won a lot, too. But
one man, whom I could not help noticing, backed red when I was on black,
and vice versa. He did it persistently, intentionally, and he lost every
time. Finally one of the croupiers told me that my stake was above the
maximum, and asked how much I would risk. I was tired of answering his
questions, and I turned away. A lackey followed me with a salver covered
with gold and notes--the money I had won. I didn't want it; I had not
even a pocket to put it in, and the purse which I held in my hand would
not have held a fraction of it. It was a nuisance. I turned it over to
Bunker, and presently we all went out on the terrace that overhangs the
sea. It was a perfect night. In the air was a caress, and from the
Mediterranean came a tonic. While I was enjoying it all, a beggar
ambled up on a crutch and begged a franc. I took from Bunker the money I
had won and gave him thirty thousand. You should have heard Bunker then.
I actually believe that if I had been his wife instead of his guest he
would have struck me. I suppose it was an absurd thing to do. But the
next time you are in search of a new sensation do something of the same
sort. The beggar became transfigured. He looked at the gold and notes,
and then at me. I do not think I shall ever forget the expression in his
face. Did you ever see a child asleep--a child to whom some wonderful
dream has come? It was at once infantile and radiant. And all the while
Bunker was abusing me like a pickpocket. The beggar gave me one look,
dropped on his knees, caught the hem of my skirt, kissed it, threw away
his crutch, and _ran_. I burst out laughing, and Bunker, in spite of his
rage, burst out laughing too. Fanny called us a pair of idiots, and said
that if I was as lavish as that it would be better and wiser, and far
more Christian, to keep my money for indigent and deserving Bostonese,
than to bestow it as a premium on Monacean vice and effrontery. Just as
she was working herself into big words and short sentences, the man whom
I had noticed at the tables came along. He had met her before, and now,
as he expressed it, he precipitated himself to renew the expression of
his homage. Fanny, after introducing him to me, began at once on the
tale of my misconduct. He had a complexion of the cream-tint order, and
a moustache blacker than hate. He was a Florentine, I discovered, a
marquis with a name made up of v's, sonorous o's, and n's. We had found
a table, and Bunker ordered some ices. The night was really so perfect,
and the ice so good, that, like Mme. de Stael over her sherbet in
moonlit Venice, I almost wished it were a sin to sit there. The marquis
was in very good form and inclined to do the devoted on the slightest
provocation.
"'Is mademoiselle,' he asked me, 'is mademoiselle as disdainful of the
heart as she is of gold?'
"'Absolutely,' I answered--a remark which may have sounded snobbish, but
still was wholly true.
"'Ah!' he exclaimed, 'there are birds that do not sing untaught.'
"'You are beginning well,' I thought.
"The next day he lunched with us, and came again in the evening. In
addition to his marquisate, he had a fluty tenorino voice; what they
call a _voix de salon_. He sang all sorts of things for us, and he sang
them very well. When the air was lively he looked at Fanny, when it was
sentimental he looked at me. Thereafter I saw a great deal of him. One
day we would make up a party for Nice, on another we would go to San
Remo, or else back in the mountains, or to Grasse. Of course, as you
know, customs over there are such that he had no opportunity of being
alone with me, even for a second; but he had an art of making love in
public which must have been the result of long practice. It was both
open and discreet. It was not in words; it was in the inflection of the
voice and in the paying of the thousand and one little attentions which
foreigners perform so well. Now, to me, a tiara might be becoming, but
it is an ornament for which I have never felt the vaguest covetousness.
Moreover, I had no intention of marrying an Italian, however fabulous
the ancestry of that Italian might be. And, besides, the attentions of
which I was the apparent object were, I knew, addressed less to me than
to the blue eyes of my check-book. The Florentine nobleman who is
disposed to marry a dowerless American is yet to be heard from. This by
the way. However, I accepted the attentions with becoming grace, and
marked the cunning of his tricks. One evening he did not put in an
appearance, but at midnight, I heard, on the road before my window, the
tinkle of a guitar. I did not need to peer through the curtains to know
from whom it came. First he sang a song of Tosti's, and then the
serenade from "Don Pasquale:"
'Com' e gentil, la notte in mezz' Aprile.
Poi quando saro morto, tu piangerai
Ma ritornarmi in vita, tu non potrai.'
"Sentimental? Yes, sentimental to the last degree. But on the Riviera, in
spring, and at night, one's fancy turns to that sort of thing with
astounding ease. I listened with unalloyed pleasure. It was like a
Boccaccian echo. And as I listened I wondered whether I should ever
learn what love might be. The idea of taking a course of lessons from a
man who strummed on a guitar in front of my window never entered my
head. The next day Fanny came to me in a state of great excitement. The
guitarist, it appeared, had, with all proper and due formality, asked
leave to place his coronet at my feet. _Ce que j'ai ri!_
"You can hear Fanny from here. She accused me of flirting with the man.
'You have no right,' she said, 'to treat him as though he were a college
boy at Mt. Desert.' What he had done to make her so vicious I never
discovered. It must have been the title, a title always went to her
head. Poor Fanny! That evening, when he came, she declined to be
present. I had to see him alone. My dear, he was too funny. He had
prepared a little speech which he got off very well, only at the end of
it he lapsed into English. 'We will loaf,' he said, 'we will be always
loafers.' He meant, of course, to assert that we should love and be
always lovers, but the intricacies of our pronunciation were too much
for him. I could have died, it was so amusing. I managed, however, to
keep a straight face. 'Marquis,' I said, 'I am deeply honored, but your
invitation is one that I am unable to accept.' A more astounded man you
never saw. He really thought that he had but to ask, and it would be
given. He declined to take No for an answer. He said he would wait.
Actually, he was so pertinacious that I had to drag Fanny up to Paris.
He followed us in the next train. There was no getting rid of him at
all. If he sent me one note he sent me a hundred, and notes ten pages
each, at the very least. Finally, as you heard, he tried the dramatic.
One afternoon, while I was out shopping, he bribed a waiter at the hotel
where we lodged. When I returned, there he was, waiting for me. 'At
last,' he cried, 'at last we are face to face. You think I do not love.
Cruel one, behold me! I love as no mortal ever loved before. See, I die
at your feet!' And there, before my very eyes, he whipped out a pistol,
pulled the trigger, tumbled over and seemed fully disposed to carry out
the programme to the end. He had shot himself; there was no doubt about
that; but he had shot himself in such an intelligent manner, that,
though there was blood enough to frighten a sensitive young person out
of her wits, yet of danger there was none at all. Talk to me about
comedians! When I discovered the farce which had been enacted with the
sole object of stirring my sympathies into affection, I was
flabbergasted at the wiles of man.
"It was after that episode that I returned to Beacon Street. It was
there that what you are pleased to call the scandal began. Fanny, whose
desire to marry me off was simply epic, one day caught an Englishman;
young, so she said, and good-looking. And that Englishman, she made up
her mind, I should ensnare. Fanny, as you know, was possessed with an
ungratified desire to pay annual visits to swell country houses on the
other side. Hence, I suppose, her efforts. Having caught the Englishman,
the next step was to serve him up in becoming form. To that end she gave
a tentative dinner. I got to it late; in fact, I was the last to arrive.
Fanny, I could see, was in a state of feverish excitement. She presented
to me one or two men, whose names I did not catch, and a moment later
one of them gave me his arm. When we were seated at table, and while he
was sticking a chrysanthemum in his button-hole, I glanced at the card
on his plate. It bore for legend Lord Alfred Harrow. It was then I took
my first look at him. My dear, he was the ugliest man I have ever seen;
he was so ugly that he was positively attractive. His mouth was large
enough to sing a duet, but his teeth were whiter than mine."
As she spoke she curled her lips.
"There was no hair on his face, and his features were those of a
middle-aged wizard. But about him was the atmosphere of health, of
strength, too, and his hands, though bronzed and sinewy, were perfect. I
knew he was a thoroughbred at once. 'And how do you like the States?' I
asked. He was squeezing some lemon on an oyster, and I noticed that when
some white wine was offered him he turned the glass upside down. 'Very
much,' he answered; 'and you?' There was more of that sort of thing, and
finally I asked him if, like other Englishmen, he thought that Boston
suggested one of his provincial towns. 'There seems to be some mistake,'
he said. 'I was going into the Somerset five minutes ago when Hill
coralled me. He told me that his wife was giving a dinner, and that at
the last moment one of the bidden had wired to the effect that he was
prevented from coming. Whereupon Mrs. Hill had packed him off to the
club, with instructions to bring back the first man he met. I happened
to be that man.' He took up the card. 'Lord Alfred is, I fancy, the
delinquent. My name,' he added, 'is Mr. Stitt--Ferris Stitt,' he
continued, as though apologizing for its inconsequence.
"After that we got on famously. In a day or two he came to the house.
When he left the world was larger. He knew nothing about poetry. He had
never so much as heard of Fichte. Herbert Spencer was to him a name and
nothing more. The only works of ornamental literature which he seemed to
have read were the Arabian Nights, which he had forgotten, and something
of Dickens, which had put him to sleep. He did not know one note of
music from another. But he had hunted big game in Africa, in Bengal, and
he had penetrated Thibet. He had been in Iceland and among the Caribs.
No carpet knight was he.
"My dear, I had not seen him five times before I felt myself going. I
think he knew it. But I had been cheated before, and so well that I held
on with all my strength. While I was holding on, he disappeared. Not a
word, not a line, not even so much as a p. p. c. In the course of time,
through the merest accident, I learned that he was in Yucatan. Six
months later I caught a glimpse of him in the street. Presently he
called.
"At once, without so much as a preamble, he told me he had gone away
that in absence he might learn whether I was as dear to him as he
thought. He hesitated a moment. 'Will you let me love you?' he asked.
'You have been prudent,' I answered; 'let me be prudent, too.' Then I
told him of my disenchantments. I told him how difficult I found it to
discover what men really were. I told him, as I have told you, that it
seemed to me, if an intelligent girl admired her brother, it was because
that brother was assuredly an admirable man. And I added that I would
accept no man until I had the same opportunities of judging him as a
sister has of judging her brother. Besides, I said, I have yet to know
what love may be. It was then that we made the agreement of which you
disapprove. After all, it was my own suggestion, and, if unconventional,
in what does the criterion consist? I was acting for the best. You do
not imagine, do you, that I regret it?"
And to her lips came a smile.
"I took Mary, who, you must admit, is respectability personified, and
whom I had long since elevated from nurse to sheep dog--I took Mary,
and, together, all three of us, we went abroad. It is in travelling that
you get to know a man. Each evening, when he said good-night, my
admiration had increased. From England, as you know, we went straight
to India. It was a long trip, I had heard, but to me it seemed
needlessly brief. During the entire journey I studied him as one studies
a new science. I watched him as a cat watches a mouse. Not once did he
do the slightest thing that jarred. During the entire journey he did not
so much as attempt to take my hand in his. He knew, I suppose, as I
knew, that if the time ever came I would give it unasked.
"One evening, on going to my stateroom, I found I had left my
vinaigrette on deck. Mary was asleep. I went back for it alone. It was
very dark. On the way to where I had sat I heard his voice; he was
talking to one of the passengers. In spite of myself I listened to what
he was saying. I listened for nearly an hour. Not one word was there in
it all that he could not have said to me. When I got back to my cabin I
wondered whether it might not be that he knew I was standing there. Yes,
I admit, I was suspicious; but circumstances had made me so. Oh! he has
forgiven me since."
She smiled again complacently to herself, and, tucking the whip under
her arm, she drew off a glove; on one finger was a narrow circle of
gold. She looked at it and raised it to her lips.
"When we landed our journey had practically begun. You see, I was still
unassured. Yet he was irreproachable and ever the same. Well, the
details are unimportant. One day, at Benares, he heard that leopards had
been seen in the neighborhood of a lake some fifteen or twenty miles
out. At once he was for having a crack at them. I determined to
accompany him. He was surprised at first, and objected a little, but I
managed, as I usually do, to have my own way. It was night when we got
there. We left the horses with the guide, and, noiselessly as ghosts, we
stole through a coppice which hid the lake from view. Almost at the
water's edge we crouched and waited. The stars were white as lilies and
splendid as trembling gems. The silence was as absolute as might. How
long we waited I cannot now recall. I think I dreamed a bit with open
eyes. Then dimly I became conscious of something moving in the distance.
The moon had risen like a balloon of gold, and in the air was the scent
of sandal. Slowly, with an indolent grace of its own, that something
neared the opposite shore. As it reached the water it stopped, arched
its back, and turned. I saw then that it was a leopard. No, my dear,
you can form no idea of the beauty of that beast. And then suddenly it
threw its head back and called. It lapped the water, and then, with its
tongue, gave its forepaw one long, lustrous lick, and called again; a
call that was echoless, yet so resonant I felt it thrill my finger-tips.
In a moment its mate sprang from the shadows. If the first comer was
beautiful, then this one was the ideal. There they stood, caressing each
other with amber, insatiate eyes. It was like a scene in fairyland. And
as I watched them, I felt a movement at my side. I turned. He had taken
aim and was about to fire, but, as I turned, he turned to me. Those
beasts, I told myself, are far too fair for death; yet I said not a
word. My dear, he read my unuttered wish, he lowered the gun, and
then--then, for the first time, I knew what love might be.... There's
the dogcart now. Come over and dine to-morrow. If you care to, Ferris
will show you the gun."
FAUSTA.
There are many beautiful things in the world, and among them, near the
head of the list, stands dawn in the tropics. It is sudden as love, and
just as fair. Throughout the night the ship had been sailing beneath
larger stars than ours, in waters that were seamed and sentient with
phosphorus; but now the ship was in the harbor, day had chased the
stars, the water was iridescent as a syrup of opals, at the horizon was
the tenderest pink, overhead was a compound of salmon and of blue; and
beyond, within rifle range, was an amphitheatre of houses particolored
as rainbows, surmounted by green hills, tiared with the pearl points of
cathedral steeples, and for defensive girdle, the yellow walls of a
crumbling fort.
"On this side," thought one who lounged on deck, "it seems bounded by
beauty," and he might have added, "by ignorance on the other." He was a
good-looking young fellow, dressed Piccadilly-fashion, and yet, despite
the cut of his coat, the faint umber of his skin and the sultry un-Saxon
eyes marked him as being of Latin blood. His name was Ruis Ixar. He was
the son of a certain Don Jayme, who was then Governor of Puerto
Principe, and in Castile, Count, Grandee of Spain, and Marquis, to boot.
Don Jayme had emptied his coffers in discreet rivalry of his king, and
his king, who admired prodigal fathers, had given him leave to replenish
them in the New World. This permission Don Jayme had for some time past
made the most of, now by exactions, now by fresh taxes, by peculations
and speculations, and also by means of a sugar plantation a few leagues
beyond Santiago de Cuba, in the harbor of which his son, that morning,
was preparing to disembark.
Don Jayme had been domiciled in the neighborhood for five years, and the
five years had been to him five Kalpas of time.
He felt desolate as a lighthouse. He had come expecting to make a rapid
fortune, and in that expectation he had been wearisomely deceived. The
province which he had intended to wring dry as an orange had been well
squeezed by earlier comers, and as for his hacienda, he found it more
profitable to let the cane rot uncut than to attempt to extract the
sugar. He hated Cuba, as every true Spaniard does, and the portion of
Cuba which he administered hated him. He longed for Madrid, for the pomp
and ceremonial of court; and particularly did he desire that his son
should enjoy an income suited to his rank. Though he had not as yet
succeeded in replenishing more than one or two of the many emptied
coffers, there was no valid reason why his sole descendant should be
poor. And if his son were rich, the former splendor of the Ixars would
blaze anew. Don Jayme was a selfish man, as men brought up in court
circles are apt to be; he was not a good man, he was not even a
good-looking man, but the bit of lignum vitae which served him for heart
was all in all for that son. It was for him he had come to Cuba, and if
the coming had been a partial failure, that partial failure would be
wholly retrieved did he succeed in supplying the heir to his title with
a well dowered wife.
So argued Don Jayme. But he was careful to argue with no one save his
most intimate friend, to-wit, himself. To his son he said nothing; he
merely wrote him to take ship, and sail.
It so happened that when this communication was received, Ruis Ixar was
as anxious for a trip to the New World as Don Jayme was for a return to
the Old. He was tired of the Puerto del Sol; he was tired too of the
usual young woman that lives over the way. He wanted a taste of
adventure; and moreover obedience to his father's behests had been the
groundwork of his education. He had therefore taken ship with alacrity,
and on this melting morning of December, as he gazed for the first time
at the multicolored vista before him, he was in great and expectant
spirits. Concerning the town itself, had he been put on the rack he
could have confessed to but two items of information: one was that his
father was chief official; and the other that there was not a book-shop
within its walls. To the latter fact he was utterly indifferent; he had
learned it haphazard on the way over: but the former was not without its
charm. The influence of that charm presently exerted itself. He was
conveyed from the ship in a government boat, and two hours later, while
his fellow-passengers were still engaged in feeing the supervisors of
the custom-house, he had reached the hacienda behind the hills.
The hacienda, or ingenio as it is more properly called, was several
miles of yellow striated with red, punctuated with palms and cut by
paths that were shaded with the great glistening leaves of the banana,
while here and there, Dantesque and unnatural in its grandeur, rose the
ceiba, its giant arms outstretched as though to shield the toiler from
the suffocation of the purple skies. And beneath, for contrast, the
brilliance of convolvuli and granadillas opposed the tender green. At
the southernmost end was Don Jayme's habitation, a one-story edifice,
built quadrangularwise, tiled and steep of roof, and semi-circled by a
veranda so veiled with vines that at a distance the house seemed a
massive mound of pistache.
"Even in Andalusia," thought Ruis, as the volante brought him to the
door, "there is nothing equal to this." Like all his race, he had a
quick eye to the beautiful, and for the moment he was bewildered by the
riot of color. And while the bewilderment still lingered, a gentleman,
slim and tall, entirely in white, with face and hands of the shade of
Turkish tobacco, kissed him on either cheek.
"God be praised, my son," he murmured, "you are here."
And with that he led him into the cool of the veranda. It had been years
since they had met, there was much to be said, and in that grave
unvociferous fashion which is peculiar to the Spaniard of Castile, in a
language which nightingales might envy, father and son discussed topics
of common and personal interest.