His name was really Perez Armando Aldeano, but in the end everybody
called him the _amigo_, because that was the endearing term by which
he saluted all the world. There was a time when the children called
him "Span-yard" in their games, for he spoke no tongue but Spanish,
and though he came from Ecuador, and was no more a Spaniard than they
were English, he answered to the call of "Span-yard!" whenever he
heard it. He came eagerly in the hope of fun, and all the more eagerly
if there was a hope of mischief in the fun. Still, to discerning
spirits, he was always the _amigo_, for, when he hailed you so, you
could not help hailing him so again, and whatever mock he put upon you
afterward, you were his secret and inalienable friend.
The moment of my own acceptance in this quality came in the first
hours of expansion following our getting to sea after long detention
in the dock by fog. A small figure came flying down the dock with
outspread arms, and a joyful cry of "Ah, _amigo_!" as if we were now
meeting unexpectedly after a former intimacy in Bogotá; and the
_amigo_ clasped me round the middle to his bosom, or more strictly
speaking, his brow, which he plunged into my waistcoat. He was clad in
a long black overcoat, and a boy's knee-pants, and under the peak of
his cap twinkled the merriest black eyes that ever lighted up a
smiling face of olive hue. Thereafter, he was more and more, with the
thinness of his small black legs, and his habit of hopping up and
down, and dancing threateningly about, with mischief latent in every
motion, like a crow which in being tamed has acquired one of the worst
traits of civilization. He began babbling and gurgling in Spanish, and
took my hand for a stroll about the ship, and from that time we were,
with certain crises of disaffection, firm allies.
There were others whom he hailed and adopted his friends, whose legs
he clung about and impeded in their walks, or whom he required to toss
him into the air as they passed, but I flattered myself that he had a
peculiar, because a primary, esteem for myself. I have thought it
might be that, Bogotá being said to be a very literary capital, as
those things go in South America, he was mystically aware of a common
ground between us, wider and deeper than that of his other
friendships. But it may have been somewhat owing to my inviting him to
my cabin to choose such portion as he would of a lady-cake sent us on
shipboard at the last hour. He prattled and chuckled over it in the
soft gutturals of his parrot-like Spanish, and rushed up on deck to
eat the frosting off in the presence of his small companions, and to
exult before them in the exploitation of a novel pleasure. Yet it
could not have been the lady-cake which lastingly endeared me to him,
for by the next day he had learned prudence and refused it without
withdrawing his amity.
This, indeed, was always tempered by what seemed a constitutional
irony, and he did not impart it to any one without some time making
his friend feel the edge of his practical humor. It was not long
before the children whom he gathered to his heart had each and all
suffered some fall or bump or bruise which, if not of his intention,
was of his infliction, and which was regretted with such winning
archness that the very mothers of them could not resist him, and his
victims dried their tears to follow him with glad cries of "Span-yard,
Span-yard!" Injury at his hands was a favor; neglect was the only real
grievance. He went about rolling his small black head, and darting
roguish lightnings from under his thick-fringed eyes, and making more
trouble with a more enticing gaiety than all the other people on the
ship put together.
The truth must be owned that the time came, long before the end of the
voyage, when it was felt that in the interest of the common welfare,
something must be done about the _amigo_. At the conversational end of
the doctor's table, where he was discussed whenever the racks were not
on, and the talk might have languished without their inspiration, his
badness was debated at every meal. Some declared him the worst boy in
the world, and held against his half-hearted defenders that something
ought to be done about him; and one was left to imagine all the darker
fate for him because there was nothing specific in these convictions.
He could not be thrown overboard, and if he had been put in irons
probably his worst enemies at the conversational end of the table
would have been the first to intercede for him. It is not certain,
however, that their prayers would have been effective with the
captain, if that officer, framed for comfort as well as command, could
have known how accurately the _amigo_ had dramatized his personal
presence by throwing himself back, and clasping his hands a foot in
front of his small stomach, and making a few tilting paces forward.
The _amigo_ had a mimic gift which he liked to exercise when he could
find no intelligible language for the expression of his ironic spirit.
Being forbidden visits in and out of season to certain staterooms
whose inmates feigned a wish to sleep, he represented in what
grotesque attitudes of sonorous slumber they passed their day, and he
spared neither age nor sex in these graphic shows. When age refused
one day to go up on deck with him and pleaded in such Spanish as it
could pluck up from its past studies that it was too old, he laughed
it to scorn. "You are not old," he said. "Why?" the flattered dotard
inquired. "Because you smile," and that seemed reason enough for one's
continued youth. It was then that the _amigo_ gave his own age,
carefully telling the Spanish numerals over, and explaining further by
holding up both hands with one finger shut in. But he had the subtlety
of centuries in his nine years, and he penetrated the ship everywhere
with his arch spirit of mischief. It was mischief always in the
interest of the good-fellowship which he offered impartially to old
and young; and if it were mere frolic, with no ulterior object, he did
not care at all how old or young his playmate was. This endeared him
naturally to every age; and the little blond German-American boy
dried his tears from the last accident inflicted on him by the _amigo_
to recall him by tender entreaties of "Span-yard, Span-yard!" while
the eldest of his friends could not hold out against him more than two
days in the strained relations following upon the _amigo's_ sweeping
him down the back with a toy broom employed by the German-American boy
to scrub the scuppers. This was not so much an injury as an indignity,
but it was resented as an indignity, in spite of many demure glances
of propitiation from the _amigo's_ ironical eyes and murmurs of
inarticulate apology as he passed.
He was, up to a certain point, the kindest and truest of _amigos_;
then his weird seizure came, and the baby was spilled out of the
carriage he had been so benevolently pushing up and down; or the
second officer's legs, as he walked past with the prettiest girl on
board, were hit with the stick that the _amigo_ had been innocently
playing shuffle-board with; or some passenger was taken unawares in
his vanity or infirmity and made to contribute to the _amigo's_
passion for active amusement.
At this point I ought to explain that the _amigo_ was not traveling
alone from Ecuador to Paris, where it was said he was to rejoin his
father. At meal-times, and at other rare intervals, he was seen to be
in the charge of a very dark and very silent little man, with
intensely black eyes and mustache, clad in raven hues from his head to
the delicate feet on which he wore patent-leather shoes. With him the
_amigo_ walked gravely up and down the deck, and behaved decorously at
table; and we could not reconcile the apparent affection between the
two with a theory we had that the _amigo_ had been found impossible in
his own country, and had been sent out of Ecuador by a decree of the
government, or perhaps a vote of the whole people. The little, dark,
silent man, in his patent-leather boots, had not the air of conveying
a state prisoner into exile, and we wondered in vain what the tie
between him and the _amigo_ was. He might have been his tutor, or his
uncle. He exercised a quite mystical control over the _amigo_, who was
exactly obedient to him in everything, and would not look aside at you
when in his keeping. We reflected with awe and pathos that, as they
roomed together, it was his privilege to see the _amigo_ asleep, when
that little, very kissable black head rested innocently on the pillow,
and the busy brain within it was at peace with the world which formed
its pleasure and its prey in waking.
It would be idle to represent that the _amigo_ played his pranks upon
that shipload of long-suffering people with final impunity. The time
came when they not only said something must be done, but actually did
something. It was by the hand of one of the _amigo's_ sweetest and
kindest friends, namely, that elderly captain, off duty, who was going
out to be assigned his ship in Hamburg. From the first he had shown
the affectionate tenderness for the _amigo_ which was felt by all
except some obdurate hearts at the conversational end of the table;
and it must have been with a loving interest in the _amigo's_ ultimate
well-being that, taking him in an ecstasy of mischief, he drew the
_amigo_ face downward across his knees, and bestowed the chastisement
which was morally a caress. He dismissed him with a smile in which the
_amigo_ read the good understanding that existed unimpaired between
them, and accepted his correction with the same affection as that
which had given it. He shook himself and ran off with an enjoyment of
the joke as great as that of any of the spectators and far more
generous.
In fact there was nothing mean in the _amigo_. Impish he was, or might
be, but only in the sort of the crow or the parrot; there was no
malevolence in his fine malice. One fancied him in his adolescence
taking part in one of the frequent revolutions of his continent, but
humorously, not homicidally. He would like to alarm the other
faction, and perhaps drive it from power, or overset it from its
official place, but if he had the say there would be no bringing the
vanquished out into the plaza to be shot. He may now have been on his
way to France ultimately to study medicine, which seems to be
preliminary to a high political career in South America; but in the
mean time we feared for him in that republic of severely regulated
subordinations.
We thought with pathos of our early parting with him, as we approached
Plymouth and tried to be kodaked with him, considering it an honor and
pleasure. He so far shared our feeling as to consent, but he insisted
on wearing a pair of glasses which had large eyes painted on them, and
on being taken in the act of inflating a toy balloon. Probably,
therefore, the likeness would not be recognized in Bogotá, but it will
always be endeared to us by the memory of the many mockeries suffered
from him. There were other friends whom we left on the ship, notably
those of the conversational end of the table, who thought him simply a
bad boy; but there were none of such peculiar appeal as he, when he
stood by the guard, opening and shutting his hand in ironical adieu,
and looking smaller and smaller as our tender drifted away and the
vast liner loomed immense before us. He may have contributed to its
effect of immensity by the smallness of his presence, or it may have
dwarfed him. No matter; he filled no slight space in our lives while
he lasted. Now that he is no longer there, was he really a bad little
boy, merely and simply? Heaven knows, which alone knows good boys from
bad.