The Bright Shawl Part 10

She a.s.sured 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?"

But, relapsing into immobility, she ignored his question. Beyond doubt 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 fas.h.i.+oned 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 pa.s.sed 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 ca.n.a.l, holding some gaily painted and cus.h.i.+oned 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 gra.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed, 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 h.e.l.lish 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'

att.i.tude: his love for him was all that prevented the acerbity of a voiced irritation.

Yet, when the regimental band was leaving to the diminis.h.i.+ng 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 companions.h.i.+p, 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 pa.s.sed 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 friends.h.i.+p. "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 circ.u.mstances, 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 superst.i.tion 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 ma.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+p. 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 pa.s.sion 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 friends.h.i.+p for Andres Escobar had no relation to material ends.

At first it had been upheld, vitalized, by admiration, qualities perceptible to his mind, to a.n.a.lysis; 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 a.s.sa.s.sin. 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 pa.s.sing 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.