The Bright Shawl Part 9

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 circ.u.mstances 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 baga.s.se. 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 rea.s.surances 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 refres.h.i.+ng than customary, and the spirit of Havana, in the parques and paseos and restaurants, was high. The Louvre was crowded, a dense ma.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 l.u.s.treless 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 a.n.a.lysis, she managed to convey to him the a.s.surance 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, fas.h.i.+oned delicately for rooms hung in peac.o.c.k silks and courtyards of fretted alabaster and burnished cedar.

He wanted to reply that he liked her, but, in prospect, that seemed awkward, ba.n.a.l; 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 pa.s.s 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 s.e.xless body was upright in its film of clear white.

The older woman was a.s.sisted 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 sh.e.l.ls maintained a cool splas.h.i.+ng.

"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."