A Transient Guest, and Other Episodes Part 8

"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 d.i.c.kens, 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 a.s.suredly 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 pa.s.sengers. 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 circ.u.mstances 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 una.s.sured. 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 sh.o.r.e. 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, l.u.s.trous 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 s.h.i.+p had been sailing beneath larger stars than ours, in waters that were seamed and sentient with phosphorus; but now the s.h.i.+p 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-fas.h.i.+on, 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 replenis.h.i.+ng 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 t.i.tle 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p in a government boat, and two hours later, while his fellow-pa.s.sengers 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 ma.s.sive 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.

"G.o.d 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 fas.h.i.+on 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.

Thereafter for some little time, a fortnight to be exact, things went very well indeed. Ruis expressed himself enchanted with his new home.

The plantation was a wonder to him, the half-naked negroes and their wholly nude progeny a surprise, and the brutality with which they were treated caused him a transient emotion. In turtle fis.h.i.+ng he found an agreeable novelty, and in the shooting of doves and the blue-headed partridge he became an immediate adept. But when a fortnight had come and gone he felt vaguely bored; he grew tired of strange and sticky fruits, the call of chromatic birds jarred, discordant, on his nerves, the turtles lost their allurement, the weight of purple days oppressed him. In brief, he thought he had quite enough of rural life in the tropics. Aside from his father, there was not, on the estate, a soul of his own race with whom he could exchange a word. And though he had nothing whatever to say, yet such is the nature of youth that he heartily wished himself back in Spain. The young girl that lived there over the way he would have hailed as life's full delight, and two or three of her sc.r.a.ppy letters, which through some oversight he had neglected to turn into cigarette-lighters, he set to work to decipher anew. The writer of them was an ethereal young person with a pretty taste for fine sentiments, and as Ruis possessed himself of the candors of her thought, he very much wished that he could kneel immediately at her feet.

From the early forenoon until the sun has begun to set it is not at all agreeable, or prudent either, for the unacclimated to be astir in that part of the planet in which Don Jayme's hacienda was situated. But the mornings are mellow indeed, the dusk is languorous in its beauty, and as for the nights, none others in all the world can compare with them. The stars are as lilies set in parterres of indigo. In the air is a perfume and a caress.

And Ruis, out of sheer laziness, made the most of the dusk and the early hours. At sunrise he was on horseback scouring the country, now over the red road in the direction of the town, and again across the savannas, past cool thin streams and ravines that were full of shadow, mystery, and green. And when the sun had lost its ardor he would be off again, and return in company with the moon. As a rule he met but few people, sometimes a man or two conveying garden produce to the sea-port, sometimes women with eggs and poultry, now and then a negro, and once a priest. But practically the roads were unfrequented, and without incident or surprise.

One morning, however, as his horse was bearing him homeward, he caught sight of an object moving in the distance. At first he fancied that it might be one of the men he was wont to meet, but soon he saw that it was a woman, and as he drew nearer he noticed that she was young, and, in a moment, that she was fair to see. By her side stood a horse. The saddle was on the ground, and she was busying herself with the girth. At his approach she turned her head. Her mouth was like a pomegranate filled with pearls; her face was without color, innocent of the powdered egg-sh.e.l.ls with which Cuban damsels and dames whiten their cheeks; and in her eyes was an Orient of dreams. She was lithe and graceful, not tall; perhaps sixteen. About her waist a crimson sash was wound many times, her gown was of gray Catalonian calico, and her sandalled feet were stockingless.

"A Creole," thought Ruis; and raising his right hand to the left side of his broad-brimmed hat, he made it describe a magnificent parabola through the air, and as he replaced it, bowed.

"Your servant, Senorita," he said.

"And yours, Don Ruis," she replied.

"You know my name, Senorita! May I ask how you are called?"

"I am called Fausta," she answered; and as she spoke Ruis caught in her voice an accent unknown to the Madridlenes of his acquaintance, the accent of the New World, abrupt, disdainful of sibilants, and resolute.

He dismounted at once.

"You have had an accident, Dona Fausta; let me aid you."

But the girth was beyond aid; it was old and had worn itself in twain.

And as he examined it he noticed that the saddle was not of the kind that women prefer.

"It is needless, Don Ruis. See, it is an easy matter." And with that she unwound her crimson girdle, and in a moment, with dexterous skill, she removed the broken girth, replaced the saddle on the horse, and bound it to him with the sash. "But I thank you," she added, gravely.

Ruis was a little sceptical about the security of this arrangement, and that scepticism he ventured to express. But the girl was on the horse, una.s.sisted, before he had finished the sentence.

"Have no fears, Don Ruis. Besides, our house is but a little bird's flight from here. I could have walked, if need were."

Ruis remounted. "May I not accompany you?" he asked.

"To-morrow," she answered; and for the first time she smiled. For to-morrow in a Cuban mouth means anything except what it expresses. And as she said it, Ruis smiled too.

"How do you know my name?" he inquired.

"We--my mother and I--we are your neighbors."

"Ah, Dona Fausta, in that case, I pray you make my duty to the lady your mother, and beg of her a permission that I may do so myself."

Again she smiled. "To-morrow," she lisped, and whipped her horse.

Ruis raised his hat as before, and bowed.

"G.o.d be with you, Dona Fausta."

"And with you, Don Ruis."

The next morning he was on the red road again, but no maiden in distress was discoverable that day. The sun chased him home, and as he lounged through high noon in the cool of the veranda, he marvelled at his earlier boredom. Later on he sent for one of the overseers and questioned him minutely. Whatever information he may have gleaned, it was presumably satisfactory. He watched the sun expire in throes of crimson and gamboge, and night unloose her leash of stars. Then he took horse again, and, aided by information received, in ten minutes he was at Dona Fausta's door. It was a shabby door, he noticed, the portal of a still shabbier abode, and even in the starlight he divined that if ever wealth had pa.s.sed that way, it had long since taken flight. The noise of hoofs brought the girl to the porch.

"At your feet, Dona Fausta," he said, and raised his hat. "I am come to offer my homage to the lady your mother, and to you, if I may."