Read Ebook: The Bright Shawl by Hergesheimer Joseph

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Ebook has 345 lines and 35670 words, and 7 pages

Or, rather, he saw himself objectively, as he had been say a year ago, at which time his present situation would have surpassed his most splendid worldly hopes. It was strange, he thought, how life granted one by one every desire ... when it was no longer valued: the fragrance, the tender passion, of Narcisa, the preference in La Clavel singling him out from a city for her interest!

She smiled at him over her shoulder, and, in return, he nodded seriously, busy with a cigarette; maintaining, in a difficult pass, his complete air of indifference, of experience. The hairdresser must have pulled roughly at a strand for, with a sudden harsh vulgarity, she described him as a blot on the virginity of his mother; in an instant every atom of her was charged with anger. It was, Charles told himself, exactly as though a shock of dried grass had caught fire; ignited gun powder rather than blood seemed to fill her veins.

Her ill-temper, tempestuous in its course, was over as quickly as it had flared into being. She paid the hairdresser from a confusion of silver and gold on her dressing-table and dismissed him with a good nature flavored by a native proverb. Then, bending above a drawer, she brought out the vivid shawl in which she had danced. La Clavel folded its dragging brilliancy squarely along its length, laid it across her breast, brought the fringed ends under and up over her arms, crossed them in a swift twist, and she was wholly, magnificently, clothed. She sat on the edge of a bed covered with gay oddments of attire--fans and slippers with vermilion heels, lace mantillas, a domino in silver tissue lined in carnation and a knife with a narrow blade and holder of silk.

Charles offered her his cigarette case, but she declined in favor of the long pale cigars Andr?s and he himself affected. With its smoke drifting bluely across her pallid face, her eyes now interrogating him, and now withdrawn in thought, she asked him about Tirso Labrador. Charles Abbott quickly gathered that his presence was for that sole purpose.

"I heard all that was said," she warned him; "and I don't want that repeated. Why did he try to garotte de Vaca with his hands? There was more in it than appeared. But all Ceaza will say is that he was a cursed traitor to the Crown. Signor American, I like Cuba, they have been very good to me here; I like you and your polite friends. But whenever I try to come closer to you, to leave the stage, as it were, for the audience, we are kept apart. The Spanish officers who take up so much of my time warn me that I must have nothing to do with disaffected Cubans; the Cubans, when I reach out my arms to them, are only polite.

"Certainly I know that there has been a rebellion; but it is stamped out, ended, now; there are no signs of it in Havana, when I dance the jota; so why isn't everyone sensible and social; why, if they are victorious, are not Gaspar Arco de Vaca and Ceaza y Santacilla easier? If, as it must be, Cuba is subjected, why doesn't it ignore the unpleasant and take what the days and nights always offer? There can be no longer, so late in the history of the world, a need for the old Inquisition, the stabbers Philip commanded."

Charles Abbott had an impulse to reply that, far from being conquered, the spirit of liberty in Cuba was higher than ever before; he wanted to tell her, to cry out, that it was deathless; and that no horrors of the black past were more appalling than those practiced now by the Spanish soldiery. Instead of this he watched a curl of smoke mount through the height of the room to a small square window far up on the wall where it was struck gold by a shaft of sunlight.

"He was particularly a friend of yours?" she insisted, returning to Tirso. "You were always together, watching me dance from your box in the Tacon Theatre, and eating ices at the El Louvre or at the Tuileries."

He spoke slowly, indifferently, keeping his gaze elevated toward the ceiling. "Tirso Labrador was a braggard, he was always boasting about what he could do with his foolish muscles. What happened to him was unavoidable. We weren't sorry--a thorough bully. As for the others, that dandy, Quintara, and Remigio Florez, who looks like a coffee berry from their plantation at Vuelta Arriba, and Escobar, I am very much in their debt--I bring the gold and they provide the pleasures of Havana. They are my runners. I haven't the slightest interest in their politics; if they support the Revolution or Madrid, they keep all that out of my knowledge."

A prolonged silence followed, a period devoted to the two cigars. "That Escobar," La Clavel said, "is a very beautiful boy. What you tell me is surprising; he, at any rate, seems quite different. And I have seen you time after time sitting together, the two or three or four of you, with affectionate glances and arms. I am sensitive to such things, and I think you are lying."

An air of amused surprise appeared on his countenance, "If you are so taken with Andr?s Escobar," he observed, "why did you make this appointment with me? May I have the pleasure of taking him a note from you? he is very fond of intrigues."

Leaning forward she laid a firm square palm on his knee. "You have told me all that I wanted--this Tirso, who was killed, he was your dear friend and his death an agony; the smaller, the coffee berry, you are devoted to his goodness and simplicity; beneath Quintara's waistcoats you find a heart of gold. But Escobar--is it Andr?s?--you love better than your life. They care nothing for your American dollars; it is evident they all have much more than you. What is it, then, you are united by? I shall tell you--Cuba. You are patriots, insurrectionists; Santacilla was right. And neither is your rebellion crushed, not with Agramonte alive." She leaned back with glimmering eyes and the cruel paint of her mouth smiling at him.

She was, then, Charles Abbott reflected, an agent of Spain's; calmly he rehearsed all they had said to each other, he examined every sentence, every inflection of voice. He could not have been more circumspect; the position he had taken, of a pleasure-loving young American, was so natural that it was inevitable. No, La Clavel knew nothing, she was simply adopting another method in her task of getting information for Santacilla. At this, remembering the adoration of his circle for her, he was brushed by a swift sorrow. For them she had been the symbol, the embodiment, of beauty; the fire and grace of her dancing had intensified, made richer, their sense of life. She had been the utmost flashing peak of their desire; and now it was clear to him that she was rotten at the core, La Clavel was merely a spy; what had engaged them was nothing more than a brilliant flowery surface, a bright shawl.

"You are wasting your efforts," he assured her, with an appearance of complete comfort. "Even if you were right, I mean about the others, what, do you think, would make them confide in me, almost a stranger? You understand this so much better than I that, instead of questioning me, you ought to explain the whole Cuban situation. Women like yourself, with genius, know everything."

She utterly disconcerted Charles by enveloping him in a rapid gesture, her odorous lips were pressed against his cheek. "You are as sweet as a lime flower," La Clavel declared. "After the others--" her expression of disgust was singularly valid. "That is what I love about you," she cried suddenly, "your youth and freshness and courage. Tirso Labrador dying so gallantly ... all your beardless intent faces. The revolt in Cuba, I've felt it ever since I landed at Havana, it's in the air like wine. I am sick of officers: look, ever since I was a child the army has forced itself upon me. I had to have their patronage when I was dancing and their company when I went to the caf?s; and when it wasn't the cavalry it was the gentlemen. They were always superior, condescending; and always, inside me, I hated them. They thought, because I was peasant born, that their attentions filled me with joy, that I should be grateful for their aristocratic presences. But, because I was what I was, I held them, with their ladies' hands and sugared voices, in contempt. There isn't one of them with the entrails to demand my love.

"I tell you I was smothering in the air about me. My dancing isn't like the posturing of the court, it's the dancing of the people, my people, passionate like a knife. I am from the Morena, and there we are not the human sheep who live in the valleys, along the empty rivers. How shall I explain? But how can you explain yourself? You are not a Cuban; this rebellion, in which you may so easily be killed almost before you begin to live, it isn't yours. What drew you into it? You must make it plain, for I, too, am caught."

"Men are different from women," he replied, putting into words his newly acquired wisdom; "whatever happened to me would be useless for you, you couldn't be helped by it." Yet he was forced to admit to himself that all she had said was reasonable; at bottom it didn't contradict his generalization, for it was based on a reality, on La Clavel's long resentment, on indignities to her pride, on, as she had said, the innate freedom of the mountain spirit. If she were honest, any possible attachment to Cuba might result from her hatred of Spain, of Sevilla and Madrid. Hers, then, would be the motive of revenge.

"You are right about the difference in our experiences," she agreed; "I was dancing for a living at six; at ten I had another accomplishment. I have lived in rooms inlaid with gold, and in cellars with men where murder would have been a gracious virtue. Yes, lime flower, there is little you know that could be any assistance to me. But the other, your purity, your effort of nobility, that I must learn from you."

He explained his meaning more fully to her, and she listened intently. "You think," she interrupted, "that a woman must be attached to something real, like your arm or a pot of gold. You know them, and that at your age, at any age, is a marvel enough in itself. The wisest men in Europe have tried to understand the first movement of my dancing--how, in it, a race, the whole history of a nation, is expressed in the stamp of a heel, the turn of a hip. They wonder what, in me, had happened to the maternal instinct, why I chose to reflect life, as though I were a mirror, rather than experience it. And now, it seems, you see everything, all is clear to you. You have put a label, such as are in museums, on women; good!"

She smiled at him, mocking but not unkind.

"However," he told her crossly, "that is of very little importance. How did we begin? I have forgotten already."

"In this way," she said coolly; "I asked if it would be of any interest to--let us say, your friends, to learn that the United States, in spite of the Administration, will not recognize a Republican Cuba. Fish is unchangeably opposed to the insurgents. You may expect no help there."

"That might be important to the insurgents," he admitted; "but where are they to be found--in the cabildos of Los Egidos?"

"At least repeat what you have heard to Escobar: is it Andr?s or Vincente?"

The name of Andr?s' brother was spoken so unexpectedly, the faintest knowledge of Vincente on the part of the dancer of such grave importance, that Charles Abbott momentarily lost his composure. "Vincente!" he exclaimed awkwardly. "Was that the other brother? But he is dead."

"Not yet," she replied. "It is planned for tonight, after dinner, when he is smoking in the little upper salon."

Agitated, at a loss for further protest, he rose. He must go at once to the Escobars, warn them. "You will admit now that I have been of use," La Clavel was standing beside him. "And it is possible, if Vincente Escobar isn't found, and Ceaza discovers that you were here, that--" she paused significantly. "I am the victim of a madness," she declared, "of a Cuban fever." But there was no time now to analyse the processes of her mind and sex.

"I'll be going," he said abruptly.

"Naturally," she returned; "but what about your coming back? That will be more difficult, and yet it is necessary. Ah, yes, you must pretend to be in love with me; it will be hard, but what else is there? A dancer has always a number of youths at her loose heels.

"You will be laughed at, of course; the officers, Santacilla and Gaspar, will be unbearable. You will have to play the infatuated fool, and send me bouquets of gardenias and three-cornered notes, and give me money. That won't be so hard, because we can use the same sum over and over; but I shall have to read the notes to my protectors in the army."

"I'll be going," he repeated, gathering his stick and gloves from the floor. She asked, with a breath of wistfulness, if he could manage a touch of affection for her? Charles Abbott replied that this was not the hour for such questions. "The young," she sighed, "are glacial." But that, she proceeded, was exactly what drew her to them. They were like the pure wind along the eaves under which she had been born. "I promise never to kiss you again, or, if I must, solely as the mark of brotherhood. And now go back to--to Andr?s."

She backed away from him, superb in the shawl, and again she was rayed in the superlative beauty of her first appearance. The woman was lost in the dancer, the flesh in the vision, the art.

"You could be a goddess," Charles told her, "the shrine of thousands of hearts." The declaration of his entire secret was on his lips; but, after all, it wasn't his. There was a possibility that she had lied about Vincente, and at this second he might be dead, the Volunteers waiting for him, Charles Abbott, below.

Hurrying through the Paseo Isabel to the Prado, Charles, looking at his watch, found that it was nearly six. Carmita Escobar and Narcisa, and probably Domingo, were driving perhaps by the sea or perhaps toward Los Molinos, the park of the Captain-General. At any rate the women would be away from the house, and that, in the situation which faced the Escobars, was fortunate. If what La Clavel said were true, and Charles Abbott now believed her implicitly, the agents of the Crown would be already watching in the Prado. Vincente must be smuggled away; how, he didn't yet see; but a consultation would result in a plan for his escape. The servant who opened the small door in the great iron-studded double gate, though he knew Charles Abbott well, was uncommunicative to the point of rudeness. He refused to say who of the family were at home; he intimated that, in any case, Charles would not be seen, and he attempted to close him out.

Charles, however, ignoring the other's protests, forced his way into the arch on the patio. He went up the wide stairs unceremoniously to the suite of formal rooms along the street, where, to his amazement, he found the Escobar family seated in the sombreness of drawn curtains, and all of them with their faces marked with tears. Surprised by his abrupt appearance they showed no emotion other than a dull indifference. Then Andr?s rose and put his hand on Charles' shoulder, speaking in a level grave voice:

"My dear Abbott, Vincente, our brother, has made the last sacrifice possible to men. He died at noon, sitting in his chair, as a result of the fever."

This was tragic, but, with a deeper knowledge of the dilemma facing them, Charles was actually impatient. "What," he demanded, "are you going to do with the body?"

"It is placed in dignity on a couch, and we have sent to Matanzas for a priest we can trust. He'll be here early in the morning, and then, and then, we must forget our love."

"You must do that now, without a minute's loss," Charles urged them. "You can wait for no priest. The Spanish Government knows he is here; tonight, after dinner, he was to have been taken. The house will be stood on its roof, every inch investigated. You spoke, once, of Narcisa, what might horribly swallow you all. Well, it has almost come."

Andr?s' grip tightened; he was pale but quiet. "You are right," he asserted; "but how did you find this out, and save us?" That, Charles replied, was of no importance now. What could they do with Vincente's body? Carmita, his mother, began to cry again, noiselessly; Narcisa, as frigid as a statue in marble, sat with her wide gaze fastened on Charles Abbott. "What?" Domingo echoed desperately. It was no longer a question of the dignity, the blessing, of the dead, but of the salvation of the living. Vincente's corpse, revered a few minutes before, now became a hideous menace; it seemed to have grown to monumental proportions, a thing impossible to put out of sight.

Undoubtedly soldiers were watching, guarding the house: a number of men in nondescript clothes were lounging persistently under the rows of Indian laurels below. A hundred practical objections immediately rose to confront every proposal. Carmita and Narcisa had been sent from the room, and a discussion was in progress of the possibility of cutting the body into minute fragments. "If that is decided on," Domingo Escobar declared, with sweat rolling over his forehead, "I must do it; my darling and heroic son would approve; he would wish me to be his butcher."

Andr?s, harder, more mature, than the elder, stopped such expressions of sentiment. It would make such a mess, he reminded them; and then, how far could the servants, the hysterical negroes, be depended upon? They would soon discover the progress of such an operation.

Charles suggested fire, but the Spanish stoves, with shallow cups for charcoal, were useless, and the ovens were cold; it would create suspicion to set them to burning so late in the day. "Since we can't get rid of it," Charles declared, "we must accept it. The body is there, but whose is it? Did you send a servant to Matanzas?"

Two had gone, riding, once they were beyond Havana, furiously. A Jamaican negro, huge and black, totally unlike Vincente, and a Cuban newly in the city, a mestizo, brought in from the Escobars' small sugar estate near Madriga. Andr?s at once appropriated Charles' idea. Their mother and Narcisa, he proclaimed, must go out as usual for their afternoon drive, and he would secure some clothes that belonged to Juan Roman, the servant. No one in the back of the house, luckily, had seen the riders leave. Judged more faithful than the rest, they had been sent away as secretly as possible.

"What," Charles Abbott asked, "caused his death?" Andr?s faced him coldly. "This pig of a countryman I killed," he said. "The Spanish will understand that. They have killed a multitude of us, for nothing, for neglect in polishing the back of a boot. It will be more difficult with the servants,--they are used to kindness, consideration, here; but they, too, in other places, have had their lesson. And I was drunk."

In spite of Charles' insistence, he was not permitted to assist in the carrying out of the details that followed. He sat, walked about, alone in the drawing-room. After an interminable wait he heard the report, faint and muffled by walls, of a pistol, and then running feet passed the door. Domingo appeared first, a glass of brandy in his shaking hand:

"He has gone, in a sack, to be thrown into the sea ... the blood hid his face. Ah, Jesu! But it was successful--a corporal looked, with the hundred doblons I pressed into his hand. He kicked the body three times, thrust a knife into it, and said that there, anyhow, was one less Cuban." Andr?s entered the room and, without speech, embraced Charles, kissing him on either cheek; and soon Carmita Escobar and Narcisa, with their parasols and embroidered gloves, returned from their drive.

They could do nothing but wait for what impended, and Charles Abbott related to Andr?s the entire scene with La Clavel. "I believe in her," he concluded. Andr?s agreed with him. "Her plan is excellent," he pronounced; "it will be very hard on you, though. You will be fed on insults." That, Charles protested, was nothing. "And, worse still, it will end our companionship. You will be able no longer to go about with Jaime and Remigio and me. Yes, that, so soon, is over. What was left of our happiness together has been taken away. We are nothing now in ourselves. How quickly, Charles, we have aged; when I look in the glass I half expect to see grey hair. It is sad, this. Why did you leave your comfort and safety and come to us? But, thank God, you did. It was you who saved us for the present. And that, now, is enough; you must go back to the San Felipe. Put on your best clothes, with a rose in your buttonhole, and get drunk in all the caf?s; tell anyone who will listen that La Clavel is more superb than Helen of the Greeks, and buy every Spanish officer you see what he may fancy."

As Charles Abbott left the Escobar dwelling a detachment of Cuban Volunteers on horse, and a file of infantry, their uniform of brown drilling dressed with red collars and cuffs, had gathered across its face. "Quien vive?" a harsh voice stopped him. "Forastero," Charles answered sullenly. He was subjected to a long insolent scrutiny, a whangee cane smote him sharply across the back. He regarded the men about him stolidly; while an officer, who had some English, advised him to keep away from suspected Cubans. But, at last, he was released, directed to proceed at once to Anche del Norte Street, where his passport would be again examined. Charles prepared slowly for dinner at the Dominica; and, when he was ready to go out, he was the pattern of a fashionable and idle young tourist. But what filled his mind was the speculation whether or not the Escobars would remember to prevent the return of Juan Roman with the priest from Matanzas.

Nothing, considering the aspirations of Charles Abbott, could have been more ironical than the phase of life he entered upon the acceptance of La Clavel into the party of independence. The entire success of this dangerous arrangement depended on his ability to create an impression, where he was concerned, of unrelieved vapidity. He was supposed to be infatuated with the dancer; and he lingered, not wholly sober, about the fashionable resorts. Charles sent her flowers; and, sitting in his room on the roof of the San Felipe, he composed, in a cold distaste, innumerable short variations on the theme of a fluid and fatuous attachment. In reality, he had been repelled by the actuality of La Clavel; he had an unconquerable aversion for her room with its tumbled vivid finery, the powdered scents mingling with the odors of her body and of the brandy always standing in a glass beside her. Yet the discrepancy between the woman herself and the vision she had bred continued to puzzle and disconcert him.

When they were together it was this he preferred to talk about. At times she answered his questioning with a like interest; but all, practically, that she understood about herself, her dancing, had been expressed in their first conversation upon that topic. The rest, at best, was no more than a childlike curiosity and vanity. She had an insatiable appetite for compliment; and, sincere in his admiration for her impersonal aspect, Charles was content to gratify her; except when, in spite of her promise, she kissed him ardently. This never failed to seriously annoy him; and afterwards she would offer him a mock apology. It detracted, he felt, from his dignity, assaulted, insidiously, the elevation of his purpose in life.

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