Joseph Hergesheimer

“ Howard Gage had said. “There wasn’t any music about it, any romance. It had to be done, that was all, and it was. Don’t expect me to be poetic.”
Yes, the youth of today were, to Charles’ way of thinking, badly off. Anyone who could not be poetic, who wouldn’t be if he had the chance, was unfortunate, limited, cramped. Visions, ideals, were indispensable for youth. Why, damn it, love was dependent on dreams, unreality. He had never known it; but he was able to appreciate what it might be in a man’s life. ”

“ A dark angry surge invaded his face, and then receded. “No man will ever kill me,” he repeated. “It is my star.” A hand left the cane and produced a small gold whistle.
Charles stared dully at the useless weapon, with its mounting of mother-of-pearl, which he still held.
“The cartridges have been too long in their barrels,” Santacilla explained; “they have dried and shifted. You should have greased them every week.”
La Clavel stood, lost in thought, like a woman in a dream. Her hair, over which she had spent such time and curses, was an elaborate silhouette against the light. ”

“ Charles Abbott kissed her softly and then took her hands. “You wouldn’t want me, Narcisa,” he continued; “if I failed in this, I should fail you absolutely. If I were unfaithful now I could never be faithful to you.”
She drew her hands sharply away. “It’s you who are young and not I,” she declared; “you talk like a boy, like Andrés. All you want is a kind of glory, like the gold lace the officers of Isabella wear. Nothing could be more selfish.” ”

“ At moments of rest, his chest laboring and arms limp at his sides, Charles Abbott would stare up at the remote pastoral of love and Venus and roses. Then the clamor, the wicked scrape of steel, the sharp breaths, the sibilant cries that accompanied the lunges, would appear wholly incomprehensible to him, a business in a mad-house; he’d want to tear the plastron, with its scarlet heart sewn high on the left, from his chest, and fling it, with his gauntlet and mask, across the floor; he’d want to break all the foils, and banish Galope Hormiguero to live among the wild beasts he resembled. ”

“ An air of amused surprise appeared on his countenance, “If you are so taken with Andrés 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. ”

“ A sharp gladness seized him that Andrés had, almost at the last, heard his voice, his shouted warning and apprehension and love. If liberty, justice, were to come, one life, two, could make no difference; a hundred years, a hundred hundred, were small measures of time. And if all were doomed, impossible, open to the knife of a fateful Pilar, why, then, they had had their companionship, their warmth, a period of unalloyed fidelity to a need that broke ideals like reeds. ”

“ How yellow the face was, the eyes were like jet, through the mask. Then Charles Abbott grasped what, he was certain, was the purpose of such an apparently disproportionate attack. It was the result of a cold effort, a set determination, to destroy what courage he had. He gazed quickly about, and saw nothing but Spanish faces; the fencing master was in the far end of the room, intent upon a sheaf of foils. At any moment de Vaca could have disarmed him, sent his steel flying through air; but that he forebore to do. ”

“ La Clavel was a glittering thing of beauty, the perfection of all that in a happier world, an Elysium—life and romance might be. He regarded her in a mood of decided melancholy as something greatly desirable and never to be grasped. When she danced his every sensibility was intensified; life, for the moment, was immeasurably lovely, flooded with lyrical splendor, vivid with gorgeous color and aching happiness. Charles’ pleasure in every circumstance of being 59 was acutely expanded—his affection for Andrés, the charm of Havana, the dignity of his impending fate. ”

“ Vincente Escobar, it was evident, thought that he wasn’t capable of sustaining such a trust. Still there was nothing to be gained by protests, hot asseverations; with difficulty he suppressed his resentment, and sat, to all appearances, calm, engaged with a cigar and attending Vincente’s irregular vehement speech. Andrés was silent, dark and serious; but the gaze he turned upon Charles was warm with affection and admiration. Nothing, Vincente insisted, could be done now; they must wait and draw into their cause every possible ultimate assistance and understanding. ”

“ The older woman was assisted into the leather body of the quitrin, Pilar settled lightly in the niña 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 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? ”

“ She was, Charles was forced to admit, notably pretty; in fact, for a little girl, she was a beauty. Now if she had been thirty he might have had a hopeless passion for her, hopeless not because she failed to return it, but for the reason that he was a man without a future—some day, they both knew, he would desert love for stark death.
They went, Charles and Andrés, Tirso and Remigio and Jaime, to the Tacon Theatre for every play, where they occupied a box in the first row, the primer piso, and lounged, between the acts, on the velvet rail with their high silk hats and canes and boutonnières. ”

“ The Louvre was 180 crowded, a dense mass 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was nothing sacrificial in Howard Gage’s conception of life and duty, no allegiance outside his immediate need. Selfish, Charles Abbott decided. What upset him was the other’s coldness: damn it, a young man had no business to 11 be so literal! Youth was a time for generous transforming passions, for heroics. The qualities of absolute justice and consistency should come only with increasing age—the inconsiderable compensations for the other ability to be rapt in uncritical enthusiasms. ”

“ It was, in its persistence, mocking; and finally it grew into a bitter undertone to the elevation of his thought: he wanted, like Savonarola, to bring to an end the depravity of the city; he wanted to cleanse Havana of everything but the blanched heavenly ardor of his own dedication. The jotas continued and the scent of mignonette increased. The moon, slipping over the sea, shone with a vague brightness on the leaves of the laurels below, on the whiteness of marble walks, and in the liquid gleam of fountains. A woman laughed with a note of uncertainty and passion.... ”

“ The politicians of Washington are not different from those of Cuba. If he is wise he will see Havana as an idler. Even you, Andrés, do not know yet what is waiting for you. It is one thing to conspire in a balcony on the Prado and another to lie in the marshes of Camagüey. You cannot realize how desperate Spain is with the debt left from her wars with Morocco and Chile and Peru. Cuba, for a number of years, has been her richest possession. While the Spaniards were paying taxes of three dollars and twenty some cents, we, in Cuba, were paying six dollars and sixty-nine. ”

“ But those tragedies and reprisals, the champion of his determination insisted, were limited, as he had begun by saying, to the politically involved. No more engaging or safer city than Havana existed for the delight of young travelling Americans with an equal amount of money and good sense. He had proceeded to indicate the temperate pleasures of Havana; but, then, Charles Abbott had no ear for sensuous enjoyment. His mind was filled by the other vision of heroic youth dying for the ideal of liberty.
He had never before given Cuba, under Spanish rule, a thought ”

“ He unpacked slowly, with a gratifying sense of the mature significance of his every gesture; and, in the stone tub hidden by a curtain in a corner, had a refreshing bath. There was a single window rising from the tiled floor eight or ten feet, and he opened double shutters, discovering a shallow iron-railed balcony. Before him was a squat yellow building with a wide complicated façade; it reached back for a square, and Charles decided that it was the Tacon Theatre. ”

“ She sank forward again, the knotted fringe of her mantón spread out beyond the rug, upon the stone. After a little he told her that her courage, her daring and patience, were magnificent. But she replied that they were cold virtues. “All virtues are cold,” Charles assured her seriously. If that were so, La Clavel whispered, her cheek close to his, she was lost to virtue. Anyhow, she didn’t believe him, he could not, at his age, know so much. Yet not, God comprehended, that he wasn’t both virtuous and cold; any other man in the world, not a heathen, would have flung himself at her. ”

“ 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 sexless body was upright in its film of clear white. ”

“ Perfection like that couldn’t begin on the rim of being and extend inward; it must be at the center of all life, obscured, delayed, but, in an end not computable in the span of human existence, certain and inevitable. Charles Abbott now had the feeling that, parallel with the maintaining of his grasp on materialism, his recognition of the means at his hand, there should be an allegiance to a supremacy of the immeasurable whole. ”

“ No woman that Howard Gage might dream of could have worn La Clavel’s mantón; it would have consumed her like a breath of fire, leaving a white ash hardly more than distinguishable from the present living actuality. Women cast up a prodigious amount of smoke now, a most noisy crackling, but Charles Abbott doubted the blaze within them. Water had been thrown on it. Their grace, too, the dancing about which 16 they made such a stir,—not to compare it with La Clavel’s but with no better than Pilar’s—was hardly more than a rapid clumsy posturing. ”