That same night Biglow happened to hear Adams performing on a banjo at the Sing-Song Café, hard by their lodgings (Adams was a decent banjo player), and Clensy strumming out melodies and dance-tunes on a derelict piano. So when Biglow met Clensy next day he gave the young Englishman a most contemptuous look, and said, “You! You play the piano like that and yet ask me to get you introduced into the palace society!”
“What on earth has the piano to do with it? How? Why?” said Clensy, mystified.
“Lad, you’re a mug, and though you can’t see farther than the tip of yer nose, you may consider yourself engaged on the spot as Pianist to the President of the Black Republic.”
Clensy, with his usual lack of confidence, began to expostulate and bring forward a hundred reasons to show why such a procedure would be a failure. But Biglow simply gave him another contemptuous glance, and then, pushing his mass of curls from his massive brow, turned on his heel and walked away. Next day, when Clensy returned from a stroll in the town back to his lodgings, Biglow smacked him on the back and informed him that he was engaged as piano-player for the coming presidential ball. The next moment Biglow had handed Clensy twenty Mexican dollars.
“What’s this for?” gasped the astonished Clensy.
“Why, you looney, it’s your advance, a bit on account of your wages!” Then Biglow explained that he had told the President that he, Clensy, was a great musician, the chief Musical Director of the Conservatoire in New York, and that it was a relentless rule of Yankee virtuosos to demand an advance note.
“But I’m not a professional player at all. I can’t play well enough,” said Clensy, as he recovered from his surprise, and looked at the money. “I’m only a strummer on the piano, and they’ll expect to hear some of the classics performed, won’t they?” said Clensy.
“Can’t play well enough! Classics, by God!” yelled Biglow, giving the young Englishman a withering, pitying glance, then he added, “By heavens, if you refuse the job, I’ll take it on! Do you think these half-caste niggers know what music is? It’s Bartholomew Biglow who knows what melody is; he’ll show ’em!” So saying, Biglow immediately opened his mouth and began to sing some weird heathen melody which made the Haytian maids rush from their doorways to see who sang so well and with such vibrant feeling. Clensy at once bowed to the inevitable, and agreed to accept the engagement, and play at the palace ball on the following night.
Royal Clensy discovered that Biglow’s assurance that no one in Hayti knew what real music was, was admirably exemplified by himself when he sat the next night in the sumptuously furnished ball-room of the palace and banged away on the imported Erard pianoforte. True enough he had been well primed up for the occasion by Biglow, who had enticed him to swallow much cognac. And so the young Englishman felt that he was seeing tropical life in its most vigorous, romantic stage, as the richly-attired Haytian chiefs and voluptuous-eyed mulatto women, clad in picturesque sarongs, did wonderful dances that had been introduced into Hayti by the old-time West African negro emigrants. As the happy guests drank their host’s rich, heady wines, the strain of negro blood, which is in the veins of almost all the Haytians, asserted itself. The romantically clad half-caste girls undid their chignons and allowed their shining, dusky tresses to fall in wanton abandonment about their bare shoulders. And, as their softly-sandalled feet tripped and glided across the wide polished floor of the dancing-room, their dark eyes sparkled in the light of the innumerable hanging lamps. Clensy almost forgot to play the tricky syncopated time of the dances, for just by the side of the piano was a large mirror wherein the shadowy forms of the wine-warmed dusky beauties gave misty yet vivid demonstrative exhibitions of their delicate charms, as they did the heart-rending steps of the bamboula and the old barbarian chica dances! Even Biglow gave a ponderous wink and modestly arched his hand over his eyes as his big dancing feet swerved by the piano, and Clensy looked sideways at him. That ball-room was a seraglio of smouldering frenzied passion. The semi-diaphanous robes of the women seemed to have been cut out of material that was specially suitable for revealing the shapely limbs of the wearers. The lustrous eyes of those dusky beauties of southern climes gave deliberate, long languishing glances, and so fired the blood of dark, fierce men who had their origin away back in the ancient primitive life of Africa and Arabia.
When the interval arrived, Clensy rose from the piano and strolled about, as he sought to find some trace of pretty Sestrina, she whom he had dreamed so much about. He was almost pleased to find that she was not to be found in that passionate, riotous, high Haytian society. The reason Sestrina was absent was because the president would not allow his daughter to enter the festival rooms when the fetish dances were on. Instead of Clensy being disappointed at not seeing the girl at all, he blessed his luck, for everything turned out beautifully unexpected. The heat was terrific, and so Clensy, after having a cooling drink, pulled the wide heavily-draped curtains of the ball-room aside and passed into the outer corridors. Then he stood by the tropical flowers which grew in pots in the large palace rooms, and breathed in the scented zephyrs which floated through the open windows. The sight of the picturesque grounds that surrounded the presidential residence tempted him to pass out into the open air. As he approached the mahogany groves and lit a cigarette, he was startled at hearing a voice say, “Suva, monsieur, ’tis you again! Why this pleasure?”