A Transient Guest, and Other Episodes

by Edgar Saltus

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 ship had been sailing beneath larger stars than ours, in waters that were seamed and sentient with phosphorus; but now the ship 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-fashion, 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 replenishing 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 vitæ 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 title 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 ship, 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 ship 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 ship in a government boat, and two hours later, while his fellow-passengers 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 shield 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 massive 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.

"God be praised, my son," he murmured, "you are here."