A Transient Guest, and Other Episodes

by Edgar Saltus

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 fashion 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 fishing 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 scrappy 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-shells 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, Señorita," he said.

"And yours, Don Ruis," she replied.

"You know my name, Señorita! 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.