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 102 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 Andrés.”
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 103 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 104 no emotion other than a dull indifference. Then Andrés rose and put his hand on Charles’ shoulder, speaking in a level grave voice: