“Be honest—you didn’t care for me. You ought to be very successful, you have things surprising in the so young. Will you,” she demanded suddenly, totally changing the subject, “be my maid?” He hastened to inform her, vehemently, that he would not. “Jobaba hasn’t come today,” La Clavel continued; “and she wasn’t here to dress me for dinner last evening. That is unusual in her: I have a feeling she is not coming back.”
“Perhaps she has been murdered in one of the brujos cabildos,” Charles suggested. “It is impossible to say where that frenzy stops.” A happening quite different, the dancer told him, was in her mind.
“I could never get into the thoughts of Jobaba,” she admitted. “And there is very little I miss. I suppose it’s the negro. She is like cream, smooth and beautiful to look at, but turned by thunder.” If she were going away, Charles reminded her, there were a number of things to be discussed and closed. And she told Charles how a Cuban, ostensibly attached to the national party, but in reality a Spanish secret 155 agent, had been sent into Camagüey. His name was Rimblas.
Charles Abbott repeated that, and memorized such characteristics as La Clavel knew. There was an indefinite stir at the door, a short knock, and he moved to the window as Santacilla entered unceremoniously.
The Spaniard was a model of politeness, of consideration, and he listened, seated with his hands folded about the head of his officer’s cane, to La Clavel’s determination to go to South America. It was an excellent plan, he agreed; they would welcome her rapturously in Buenos Aires; but hadn’t she put off her intention a little too long? It was on account of the climate, the season, he hastened to add. Although, of course, they would open the opera house for her, the smart world would come in from their estancias.
“But what will our young American do?” he demanded. “How will he live without his delight? But perhaps he is going to the Argentine with you. He will have a busy time, and a hatful of challenges there, where beauty is appreciated to the full.”
Charles said, with an appearance of sullenness, that he hadn’t been invited to go farther 156 south; and Santacilla replied that, as a matter of fact, it might be necessary for him to remain, perhaps forever, in Havana. He spoke cheerfully, gazing amiably upon them, but a vague quality of his bearing, his voice, was disturbing, mocking. His words had the air of an underlying meaning different from their sound. An uneasiness, as well, was communicated to La Clavel: she watched Santacilla with an indirect puzzled gaze.
“Jobaba has gone,” she announced abruptly.
The trace of a smile hovered about the officer’s expression of regret. “A personable clip of hell,” was his opinion of the strayed maid. “Do you remember the major who composed music?” he addressed La Clavel. “Well, he was always a little touched in the brain, and he caught this negro hysteria, he became a brujos. He’d come home in the morning with his body marked in yellow chalk, and wrung out like a boatman’s sponge; and he let drop a fact or two about your Jobaba screaming to an African drum rubbed with the fingers. In that state, he said, a great deal that was curious and valuable could be dragged from her. We encouraged his madness, at the Cabañas, for what it brought us. But it was unfortunate for him—he ties bright rags 157 about his ankles and mumbles, when he thinks he is alone.”
Charles Abbott’s mind, sifting all that the other said, was abnormally active, sharp. Something, he couldn’t quite grasp what, was acutely, threateningly, wrong. He had a sense of impending danger, a premonition of dashing sound, of discord. And, whatever developed, he must meet it, subdue and conquer it. Ceaza y Santacilla, he saw, was not visibly armed; but, probably, he would carry a small pistol. The one his father had given him was in Charles’ pocket. The difficulty was that, in the event of a disturbance, no matter what the outcome here might happen to be, the dancer and he would bear the weight of any Spanish fury. And it was no part of his intention to be cut in half by bullets behind a fortress wall.