“No, Andrés, it isn’t a token of love, but a banner, yours even more than mine, a charge we must keep above the earth.”
That, Andrés observed satirically, was very pretty; but a mantón, a woman’s thing, had no relation to the cause of Cuban independence.
“Perhaps, but of course, you are right,” Charles agreed. “Very well, then it is only a superstition of mine. I have the feeling that if we lower this—this standard it will bring us bad luck, it will be disastrous. What that Pilar, you may think, is to you, the mantón has always been for me. It is in my blood; I regard it as a sailor might a chart. And then, Andrés, remember—it protected Cuba.”
“I have to have it,” the other whispered desperately; “she—she wants it, for the danzón.”
Charles Abbott’s resentment changed to pity, and then to a calm acceptance of what had the aspect of undeviating fate. “Very well,” he said quietly. “After all, you are right, it is nothing but a shawl, and our love for each other must not suffer. I’ll give it to you freely, Andrés: she will look wonderful in it.”
The other grasped his hands. “Be patient, Charles,” he begged. “This will go and leave us as we were before, as we shall always be. It hasn’t touched what you know of, it is absolutely aside from that—a little scene in front of the curtain between the acts of the serious, the main, piece. I doubted her honesty, as you described it, at first; but you were right. She has no interest at all in our small struggle; she is only anxious to return to Peru.”
“I wish she had never come from there!” Charles declared; “whether she is honest or dishonest is unimportant. She is spoiled, like a bad lime.”
“If you had been more successful with her—” Andrés paused significantly.
“So that,” Charles returned, “is what she said or hinted to you!” Andrés Escobar was gazing away into the massed and odorous grey-blue mignonette. “Go away before I get angry with you; 199 you are more Spanish than any Mendoza. The mantón you’ll find at home tonight.”