He was, frankly, worried about Andrés; not fundamentally—Andrés’ loyalty was beyond any personal betrayal—but because he was aware of the essential inflammability of all tropical emotion. The other might get into a rage with Pilar, who never, herself, could fall into such an error, and pay the penalty exacted by a swift gesture toward the hem of her skirt. Then he recalled, still with a slight shudder of delight, the soft dragging feel of her fingers on his cheek. He tied the shawl up sombrely, oppressed by the conviction of mischance he had expressed to Andrés, and despatched it.
Pilar de Lima might, possibly, depart for Peru earlier even than she hoped; boats left not infrequently for Mexico and South America—the Argentine for which La Clavel had longed—and she was welcome to try her mysterious arts upon the seas away from Cuba and Andrés. A sugar bag could easily, at the appropriate moment, be slipped over her head, and a bateau carry her out, with a sum of gold, at night to a departing ship. There would be no trouble, after she had been seen, in getting her on board. And Charles Abbott thought of her, in her silent whiteness, corrupting 200 one by one the officers and crew; a vague hatred would spread over the deck, forward and aft; and through the cabins, the hearts, her suggestions and breath of evil touched. They would never see Mexico, he decided; but, on a calm purple night in the Gulf, a sanguine and volcanic inferno of blackened passion would burst around the flicker of her blanched dress and face no colder in death than in life.
Charles Abbott’s thoughts returned continually to Andrés; in the shadowy region of his brain the latter was like a vividly and singly illuminated figure. He remembered, too, the occasion of his first seeing Andrés, at the Hotel Inglaterra: they had gone together into the restaurant, where, over rum punches and cigars, the love he had for him had been born at once. It was curious—that feeling; a thing wholly immaterial, idealizing. He had speculated about it before, but without coming to the end of its possibilities, the bottom of its meaning. There was no need to search for a reason for the love of women; that, it might be, was no more than mechanical, the allurement cast by nature about its automatic purpose. It belonged to earth, where it touched any sky was not 201 Charles’ concern; but his friendship for Andrés Escobar had no relation to material ends.
At first it had been upheld, vitalized, by admiration, qualities perceptible to his mind, to analysis; he had often reviewed them—Andrés’ deep sense of honor, his allegiance to a conduct free of self, his generosity, his slightly dramatic but inflexible courage, the fastidious manners of his person. His clothes, the sprig of mimosa he preferred, the angle of his hat and the rake back, through an elbow, of his malacca cane, were all satisfying, distinguished. But Charles’ consciousness of these actual traits, details, had vanished before an acceptance of Andrés as a whole, uncritically. What, once, had been a process of thought had become an emotion integral with his own subconscious being.
Something of his essential character had entered Andrés, and a part of Andrés had become bound into him. This, as soon as she had grown into the slightest menace to it, had cast Pilar de Lima from his consideration. It had been no effort, at the moment necessary he had forgotten her; just as Andrés, faced with the truth, would put her away from him. The bond between them, Charles told himself, was forged from pure gold.
This was running through his head on the 202 night of the danzón. He was seated at the entrance of the United States Club, where the sharp Yankee accents of the gamblers within floated out and were lost in the narrow walled darkness of Virtudes Street. It was no more than eleven, the Tacon Theatre would be empty yet.... Charles had no intention of going to the danzón, but at the same time he was the victim of a restless curiosity in connection with it; he had an uncomfortable oppression at the vision of Andrés, with Pilar in the bright shawl, on the floor crowded with the especial depravities of Havana.
The Spanish officers had made it customary for men of gentility to go into the criolla festivities; they were always present, the young and careless, the drunken and degenerate; and that, too, added to Charles’ indefinable sense of possible disaster. In a way, it might be an excellent thing for him to attend, to watch, the danzón. If Andrés were infatuated he would be blind to the dangers, both the political and those emanating from the mixture of bloods. At this moment the game inside ended, and a knot of men, sliding into their coats, awkwardly grasping broad-brimmed hats, appeared, departing for the Tacon Theatre. A perfunctory nodded invitation for 203 him to accompany them settled the indecision in Charles Abbott’s mind. And, a half hour later, he was seated in a palco of the second tier, above the dance.
Familiar with them, he paid no attention to the sheer fantastic spectacle; the two orchestras, one taking up the burden of sound when the other paused, produced not for him their rasping dislocated rhythm. He was aware only of floating skirts, masks and dark or light faces, cigars held seriously in serious mouths. Charles soon saw that Andrés and Pilar de Lima had not yet arrived. As he leaned forward over the railing of the box, Gaspar Arco de Vaca, sardonic and observing, glanced up and saluted with his exaggerated courtesy. He disappeared, there was a knock at the closed door behind Charles, and de Vaca entered.
There was a general standing acknowledgement of his appearance; the visor of his dress cap was touched for every man present, and he took a vacated chair at Charles’ side. “You weren’t attracted to my white absinthe,” he said easily. On the contrary, Charles replied, he had liked Pilar very well, although she had annoyed him by foolish tales of a Spanish interest in him.