"He's a clever man, and will remember your services," said the general, carelessly, as he walked up the quay and received the salute of the sentinel on duty.
Some strange feeling appeared to be working in the breast of the young officer who had just performed the gallant deed we have recorded, for he seemed even now to be quite lost to all outward realization, and was evidently engaged in most agreeable communion with himself mentally. He too now walked up the quay, also, receiving the salute of the sentinel, and not forgetting either, as did the superior officer, to touch his cap in acknowledgement, a sign that an observant man would have marked in the character of both; and one, too, which was not lost on the humble private, whose duty it was to stand at his post until the middle watch of the night. A long and weary duty is that of a sentinel on the quay at night.
CHAPTER II.—THE BELLE AND THE SOLDIER.
WHOEVER has been in Havana, that strange and peculiar city, whose every association and belonging seem to bring to mind the period of centuries gone by, whose time-worn and moss-covered cathedrals appear to stand as grim records of the past, whose noble palaces and residences of the rich give token of the fact of its great wealth and extraordinary resources—whoever, we say, has been in this capital of Cuba, has of course visited its well-known and far-famed Tacon Paseo. It is here, just outside the city walls, in a beautiful tract of land, laid out in tempting walks, ornamented with the fragrant flowers of the tropics, and with statues and fountains innumerable, that the beauty and fashion of the town resort each afternoon to drive in their volantes, and to meet and greet each other.
It was on the afternoon subsequent to that of the accident recorded in the preceding chapter, that a young officer, off duty, might be seen partially reclining upon one of the broad seats that here and there line the foot-path of the circular drive in the Paseo. He possessed a fine manly figure, and was perhaps of twenty-four or five years of age, and clothed in the plain undress uniform of the Spanish army. His features were of that national and handsome cast that is peculiar to the full-blooded Castilian, and the pure olive of his complexion contrasted finely with a moustache and imperial as black as the dark flowing hair that fell from beneath his foraging cap. At the moment when we introduce him he was playing with a small, light walking-stick, with which he thrashed his boots most immoderately; but his thoughts were busy enough in another quarter, as any one might conjecture even at a single glance.
Suddenly his whole manner changed; he rose quickly to his feet, and lifting his cap gracefully, he saluted and acknowledged the particular notice of a lady who bent partially forward from a richly mounted volante drawn by as richly it caparisoned horse, and driven by as richly dressed a calesaro. The manner of the young officer from that moment was the very antipodes of what it had been a few moments before. A change seemed to have come over the spirit of his dream. His fine military figure became erect and dignified, and a slight indication of satisfied pride was just visible in the fine lines of his expressive lips. As he passed on his way, after a momentary pause, he met General Harero, who stiffly acknowledged his military salute, with anything but kindness expressed in the stern lines of his forbidding countenance. He even took some pains to scowl upon the young soldier as they passed each other.
But what cared Lieutenant Bezan for his frowns? Had not the belle of the city, the beautiful, the peerless, the famed Senorita Isabella Gonzales just publicly saluted him?-that glorious being whose transcendent beauty had been the theme of every tongue, and whose loveliness had enslaved him from the first moment he had looked upon her-just two years previous, when he first came from Spain. Had not this high-born and proud lady publicly saluted him? Him, a poor lieutenant of infantry, who had never dared to lift his eyes to meet her own before, however deep and ardently he might have worshipped her in secret. What cared the young officer that his commander had seen fit thus to frown upon him? True, he realized the power of military discipline, and particularly of the Spanish army; but he forgot all else now, in the fact that Isabella Gonzales had publicly saluted him in the paths of the Paseo.
Possessed of a highly chivalrous disposition, Lieutenant Bezan had few confidants among his regiment, who, notwithstanding this, loved him as well as brothers might love. He seemed decidedly to prefer solitude and his books to the social gatherings, or the clubs formed by his brother officers, or indeed to join them in any of their ordinary sports or pastimes.