“Ah! a benefactor to the town, I see.”
“A generous, princely gentleman, Excellency—and his daughter quite a little queen amongst us.”
“Is she now at the Villa San Jorge?”
“She arrived from Europe three days ago, Excellency.”
I had nothing more to ask, and without the loss of a moment I delivered my dressing-bag to the negro servant who approached me in the General’s name, and mounted the horse which a smart French groom led up to me. Okyada, my servant, being equally well cared for, we set off presently from the town, a little company, it may be, of a dozen men, and began to ride upward toward the mountains. A less suspicious man, one less given to remark every circumstance, however trivial, would have found the scene entirely delightful. The wild, tortuous mountain path, the clear sky above, the glittering rocks becoming peaks and domes of gold in the moonbeams, the waving torches carried by negroes, Portuguese, mulattoes, men of many nationalities who sang a haunting native chant as they went—here, truly, was the mask of romance if not its true circumstance. But I had eyes rather for the men themselves, for the arms they carried, the ugly knives, the revolvers that I detected in the holsters. Against what perils of that simple island life were these weapons intended? Should I say that these men were assassins, and that I had been decoyed to the island to be the subject of a vulgar and grotesquely imprudent crime? I did not believe it. The anchor light of the White Wings, shining across the water, stood for my salvation. These men dare not murder me, I said. I could have laughed aloud at their display of impotent force.
I say that we followed a dangerous path up the hillside; but anon this opened out somewhat, and having crossed a modern bridge of iron above a considerable chasm, the forbidding walls of which the torches showed me very plainly—having passed thereby, we found ourselves upon a plateau, the third of a mile across, perhaps, and having for its background the great peak of the mountain itself. How the land went upon the seaward side I could not make out in the darkness; but no sooner had we passed the gates than I observed the lights of a house shining very pleasantly across the park; and from the cries the men raised, the hastening paces of the horses, and the ensuing hubbub, I knew that we had reached our destination, and that this was the home of General Fordibras.
Five minutes later, the barking of hounds, the sudden flash of light from an open door, and a figure in the shadows gave us welcome to the Villa San Jorge. I dismounted from my horse and found myself face to face, not with Hubert Fordibras, but with his daughter Joan.
She was prettily dressed in a young girl’s gown of white, but one that evidently had been built in Paris. I observed that she wore no jewellery, and that her manner was as natural and simple as I might have hoped it to be. A little shyly, she told me that her father had been called to the neighbouring island of St. Michaels, and might not return for three days.
“And isn’t it just awful?” she said, the American phrase coming prettily enough from her young lips. “Isn’t it awful to think that I shall have to entertain you all that long while?”
I answered her that if my visit were an embarrassment, I could return to the yacht immediately—that I had come to see her father, and that my time was my own. To all of which she replied with one of those expressive and girlish gestures which had first attracted me toward her—just an imperceptible shrug of the shoulders and a pretty pout of protest.