The interior of the club was painfully hot, and most of the members sat upon the terrace above the entrance, sipping drinks from glasses that tinkled musically. Two or three cigars glowed fitfully in the obscurity, and the white-clad figure of the mozo moving from chair to chair was wraithlike.
Beckwith stood in the doorway a moment before emerging. The band was good, even for a military band among a musical people. At the moment it was playing a soft and dreamy waltz, while the young people in the plaza below eddied in their endless circles, the women inside, prim and decorous and the men without, discreetly admiring. Half a dozen sputtering lights detracted from the romance of the scene, but made it possible to catch an occasional glimpse of some darkly beautiful face, outlined in the sharp glow of the arc-lamp.
Beckwith paid no attention to that phase of the scene, but searched among the seated, coatless figures for Melton, the consul. Melton had drawn his chair close to the railing and was looking out and down upon the plaza with a curiously wistful expression. Beckwith caught sight of him when the red glow of his cigar lighted up his face for a moment. With an assumption of indifference, Beckwith dropped into the chair by his side. Melton turned and squinted at him through the darkness until he recognized who it was.
“Oh, hello, Beckwith,” he said casually.
“Hot, isn’t it?”
He turned and surveyed the prim crowd below him, without waiting for Beckwith’s acknowledgment. Melton was silent for a moment or so.
“Beckwith,” he said presently, “do you know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of Springfield, Massachusetts, about November. It’s so different.” He half smiled to himself in the darkness. “I remember I used to be going about this time to call on some girl, with a box of candy under my arm.”
“Mozo,” said Beckwith harshly. The boy came and took his order.
“You’ve been down here ten years,” went on the consul, still in that half-hushed tone of reminiscence. “I’ve been away five years from the States, but I can still picture it. Crowds of people going into vaudeville houses, others climbing excitedly on street-cars. I’d give a lot to have a street-car clang a bell at me just about now.”
“I was in New York two weeks ago,” said Beckwith suddenly, half minded to blurt out his reason for going north and what he had done there. “Went up there, but it was all strange. I wasn’t comfortable until I got back here.”