Four Bells: A Tale of the Caribbean

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

Thus Teresa sadly argued with herself, but love and logic cannot be mated. She loved Richard Cary with an unwavering constancy. And her belief that he cared for her in the same way might be shaken, but could not be destroyed. He was the soul of candor. His simplicity was as massive as a mountain-side. Honesty was in him if ever it dwelt in any man.

The fateful brown monkey, unhappily secluded beneath the burlap sacks in the vegetable bin, had reason for ironic mirth. Those crumpled scraps of paper in a corner of the patio—if the woman had been wise enough to smooth them and try to piece them together, a word or two here, a phrase there, she might have found the answer to her question.

Absorbed in her study of the briar pipe, Teresa had paid no heed to the scattered bits of paper so minutely torn by a monkey’s busy fingers. They had failed to impress her as bearing any resemblance to the remains of a letter. She went from room to room, searching for sign or trace of the occupancy of Richard Cary. There might be something else besides his pipe. The search yielded nothing at all. The library desk was vainly ransacked. The waste-baskets had been emptied. There was absolutely nothing anywhere to indicate that Uncle Ramon Bazán had entertained a guest.

Weary and bewildered, Teresa threw herself upon the bed in the coolest room. It would be an ordeal to have to meet Señor Alonzo de Mello’s family at dinner, but it could not be avoided. There were questions to ask him. She had to know more about the singular voyage of her Uncle Ramon. Where else could she try to find information? Uncle Ramon’s two servants, of course, the Indian muchacho and the negress who had cooked and slaved for him. José and Rosa were all the names by which she knew them. She was in ignorance of where either lived. It might not be in Cartagena at all. Unless Señor de Mello could help her, it might be impossible to find the two servants. Then, again, if the furtive Uncle Ramon had been guarding some secret, as it seemed plausible to assume, it would have been like him to bind José and Rosa to silence after his departure.

This house held a secret. It concerned Richard Cary. This was as far as Teresa could grope in her labyrinth, But it was not her habit to hesitate and grope for long. She would take a path and follow it to the bitter end, once the choice of direction had been made.

It was a long, long afternoon to spend in this silent house that refused to whisper its secret. Teresa drowsed off more than once, dreadfully tired and feeling the heat after the passage across the Caribbean and the strong wind that was almost always blowing there, whistling through a ship’s stays, whipping the blue surface into foaming surges, blowing beneath a hard, bright sky: the wind with a tang to it, the wind that Richard Cary had so zestfully drawn deep into his lungs, standing with arms folded across his mighty chest.

It was a breath of this same wind that came, at length, and drew through the long windows of Ramon Bazán’s house when the sun was going down. It stirred the sultry air. Teresa dropped her fan. She would take her bath and do her hair and put on the evening gown of black lace which had been her one extravagant purchase in New York. The household of Señor de Mello dined with a certain amount of formality.

When she was dressed, Teresa remembered the odious monkey which had betaken itself into retirement. She could never coax it into following her next door. Señor de Mello would have to intervene. She refused to spend a night under the same roof with it. She went to close the door into the rear hall. This would keep her pet aversion penned in the kitchen quarters.

The breeze had increased and was buoyantly sweeping through the patio. It caught up the bits of torn paper and whirled them like snowflakes. Teresa noticed them because she hated the slightest disorder. She had been disciplined in the immaculate routine of well-kept ships in the passenger trade. Flying bits of paper annoyed her. It was too late to sweep them up. They were drifting hither and yon.

Now that they had attracted her attention, she called herself a stupid fool for neglecting to examine them in the first place. She had been thinking of something else. Was there writing on them? She stooped to catch a few bits as they eddied to the floor. One or two fluttered behind a bench. Others settled in the dusty basin of the fountain. In the open court the light of the sky was failing. She took the bits of paper to a lamp.