She was followed by a group of white men, but I saw only the girl. When I recognized even at a distance that she was a girl from the States my satisfaction was unbounded. It had needed only the presence of such an audience to give the final touch of pleasure to my triumphant progress. My new uniform had been finished only just in time.
When I first saw the girl I was startled merely because any white woman in Honduras is an unusual spectacle, but as she rode nearer I knew that, had I seen this girl at home among a thousand women, I would have looked only at her.
She wore a white riding-habit, and a high-peaked Mexican sombrero, and when her pony shied at the sound of the music she raised her head, and the sun struck on the burnished braid around the brim, and framed her face with a rim of silver. I had never seen such a face. It was so beautiful that I drew a great breath of wonder, and my throat tightened with the deep delight that rose in me.
I stared at her as she rode forward, because I could not help myself. If an earthquake had opened a crevasse at my feet I would not have lowered my eyes. I had time to guess who she was, for I knew there could be no other woman so beautiful in Honduras, except the daughter of Joseph Fiske. Had not Aiken said of her, “When she passes, the native women kneel by the trail and cross themselves?”
I rode toward her fearfully, conscious only of a sudden deep flood of gratitude for anything so nobly beautiful. I was as humbly thankful as the crusader who is rewarded by his first sight of the Holy City, and I was glad, too, that I came into her presence worthily, riding in advance of a regiment. I was proud of our triumphant music, of our captured flags and guns, and the men behind me, who had taken them.
I still watched her as our column drew nearer, and she pulled her pony to one side to let it pass. I felt as though I were marching in review before an empress, and I all but lifted my sword-blade in salute.
But as we passed I saw that the look on her face was that of a superior and critical adversary. It was a glance of amused disdain, softened only by a smile of contempt. As it fell upon me I blushed to the rim of my sombrero. I felt as meanly as though I had been caught in a lie. With her eyes, I saw the bare feet of our negro band, our ill-fitting uniforms with their flannel facings, the swagger of our officers, glancing pompously from their half-starved, unkempt ponies upon the native Indians, who fawned at us from the sidewalks.
I saw that to her we were so many red-shirted firemen, dragging a wooden hose-cart; a company of burnt-cork minstrels, kicking up the dust of a village street; that we were ridiculous, lawless, absurd, and it was like a blow over my heart that one so noble-looking should be so blind and so unjust. I was swept with bitter indignation. I wanted to turn in my saddle and cry to her that beneath the flannel facings at which she laughed these men wore deep, uncared-for, festering wounds; that to march thus through the streets of this tiny Capital they had waded waist-high through rivers, had starved in fever camps, and at any hour when I had called on them had run forward to throw cold hands with death.
The group of gentlemen who were riding with the girl had halted their ponies by the sidewalk, and as I drew near I noted that one of them wore the uniform of an ensign in our navy. This puzzled me for an instant, until I remembered I had heard that the cruiser Raleigh was lying at Amapala. I was just passing the group when one of them, with the evident intent that I should hear him, raised his voice.
“Well, here’s the army,” he said, “but where’s Falstaff? I don’t see Laguerre.”