He had spoken vaguely to Sherwen of a restless condition of the local mind. Reports, it appeared, had been set afloat among the populace to the effect that an American sanitary officer had been bribed by the enemies of Caracuña to declare plague prevalent, in order to close the ports and strangle commerce. Urgante was going about the lower part of the city haranguing on street corners without interference from the police. In the arroyo of the slaughter-house, two American employees of the street-car company had been stoned and beaten. Much aguardiente was in process of consumption, it being a half-holiday in honor of some saint, and nobody knew what trouble might break out.
“Bolas are rolling around like balls on a billiard table,” said young Raimonda, who had come after luncheon to call on Miss Brewster. “In this part of the city there will be nothing. You needn’t be alarmed.”
“I’m not afraid,” said Miss Polly.
“I’m sure of it,” declared the Caracuñan, with admiration. “You are very wonderful, you American women.”
“Oh, no. It’s only that we love excitement,” she laughed.
“Ah, that is all very well, for a bull-fight or ‘la boxe.’ But for one of our street émeutes—no; too much!”
They were seated on the roof of the half-story of the house, which had been made into a trellised porch overlooking the patio in the rear and the street in front, an architectural wonder in that city of dead walls flush with the sidewalk line all the way up. Leaning over the rail, the visitor pointed through the leaves of a small gallito tree to a broad-fronted building almost opposite.
“That is my club. You have other friends there who would do anything for you, as I would, so gladly,” he added wistfully. “Will you honor me by accepting this little whistle? It is my hunting-whistle. And if there should be anything—but I think there will not—you will blow it, and there will be plenty to answer. If not, you will keep it, please, to remember one who will not forget you.”
Handsome and elegant and courtly he was, a true chevalier of adventurous pioneering stock, sprung from the old proud Spanish blood, but there stole behind the girl’s vision, as she bade him farewell, the undesired phantasm of a very different face, weary and lined and lighted by steadfast gray eyes—eyes that looked truthful and belonged to a liar! Miss Polly Brewster resumed her final packing in a fume of rage at herself.
All hands among the visitors passed the afternoon dully. Mr. Brewster, who had finally yielded to persuasion and decided not to venture out, though still deriding the restriction as the merest nonsense, was in a mood of restless silence, which his irrepressible daughter described to Fitzhugh Carroll as “the superior sulks.”